Pattern
Leave me to my lonely pillow.Go, and take your silly posies;Who has vowed to wear the willowLooks a fool, tricked out in roses.
Who are you, my lad, to ease me?Leave your pretty words unspoken.Tinkling echoes little please me,Now my heart is freshly broken.
Over young are you to guide me,And your blood is slow and sleeping.If you must, then sit beside me....Tell me, why have I been weeping?
About this text
Pattern is in the public domain. This text is taken from Enough Rope: Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #68353; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Dorothy Parker, Pattern, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/pattern.html, id L27358.
Form and metre
Pattern is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 2 ABAB meA · unspokenB · meA · brokenB
- 3 ABAB meA · sleepingB · meA · weepingB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Leave me to my lonely pillow. | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Go, and take your silly posies; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Who has vowed to wear the willow | 8 | ······/· |
| Looks a fool, tricked out in roses. | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Who are you, my lad, to ease me? | 8 | ········ |
| Leave your pretty words unspoken. | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| Tinkling echoes little please me, | 8 | /˘/˘/˘·· |
| Now my heart is freshly broken. | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Over young are you to guide me, | 8 | ········ |
| And your blood is slow and sleeping. | 8 | ······/˘ |
| If you must, then sit beside me.... | 8 | ·····˘/· |
| Tell me, why have I been weeping? | 8 | ······/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.