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 K2ZK2Z

Washington SquareA
-
I met him as one meets a ghost or twoB
Between the gray Arch and the old HotelC
King Solomon was right there's nothing newB
Said he Behold a ruin who meant wellC
-
He led me down familiar steps againD
Appealingly and set me in a chairA
My dreams have all come true to other menD
Said he God lives however and why careA
-
An hour among the ghosts will do no harmE
He laughed and something glad within me sankF
I may have eyed him with a faint alarmE
For now his laugh was lost in what he drankF
-
They chill things here with ice from hell he saidG
I might have known it And he made a faceH
That showed again how much of him was deadG
And how much was alive and out of placeH
-
And out of reach He knew as well as II
That all the words of wise men who are skilledJ
In using them are not much to defyI
What comes when memory meets the unfulfilledJ
-
What evil and infirm perversityK
Had been at work with him to bring him backL
Never among the ghosts assuredlyK
Would he originate a new attackL
-
Never among the ghosts or anywhereA
Till what was dead of him was put awayM
Would he attain to his offended shareA
Of honor among others of his dayM
-
You ponder like an owl he said at lastN
You always did and here you have a causeO
For I'm a confirmation of the pastN
A vengeance and a flowering of what wasO
-
Sorry Of course you are though you compressP
With even your most impenetrable fearsQ
A placid and a proper consciousnessR
Of anxious angels over my arrearsQ
-
I see them there against me in a bookS
As large as hope in ink that shines by nightT
For sure I see but now I'd rather lookS
At you and you are not a pleasant sightT
-
Forbear forgive Ten years are on my soulU
And on my conscience I've an incubusQ
My one distinction and a parlous tollU
To glory but hope lives on clamorousQ
-
'Twas hope though heaven I grant you knows of whatV
The kind that blinks and rises when it fallsQ
Whether it sees a reason why or notW
That heard Broadway's hard throated siren callsQ
-
'Twas hope that brought me through December stormsQ
To shores again where I'll not have to beK
A lonely man with only foreign wormsQ
To cheer him in his last obscurityK
-
But what it was that hurried me down hereX
To be among the ghosts I leave to youB
My thanks are yours no less for one thing clearY
Though you are silent what you say is trueB
-
There may have been the devil in my feetZ
For down I blundered like a fugitiveA2
To find the old room in Eleventh StreetZ
God save us I came here again to liveB2
-
We rose at that and all the ghosts rose thenD
And followed us unseen to his old roomC2
No longer a good place for living menD
We found it and we shivered in the gloomC2
-
The goods he took away from there were fewB
And soon we found ourselves outside once moreD2
Where now the lamps along the AvenueB
Bloomed white for miles above an iron floorD2
-
Now lead me to the newest of hotelsQ
He said and let your spleen be undeceivedZ
This ruin is not myself but some one elseQ
I haven't failed I've merely not achievedZ
-
Whether he knew or not he laughed and dinedZ
With more of an immune regardlessnessQ
Of pits before him and of sands behindZ
Than many a child at forty would confessQ
-
And after when the bells in 'Boris' rangE2
Their tumult at the MetropolitanF2
He rocked himself and I believe he sangE2
God lives he crooned aloud and I'm the manG2
-
He was And even though the creature spoiledZ
All prophecies I cherish his acclaimH2
Three weeks he fattened and five years he toiledZ
In Yonkers and then sauntered into fameH2
-
And he may go now to what streets he willI2
Eleventh or the last and little careA
But he would find the old room very stillI2
Of evenings and the ghosts would all be thereA
-
I doubt if he goes after them I doubtZ
If many of them ever come to himJ2
His memories are like lamps and they go outZ
Or if they burn they flicker and are dimJ2
-
A light of other gleams he has to dayZ
And adulations of applauding hostsQ
A famous danger but a safer wayZ
Than growing old alone among the ghostsQ
-
But we may still be glad that we were wrongK2
He fooled us and we'd shrivel to deny itZ
Though sometimes when old echoes ring too longK2
I wish the bells in 'Boris' would be quietZ

Edwin Arlington Robinson



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