Posterity's Award Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCC DBDBEE FGFGHH IGIGJJ K KLM NBNBEE OPOPQQ RSTSUU| I'd long been dead but I returned to earth | A |
| Some small affairs posterity was making | B |
| A mess of and I came to see that worth | A |
| Received its dues I'd hardly finished waking | B |
| The grave mould still upon me when my eye | C |
| Perceived a statue standing straight and high | C |
| - | |
| 'Twas a colossal figure bronze and gold | D |
| Nobly designed in attitude commanding | B |
| A toga from its shoulders fold on fold | D |
| Fell to the pedestal on which 'twas standing | B |
| Nobility it had and splendid grace | E |
| And all it should have had except a face | E |
| - | |
| It showed no features not a trace nor sign | F |
| Of any eyes or nose could be detected | G |
| On the smooth oval of its front no line | F |
| Where sites for mouths are commonly selected | G |
| All blank and blind its faulty head it reared | H |
| Let this be said 'twas generously eared | H |
| - | |
| Seeing these things I straight began to guess | I |
| For whom this mighty image was intended | G |
| 'The head ' I cried 'is Upton's and the dress | I |
| Is Parson Bartlett's own ' True his cloak ended | G |
| Flush with his lowest vertebra but no | J |
| Sane sculptor ever made a toga so | J |
| - | |
| Then on the pedestal these words I read | K |
| ' Erected Eighteen Hundred Ninety seven ' | - |
| Saint Christofer how fast the time had sped | K |
| Of course it naturally does in Heaven | L |
| ' To ' here a blank space for the name began | M |
| ' The Nineteenth Century's Great Foremost Man ' | - |
| - | |
| ' Completed ' the inscription ended ' in | N |
| The Year Three Thousand ' which was just arriving | B |
| By Jove thought I 'twould make the founders grin | N |
| To learn whose fame so long has been surviving | B |
| To read the name posterity will place | E |
| In that blank void and view the finished face | E |
| - | |
| Even as I gazed the year Three Thousand came | O |
| And then by acclamation all the people | P |
| Decreed whose was our century's best fame | O |
| Then scaffolded the statue like a steeple | P |
| To make the likeness and the name was sunk | Q |
| Deep in the pedestal's metallic trunk | Q |
| - | |
| Whose was it Gentle reader pray excuse | R |
| The seeming rudeness but I can't consent to | S |
| Be so forehanded with important news | T |
| 'Twas neither yours nor mine let that content you | S |
| If not the name I must surrender which | U |
| Upon a dead man's word was George K Fitch | U |
Ambrose Bierce
(1)
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