Unfortunate Coincidence
By the time you swear you're his,Shivering and sighing,And he vows his passion isInfinite, undying--Lady, make a note of this:One of you is lying.
Words in this poem
- undying a.
- Not dying; imperishable; unending; immortal; as, the undying souls of men.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Unfortunate Coincidence 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, Unfortunate Coincidence, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/unfortunate-coincidence.html, id L27352.
Form and metre
Unfortunate Coincidence is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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 ABAB-B hisA · sighingB · isA · undyingB · this · lyingB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| By the time you swear you're his, | 7 | ······· |
| Shivering and sighing, | 6 | /˘˘·/˘ |
| And he vows his passion is | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Infinite, undying-- | 6 | /˘˘˘/˘ |
| Lady, make a note of this: | 7 | /˘····· |
| One of you is lying. | 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.