The Letter Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCACBDDEEFGGFHIJIJA AKLKMNMOPQROSTSTUVVU VVWXXVWVYVYGZA2GB2C2 VB2F C2D2E2F2F2G2H2H2I2VJ 2TK2L2L2M2M2V H2YN2H2N2O2P2P2O2VH2 Q2H2Q2R2R2H2VS2T2U2C 2TH2H2AAVVV2V2I| What does one gain by living What by dying | A |
| Is lost worth having What the daily things | B |
| Lived through together make them worth the while | C |
| For their sakes or for life's Where's the denying | A |
| Of souls through separation There's your smile | C |
| And your hands' touch And the long day that brings | B |
| Half uttered nothings of delight But then | D |
| Now that I see you not and shall again | D |
| Touch you no more memory can possess | E |
| Your soul's essential self and none the less | E |
| You live with me I therefore write to you | F |
| This letter just as if you were away | G |
| Upon a journey or a holiday | G |
| And so I'll put down everything that's new | F |
| In this secluded village since you left | H |
| Now let me think Well then as I remember | I |
| After ten days the lilacs burst in bloom | J |
| We had spring all at once the long December | I |
| Gave way to sunshine Then we swept your room | J |
| And laid your things away And then one morning | A |
| I saw the mother robin giving warning | A |
| To little bills stuck just above the rim | K |
| Of that nest which you watched while being built | L |
| Near where she sat upon a leafless limb | K |
| With folded wings against an April rain | M |
| On June the tenth Edward and Julia married | N |
| I did not go for fear of an old pain | M |
| I was out on the porch as they drove by | O |
| Coming from church I think I never scanned | P |
| A girl's face with such sunny smiles upon it | Q |
| Showing beneath the roses on her bonnet | R |
| I went into the house to have a cry | O |
| A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife | S |
| Between housework and hoeing in the garden | T |
| I read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life | S |
| My heart was numb and still I had to harden | T |
| All memory or die And just the same | U |
| As when you sat beside the window passed | V |
| Larson the cobbler hollow chested lamed | V |
| He did not die till late November came | U |
| Things did not come as Doctor Jones forecast | V |
| 'Twas June when Mary Morgan had her child | V |
| Her husband was in Monmouth at the time | W |
| She had no milk the baby is not well | X |
| The Baptist Church has got a fine new bell | X |
| And after harvest Joseph Clifford tiled | V |
| His bottom land Then Judy Heaton's crime | W |
| Has shocked the village for the monster killed | V |
| Glendora Wilson's father at his door | Y |
| A daughter's name was why the blood was spilled | V |
| I could go on but wherefore tell you more | Y |
| The world of men has gone its olden way | G |
| With war in Europe and the same routine | Z |
| Of life among us that you knew when here | A2 |
| This gossip is not idle since I say | G |
| By means of it what I would tell you dear | B2 |
| I have been near you dear for I have been | C2 |
| Not with you through these things but in despite | V |
| Of living them without you therefore near | B2 |
| In spirit and in memory with you | F |
| - | |
| - | |
| - | |
| Do you remember that delightful Inn | C2 |
| At Chester and the Roman wall and how | D2 |
| We walked from Avon clear to Kenilworth | E2 |
| And afterward when you and I came down | F2 |
| To London I forsook the murky town | F2 |
| And left you to quaint ways and crowded places | G2 |
| While I went on to Putney just to see | H2 |
| Old Swinburne and to look into his face's | H2 |
| Changeable lights and shadows and to seize on | I2 |
| A finer thing than any verse he wrote | V |
| Oh beautiful illusions of our youth | J2 |
| He did not see me gladly Talked of treason | T |
| To England's greatness What was Camden like | K2 |
| Did old Walt Whitman smoke or did he drink | L2 |
| And Longfellow was sweet but couldn't think | L2 |
| His mood was crusty Lowell made him laugh | M2 |
| Meantime Watts Dunton came and broke in half | M2 |
| My visit so I left | V |
| - | |
| The thing was this | H2 |
| None of this talk was Swinburne any more | Y |
| Than some child of his loins would take his hair | N2 |
| Eyes skin from him in some pangenesis | H2 |
| His flesh was nothing but a poor affair | N2 |
| A channel for the eternal stream his flesh | O2 |
| Gave nothing closer mind you than his book | P2 |
| But rather blurred it even his eyes' look | P2 |
| Confused Madonna Mia from its fresh | O2 |
| And liquid meaning So I knew at last | V |
| His real immortal self is in his verse | H2 |
| - | |
| - | |
| - | |
| Since you have gone I've thought of this so much | Q2 |
| I cannot lose you in this universe | H2 |
| I first must lose myself The essential touch | Q2 |
| Of soul possession lies not in the walk | R2 |
| Of daily life on earth nor in the talk | R2 |
| Of daily things nor in the sight of eyes | H2 |
| Looking in other eyes nor daily bread | V |
| Broken together nor the hour of love | S2 |
| When flesh surrenders depths of things divine | T2 |
| Beyond all vision as they were the dream | U2 |
| Of other planets but without these even | C2 |
| In death and separation there is heaven | T |
| By just that unison and its memory | H2 |
| Which brought our lips together To be free | H2 |
| From accidents of being to be freeing | A |
| The soul from trammels on essential being | A |
| Is to possess the loved one I have strayed | V |
| Into the only heaven God has made | V |
| That's where we know each other as we are | V2 |
| In the bright ether of some quiet star | V2 |
| Communing as two memories with each other | I |
Edgar Lee Masters
(1)
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