Two-Volume Novel
The sun’s gone dim, andThe moon’s turned black;For I loved him, andHe didn’t love back.
About this text
Two-Volume Novel 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, Two-Volume Novel, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/two-volume-novel.html, id L27469.
Form and metre
Two-Volume Novel 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 ABAB andA · blackB · andA · backB
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The sun’s gone dim, and | 5 | ····· |
| The moon’s turned black; | 4 | ···· |
| For I loved him, and | 5 | ····· |
| He didn’t love back. | 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.