The Escape Of The Old Grey Squirrel Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDBD EFGHFIIJ KLMNLIKOPQQMRS QTSUSQQ CVBHBWUJ SXYSZQXZQQA2 QAB2AQTC2B2T QBB QQQQQ CD2UD2BQBQ QTQE2TQQF2TE2Q HPHNJ BG2AUG2H2H2QI2QI2 QQBQOld Grey Squirrel might have been | A |
Almost anything | B |
Might have been a soldier sailor | C |
Tinker tailor | C |
Never a beggar man though nor thief | D |
Might have been perhaps a king | B |
Or an Indian chief | D |
- | |
He remained a City clerk | E |
Doubled on a great high stool | F |
Totting up from dawn to dark | G |
Figures figures figures figures | H |
Red ink black ink double rule | F |
Tot tot totting with his pen | I |
Up and down and round again | I |
Curious Old Grey Squirrel | J |
- | |
No one ever really knew | K |
What he did at night | L |
In his room so near the roof | M |
Up those steep and narrow stairs | N |
Old Grey Squirrel wasn't quite | L |
The same as other men | I |
What he said was always true | K |
He was like a little child | O |
In a thousand things | P |
Something shy and delicate | Q |
Cold and grave and undefiled | Q |
Seemed to keep him quite aloof | M |
You could never call him lonely | R |
Though he lived with memory there | S |
- | |
When he knelt beside his bed | Q |
He had nothing much to say | T |
But the simplest little prayer | S |
Learned in childhood long ago | U |
And he didn't know or care | S |
Whether Calvinists might call it | Q |
Praying for the dead | Q |
- | |
Father mother sister brother | C |
Memories clear as evening bells | V |
Yes the very sort of thing | B |
All your clever little scribblers | H |
Love to satirize and sting | B |
So let's talk of something else | W |
He collected stamps you know | U |
Commonplace Old Squirrel | J |
- | |
Ah but could you see him there | S |
When the day's grey work was done | X |
Poring over his new stamps | Y |
With that wise old air | S |
Looking up the curious places | Z |
In his tattered atlas too | Q |
Lands of jungle and of sun | X |
Ivory tusks and dusky faces | Z |
Whence his latest treasure flew | Q |
Like a tropic moth he thought | Q |
To flutter round his dying lamp | A2 |
- | |
Visions are not bought and sold | Q |
But when the foreign mail came in | A |
Bringing his employers news | B2 |
Of copper sulphide zinc and tin | A |
And the red resultant gold | Q |
Envelopes were thrown away | T |
So of course one clearly sees | C2 |
He could pick and he could choose | B2 |
Having as he used to say | T |
'Very great advantages ' | - |
Rarities could not be bought | Q |
Bus fares don't leave much for spending | B |
On a flight to Zipangu | B |
- | |
All the same one never knew | Q |
All things come to those who wait | Q |
Isles of palm in rose and blue | Q |
India China and Peru | Q |
And the Golden Gate | Q |
- | |
So he'd turn his treasures over | C |
Mauve and crimson buff and cream | D2 |
Every stamp an elfin window | U |
Opening on a boy's lost dream | D2 |
'Curious curious that's Jamaica | B |
That's Hong Kong the twopenny red | Q |
I've no doubt they are well worth seeing | B |
Well worth seeing ' Old Squirrel said | Q |
- | |
'Curious' curious was his word | Q |
Old Grey Squirrel remembered a day | T |
Sitting alone in a whispering fir wood | Q |
This was in boyhood before they caught him | E2 |
Writing a story of far Cathay | T |
A tale that his friends would think absurd | Q |
But would make him famous when he was dead | Q |
'Curious' thinking of all those years | F2 |
All those dreams that had drifted away | T |
Once he had thought but the years had taught him | E2 |
Taught him better and bowed his head | Q |
- | |
'Curious' memory clings and lingers | H |
Clings the smell of the fir wood clings | P |
Through his wrinkled ink stained fingers | H |
'Curious curious ' trickled the tears | N |
Curious Old Grey Squirrel | J |
- | |
No you'd hardly call it weeping | B |
Old Grey Squirrel could not weep | G2 |
Head on arm he might have been | A |
Sleeping but he did not know | U |
Most of us are sound asleep | G2 |
And that Christmas Eve it seems | H2 |
He awoke at last from dreams | H2 |
Gently as a woman's hand | Q |
Something touched him on the brow | I2 |
And he woke in that strange land | Q |
Where he lives for ever now | I2 |
- | |
All things come to those who wait | Q |
Palms against a deeper blue | Q |
Far Cathay and Zipangu | B |
And the Golden Gate | Q |
Alfred Noyes
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Escape Of The Old Grey Squirrel poem by Alfred Noyes
Best Poems of Alfred Noyes