Life's Slacker Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCC EFEGHIHI HJHJKCKC CCCCCCCC| The saddest sort of death to die | A |
| Would be to quit the game called life | B |
| And know beneath the gentle sky | A |
| You'd lived a slacker in the strife | B |
| That nothing men on earth would find | C |
| To mark the spot that you had filled | D |
| That you must go and leave behind | C |
| No patch of soil your hands had tilled | C |
| - | |
| I know no greater shame than this | E |
| To feel that yours were empty years | F |
| That after death no man would miss | E |
| Your presence in this vale of tears | G |
| That you had breathed the fragrant air | H |
| And sat by kindly fires that burn | I |
| And in earth's riches had a share | H |
| But gave no labor in return | I |
| - | |
| Yet some men die this way nor care | H |
| They enter and they leave life's door | J |
| And at the end their record's bare | H |
| The world's no better than before | J |
| A few false tears are shed and then | K |
| In busy service they're forgot | C |
| We have no time to mourn for men | K |
| Who lived on earth but served it not | C |
| - | |
| A man in perfect peace to die | C |
| Must leave some mark of toil behind | C |
| Some building towering to the sky | C |
| Some symbol that his heart was kind | C |
| Some roadway where strange feet may tread | C |
| That out of gratitude he made | C |
| He cannot bravely look ahead | C |
| Unless his debt to life is paid | C |
Edgar Albert Guest
(1)
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