Ah Ling, The Leper Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH IIJJ KKLL KKGG MMNN| UP a dark and fetid alley where the offal and the slime | A |
| Of a brave and blusterous city met its misery and crime | A |
| In a hovel reeking pestilence and noisome as the grave | B |
| Dwelt Ah Ling the Chinese joiner and the sweater s willing slave | B |
| - | |
| Squatting down amongst the shavings with his chisel and his plane | C |
| Through the long hot days of striving dead to pleasure and to pain | C |
| Like a creature barely human very yellow gaunt and grim | D |
| Ah Ling laboured on for pleasure spread no lures that tempted him | D |
| - | |
| And the curious people watching through the rotten wall at night | E |
| Saw his death s face weirdly outlined in the candle s feeble light | E |
| Saw him still intent upon his work ill omened and unclean | F |
| Planing sawing nailing hewing just a skin and bone machine | F |
| - | |
| Neither kith nor kin the joiner had perchance he nerved his hand | G |
| With the treasured hope of seeing once again his native land | G |
| As a Chinaman of fortune and of finishing his life | H |
| At his ease in China Proper with a painted Chinese wife | H |
| - | |
| But Ah Ling grew yet more grisly and twas easy now to trace | I |
| Signs of vice and fierce privations in his scarred and pitted face | I |
| With a dreadful something added By this thing the truth was known | J |
| And his countrymen forsook him and he lived and toiled alone | J |
| - | |
| Still the work came in and still he slaved and saw his earnings grow | K |
| Who s to trouble where the goods are made when buyers will not know | K |
| Gimcrack chairs and pretty nick nacks from infected dens like this | L |
| Go to furnish happy homes to day where ignorance is bliss | L |
| - | |
| Now the time was come when Ling might take his treasure up and go | K |
| To enjoy celestial comforts by the flowing Hoang Ho | K |
| But one day his shop was raided and upon him fell the hand | G |
| Of the Law and death were better than the ruthless Law s command | G |
| - | |
| Room for the leper room A thing of fear Ah Ling was torn | M |
| From his hovel and his labour and his cherished hopes and borne | M |
| To a home of untold terrors where to life grim death is wed | N |
| And the quick behold and know the loathly horrors of the dead | N |
Edward George Dyson
(1)
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