Beer Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABABCC DAEAFAGG HCHCHCII H JKJKL HCHCHCAA HAHAHAMM CAC CAII CNCNCNMM AJ JAJHH HHHHHHHH AHAHAHHH OAOAOAHH HOHOHOM PQIQIQHH AMAMAMIn those old days which poets say were golden | A |
Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves | B |
And if they did I'm all the more beholden | A |
To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves | B |
Who talk to me 'in language quaint and olden' | A |
Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves | B |
Pan with his pipes and Bacchus with his leopards | C |
And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds | C |
- | |
In those old days the Nymph called Etiquette | D |
Appalling thought to dwell on was not born | A |
They had their May but no Mayfair as yet | E |
No fashions varying as the hues of morn | A |
Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate | F |
Sang hymns to Ceres their John Barleycorn | A |
And danced unchaperoned and laughed unchecked | G |
And were no doubt extremely incorrect | G |
- | |
Yet do I think their theory was pleasant | H |
And oft I own my 'wayward fancy roams' | C |
Back to those times so different from the present | H |
When no one smoked cigars nor gave At homes | C |
Nor smote a billiard ball nor winged a pheasant | H |
Nor 'did' her hair by means of long tailed combs | C |
Nor migrated to Brighton once a year | I |
Nor most astonishing of all drank Beer | I |
- | |
No they did not drink Beer 'which brings me to' | H |
As Gilpin said 'the middle of my song ' | - |
Not that 'the middle' is precisely true | J |
Or else I should not tax your patience long | K |
If I had said 'beginning ' it might do | J |
But I have a dislike to quoting wrong | K |
I was unlucky sinned against not sinning | L |
When Cowper wrote down 'middle' for 'beginning ' | - |
- | |
So to proceed That abstinence from Malt | H |
Has always struck me as extremely curious | C |
The Greek mind must have had some vital fault | H |
That they should stick to liquors so injurious | C |
Wine water tempered p'raps with Attic salt | H |
And not at once invent that mild luxurious | C |
And artful beverage Beer How the digestion | A |
Got on without it is a startling question | A |
- | |
Had they digestions and an actual body | H |
Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on | A |
Were they abstract ideas like Tom Noddy | H |
And Mr Briggs or men like Jones and Jackson | A |
Then nectar was that beer or whisky toddy | H |
Some say the Gaelic mixture I the Saxon | A |
I think a strict adherence to the latter | M |
Might make some Scots less pigheaded and fatter | M |
- | |
Besides Bon Gaultier definitely shows | C |
That the real beverage for feasting gods on | A |
Is a soft compound grateful to the nose | C |
And also to the palate known as 'Hidgson ' | - |
I know a man a tailor's son who rose | C |
To be a peer and this I would lay odds on | A |
Though in his Memoirs it may not appear | I |
That that man owed his rise to copious Beer | I |
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O Beer O Hodgson Guinness Allsopp Bass | C |
Names that should be on every infant's tongue | N |
Shall days and months and years and centuries pass | C |
And still your merits be unrecked unsung | N |
Oh I have gazed into my foaming glass | C |
And wished that lyre could yet again be strung | N |
Which once rang prophet like through Greece and taught her | M |
Misguided sons that the best drink was water | M |
- | |
How would he now recant that wild opinion | A |
And sing as would that I could sing of you | J |
I was not born alas the 'Muses' minion ' | - |
I'm not poetical not even blue | J |
And he we know but strives with waxen pinion | A |
Whoe'er he is that entertains the view | J |
Of emulating Pindar and will be | H |
Sponsor at last to some now nameless sea | H |
- | |
Oh when the green slopes of Arcadia burned | H |
With all the lustre of the dying day | H |
And on Cith ron's brow the reaper turned | H |
Humming of course in his delightful way | H |
How Lycidas was dead and how concerned | H |
The Nymphs were when they saw his lifeless clay | H |
And how rock told to rock the dreadful story | H |
That poor young Lycidas was gone to glory | H |
- | |
What would that lone and labouring soul have given | A |
At that soft moment for a pewter pot | H |
How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven | A |
And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot | H |
If his own grandmother had died unshriven | A |
In two short seconds he'd have recked it not | H |
Such power hath Beer The heart which Grief hath cankered | H |
Hath one unfailing remedy the Tankard | H |
- | |
Coffee is good and so no doubt is cocoa | O |
Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen | A |
When 'Dulce est desipere in loco' | O |
Was written real Falernian winged the pen | A |
When a rapt audience has encored 'Fra Poco' | O |
Or 'Casta Diva ' I have heard that then | A |
The Prima Donna smiling herself out | H |
Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout | H |
- | |
But what is coffee but a noxious berry | H |
Born to keep used up Londoners awake | O |
What is Falernian what is Port or Sherry | H |
But vile concoctions to make dull heads ache | O |
Nay stout itself though good with oysters very | H |
Is not a thing your reading man should take | O |
He that would shine and petrify his tutor | M |
Should drink draught Allsopp in its 'native pewter ' | - |
- | |
But hark a sound is stealing on my ear | P |
A soft and silvery sound I know it well | Q |
Its tinkling tells me that a time is near | I |
Precious to me it is the Dinner Bell | Q |
O blessed Bell Thou bringest beef and beer | I |
Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell | Q |
Seared is of course my heart but unsubdued | H |
Is and shall be my appetite for food | H |
- | |
I go Untaught and feeble is my pen | A |
But on one statement I may safely venture | M |
That few of our most highly gifted men | A |
Have more appreciation of their trencher | M |
I go One pound of British beef and then | A |
What Mr Swiveller called a 'modest quencher' | M |
That home returning I may 'soothly say ' | - |
'Fate cannot touch me I have dined to day ' | - |
Charles Stuart Calverley
(1)
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