The Old Meeting House Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCA BDDE FGHF IJJI KLMK NBBN OPPO QRRS TIIT UVWX| Its quiet graves were made for peace till Gabriel blows his horn | A |
| Those wise old elms could hear no cry | B |
| Of all that distant agony | C |
| Only the red winged blackbird and the rustle of thick ripe corn | A |
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| The blue jay perched upon that bronze with bright unweeting eye | B |
| Could never read the names that signed | D |
| The noblest charter of mankind | D |
| But all of them were names we knew beneath our English skies | E |
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| And on the low gray headstones with their crumbling weather stains | F |
| Though cardinal birds like drops of blood | G |
| Flickered across the haunted wood | H |
| The names you d see were names that woke like flowers in English lanes | F |
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| John Applegate was fast asleep and Temperance Olden too | I |
| And David Worth had quite forgot | J |
| If Hannah s lips were red or not | J |
| And Prudence veiled her eyes at last as Prudence ought to do | I |
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| And when across that patch of heaven that small blue leaf edged space | K |
| At times a droning airplane went | L |
| No flicker of astonishment | M |
| Could lift the heavy eyelids on one gossip s upturned face | K |
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| For William Speakman could not tell so thick the grasses grow | N |
| If that strange humming in the sky | B |
| Meant that the Judgment Day were nigh | B |
| Or if twere but the summer bees that blundered to and fro | N |
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| And then across the breathless wood a Bell began to sound | O |
| The only Bell that wakes the dead | P |
| And Stockton Signer raised his head | P |
| And called to all the deacons in the ancient burial ground | O |
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| The Bell the Bell is ringing Give me back my rusty sword | Q |
| Though I thought the wars were done | R |
| Though I thought our peace was won | R |
| Yet I signed the Declaration and the dead must keep their word | S |
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| There s only one great ghost I know could make that larum ring | T |
| It s the captain that we knew | I |
| In the ancient buff and blue | I |
| It s our Englishman George Washington who fought the German king | T |
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| So the sunset saw them mustering beneath their brooding boughs | U |
| Ancient shadows of our sires | V |
| Kindling with the ancient fires | W |
| While the old cracked Bell to southward shook the shadowy meeting house | X |
Alfred Noyes
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