A Lifted Finger Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGG HHIIJJKKLLMMNNOO FFPP DQQRRSSTT UUVVWWXXYYZZA2A2| What you whip rascals you whose gutter blood | A |
| Bears in its dark dishonorable flood | A |
| Enough of prison birds' prolific germs | B |
| To serve a whole eternity of terms | B |
| You for whose back the rods and cudgels strove | C |
| Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove | C |
| You the De Young whose splendor bright and brave | D |
| Is phosphorescence from another's grave | D |
| Till now unknown by any chance or luck | E |
| Even to the hearts at which you feebly struck | E |
| You whip a rascal out of office you | F |
| Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew | F |
| Its smoke in six directions to assert | G |
| Your lack of appetite for others' dirt | G |
| - | |
| Practice makes perfect when for fame you thirst | H |
| Then whip a rascal Whip a cripple first | H |
| Or if for action you're less free than bold | I |
| Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold | I |
| Entrust the castigation that you've planned | J |
| As once before to woman's idle hand | J |
| So in your spirit shall two pleasures join | K |
| To slake the sacred thirst for blood and coin | K |
| Blood Souls have blood even as the body hath | L |
| And spilled 'twill fertilize the field of wrath | L |
| Lo in a purple gorge of yonder hills | M |
| Where o'er a grave a bird its day song stills | M |
| A woman's blood through roses ever red | N |
| Mutely appeals for vengeance on your head | N |
| Slandered to death to serve a sordid end | O |
| She called you murderer and called me friend | O |
| - | |
| Now mark you libeler this course if you | F |
| Dare to maintain or rather to renew | F |
| If one short year's immunity has made | P |
| You blink again the perils of your trade | P |
| The ghastly sequence of the maddened 'knave ' | - |
| The hot encounter and the colder grave | D |
| If the grim dismal lesson you ignore | Q |
| While yet the stains are fresh upon your floor | Q |
| And calmly march upon the fatal brink | R |
| With eyes averted to your trail of ink | R |
| Counting unkind the services of those | S |
| Who pull to hold you back your stupid nose | S |
| The day for you to die is not so far | T |
| Or at the least to live the thing you are | T |
| - | |
| Pregnant with possibilities of crime | U |
| And full of felons for all coming time | U |
| Your blood's too precious to be lightly spilt | V |
| In testimony to a venial guilt | V |
| Live to get whelpage and preserve a name | W |
| No praise can sweeten and no lie unshame | W |
| Live to fulfill the vision that I see | X |
| Down the dim vistas of the time to be | X |
| A dream of clattering beaks and burning eyes | Y |
| Of hungry ravens glooming all the skies | Y |
| A dream of gleaming teeth and foetid breath | Z |
| Of jackals wrangling at the feast of death | Z |
| A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues | A2 |
| The whole world's gibbets loaded with De Youngs | A2 |
Ambrose Bierce
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about A Lifted Finger poem by Ambrose Bierce
Best Poems of Ambrose Bierce