A Dilettante Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEF ECGEECHEICJ KCE LEMEEEEEEACAFNECECCE CEOEEC EEEMPECEEHQ MERLEEEPECCCCSTEEUEV E EWXCYZA CPA2CPB2ELPEECEEC2E ECEEE D2C2CEEECCEA2CCFCREX E2F2CCCCRCECG2CEECCE H2 DECCFCCEECI2MCC CHEECCJ2 CK2EL2CEEF CM2ECEFCIRGood friend be patient goes the world awry | A |
well can you groove it straight with all your pains | B |
and sigh or scold and argue or intreat | C |
what have you done but waste your part of life | D |
on impotent fool's battles with the winds | E |
that will blow as they list in spite of you | F |
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Fie I am weary of your pettish griefs | E |
against the world that's given like a child | C |
who whines and pules because his bread's not cake | G |
because the roses have those ugly thorns | E |
that prick if he's not careful of his hands | E |
Oh foolish spite what talk you of the world | C |
and mean the men and women and the sin | H |
Oh friend these all pass by and God remains | E |
and God has made a world that pleases Him | I |
and when He wills then He will better it | C |
let it suffice us as he wills it now | J |
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Nay hush and look and listen For this noon | K |
this summer noon replies but be content | C |
speaking in voices of a hundred joys | E |
- | |
For lo we lying on this mossy knoll | L |
tasting the vivid musk of sheltering pines | E |
and balm of odorous flowers and sweet warm air | M |
feeling the uncadenced music of slow leaves | E |
and ripples in the brook athwart its stones | E |
and birds that call each other in the brakes | E |
with sudden questions and smooth long replies | E |
the gossip of the incessant grasshoppers | E |
and the contented hum of laden bees | E |
we knowing with the easy restful eye | A |
that whichsoever way it turns is filled | C |
with unexacting beauty this smooth sky | A |
blue with our English placid silvery blue | F |
mottled with little lazy clouds this stretch | N |
of dappled wealds and green and saffron slopes | E |
and near us these gnarled elm trunks barred with gold | C |
and ruddy pine boles where the slumbrous beams | E |
have slipped through the translucent leafy net | C |
to break the shimmering dimness of the wood | C |
we who like licensed truants from light tasks | E |
which lightly can be banished out of mind | C |
have all ourselves to give to idleness | E |
were more unreasoning if we make moan | O |
of miseries and toils and barrenness | E |
than if we sitting at a feast told tales | E |
of famines and for the pity of them starved | C |
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Oh life is good when on such summer days | E |
we linger in the dreamful paradise | E |
that lies at every door where so much space | E |
is left to garner in the languid air | M |
as grass may grow in and some verdurous tree | P |
and some few yards of blueness and of clouds | E |
may stretch above making immensity | C |
when lost out of our petty unit selves | E |
the heart grows large in the grave trance of peace | E |
and all things breathing growing are its kin | H |
and all the fair and blossoming earth is home | Q |
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And beauty is our lesson for look there | M |
that exquisite curve and cluster of rich leaves | E |
emerald and shadow in that patch of sun | R |
what is it but a nettle And that knoll | L |
of woven green where all fantastic grace | E |
of shaggy stems and lush and trailing shoots | E |
and all a thousand delicate varied tints | E |
are mingled in a wanton symmetry | P |
what is it but a thorn and bramble copse | E |
And that far plain on which through all the day | C |
change still grows lovelier and every cloud | C |
makes different softer dimness every light | C |
an other coloured glory what is it | C |
a desolate barren waste marshland and moor | S |
And in some other moment when the rain | T |
spurts greyly downwards on the soddening fields | E |
or the dank autumn fog veils leaden skies | E |
or the keen baleful east winds nip the bloom | U |
of frightened spring with bleak and parching chills | E |
the waste the thorns the nettle each would seem | V |
cursed with the unloveliness of evil things | E |
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So beauty comes and goes yet beauty is | E |
a message out of Heaven can it speak | W |
from evil things I know not but I know | X |
that waste and thorns and nettle are to day | C |
teachers of Love a prospect not to change | Y |
for use against a fifty miles of corn | Z |
Can we tell good from evil you and I | A |
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Oh if the men and women of to day | C |
seem ill or good to us why what know we | P |
to morrow they or those who follow them | A2 |
will seem another way and are they changed | C |
or are the eyes that see them Let them be | P |
are we divine that we should judge and rule | B2 |
And they are not the world by several selves | E |
but in a gathered whole and if that whole | L |
drift heavenward or hellward God can see | P |
not we who ants hived in our colonies | E |
count the world loam or gravel stocked with flowers | E |
or weeds or cabbages as we shall find | C |
within our own small ranges and being wise | E |
and full of care for all the universe | E |
wonder and blame and theorize and plan | C2 |
by the broad guide of our experiences | E |
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'Twere a neat world if levelled by the ants | E |
no ridges no rough gaps all fined and soft | C |
But I will rather use my antish wits | E |
in smoothing just my cell and at my doors | E |
than join in such heroic enterprise | E |
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Selfish you call me callous Hear a tale | D2 |
There was a little shallow brook that ran | C2 |
between low banks scarcely a child's leap wide | C |
feeding a foot or two of bordering grass | E |
and here and there some tufts of waterflowers | E |
and cresses and tall sedge rushes and reeds | E |
and where it bubbled past a poor man's cot | C |
he and his household came and drank of it | C |
and all the children loved it for its flowers | E |
and counted it a playmate made for them | A2 |
but not far off a sandy arid waste | C |
where when a winged seed rested or a bird | C |
would drop a grain in passing and it grew | F |
it presently must droop and die athirst | C |
spread its scorched silent leagues to the fierce sun | R |
and once a learned man came by and saw | E |
and lo said he what space for corn to grow | X |
could we send vivifying moistures here | E2 |
while look this wanton misdirected brook | F2 |
watering its useless weeds so had it turned | C |
and made a channel for it through the waste | C |
but its small waters could not feed that drought | C |
and in the wide unshadowed plain it lagged | C |
and shrank away sucked upwards of the sun | R |
and downwards of the sands so the new bed | C |
lay dry and dry the old and the parched reeds | E |
grew brown and dwined the stunted rushes drooped | C |
the cresses could not root in that slacked soil | G2 |
the blossoms and the sedges died away | C |
the greenness shrivelled from the dusty banks | E |
the children missed their playmate and the flowers | E |
and thirsted in hot noon tides for the draught | C |
grown over precious now their mother went | C |
a half mile to the well to fill her pails | E |
and not two ears of corn the more were green | H2 |
- | |
Tell me what should I do I take my life | D |
as I have found it and the work it brings | E |
well and the life is kind the work is light | C |
shall I go fret and scorn myself for that | C |
and must I sally forth to hack and hew | F |
at giants or at windmills leave the post | C |
I could have filled the work I could have wrought | C |
for some magnificent mad enterprise | E |
some task to lift a mountain drain a sea | E |
tread down a Titan build a pyramid | C |
No let me like a bird bred in the cage | I2 |
that singing its own self to gladness there | M |
makes some who hear it gladder take what part | C |
I have been born to and make joy of it | C |
- | |
Grumbler what are you muttering in your beard | C |
You've a bird likeness too to shew me in | H |
I take life as a sea gull takes the sea | E |
mere skimmingly I say no otherwise | E |
'tis a wise bird the sea gull does but taste | C |
the hale and briny freshness of the spray | C |
what would you have me do plunge in and drown | J2 |
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Oh chiding friend I am not of your kind | C |
you strenuous souls who cannot think you live | K2 |
unless you feel your limbs though 'twere by aches | E |
great boisterous winds you are who must rush on | L2 |
and sweep all on your way or drop and die | C |
but I am only a small fluttering breeze | E |
to coax the roses open let me be | E |
perhaps I have my use no less than you | F |
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Ah well How strange that you and I who tread | C |
so same a path perceive it so unlike | M2 |
And which sees justly Maybe both of us | E |
or maybe one of us is colour blind | C |
and sees the tintings blurred or sees them false | E |
or does not see so misses what they shew | F |
Or likelier each of us is colour blind | C |
and sees the world his own way fit for him | I |
doubtless we afterwards shall un | R |
Augusta Davies Webster
(1)
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