For a Favorite Grand-daughter
Never love a simple lad,Guard against a wise,Shun a timid youth and sad,Hide from haunted eyes.
Never hold your heart in painFor an evil-doer;Never flip it down the laneTo a gifted wooer.
Never love a loving son,Nor a sheep astray;Gather up your skirts and runFrom a tender way.
Never give away a tear,Never toss and pine;Should you heed my words, my dear,You’re no blood of mine!
Words in this poem
- haunted a.
- Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost.
- flip n.
- A mixture of beer, spirit, etc., stirred and heated by a hot iron. Flip dog, an iron used, when heated, to warm flip. [Cf. Prov. E. flip nimble, flippant, also, a slight blow. Cf. Flippant.]
- wooer n.
- One who wooes; one who courts or solicits in love; a suitor. [AS. wogere. See Woo, v. t.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
For a Favorite Grand-daughter 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, For a Favorite Grand-daughter, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/for-a-favorite-grand-daughter.html, id L27461.
Form and metre
For a Favorite Grand-daughter is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%).
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 ladA · wiseB · sadA · eyesB
- 2 ABAB painA · doerB · laneA · wooerB
- 3 ABAB sonA · astrayB · runA · wayB
- 4 ABAB tearA · pineB · dearA · mineB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Never love a simple lad, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Guard against a wise, | 5 | ····· |
| Shun a timid youth and sad, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Hide from haunted eyes. | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Never hold your heart in pain | 7 | /˘····· |
| For an evil-doer; | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Never flip it down the lane | 7 | /˘····· |
| To a gifted wooer. | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Never love a loving son, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Nor a sheep astray; | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Gather up your skirts and run | 7 | /˘····· |
| From a tender way. | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Never give away a tear, | 7 | /˘·˘/·· |
| Never toss and pine; | 5 | /˘··· |
| Should you heed my words, my dear, | 7 | ······· |
| You’re no blood of mine! | 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.