Nostalgia Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFG HIJKLMN OPQRST UVWXYZA2 WB2C2D2D2 E2CF2D2G2D2| Remember the 's We were doing a dance called the Catapult | A |
| You always wore brown the color craze of the decade | B |
| and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular | C |
| the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework | D |
| Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon | E |
| and at night we would play a game called Find the Cow | F |
| Everything was hand lettered then not like today | G |
| - | |
| Where has the summer of gone Brocade and sonnet | H |
| marathons were the rage We used to dress up in the flags | I |
| of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone | J |
| Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle | K |
| while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room | L |
| We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang | M |
| These days language seems transparent a badly broken code | N |
| - | |
| The 's will never come again Childhood was big | O |
| People would take walks to the very tops of hills | P |
| and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking | Q |
| Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft | R |
| We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs | S |
| It was a wonderful time to be alive or even dead | T |
| - | |
| I am very fond of the period between and | U |
| Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits | V |
| And I would love to return to if only for a moment | W |
| time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps | X |
| or shoot me back to or or at least let me | Y |
| recapture the serenity of last month when we picked | Z |
| berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe | A2 |
| - | |
| Even this morning would be an improvement over the present | W |
| I was in the garden then surrounded by the hum of bees | B2 |
| and the Latin names of flowers watching the early light | C2 |
| flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse | D2 |
| and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks | D2 |
| - | |
| As usual I was thinking about the moments of the past | E2 |
| letting my memory rush over them like water | C |
| rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream | F2 |
| I was even thinking a little about the future that place | D2 |
| where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine | G2 |
| a dance whose name we can only guess | D2 |
Billy Collins
(1)
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