Landscape
Now this must be the sweetest placeFrom here to Heaven’s end;The field is white with flowering lace,The birches leap and bend,
The hills, beneath the roving sun,From green to purple pass,And little, trifling breezes runTheir fingers through the grass.
So good it is, so gay it is,So calm it is, and pure,A one whose eyes may look on thisMust be the happier, sure.
But me—I see it flat and grayAnd blurred with misery,Because a lad a mile awayHas little need of me.
About this text
Landscape 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, Landscape, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/landscape.html, id L27455.
Form and metre
Landscape is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in common measure.
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 placeA · endB · laceA · bendB
- 2 ABAB sunA · passB · runA · grassB
- 3 ABAB isA · pureB · thisA · sureB
- 4 ABAB grayA · miseryB · awayA · meB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Now this must be the sweetest place | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| From here to Heaven’s end; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The field is white with flowering lace, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The birches leap and bend, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The hills, beneath the roving sun, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| From green to purple pass, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And little, trifling breezes run | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| Their fingers through the grass. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| So good it is, so gay it is, | 8 | ········ |
| So calm it is, and pure, | 6 | ······ |
| A one whose eyes may look on this | 8 | ········ |
| Must be the happier, sure. | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| But me—I see it flat and gray | 8 | ········ |
| And blurred with misery, | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Because a lad a mile away | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Has little need of me. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.