Renunciation
Chloe's hair, no doubt, was brighter;Lydia's mouth more sweetly sad;Hebe's arms were rather whiter;Languorous-lidded Helen hadEyes more blue than e'er the sky wasLalage's was subtler stuff;Still, you used to think that I wasFair enough.
Now you're casting yearning glancesAt the pale Penelope;Cutting in on Claudia's dances;Taking Iris out to tea.Iole you find warm-hearted;Zoë's cheek is far from rough,--Don't you think it's time we parted? ...Fair enough!
Words in this poem
- penelope n.
- A genus of curassows, including the guans.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Renunciation 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, Renunciation, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/renunciation.html, id L27363.
Form and metre
Renunciation is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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.
- 1 ABABCDCD brighterA · sadB · whiterA · hadB · wasC · stuffD · wasC · enoughD
- 2 ABABCDCD glancesA · penelopeB · dancesA · teaB · heartedC · roughD · partedC · enoughD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Chloe's hair, no doubt, was brighter; | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| Lydia's mouth more sweetly sad; | 8 | /˘˘··/˘· |
| Hebe's arms were rather whiter; | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Languorous-lidded Helen had | 8 | /˘˘/˘/˘· |
| Eyes more blue than e'er the sky was | 8 | ········ |
| Lalage's was subtler stuff; | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| Still, you used to think that I was | 8 | ········ |
| Fair enough. | 3 | ·˘/ |
| Now you're casting yearning glances | 8 | ··/˘/˘/˘ |
| At the pale Penelope; | 7 | ···˘/˘˘ |
| Cutting in on Claudia's dances; | 9 | /˘··/˘˘/˘ |
| Taking Iris out to tea. | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Iole you find warm-hearted; | 8 | ˘/˘···/˘ |
| Zoë's cheek is far from rough,-- | 6 | ······ |
| Don't you think it's time we parted? ... | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Fair enough! | 3 | ·˘/ |
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.