Coda
There’s little in taking or giving,There’s little in water or wine;This living, this living, this livingWas never a project of mine.Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse isThe gain of the one at the top,For art is a form of catharsis,And love is a permanent flop,And work is the province of cattle,And rest’s for a clam in a shell,So I’m thinking of throwing the battle—Would you kindly direct me to hell?
Words in this poem
- sparse v. t.
- To scatter; to disperse. [L. sparsus, p.p. of spargere to scatter.]
- catharsis n.
- A natural or artificial purgation of any passage, as of the mouth, bowels, etc. [NL., fr. Gr. Cathartic.]
- flop v. t.
- To clap or strike, as a bird its wings, a fish its tail, etc.; to flap. [A variant of flap.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Coda is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sunset Gun: Poems (Boni & Liveright, 1928), English Wikisource; 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, Coda, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/coda.html, id L27474.
Form and metre
Coda is 12 lines in a single stanza. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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-C-CDEDE givingA · wineB · livingA · mineB · is · topC · catharsis · flopC · cattleD · shellE · battleD · hellE
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| There’s little in taking or giving, | 9 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| There’s little in water or wine; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| This living, this living, this living | 9 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Was never a project of mine. | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| The gain of the one at the top, | 8 | ········ |
| For art is a form of catharsis, | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| And love is a permanent flop, | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| And work is the province of cattle, | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| And rest’s for a clam in a shell, | 8 | ········ |
| So I’m thinking of throwing the battle— | 10 | ··/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Would you kindly direct me to hell? | 9 | ··/˘˘/··· |
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.