Penelope
In the pathway of the sun,In the footsteps of the breeze,Where the world and sky are one,He shall ride the silver seas,He shall cut the glittering wave.I shall sit at home, and rock;Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;Brew my tea, and snip my thread;Bleach the linen for my bed.They will call him brave.
Words in this poem
- pathway n.
- A footpath; a beaten track; any path or course. Also used figuratively.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- brew v. t.
- To boil or seethe; to cook. [OE. brewen, AS. breówan; akin to D. brouwen, OHG. priuwan, MHG. briuwen, br, G. brauen, Icel. brugga, Sw. brygga, Dan. brygge, and perh. to L. defrutum must boi]
- snip v. t.
- To cut off the nip or neb of, or to cut off at once with shears or scissors; to clip off suddenly; to nip; hence, to break off; to snatch away. [D. snippen; akin to G. schnippen.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Penelope 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, Penelope, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/penelope.html, id L27434.
Form and metre
Penelope is 10 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDDEEC. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
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 ABABCDDEEC sunA · breezeB · oneA · seasB · waveC · rockD · knockD · threadE · bedE · braveC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| In the pathway of the sun, | 7 | ··/···· |
| In the footsteps of the breeze, | 7 | ··/···· |
| Where the world and sky are one, | 7 | ······· |
| He shall ride the silver seas, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| He shall cut the glittering wave. | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| I shall sit at home, and rock; | 7 | ······· |
| Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Brew my tea, and snip my thread; | 7 | ······· |
| Bleach the linen for my bed. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| They will call him brave. | 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.