Is Love Cliché or Perfect? Is love a cliche or simply great, is it something to dread or a once in a lifetime find? “One Perfect Rose” by Dorothy Parker and “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning state different viewpoints on the topic of love. From the rhyming schemes to the meter as well as the meaning behind the poems they are similar as well as different. In “One Perfect Rose” the rhyming scheme is a strict rhyme scheme. The ABAB rhyme scheme draws the reader in and provides the idea that the poem, as well as the rose, is perfect. The four line stanzas, quatrains, also follow the same pattern throughout the poem. The entire poem is iambic. The first three lines of each stanza are pentameters. Then the fourth line changes to dimeter. which allows the reader to shift from point to point. By changing the meter Parker showed the reader that everything was the same until the end. Just like the overall message in the poem, when love becomes cliche you need a change. The author effectively broke up the poem into stanzas, each stanza discussed a different scene. It represented a condensed timeline of a love diminishing. Each stanza is creating a different scene and the change in meter helps transition from each stanza. She starts off talking about a perfect rose, but then moves on to talk about how maybe something beside a rose should represent love. Maybe the author has fallen in love in the past, but then slowly fell out of it and was no