Fulfilment
For this my mother wrapped me warm,And called me home against the storm,And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,And gave me roughage in my diet,And tucked me in my bed at eight,And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,And watched me as I sat and stood:That I might grow to womanhoodTo hear a whistle and drop my witsAnd break my heart to clattering bits.
About this text
Fulfilment 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, Fulfilment, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/fulfilment.html, id L27441.
Form and metre
Fulfilment is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 AABBCCDDEE warmA · stormA · quietB · dietB · eightC · weightC · stoodD · womanhoodD · witsE · bitsE
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| For this my mother wrapped me warm, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And called me home against the storm, | 8 | ········ |
| And coaxed my infant nights to quiet, | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| And gave me roughage in my diet, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| And tucked me in my bed at eight, | 8 | ········ |
| And clipped my hair, and marked my weight, | 8 | ········ |
| And watched me as I sat and stood: | 8 | ········ |
| That I might grow to womanhood | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| To hear a whistle and drop my wits | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| And break my heart to clattering bits. | 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.