Tortoise-shell Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCD EFGCH IIII JAKH LMN OOOLJPQO RSP TQU GO V O WO XUYZZLL| Along the back of the baby tortoise | A |
| The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge | B |
| Scale lapping like a lobster's sections | C |
| Or a bee's | D |
| - | |
| Then crossways down his sides | E |
| Tiger stripes and wasp bands | F |
| Five and five again and five again | G |
| And round the edges twenty five little ones | C |
| The sections of the baby tortoise shell | H |
| - | |
| Four and a keystone | I |
| Four and a keystone | I |
| Four and a keystone | I |
| Then twenty four and a tiny little keystone | I |
| - | |
| It needed Pythagoras to see life placing her counters on the living back | J |
| Of the baby tortoise | A |
| Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet | K |
| Not in stone like the Judean Lord or bronze but in life clouded life rosy tortoise shell | H |
| - | |
| The first little mathematical gentleman | L |
| Stepping wee mite in his loose trousers | M |
| Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law | N |
| - | |
| Fives and tens | O |
| Threes and fours and twelves | O |
| All the volte face of decimals | O |
| The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven | L |
| Turn him on his back | J |
| The kicking little beetle | P |
| And there again on his shell tender earth touching belly | Q |
| The long cleavage of division upright of the eternal cross | O |
| - | |
| And on either side count five | R |
| On each side two above on each side two below | S |
| The dark bar horizontal | P |
| - | |
| It goes right through him the sprottling insect | T |
| Through his cross wise cloven psyche | Q |
| Through his five fold complex nature | U |
| - | |
| So turn him over on his toes again | G |
| Four pin point toes and a problematical thumb piece | O |
| - | |
| Four rowing limbs and one wedge balancing head | V |
| - | |
| Four and one makes five which is the clue to all mathematics | O |
| - | |
| The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate | W |
| Of the baby tortoise | O |
| - | |
| Outward and visible indication of the plan within | X |
| The complex manifold involvedness of an individual creature | U |
| Blotted out | Y |
| On this small bird this rudiment | Z |
| This little dome this pediment | Z |
| Of all creation | L |
| This slow one | L |
D. H. Lawrence (david Herbert Richards)
(1)
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