A Word To The Unwise Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABA CCDC EEFE GGHG IIJI KKLK MMNM OOPO QQAQ RRSR TTUT VVWV| Charles Main of Main Winchester attend | A |
| With friendly ear the chit chat of a friend | A |
| Who knows you not yet knows that you and he | B |
| Travel two roads that have a common end | A |
| - | |
| We journey forward through the time allowed | C |
| I humbly bending you erect and proud | C |
| Our heads alike will stable soon the worm | D |
| The one that's lifted and the one that's bowed | C |
| - | |
| You in your mausoleum shall repose | E |
| I where it pleases Him who sleep bestows | E |
| What matter whether one so little worth | F |
| Shall stain the marble or shall feed the rose | E |
| - | |
| Charles Main I had a friend who died one day | G |
| A metal casket held his honored clay | G |
| Of cyclopean architecture stood | H |
| The splendid vault where he was laid away | G |
| - | |
| A dozen years and lo the roots of grass | I |
| Had burst asunder all the joints the brass | I |
| The gilded ornaments the carven stones | J |
| Lay tumbled all together in a mass | I |
| - | |
| A dozen years That taxes your belief | K |
| Make it a thousand if the time's too brief | K |
| 'Twill be the same to you when you are dead | L |
| You cannot even count your days of grief | K |
| - | |
| Suppose a pompous monument you raise | M |
| Till on its peak the solar splendor blaze | M |
| While yet about its base the night is black | N |
| But will it give your glory length of days | M |
| - | |
| Say when beneath your rubbish has been thrown | O |
| Some rogue to reputation all unknown | O |
| Men's backs being turned should lift his thieving hand | P |
| Efface your name and substitute his own | O |
| - | |
| Whose then would be the monument To whom | Q |
| Would be the fame Forgotten in your gloom | Q |
| Your very name forgotten ah my friend | A |
| The name is all that's rescued by the tomb | Q |
| - | |
| For memory of worth and work we go | R |
| To other records than a stone can show | R |
| These lacking naught remains with these | S |
| The stone is needless for the world will know | R |
| - | |
| Then build your mausoleum if you must | T |
| And creep into it with a perfect trust | T |
| But in the twinkling of an eye the plow | U |
| Shall pass without obstruction through your dust | T |
| - | |
| Another movement of the pendulum | V |
| And lo the desert haunting wolf shall come | V |
| And seated on the spot shall howl by night | W |
| O'er rotting cities desolate and dumb | V |
Ambrose Bierce
(1)
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