The Small Hours
No more my little song comes back;And now of nights I layMy head on down, to watch the blackAnd wait the unfailing gray.
Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;And sad's a song that's dumb;And sad it is to lie and knowAnother dawn will come.
About this text
The Small Hours 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, The Small Hours, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/the-small-hours.html, id L27318.
Form and metre
The Small Hours is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in common measure.
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 ABAB backA · layB · blackA · grayB
- 2 ABAB slowA · dumbB · knowA · comeB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| No more my little song comes back; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And now of nights I lay | 6 | ······ |
| My head on down, to watch the black | 8 | ········ |
| And wait the unfailing gray. | 7 | ···˘/˘· |
| Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And sad's a song that's dumb; | 6 | ······ |
| And sad it is to lie and know | 8 | ········ |
| Another dawn will come. | 6 | ˘/˘··· |
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.