Social Note
Lady, lady, should you meetOne whose ways are all discreet,One who murmurs that his wifeIs the lodestar of his life,One who keeps assuring youThat he never was untrue,Never loved another one ...Lady, lady, better run!
Words in this poem
- discreet a.
- Possessed of discernment, especially in avoiding error or evil, and in the adaptation of means to ends; prudent; sagacious; judicious; not rash or heedless; cautious. [F. discret, L. discretus separated (whence the meaning reserved, prudent), p. p. of discernere. See Discern, and cf. Discrete.]
- lodestar n.
- A star that leads; a guiding star; esp., the polestar; the cynosure. [Load, lode + star. See Lode.]
- assuring a.
- That assures; tending to assure; giving confidence.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Social Note 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, Social Note, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/social-note.html, id L27371.
Form and metre
Social Note is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, 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 AABBCCDD meetA · discreetA · wifeB · lifeB · youC · untrueC · oneD · runD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lady, lady, should you meet | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| One whose ways are all discreet, | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| One who murmurs that his wife | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Is the lodestar of his life, | 7 | ··/···· |
| One who keeps assuring you | 7 | ···˘/˘· |
| That he never was untrue, | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Never loved another one ... | 8 | /˘·˘˘/˘· |
| Lady, lady, better run! | 7 | /˘/˘/˘· |
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.