Didus Ineptus Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABACDABECCBCBCBCFBCG HIJKLCMBBAN| Absurd magnificent and huger | A |
| than swan or turkey cock this flightless antique pigeon | B |
| once roamed at his anachronistic leisure | A |
| among the broad leaved travelers' trees and aloes | C |
| upon that manless isle | D |
| dawnward from Madagascar | A |
| which may have been old Pliny's isle of Cerne | B |
| Laying in peace the large the one white egg | E |
| on the mat of woodland grass | C |
| through ages of that slothfull praradise | C |
| the dodo flourlshed in his archaic fashion | B |
| learning no need of wings and having but few feathers | C |
| exempt from competition | B |
| save of his only fellow islanders | C |
| the wingless rail the short winged heron | B |
| some curious doves and parroquets | C |
| and the fruit gorging bat | F |
| of which the well winged have survived alone | B |
| Then came the eastward driving Portuguese | C |
| the Dutch the French the English | G |
| to try in turn the dodo's meat to find no mode | H |
| nor amount of cooking made it palatable | I |
| and yet to leave of him no remnant | J |
| other than drawings paintings and a legend | K |
| or something great and harmless and grotesque | L |
| And no one knows | C |
| what colonist it was who killed the last | M |
| of the prodigious brood nor in | B |
| what century he earned his dim distinction | B |
| So passers wonder | A |
| unnoted and unrumored from the earth | N |
Clark Ashton Smith
(1)
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