Life's Undercurrent Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBDD EFEFGG HIHJGG KLKMGG NONOGG PFPFGG QCQRGGWithin the precincts of a hospital | A |
I wandered in a sympathetic mood | B |
Where face to face with wormwood and with gall | C |
With wrecks of pain and stern vicissitude | B |
The eye unused to human misery | D |
Might view life's undercurrent vividly | D |
- | |
My gaze soon rested on the stricken form | E |
Of one succumbing to the fever's drouth | F |
With throbbing brow intolerably warm | E |
With wasted lips and mute appealing mouth | F |
And when I watched that prostrate figure there | G |
I thought that fate must be the worst to bear | G |
- | |
I next beheld a thin but patient face | H |
Aged by the constant twinge of hopeless pain | I |
Wheeled in an easy chair from place to place | H |
A form which ne'er might stand erect again | J |
I viewed that human shipwreck in his chair | G |
And thought a fate like that was worst to bear | G |
- | |
Within her room a beauteous maiden lay | K |
Moaning in agony no words express | L |
A cancer eating rapidly away | K |
Her vital force so foul and pitiless | M |
And when I saw that face so young and fair | G |
I thought such anguish was the worst to bear | G |
- | |
- | |
A helpless paralytic met my eyes | N |
Whose hands might never grasp a friendly hand | O |
But hung distorted and of shrunken size | N |
Insensible to muscular command | O |
His face an abject picture of despair | G |
I thought a fate like that was worst to bear | G |
- | |
With wasted form emaciate and wan | P |
A pale consumptive coughed with labored breath | F |
His sunken eyes and hectic flush upon | P |
His cheek foretold a sure but lingering death | F |
I thought whene'er I met his hollow stare | G |
A wasting death like that was worst to bear | G |
- | |
That day with fetters obdurate and fast | Q |
With chain of summer winter spring and fall | C |
Is bounden to the dim receding past | Q |
Time o'er my life has spread a somber pall | R |
With sightless eyes I grope and clutch the air | G |
My lot is now the hardest lot to bear | G |
Alfred Castner King
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