Puella Mea Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB BBCCCACBCACDECFGABBH CICCIBAD JJKKABAABBLMALAMBABN OONNBPPABAAQARASABQ BBB BB BTUUVVTFVALLVGBBBVTW VAVWAVXXVAVD DYAYLAALAVVAAVVAVAVL VVVVBB AABBVVAABBV VAAZZVVA2A2AAVVBBA2A 2 A2BBBBBBABBBBBB2BBBC 2 D2B VVD2BC2C2AAAACCA2A2 AAAVAVAVVVVAAABAABAE HBBE2 C2C2C2AC2A BVVAAVC2C2BBA2VBVA2V VF2BVG2A2V AAHarun Omar and Master Hafiz | A |
keep your dead beautiful ladies | A |
Mine is a little lovelier | B |
than any of your ladies were | B |
- | |
In her perfectest array | B |
my lady moving in the day | B |
is a little stranger thing | C |
than crisp Sheba with her king | C |
in the morning wandering | C |
Through the young and awkward hours | A |
my lady perfectly moving | C |
through the new world scarce astir | B |
my fragile lady wandering | C |
in whose perishable poise | A |
is the mystery of Spring | C |
with her beauty more than snow | D |
dexterous and fugitive | E |
my very frail lady drifting | C |
distinctly moving like a myth | F |
in the uncertain morning with | G |
April feet like sudden flowers | A |
and all her body filled with May | B |
moving in the unskilful day | B |
my lady utterly alive | H |
to me is a more curious thing | C |
a thing more nimble and complete | I |
than ever to Judea's king | C |
were the shapely sharp cunning | C |
and withal delirious feet | I |
of the Princess Salom | B |
carefully dancing in the noise | A |
of Herod's silence long ago | D |
- | |
If she a little turn her head | J |
I know that I am wholly dead | J |
nor ever did on such a throat | K |
the lips of Tristram slowly dote | K |
La beale Isoud whose leman was | A |
And if my lady look at me | B |
with her eyes which like two elves | A |
incredibly amuse themselves | A |
with a look of faerie | B |
perhaps a little suddenly | B |
as sometimes the improbable | L |
beauty of my lady will | M |
at her glance my spirit shies | A |
rearing as in the miracle | L |
of a lady who had eyes | A |
which the king's horses might not kill | M |
But should my lady smile it were | B |
a flower of so pure surprise | A |
it were so very new a flower | B |
a flower so frail a flower so glad | N |
as trembling used to yield with dew | O |
when the world was young and new | O |
a flower such as the world had | N |
in springtime when the world was mad | N |
and Launcelot spoke to Guenever | B |
a flower which most heavy hung | P |
with silence when the world was young | P |
and Diarmid looked in Grania's eyes | A |
But should my lady's beauty play | B |
at not speaking sometimes as | A |
it will the silence of her face | A |
doth immediately make | Q |
in my heart so great a noise | A |
as in the sharp and thirsty blood | R |
of Paris would not all the Troys | A |
of Helen's beauty never did | S |
Lord Jason in impossible things | A |
victorious impossibly | B |
so wholly burn to undertake | Q |
- | |
Medea's rescuing eyes nor he | B |
when swooned the white egyptian day | B |
who with Egypt's body lay | B |
- | |
Lovely as those ladies were | B |
mine is a little lovelier | B |
- | |
And if she speak in her frail way | B |
it is wholly to bewitch | T |
my smallest thought with a most swift | U |
radiance wherein slowly drift | U |
murmurous things divinely bright | V |
it is foolingly to smite | V |
my spirit with the lithe free twitch | T |
of scintillant space with the cool writhe | F |
of gloom truly which syncopate | V |
some sunbeam's skilful fingerings | A |
it is utterly to lull | L |
with foliate inscrutable | L |
sweetness my soul obedient | V |
it is to stroke my being with | G |
numbing forests frolicsome | B |
fleetly mystical aroam | B |
with keen creatures of idiom | B |
beings alert and innocent | V |
very deftly upon which | T |
indolent miracles impinge | W |
it is distinctly to confute | V |
my reason with the deep caress | A |
of every most shy thing and mute | V |
it is to quell me with the twinge | W |
of all living intense things | A |
Never my soul so fortunate | V |
is past the luck of all dead men | X |
and loving as invisibly when | X |
upon her palpable solitude | V |
a furtive occult fragrance steals | A |
a gesture of immaculate | V |
perfume whereby with fear aglow | D |
- | |
my soul is wont wholly to know | D |
the poignant instantaneous fern | Y |
whose scrupulous enchanted fronds | A |
toward all things intrinsic yearn | Y |
the immanent subliminal | L |
fern of her delicious voice | A |
of her voice which always dwells | A |
beside the vivid magical | L |
impetuous and utter ponds | A |
of dream and very secret food | V |
its leaves inimitable find | V |
beyond the white authentic springs | A |
beyond the sweet instinctive wells | A |
which make to flourish the minute | V |
spontaneous meadow of her mind | V |
the vocal fern alway which feels | A |
the keen ecstatic actual tread | V |
and thereto perfectly responds | A |
of all things exquisite and dead | V |
all living things and beautiful | L |
- | |
Caliph and king their ladies had | V |
to love them and to make them glad | V |
when the world was young and mad | V |
in the city of Bagdad | V |
mine is a little lovelier | B |
than any of their ladies were | B |
- | |
Her body is most beauteous | A |
being for all things amorous | A |
fashioned very curiously | B |
of roses and of ivory | B |
The immaculate crisp head | V |
is such as only certain dead | V |
and careful painters love to use | A |
for their youngest angels whose | A |
praising bodies in a row | B |
between slow glories fleetly go | B |
Upon a keen and lovely throat | V |
- | |
the strangeness of her face doth float | V |
which in eyes and lips consists | A |
alway upon the mouth there trysts | A |
curvingly a fragile smile | Z |
which like a flower lieth while | Z |
within the eyes is dimly heard | V |
a wistful and precarious bird | V |
Springing from fragrant shoulders small | A2 |
ardent and perfectly withal | A2 |
smooth to stroke and sweet to see | A |
as a supple and young tree | A |
her slim lascivious arms alight | V |
in skilful wrists which hint at flight | V |
my lady's very singular | B |
and slenderest hands moreover are | B |
which as lilies smile and quail | A2 |
of all things perfect the most frail | A2 |
- | |
Whoso rideth in the tale | A2 |
of Chaucer knoweth many a pair | B |
of companions blithe and fair | B |
who to walk with Master Gower | B |
in Confessio doth prefer | B |
shall not lack for beauty there | B |
nor he that will amaying go | B |
with my lord Boccaccio | A |
whoso knocketh at the door | B |
of Marie and of Maleore | B |
findeth of ladies goodly store | B |
whose beauty did in nothing err | B |
If to me there shall appear | B |
than a rose more sweetly known | B2 |
more silently than a flower | B |
my lady naked in her hair | B |
I for those ladies nothing care | B |
nor any lady dead and gone | C2 |
- | |
When the world was like a song | D2 |
heard behind a golden door | B |
- | |
poet and sage and caliph had | V |
to love them and to make them glad | V |
ladies with lithe eyes and long | D2 |
when the world was like a flower | B |
Omar Hafiz and Harun | C2 |
loved their ladies in the moon | C2 |
fashioned very curiously | A |
of roses and ivory | A |
if naked she appear to me | A |
my flesh is an enchanted tree | A |
with her lips' most frail parting | C |
my body hears the cry of Spring | C |
and with their frailest syllable | A2 |
its leaves go crisp with miracle | A2 |
- | |
Love maker of my lady | A |
in that alway beyond this | A |
poem or any poem she | A |
of whose body words are afraid | V |
perfectly beautiful is | A |
forgive these words which I have made | V |
And never boast your dead beauties | A |
you greatest lovers in the world | V |
never boast your beauties dead | V |
who with Grania strangely fled | V |
who with Egypt went to bed | V |
whom white thighed Semiramis | A |
put up her mouth to wholly kiss | A |
never boast your dead beauties | A |
mine being unto me sweeter | B |
of whose why delicious glance | A |
things which never more shall be | A |
perfect things of faerie | B |
are intense inhabitants | A |
in whose warm superlative | E |
body do distinctly live | H |
all sweet cities passed away | B |
in her flesh at break of day | B |
are the smells of Nineveh | E2 |
- | |
in her eyes when day is gone | C2 |
are the cries of Babylon | C2 |
Diarmid Paris and Solomon | C2 |
Omar Harun and Master Hafiz | A |
to me your ladies are all one | C2 |
keep your dead beautiful ladies | A |
- | |
Eater of all things lovely Time | B |
upon whose watering lips the world | V |
poises a moment futile proud | V |
a costly morsel of sweet tears | A |
gesticulates and disappears | A |
of all dainties which do crowd | V |
gaily upon oblivion | C2 |
sweeter than any there is one | C2 |
to touch it is the fear of rhyme | B |
in life's very fragile hour | B |
when the world was like a tale | A2 |
made of laughter and of dew | V |
was a flight a flower a flame | B |
was a tendril fleetly curled | V |
upon frailness used to stroll | A2 |
very slowly one or two | V |
ladies like flowers made | V |
softly used to wholly move | F2 |
slender ladies made of dream | B |
in the lazy world and new | V |
sweetly used to laugh and love | G2 |
ladies with crisp eyes and frail | A2 |
in the city of Bagdad | V |
- | |
Keep your dead beautiful ladies | A |
Harun Omar and Master Hafiz | A |
E. E. Cummings
(1)
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