Charity Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDED FGFG HGHG IJIJ FKFK FLFL MNMN OCOC PQRQ| O why your good deeds with such pride do you scan | A |
| And why that self satisfied smile | B |
| At the shilling you gave to the poor working man | A |
| That lifted you over the stile | B |
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| 'Tis not much all the bread that can with it be bought | C |
| Will scarce give a morsel to each | D |
| Of his eight hungry children reflection and thought | E |
| Should you more humility teach | D |
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| Vainglory's a worm which the very best action | F |
| Will taint and its soundness eat through | G |
| But to give one's self airs for a small benefaction | F |
| Is folly and vanity too | G |
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| The money perhaps by your father or mother | H |
| Was furnished you but with that view | G |
| If so you were only the steward of another | H |
| And the praise you usurp is their due | G |
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| Perhaps every shilling you give in this way | I |
| Is paid back with two by your friends | J |
| Then the bounty you so ostentatious display | I |
| Has little and low selfish ends | J |
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| But if every penny you gave were your own | F |
| And giving diminished your purse | K |
| By a child's slender means think how little is done | F |
| And how little for it you're the worse | K |
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| You eat and you drink when you rise in the morn | F |
| You are clothed you have health and content | L |
| And you never have known from the day you were born | F |
| What hunger or nakedness meant | L |
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| The most which your bounty from you can subtract | M |
| Is an apple a sweetmeat a toy | N |
| For so easy a virtue so trifling an act | M |
| You are paid with an innocent joy | N |
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| Give thy bread to the hungry the thirsty thy cup | O |
| Divide with the afflicted thy lot | C |
| This can only be practised by persons grown up | O |
| Who've possessions which children have not | C |
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| Having two cloaks give one said our Lord to the poor | P |
| In such bounty as that lies the trial | Q |
| But a child that gives half of its infantile store | R |
| Has small praise because small self denial | Q |
Charles Lamb
(1)
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