Old Trails Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCBC DADA EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL AMAM NONO PQRQ STST UQUQ VQWQ QKQK XBYB ZA2ZB2 DC2DC2 BD2BD2 QZQZ ZQZQ E2F2E2G2 ZH2ZH2 I2AI2A ZJ2ZJ2 ZQZQ K2ZK2ZWashington Square | A |
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I met him as one meets a ghost or two | B |
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel | C |
King Solomon was right there's nothing new | B |
Said he Behold a ruin who meant well | C |
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He led me down familiar steps again | D |
Appealingly and set me in a chair | A |
My dreams have all come true to other men | D |
Said he God lives however and why care | A |
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An hour among the ghosts will do no harm | E |
He laughed and something glad within me sank | F |
I may have eyed him with a faint alarm | E |
For now his laugh was lost in what he drank | F |
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They chill things here with ice from hell he said | G |
I might have known it And he made a face | H |
That showed again how much of him was dead | G |
And how much was alive and out of place | H |
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And out of reach He knew as well as I | I |
That all the words of wise men who are skilled | J |
In using them are not much to defy | I |
What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled | J |
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What evil and infirm perversity | K |
Had been at work with him to bring him back | L |
Never among the ghosts assuredly | K |
Would he originate a new attack | L |
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Never among the ghosts or anywhere | A |
Till what was dead of him was put away | M |
Would he attain to his offended share | A |
Of honor among others of his day | M |
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You ponder like an owl he said at last | N |
You always did and here you have a cause | O |
For I'm a confirmation of the past | N |
A vengeance and a flowering of what was | O |
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Sorry Of course you are though you compress | P |
With even your most impenetrable fears | Q |
A placid and a proper consciousness | R |
Of anxious angels over my arrears | Q |
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I see them there against me in a book | S |
As large as hope in ink that shines by night | T |
For sure I see but now I'd rather look | S |
At you and you are not a pleasant sight | T |
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Forbear forgive Ten years are on my soul | U |
And on my conscience I've an incubus | Q |
My one distinction and a parlous toll | U |
To glory but hope lives on clamorous | Q |
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'Twas hope though heaven I grant you knows of what | V |
The kind that blinks and rises when it falls | Q |
Whether it sees a reason why or not | W |
That heard Broadway's hard throated siren calls | Q |
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'Twas hope that brought me through December storms | Q |
To shores again where I'll not have to be | K |
A lonely man with only foreign worms | Q |
To cheer him in his last obscurity | K |
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But what it was that hurried me down here | X |
To be among the ghosts I leave to you | B |
My thanks are yours no less for one thing clear | Y |
Though you are silent what you say is true | B |
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There may have been the devil in my feet | Z |
For down I blundered like a fugitive | A2 |
To find the old room in Eleventh Street | Z |
God save us I came here again to live | B2 |
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We rose at that and all the ghosts rose then | D |
And followed us unseen to his old room | C2 |
No longer a good place for living men | D |
We found it and we shivered in the gloom | C2 |
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The goods he took away from there were few | B |
And soon we found ourselves outside once more | D2 |
Where now the lamps along the Avenue | B |
Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor | D2 |
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Now lead me to the newest of hotels | Q |
He said and let your spleen be undeceived | Z |
This ruin is not myself but some one else | Q |
I haven't failed I've merely not achieved | Z |
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Whether he knew or not he laughed and dined | Z |
With more of an immune regardlessness | Q |
Of pits before him and of sands behind | Z |
Than many a child at forty would confess | Q |
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And after when the bells in 'Boris' rang | E2 |
Their tumult at the Metropolitan | F2 |
He rocked himself and I believe he sang | E2 |
God lives he crooned aloud and I'm the man | G2 |
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He was And even though the creature spoiled | Z |
All prophecies I cherish his acclaim | H2 |
Three weeks he fattened and five years he toiled | Z |
In Yonkers and then sauntered into fame | H2 |
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And he may go now to what streets he will | I2 |
Eleventh or the last and little care | A |
But he would find the old room very still | I2 |
Of evenings and the ghosts would all be there | A |
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I doubt if he goes after them I doubt | Z |
If many of them ever come to him | J2 |
His memories are like lamps and they go out | Z |
Or if they burn they flicker and are dim | J2 |
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A light of other gleams he has to day | Z |
And adulations of applauding hosts | Q |
A famous danger but a safer way | Z |
Than growing old alone among the ghosts | Q |
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But we may still be glad that we were wrong | K2 |
He fooled us and we'd shrivel to deny it | Z |
Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long | K2 |
I wish the bells in 'Boris' would be quiet | Z |
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(1)
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