The Nevers Of Poetry Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIIJ J FKLLEEMANNOOPPEQ OORRRMSSRR TTUU RRBBBBRRRRVV BBBBRRR WWXXRRCC BBVVRR BBYYXX XBZZ BBXXFF BBBBXX VVXXRRXX FFBBRR CC| Never say aught in verse or grave or gay | A |
| That you in prose would hesitate to say | A |
| Never in rhyme pretend to tears unless | B |
| True feeling sheds them in unfeigned distress | B |
| Or some dream grief with such a mournful strain | C |
| As night winds make in pine tops stirs your brain | C |
| To shake them dew like o er the flowers that bloom | D |
| In the wild dark round Joy s imagined tomb | D |
| Or save when doubts that over Love may lower | E |
| Like summer clouds break in a sunny shower | E |
| Out of your gladdened eyes to freshen all | F |
| The bowers of memory with their grateful fall | F |
| Never too much affect that polished thing | G |
| Once belauded known as point or sting | G |
| The highest and the noblest growths of wit | H |
| Are never or but seldom touched with it | H |
| For of the muse it is not truly born | I |
| Unless the apex of some burst of scorn | I |
| Or irony or hate all torture torn | I |
| Not to increase the passion but to make | J |
| The wave full surging on its object break | J |
| - | |
| Never if you d be readable at all | F |
| Aim overmuch at being ethical | K |
| Though she should be a teacher still the Muse | L |
| To be a mere schoolmistress should refuse | L |
| She should instruct us but her methods never | E |
| Be academic ones however clever | E |
| Her morals like great nature s morals aye | M |
| Should work themselves out in an unforced way | A |
| And not so patly as to hint the while | N |
| At cryptic ingenuities of style | N |
| Whate er the theme her ethic lights should shine | O |
| Full forth as from a central heat divine | O |
| Or heat inherent to the passion wrought | P |
| Into the chastened harmony of thought | P |
| And not be mere extraneous coals of fire | E |
| Blown for the nonce into factitious ire | Q |
| - | |
| Though sone has oft some beauty most divine | O |
| Which well we feel yet cannot well define | O |
| Some yearning excellence intense and far | R |
| Coming and going like a clouded star | R |
| Some awful glory we but half descry | R |
| Like a strong sunset in a stormy sky | M |
| Yet ne er be murky of set purpose since | S |
| You only thereby shall the more evince | S |
| That even the Sublime s but then made sure | R |
| When like a morning alp it breaks from the obscure | R |
| - | |
| Never heed whether a line strictly goes | T |
| By learned rule if brook like it warble as it flows | T |
| Or if in concord with the thought it fills | U |
| Fast forward like a torrent fast flooding from the hills | U |
| - | |
| Never say aught is fading like a star | R |
| Because receding in the past afar | R |
| Since stars do not fade but shine on no less | B |
| Thought lost in light to our weaksightedness | B |
| And no true trope should ever rest on fancy | B |
| But claim a universal relevancy | B |
| Nor think a line is racy to the core | R |
| And bold and bravely eloquent the more | R |
| It striving seems to tear itself asunder | R |
| Like this Down there i the deep heart o the thunder | R |
| But for which surely out of chaos none | V |
| Might feign to find a sanction save in fun | V |
| - | |
| Never think harshness the best foil to raise | B |
| And relish sweetness for love craggy lays | B |
| Yet never be you glib when passion s force | B |
| Should ridge your style as by a tempest hoarse | B |
| The deep is roughened into waves that roar | R |
| At heaven upheaping huddling more and more | R |
| To burst at last in booming thunder on the shore | R |
| - | |
| Never be such a pagan as to deem | W |
| That truth or beauty must diviner seem | W |
| For some abnormal set off hunched and rude | X |
| Prowling for evil in the neighbourhood | X |
| If such strange opposite breathe not the air | R |
| Of nature being found not conjured there | R |
| And never to be graceless be you fain | C |
| Till to be graceful you have tried in vain | C |
| - | |
| Never be cheated never may you be | B |
| Into the cramp belief that poesy | B |
| Must of necessity in soul be one | V |
| With the mere form of verse if it but deftly run | V |
| Or pour as with a mill wheel s vigorous cheer | R |
| A rhyming clatter hard upon the ear | R |
| - | |
| Never believe that verse a license knows | B |
| For aught that would be balderdash in prose | B |
| Or that all reason may at any time | Y |
| Find a sufficient substitute in rhyme | Y |
| Or that because with many words you re fraught | X |
| There must be under them some flood of thought | X |
| - | |
| Never compel a simile that wont | X |
| Take service without forcing if it don t | B |
| As of itself into your verses flow | Z |
| But true to liberty and let it go | Z |
| - | |
| Never reject a homely sounding phrase | B |
| That your whole meaning easily conveys | B |
| For one made current by some courtly wit | X |
| Which barely indicates a shade of it | X |
| Or which for probably it so may fall | F |
| Does not express what you would mean at all | F |
| - | |
| Never suppose that you in song are free | B |
| To strain all praise and make it flattery | B |
| To sing of the heroic is to raise | B |
| One value by another but to praise | B |
| Mere clowns in verse or natures lean and cold | X |
| Is like to setting gravel stones in gold | X |
| - | |
| Never exalt vagaries to a station | V |
| But due to flights of the imagination | V |
| Gas charged balloons put vainly all a bloat | X |
| For clouds of God that in the orient float | X |
| Theatric thunders all set brattling for | R |
| The dread all shaking tempest trumps of Thor | R |
| For in the end all charlatanry must | X |
| The more it startle but the more disgust | X |
| - | |
| And lastly never take for gospel all | F |
| Your friends say of your genius when they call | F |
| Its merits o er but at the same time see | B |
| That you do never take yourself to be | B |
| So great an ass as your known foes declare | R |
| They do most solemnly believe you are | R |
| - | |
| Each embryo poet profit by my strain | C |
| Then shall men say He has not lived in vain | C |
Charles Harpur
(1)
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