Surprise
My heart went fluttering with fearLest you should go, and leave me hereTo beat my breast and rock my headAnd stretch me sleepless on my bed.Ah, clear they see and true they sayThat one shall weep, and one shall strayFor such is Love’s unvarying law...I never thought, I never sawThat I should be the first to go;How pleasant that it happened so!
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
- sleepless a.
- Having no sleep; wakeful.
- 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,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Surprise 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, Surprise, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/surprise.html, id L27443.
Form and metre
Surprise 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 93%).
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 fearA · hereA · headB · bedB · sayC · strayC · lawD · sawD · goE · soE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My heart went fluttering with fear | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| Lest you should go, and leave me here | 8 | ········ |
| To beat my breast and rock my head | 8 | ········ |
| And stretch me sleepless on my bed. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Ah, clear they see and true they say | 8 | ········ |
| That one shall weep, and one shall stray | 8 | ········ |
| For such is Love’s unvarying law... | 8 | ········ |
| I never thought, I never saw | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That I should be the first to go; | 8 | ········ |
| How pleasant that it happened so! | 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.