Verse Reporting Late Arrival at a Conclusion
Consider a lady gone reckless in love,In novels and plays:You watch her proceed in a drapery ofA roseate haze.Acclaimed as a riot, a wow, and a scream,She flies with her beau to les Alpes Maritimes,And moves in a mist of a mutual dreamThe rest of her days.
In life, if you'll listen to one who has beenObservant of such,A lady in love is more frequently inDecidedly Dutch.The thorn, so to say, is revealed by the rose.The best that she gets is a sock in the nose.These authors and playwrights, I'm forced to suppose,Don't get around much.
Words in this poem
- roseate a.
- Full of roses; rosy; as, roseate bowers. [Cf. L. roseus, rosatus, prepared from roses. See Roseal, Rose.]
- decidedly adv.
- In a decided manner; indisputably; clearly; thoroughly.
- sock n.
- A plowshare. Edin. Encyc. [F. soc, LL. soccus, perhaps of Celtic origin.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Verse Reporting Late Arrival at a Conclusion 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, Verse Reporting Late Arrival at a Conclusion, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/verse-reporting-late-arrival-at-a-conclusion.html, id L27353.
Form and metre
Verse Reporting Late Arrival at a Conclusion is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%).
See other poems in anapaestic 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 ABABC-CB loveA · playsB · ofA · hazeB · screamC · maritimes · dreamC · daysB
- 2 ABABCCCB beenA · suchB · inA · dutchB · roseC · noseC · supposeC · muchB
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 anapaestic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Consider a lady gone reckless in love, | 11 | ˘/˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| In novels and plays: | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| You watch her proceed in a drapery of | 11 | ···˘/··/˘˘· |
| A roseate haze. | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Acclaimed as a riot, a wow, and a scream, | 11 | ˘/··/˘····· |
| She flies with her beau to les Alpes Maritimes, | 11 | ········/˘· |
| And moves in a mist of a mutual dream | 11 | ·······/˘˘· |
| The rest of her days. | 5 | ····· |
| In life, if you'll listen to one who has been | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Observant of such, | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| A lady in love is more frequently in | 11 | ·/˘····/˘˘· |
| Decidedly Dutch. | 5 | ˘/˘˘· |
| The thorn, so to say, is revealed by the rose. | 11 | ······˘/··· |
| The best that she gets is a sock in the nose. | 11 | ··········· |
| These authors and playwrights, I'm forced to suppose, | 11 | ·/˘·/····˘/ |
| Don't get around much. | 5 | ····· |
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.