Experience Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCCBBCCB DEDEDF A GHIGGHIGJKJKJ KI | A |
- | |
Like Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand | B |
Upon the desert verge of death and say | C |
What shall avail the woes of yesterday | C |
To buy to morrow's wisdom in the land | B |
Whose currency is strange unto our hand | B |
In life's small market they had served to pay | C |
Some late found rapture could we but delay | C |
Till Time hath matched our means to our demand | B |
- | |
But otherwise Fate wills it for behold | D |
Our gathered strength of individual pain | E |
When Time's long alchemy hath made it gold | D |
Dies with us hoarded all these years in vain | E |
Since those that might be heir to it the mould | D |
Renew and coin themselves new griefs again | F |
- | |
II | A |
- | |
O Death we come full handed to thy gate | G |
Rich with strange burden of the mingled years | H |
Gains and renunciations mirth and tears | I |
And love's oblivion and remembering hate | G |
Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight | G |
Upon our souls and shall our hopes and fears | H |
Buy nothing of thee Death Behold our wares | I |
And sell us the one joy for which we wait | G |
Had we lived longer life had such for sale | J |
With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap | K |
But now we stand before thy shadowy pale | J |
And all our longings lie within thy keep | K |
Death can it be the years shall naught avail | J |
- | |
Not so Death answered they shall purchase sleep | K |
Edith Wharton
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Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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