Verses in the Night (After an Evening Spent in Reading the Big Boys): Honeymoon
Ponder, darling, these busted statues,Be aware of the forum, sweet;Feel the centuries tearing at youse—Don’t keep asking me when we eat!
Look, my love, where the hills hang drowsy;Cæsar watched them, a-wondering, here.Get yon goddesses, chipped and lousy—Don’t be trying to bite my ear!
Child, consider the clouds above you,Soft and silly, like baby goats—Don’t keep asking me don’t I love you!Judas! When will you know your oats?
Words in this poem
- forum n.
- A market place or public place in Rome, where causes were judicially tried, and orations delivered to the people. [L.; akin to foris, foras, out of doors. See Foreign.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Verses in the Night (After an Evening Spent in Reading the Big Boys): Honeymoon 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, Verses in the Night (After an Evening Spent in Reading the Big Boys): Honeymoon, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/verses-in-the-night-honeymoon.html, id L27457.
Form and metre
Verses in the Night (After an Evening Spent in Reading the Big Boys): Honeymoon is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is anapaestic common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in anapaestic common measure.
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 statuesA · sweetB · youseA · eatB
- 2 ABAB drowsyA · hereB · lousyA · earB
- 3 ABAB youA · goatsB · youA · oatsB
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 anapaestic common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Ponder, darling, these busted statues, | 9 | /˘/˘·/˘/· |
| Be aware of the forum, sweet; | 8 | ·˘/··/˘· |
| Feel the centuries tearing at youse— | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Don’t keep asking me when we eat! | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Look, my love, where the hills hang drowsy; | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Cæsar watched them, a-wondering, here. | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| Get yon goddesses, chipped and lousy— | 9 | ··/˘˘··/˘ |
| Don’t be trying to bite my ear! | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Child, consider the clouds above you, | 9 | ·˘/˘····· |
| Soft and silly, like baby goats— | 8 | ··/˘·/˘· |
| Don’t keep asking me don’t I love you! | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Judas! When will you know your oats? | 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.