Address At The Opening Of The California Theatre, San Francisco, January 19, 1870 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCCC CCDDEEFF GGHHIIJJ CCKLCCMM NNFFOOPP QQRRSSHHBrief words when actions wait are well | A |
The prompter's hand is on his bell | A |
The coming heroes lovers kings | B |
Are idly lounging at the wings | B |
Behind the curtain's mystic fold | C |
The glowing future lies unrolled | C |
And yet one moment for the Past | C |
One retrospect the first and last | C |
- | |
The world's a stage the Master said | C |
To night a mightier truth is read | C |
Not in the shifting canvas screen | D |
The flash of gas or tinsel sheen | D |
Not in the skill whose signal calls | E |
From empty boards baronial halls | E |
But fronting sea and curving bay | F |
Behold the players and the play | F |
- | |
Ah friends beneath your real skies | G |
The actor's short lived triumph dies | G |
On that broad stage of empire won | H |
Whose footlights were the setting sun | H |
Whose flats a distant background rose | I |
In trackless peaks of endless snows | I |
Here genius bows and talent waits | J |
To copy that but One creates | J |
- | |
Your shifting scenes the league of sand | C |
An avenue by ocean spanned | C |
The narrow beach of straggling tents | K |
A mile of stately monuments | L |
Your standard lo a flag unfurled | C |
Whose clinging folds clasp half the world | C |
This is your drama built on facts | M |
With twenty years between the acts | M |
- | |
One moment more if here we raise | N |
The oft sung hymn of local praise | N |
Before the curtain facts must sway | F |
HERE waits the moral of your play | F |
Glassed in the poet's thought you view | O |
What money can yet cannot do | O |
The faith that soars the deeds that shine | P |
Above the gold that builds the shrine | P |
- | |
And oh when others take our place | Q |
And Earth's green curtain hides our face | Q |
Ere on the stage so silent now | R |
The last new hero makes his bow | R |
So may our deeds recalled once more | S |
In Memory's sweet but brief encore | S |
Down all the circling ages run | H |
With the world's plaudit of Well done | H |
Bret Harte
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