Consolation Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBCB BDDBB EFBFG BBHIJ DAKLM NOP| How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer | A |
| wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns | B |
| How much better to cruise these local familiar streets | B |
| fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard | C |
| and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots | B |
| - | |
| There are no abbeys here no crumbling frescoes or famous | B |
| domes and there is no need to memorize a succession | D |
| of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon | D |
| No need to stand around a sarcophagus see Napoleon's | B |
| little bed on Elba or view the bones of a saint under glass | B |
| - | |
| How much better to command the simple precinct of home | E |
| than be dwarfed by pillar arch and basilica | F |
| Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps | B |
| Why feed scenery into a hungry one eyes camera | F |
| eager to eat the world one monument at a time | G |
| - | |
| Instead of slouching in a caf eacute ignorant of the word for ice | B |
| I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress | B |
| known as Dot I will slide into the flow of the morning | H |
| paper all language barriers down | I |
| rivers of idiom running freely eggs over easy on the way | J |
| - | |
| And after breakfast I will not have to find someone | D |
| willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner | A |
| I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal | K |
| what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window | L |
| It is enough to climb back into the car | M |
| - | |
| as if it were the great car of English itself | N |
| and sounding my loud vernacular horn speed off | O |
| down a road that will never lead to Rome not even Bologna | P |
Billy Collins
(1)
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