St. Deseret Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKJ LMNOPQRSTU VWXVVJVYZ VA2B2 C2D2CE2YVF2G2VVVH2V ZCVI2J2VH2K2L2M2ZZJF YN2VVFVP O2N2N2VVSP2VVQ2 VZR2Q2VN2VS2T2D2U2V V2VW2X2VT2N2VVN2JD2Y 2W2 VVVZ2PN2Q2A3N2V2Q2SB 3VVC3N2VZ H2N2VD3D2 VVN2S2Q2D2A3VN2N2VVV VN2 VVSP2E3P2VF3V N2PLG3VVVVN2 VLN2A3Y N2VVA3VQ2FVCVVVYou wonder at my bright round eyes my lips | A |
Pressed tightly like a venomous rosette | B |
Thus do me honor by so much fond wretch | C |
And praise my Persian beauty dulcet voice | D |
But oh you know me read me passion blinds | E |
Your vision not at all and you have passion | F |
For me and what I am How can you be so | G |
Hold me so bear like take my lips with yours | H |
Bury your face in these my russet tresses | I |
And yet not lose your vision So I love you | J |
And fear you too How idle to deny it | K |
To you who know I fear you | J |
- | |
Here am I | L |
Who answer you what e'er you choose to ask | M |
You stride about my rooms and open books | N |
And say when did he give you this You pick | O |
His photograph from mantels dressers drawl | P |
Out of ironic strength and smile the while | Q |
You did not love this man You probe my soul | R |
About his courtship how I ran away | S |
How he pursued with gifts from city to city | T |
Threw bouquets to me from the pit or stood | U |
- | |
Like Cleopatra's Giant negro guard | V |
Watchful and waiting at the green room door | W |
So devil that you are with needle pricks | X |
One little question at a time you've inked | V |
The story in my flesh And now at last | V |
You smile and say I killed him Well it's true | J |
But what a death he had Envy him that | V |
Your frigid soul can never win the death | Y |
I gave him | Z |
- | |
Listen since you know already | V |
All but the subtlest matters How you laugh | A2 |
You know these too Well only I can tell them | B2 |
- | |
First 'twas a piteous thing to see a man | C2 |
So love a woman see a living thing | D2 |
So love another Why he could not touch | C |
My hand but that his heart went up ten beats | E2 |
His eyes would grow as bright as flames his breath | Y |
Come short when speaking When he felt my breast | V |
Crush soft around him he would reel and walk | F2 |
Away from me while I stood like a snake | G2 |
Poised for the strike as quiet and possessed | V |
As a dead breeze And you can have me wholly | V |
And pet and pat me like a favored child | V |
And let me go my way while you turn back | H2 |
To what you left for me | V |
- | |
Not so with him | Z |
I was all through his blood had made his flesh | C |
My flesh his nerves brain soul all mine at last | V |
Dreams thoughts emotions hungers all my own | I2 |
So that he lived two lives his own and mine | J2 |
With one poor body which he gave to me | V |
Save that he could not give what I pushed back | H2 |
Into his hands to use for me and live | K2 |
My pities hatreds loves and passions with | L2 |
I loved all this and thrived upon it still | M2 |
I did not love him Then why marry him | Z |
Why don't you see It meant so much to him | Z |
And 'twas a little thing for me to do | J |
His loneliness his hunger his great passion | F |
That showed in his poor eyes his broken breath | Y |
His chivalry his gifts his poignant letters | N2 |
His failing health why even woman's cruelty | V |
Cannot deny such passion Woman's cruelty | V |
Takes other means for finding its expression | F |
And mine found its expression you have guessed | V |
And so I tell you all | P |
- | |
We were married then | O2 |
He made a sacrament of our nuptials | N2 |
Knelt with closed eyes beside the bed my lips | N2 |
Pressed to his brow and throat Unveiled my breast | V |
And looked then closed his eyes He did not take me | V |
As man takes his possession nature's way | S |
In triumph of life in lightning no he came | P2 |
A suppliant a worshipper and whispered | V |
What angel child may lie upon the breast | V |
Of this it's angel mother | Q2 |
- | |
Well you see | V |
The tears came in my eyes for pity of him | Z |
Who made so much of what I had to give | R2 |
And could give easily whether 'twas my rapture | Q2 |
To give or to withhold And in that moment | V |
Contempt of which I had been scarcely conscious | N2 |
Lying diffused like dew around my heart | V |
Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup | S2 |
To one bright drop of vital power where | T2 |
He could not see it scarcely knew that something | D2 |
Gradually drugged the potion that he drank | U2 |
In life with me | V |
- | |
So we were wed a year | V2 |
And he was with me hourly till at last | V |
I could not breathe for him while he could breathe | W2 |
No where but where I was Then the bazaar | X2 |
Was coming on where I was to dance and he | V |
Had long postponed a trip to England where | T2 |
Great interests waited for him and with kisses | N2 |
I pushed him to his duty and he went | V |
Shame stricken for a duty long postponed | V |
Unable to retort against my words | N2 |
When I said You must go for well he knew | J |
He should have gone before And as for going | D2 |
I pleaded the bazaar and hate of travel | Y2 |
And got him off and freed myself to breathe | W2 |
- | |
His life had been too fast his years too many | V |
To stand the strain that came There was the worry | V |
About the business and the labor over it | V |
There was the war and all the fear and turmoil | Z2 |
In London for the war But most of all | P |
There was the separation And his letters | N2 |
You've read them wretch Such letters never were | Q2 |
Of aching loneliness and pining love | A3 |
And hope that lives across three thousand miles | N2 |
And waits the day to travel them and fear | V2 |
Of something which may bar the way forever | Q2 |
A storm a wreck a submarine and no day | S |
Without a letter or a cablegram | B3 |
And look at the endearments oh you fiend | V |
To pick their words to pieces like a botanist | V |
Who cuts a flower up for his microscope | C3 |
And oh myself who let you see these letters | N2 |
Why did I do it Rather why is it | V |
You master me even as I mastered him | Z |
- | |
At last he finished got his passage back | H2 |
He had been gone three months And all these letters | N2 |
Showed how he starved for me and scarce could wait | V |
To take me in his arms again would choke | D3 |
With fast and heavy feeding | D2 |
- | |
Well you see | V |
The contempt I spoke of which lay long diffused | V |
Like dew around my heart and which at once | N2 |
Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup | S2 |
Grew brighter bitterer for this obvious hunger | Q2 |
This thirst which could not wait the piteous trembling | D2 |
And all the while it seemed he thought his love | A3 |
Grew sacreder as it grew uncontrolled | V |
And marked by trembling choking tears and sighs | N2 |
This is not love which should be has no use | N2 |
In this or any world And as for me | V |
I could not stand it longer And I thought | V |
Of what was best to do if 'twas not best | V |
To kill him as the queen bee kills the mate | V |
In rapture's own excess | N2 |
- | |
Then he arrived | V |
I went to meet him in the car pretended | V |
The feed pipe broke while I was on the way | S |
I was not at the station when he came | P2 |
I got back to the house and found him gone | E3 |
He had run through the rooms calling my name | P2 |
So Mary told me Then he went around | V |
From place to place wherever in the village | F3 |
He thought to find me | V |
- | |
Soon I heard his steps | N2 |
The key in the door his winded breath his call | P |
His running stumbling up the stairs while I | L |
Stood silent as a shadow in our room | G3 |
My round bright eyes grown brighter for the light | V |
His life was feeding them And then he stood | V |
Breathless and trembling in the door way stood | V |
Transfixed with ecstacy then rushed and caught me | V |
And broke into loud tears | N2 |
- | |
It had to end | V |
One or the other of us had to die | L |
I could not die but by a violence | N2 |
And he could die by love alone and love | A3 |
I gave him to his death | Y |
- | |
Why tell you details | N2 |
And ways with which I maddened him and whipped | V |
The energies of love You have extracted | V |
The secret in the main that 'twas from love | A3 |
He came to death His life had been too fast | V |
His years too many for the daily rapture | Q2 |
I gave him after three months' separation | F |
And so he died one morning made me free | V |
Of nothing but his presence in the flesh | C |
His love is on me yet and its effect | V |
And now you're here to slave me differently | V |
No soul is ever free | V |
Edgar Lee Masters
(1)
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