A Child's Pity Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAC DEDE FGFG HIHI JDJD KAKA LMLN ONOP IQIQ| No sweeter thing than children's ways and wiles | A |
| Surely we say can gladden eyes and ears | B |
| Yet sometime sweeter than their words or smiles | A |
| Are even their tears | C |
| - | |
| To one for once a piteous tale was read | D |
| How when the murderous mother crocodile | E |
| Was slain her fierce brood famished and lay dead | D |
| Starved by the Nile | E |
| - | |
| In vast green reed beds on the vast grey slime | F |
| Those monsters motherless and helpless lay | G |
| Perishing only for the parent's crime | F |
| Whose seed were they | G |
| - | |
| Hours after toward the dusk our blithe small bird | H |
| Of Paradise who has our hearts in keeping | I |
| Was heard or seen but hardly seen or heard | H |
| For pity weeping | I |
| - | |
| He was so sorry sitting still apart | J |
| For the poor little crocodiles he said | D |
| Six years had given him for an angel's heart | J |
| A child's instead | D |
| - | |
| Feigned tears the false beasts shed for murderous ends | K |
| We know from travellers' tales of crocodiles | A |
| But these tears wept upon them of my friend's | K |
| Outshine his smiles | A |
| - | |
| What heavenliest angels of what heavenly city | L |
| Could match the heavenly heart in children here | M |
| The heart that hallowing all things with its pity | L |
| Casts out all fear | N |
| - | |
| So lovely so divine so dear their laughter | O |
| Seems to us we know not what could be more dear | N |
| But lovelier yet we see the sign thereafter | O |
| Of such a tear | P |
| - | |
| With sense of love half laughing and half weeping | I |
| We met your tears our small sweet spirited friend | Q |
| Let your love have us in its heavenly keeping | I |
| To life's last end | Q |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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