The Last Question
New love, new love, where are you to lead me?All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.
New love, new love, shall I be forsaken?One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh.Sweet it is to slumber, but how shall we awaken—Whose will be the broken heart, when dawn comes by?
Words in this poem
- 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
The Last Question 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, The Last Question, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/the-last-question.html, id L27465.
Form and metre
The Last Question is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
See other poems in trochaic hexameter.
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 meA · lineB · meA · wineB
- 2 ABAB forsakenA · sighB · awakenA · byB
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| New love, new love, where are you to lead me? | 10 | ·········· |
| All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line. | 13 | ·˘/·/˘····/˘· |
| How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me? | 13 | ············· |
| With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine. | 12 | ·/˘/˘/˘····· |
| New love, new love, shall I be forsaken? | 10 | ·······˘/˘ |
| One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh. | 13 | ····/˘˘······ |
| Sweet it is to slumber, but how shall we awaken— | 13 | ····/˘····˘/˘ |
| Whose will be the broken heart, when dawn comes by? | 11 | ····/˘····· |
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.