A Man's Repentance Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CCCC CDCD EFEF GCGC CECE HCHC CCCC CICI CCCC| To night when I came from the club at eleven | A |
| Under the gaslight I saw a face | B |
| A woman's face and I swear to heaven | A |
| It looked like the ghastly ghost of Grace | B |
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| And Grace why Grace was fair and I tarried | C |
| And loved her a season as we men do | C |
| And then but pshaw why of course she is married | C |
| Has a husband and doubtless a babe or two | C |
| - | |
| - | |
| She was perfectly calm on the day we parted | C |
| She spared me a scene to my great surprise | D |
| She wasn't the kind to be broken hearted | C |
| I remember she said with a spark in her eyes | D |
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| - | |
| I was tempted I know by her proud defiance | E |
| To make good my promises there and then | F |
| But the world would have called it a m salliance | E |
| I dreaded the comments and sneers of men | F |
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| So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover | G |
| And to hide her heart from the cold world's sight | C |
| As women do hide them the wide earth over | G |
| My God was it Grace that I saw to night | C |
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| - | |
| I thought of her married and often with pity | C |
| A poor man's wife in some dull place | E |
| And now to know she is here in the city | C |
| Under the gaslight and with that face | E |
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| - | |
| Yet I knew it at once in spite of the daubing | H |
| Of paint and powder and she knew me | C |
| She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing | H |
| And shrank in the shade so I should not see | C |
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| There was hell in her eyes She was worn and jaded | C |
| Her soul is at war with the life she has led | C |
| As I looked on that face so strangely faded | C |
| I wonder God did not strike me dead | C |
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| While I have been happy and gay and jolly | C |
| Received by the very best people in town | I |
| That girl whom I led in the way to folly | C |
| Has gone on recklessly down and down | I |
| - | |
| - | |
| Two o'clock and no sleep has found me | C |
| That face I saw in the street lamp's light | C |
| Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me | C |
| I know how a murderer feels to night | C |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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