Post-Graduate

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) · 1928

ABAB · 4 lines · from Sunset Gun

Hope it was that tutored me,And Love that taught me more;And now I learn at Sorrow’s kneeThe self-same lore.

About this text

Post-Graduate 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, Post-Graduate, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/post-graduate.html, id L27456.

Form and metre

Post-Graduate is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB.

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. 1 ABAB meA · moreB · kneeA · loreB
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. How this is done.

LineSyl.Stress
Hope it was that tutored me,8····/˘˘·
And Love that taught me more;6······
And now I learn at Sorrow’s knee8·····/˘·
The self-same lore.4····

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.

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