Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror
Helen of Troy had a wandering glance;Sappho's restriction was only the sky;Ninon was ever the chatter of France;But oh, what a good girl am I!
About this text
Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror 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, Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/words-of-comfort-to-be-scratched-on-a-mirror.html, id L27382.
Form and metre
Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB.
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 glanceA · skyB · franceA · iB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Helen of Troy had a wandering glance; | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| Sappho's restriction was only the sky; | 10 | ··˘/˘·/˘·· |
| Ninon was ever the chatter of France; | 9 | /˘·/·/˘·· |
| But oh, what a good girl am I! | 8 | ········ |
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.