Cadet Grey: Canto Ii Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCBCBDBDD A EFEFEGEHG A ABABAIAII A CCCCCBCBB A AJAJACACC A BABABCBCC A KLKLKMKMM A BNBNBBBBB C BOBOBPBPP C CCCCCOCOO C BABABPBPP C AQAQAAAAA C AJAJAOAOO B CBCBQQB RSRSAAB A BTBTBPBPU A BBBBBRBRR A QBQBQVQVV A AOAOAPAPP A CACACJCJJ C CWCWCPCPP C CXCLCWCWW C PPPPPCPCC C IPIPICICC C BYBYBMBYM A BOBOBCBCC A FPFPFPFPP A BZBZBABAA A OMOMORORA W BPBPAAB BFBBFAABI | A |
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Where West Point crouches and with lifted shield | B |
Turns the whole river eastward through the pass | C |
Whose jutting crags half silver stand revealed | B |
Like bossy bucklers of Leonidas | C |
Where buttressed low against the storms that wield | B |
Their summer lightnings where her eaglets swarm | D |
By Freedom's cradle Nature's self has steeled | B |
Her heart like Winkelried and to that storm | D |
Of leveled lances bares her bosom warm | D |
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II | A |
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But not to night The air and woods are still | E |
The faintest rustle in the trees below | F |
The lowest tremor from the mountain rill | E |
Come to the ear as but the trailing flow | F |
Of spirit robes that walk unseen the hill | E |
The moon low sailing o'er the upland farm | G |
The moon low sailing where the waters fill | E |
The lozenge lake beside the banks of balm | H |
Gleams like a chevron on the river's arm | G |
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III | A |
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All space breathes languor from the hilltop high | A |
Where Putnam's bastion crumbles in the past | B |
To swooning depths where drowsy cannon lie | A |
And wide mouthed mortars gape in slumbers vast | B |
Stroke upon stroke the far oars glance and die | A |
On the hushed bosom of the sleeping stream | I |
Bright for one moment drifts a white sail by | A |
Bright for one moment shows a bayonet gleam | I |
Far on the level plain then passes as a dream | I |
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IV | A |
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Soft down the line of darkened battlements | C |
Bright on each lattice of the barrack walls | C |
Where the low arching sallyport indents | C |
Seen through its gloom beyond the moonbeam falls | C |
All is repose save where the camping tents | C |
Mock the white gravestones farther on where sound | B |
No morning guns for reveille nor whence | C |
No drum beat calls retreat but still is ever found | B |
Waiting and present on each sentry's round | B |
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V | A |
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Within the camp they lie the young the brave | A |
Half knight half schoolboy acolytes of fame | J |
Pledged to one altar and perchance one grave | A |
Bred to fear nothing but reproach and blame | J |
Ascetic dandies o'er whom vestals rave | A |
Clean limbed young Spartans disciplined young elves | C |
Taught to destroy that they may live to save | A |
Students embattled soldiers at their shelves | C |
Heroes whose conquests are at first themselves | C |
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VI | A |
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Within the camp they lie in dreams are freed | B |
From the grim discipline they learn to love | A |
In dreams no more the sentry's challenge heed | B |
In dreams afar beyond their pickets rove | A |
One treads once more the piny paths that lead | B |
To his green mountain home and pausing hears | C |
The cattle call one treads the tangled weed | B |
Of slippery rocks beside Atlantic piers | C |
One smiles in sleep one wakens wet with tears | C |
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VII | A |
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One scents the breath of jasmine flowers that twine | K |
The pillared porches of his Southern home | L |
One hears the coo of pigeons in the pine | K |
Of Western woods where he was wont to roam | L |
One sees the sunset fire the distant line | K |
Where the long prairie sweeps its levels down | M |
One treads the snow peaks one by lamps that shine | K |
Down the broad highways of the sea girt town | M |
And two are missing Cadets Grey and Brown | M |
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VIII | A |
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Much as I grieve to chronicle the fact | B |
That selfsame truant known as Cadet Grey | N |
Was the young hero of our moral tract | B |
Shorn of his twofold names on entrance day | N |
Winthrop and Adams dropped in that one act | B |
Of martial curtness and the roll call thinned | B |
Of his ancestors he with youthful tact | B |
Indulgence claimed since Winthrop no more sinned | B |
Nor sainted Adams winced when he plain Grey was skinned | B |
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IX | C |
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He had known trials since we saw him last | B |
By sheer good luck had just escaped rejection | O |
Not for his learning but that it was cast | B |
In a spare frame scarce fit for drill inspection | O |
But when he ope'd his lips a stream so vast | B |
Of information flooded each professor | P |
They quite forgot his eyeglass something past | B |
All precedent accepting the transgressor | P |
Weak eyes and all of which he was possessor | P |
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X | C |
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E'en the first day he touched a blackboard's space | C |
So the tradition of his glory lingers | C |
Two wise professors fainted each with face | C |
White as the chalk within his rapid fingers | C |
All day he ciphered at such frantic pace | C |
His form was hid in chalk precipitation | O |
Of every problem till they said his case | C |
Could meet from them no fair examination | O |
Till Congress made a new appropriation | O |
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XI | C |
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Famous in molecules he demonstrated | B |
From the mess hash to many a listening classful | A |
Great as a botanist he separated | B |
Three kinds of Mentha in one julep's glassful | A |
High in astronomy it has been stated | B |
He was the first at West Point to discover | P |
Mars' missing satellites and calculated | B |
Their true positions not the heavens over | P |
But 'neath the window of Miss Kitty Rover | P |
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XII | C |
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Indeed I fear this novelty celestial | A |
That very night was visible and clear | Q |
At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial | A |
And clad in uniform were loitering near | Q |
A villa's casement where a gentle vestal | A |
Took their impatience somewhat patiently | A |
Knowing the youths were somewhat green and bestial | A |
A certain slang of the Academy | A |
I beg the reader won't refer to me | A |
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XIII | C |
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For when they ceased their ardent strain Miss Kitty | A |
Glowed not with anger nor a kindred flame | J |
But rather flushed with an odd sort of pity | A |
Half matron's kindness and half coquette's shame | J |
Proud yet quite blameful when she heard their ditty | A |
She gave her soul poetical expression | O |
And being clever too as she was pretty | A |
From her high casement warbled this confession | O |
Half provocation and one half repression | O |
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NOT YET | B |
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Not yet O friend not yet the patient stars | C |
Lean from their lattices content to wait | B |
All is illusion till the morning bars | C |
Slip from the levels of the Eastern gate | B |
Night is too young O friend day is too near | Q |
Wait for the day that maketh all things clear | Q |
Not yet O friend not yet | B |
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Not yet O love not yet all is not true | R |
All is not ever as it seemeth now | S |
Soon shall the river take another blue | R |
Soon dies yon light upon the mountain brow | S |
What lieth dark O love bright day will fill | A |
Wait for thy morning be it good or ill | A |
Not yet O love not yet | B |
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XIV | A |
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The strain was finished softly as the night | B |
Her voice died from the window yet e'en then | T |
Fluttered and fell likewise a kerchief white | B |
But that no doubt was accident for when | T |
She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite | B |
Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter | P |
Washing her hands of either gallant wight | B |
Knowing the moralist might compliment her | P |
Thus voicing Siren with the words of Mentor | U |
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XV | A |
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She little knew the youths below who straight | B |
Dived for her kerchief and quite overlooked | B |
The pregnant moral she would inculcate | B |
Nor dreamed the less how little Winthrop brooked | B |
Her right to doubt his soul's maturer state | B |
Brown who was Western amiable and new | R |
Might take the moral and accept his fate | B |
The which he did but being stronger too | R |
Took the white kerchief also as his due | R |
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XVI | A |
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They did not quarrel which no doubt seemed queer | Q |
To those who knew not how their friendship blended | B |
Each was opposed and each the other's peer | Q |
Yet each the other in some things transcended | B |
Where Brown lacked culture brains and oft I fear | Q |
Cash in his pocket Grey of course supplied him | V |
Where Grey lacked frankness force and faith sincere | Q |
Brown of his manhood suffered none to chide him | V |
But in his faults stood manfully beside him | V |
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XVII | A |
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In academic walks and studies grave | A |
In the camp drill and martial occupation | O |
They helped each other but just here I crave | A |
Space for the reader's full imagination | O |
The fact is patent Grey became a slave | A |
A tool a fag a pleb To state it plainer | P |
All that blue blood and ancestry e'er gave | A |
Cleaned guns brought water was in fact retainer | P |
To Jones whose uncle was a paper stainer | P |
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XVIII | A |
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How they bore this at home I cannot say | C |
I only know so runs the gossip's tale | A |
It chanced one day that the paternal Grey | C |
Came to West Point that he himself might hail | A |
The future hero in some proper way | C |
Consistent with his lineage With him came | J |
A judge a poet and a brave array | C |
Of aunts and uncles bearing each a name | J |
Eyeglass and respirator with the same | J |
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XIX | C |
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Observe quoth Grey the elder to his friends | C |
Not in these giddy youths at baseball playing | W |
You'll notice Winthrop Adams Greater ends | C |
Than these absorb HIS leisure No doubt straying | W |
With Caesar's Commentaries he attends | C |
Some Roman council Let us ask however | P |
Yon grimy urchin who my soul offends | C |
By wheeling offal if he will endeavor | P |
To find What heaven Winthrop Oh no never | P |
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XX | C |
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Alas too true The last of all the Greys | C |
Was doing police detail it had come | X |
To this in vain the rare historic bays | C |
That crowned the pictured Puritans at home | L |
And yet 'twas certain that in grosser ways | C |
Of health and physique he was quite improving | W |
Straighter he stood and had achieved some praise | C |
In other exercise much more behooving | W |
A soldier's taste than merely dirt removing | W |
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XXI | C |
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But to resume we left the youthful pair | P |
Some stanzas back before a lady's bower | P |
'Tis to be hoped they were no longer there | P |
For stars were pointing to the morning hour | P |
Their escapade discovered ill 'twould fare | P |
With our two heroes derelict of orders | C |
But like the ghost they scent the morning air | P |
And back again they steal across the borders | C |
Unseen unheeded by their martial warders | C |
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XXII | C |
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They got to bed with speed young Grey to dream | I |
Of some vague future with a general's star | P |
And Mistress Kitty basking in its gleam | I |
While Brown content to worship her afar | P |
Dreamed himself dying by some lonely stream | I |
Having snatched Kitty from eighteen Nez Perces | C |
Till a far bugle with the morning beam | I |
In his dull ear its fateful song rehearses | C |
Which Winthrop Adams after put to verses | C |
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XXIII | C |
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So passed three years of their novitiate | B |
The first real boyhood Grey had ever known | Y |
His youth ran clear not choked like his Cochituate | B |
In civic pipes but free and pure alone | Y |
Yet knew repression could himself habituate | B |
To having mind and body well rubbed down | M |
Could read himself in others and could situate | B |
Themselves in him except I grieve to own | Y |
He couldn't see what Kitty saw in Brown | M |
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XXIV | A |
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At last came graduation Brown received | B |
In the One Hundredth Cavalry commission | O |
Then frolic flirting parting when none grieved | B |
Save Brown who loved our young Academician | O |
And Grey who felt his friend was still deceived | B |
By Mistress Kitty who with other beauties | C |
Graced the occasion and it was believed | B |
Had promised Brown that when he could recruit his | C |
Promised command she'd share with him those duties | C |
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XXV | A |
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Howe'er this was I know not all I know | F |
The night was June's the moon rode high and clear | P |
'Twas such a night as this three years ago | F |
Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear | P |
There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow | F |
Too wide for one not wide enough for three | P |
A fact precluding any plural beau | F |
Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company | P |
But not why Grey that favored one should be | P |
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XXVI | A |
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There is a spring whose limpid waters hide | B |
Somewhere within the shadows of that path | Z |
Called Kosciusko's There two figures bide | B |
Grey and Miss Kitty Surely Nature hath | Z |
No fairer mirror for a might be bride | B |
Than this same pool that caught our gentle belle | A |
To its dark heart one moment At her side | B |
Grey bent A something trembled o'er the well | A |
Bright spherical a tear Ah no a button fell | A |
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XXVII | A |
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Material minds might think that gravitation | O |
Quoth Grey drew yon metallic spheroid down | M |
The soul poetic views the situation | O |
Fraught with more meaning When thy girlish crown | M |
Was mirrored there there was disintegration | O |
Of me and all my spirit moved to you | R |
Taking the form of slow precipitation | O |
But here came Taps a start a smile adieu | R |
A blush a sigh and end of Canto II | A |
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BUGLE SONG | W |
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Fades the light | B |
And afar | P |
Goeth day cometh night | B |
And a star | P |
Leadeth all | A |
Speedeth all | A |
To their rest | B |
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Love good night | B |
Must thou go | F |
When the day | B |
And the light | B |
Need thee so | F |
Needeth all | A |
Heedeth all | A |
That is best | B |
Bret Harte
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