Victoria
Dear dead VictoriaRotted cosily;In excelsis gloria,And R. I. P.
And her shroud was buttoned neat,And her bones were clean and round,And her soul was at her feetLike a bishop’s marble hound.
Albert lay a-drying,Lavishly arrayed,With his soul out flyingWhere his heart had stayed.
And there’s some could tell you what landHis spirit walks serene(But I’ve heard them say in ScotlandIt’s never been seen).
Words in this poem
- lavishly adv.
- In a lavish manner.
- stayed a.
- Staid; fixed; settled; sober; -- now written staid. See Staid.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Victoria 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, Victoria, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/victoria.html, id L27410.
Form and metre
Victoria is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 victoriaA · cosilyB · gloriaA · pB
- 2 ABAB neatA · roundB · feetA · houndB
- 3 ABAB dryingA · arrayedB · flyingA · stayedB
- 4 ABAB landA · sereneB · scotlandA · seenB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Dear dead Victoria | 6 | ··˘/˘˘ |
| Rotted cosily; | 5 | /˘/˘˘ |
| In excelsis gloria, | 7 | ····/˘˘ |
| And R. I. P. | 4 | ···· |
| And her shroud was buttoned neat, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And her bones were clean and round, | 7 | ······· |
| And her soul was at her feet | 7 | ······· |
| Like a bishop’s marble hound. | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Albert lay a-drying, | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| Lavishly arrayed, | 5 | /˘˘˘/ |
| With his soul out flying | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Where his heart had stayed. | 5 | ····· |
| And there’s some could tell you what land | 8 | ········ |
| His spirit walks serene | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| (But I’ve heard them say in Scotland | 8 | ······/˘ |
| It’s never been seen). | 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.