Conversation Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGHGHII JKJKLL MNMNOO PQPRSS TUTUVW NXNXYY ZA2B2C2MM D2BE2F2MG2H2We were a baker's dozen in the house six women and six men | A |
Besides myself and all of us had known | B |
Those benefits supposed to come from school and church and brush and pen | A |
And opportunities of being thrown | B |
In contact with the cultured and the gifted people of the day | C |
Being the thirteenth one among six pairs | D |
I deemed it wise to keep apart and let the others have their say | C |
And from my vantage place upon the stairs | D |
Or in a corner where I seemed to read I listened for some word | E |
That would make life seem sweeter or cast light | F |
Upon the goal toward which all footsteps wend and this was what I heard | E |
Throughout each day and half of every night | F |
The men talked business politics and trade | G |
They told of safe investments and great chances | H |
For speculation One man who had made | G |
Pleasure his art described the newest dances | H |
And dwelt upon each chasse glide and whirl | I |
As lovers dwell upon the charms of some fair girl | I |
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They talked of war and tried to find its cause | J |
And quite deplored the fact that wars must come | K |
But since this desperate condition was | J |
They carefully computed what the sum | K |
Of profit might be to a land of peace | L |
And wondered if times would be harder should war cease | L |
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They spoke of games and sports told many a story | M |
That made the listeners laugh then back from these | N |
Always they harked to money or the gory | M |
And savage drama playing overseas | N |
Then there were tales from club and smoking room | O |
The submarines of gossip bringing some name doom | O |
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The women talked of fashions and of plays | P |
But more of players and their private lives | Q |
Related tittle tattle of their words and ways | P |
Their lightning change of husbands and of wives | R |
And there was chat of garments and their price | S |
Of operas and balls and all that gives life spice | S |
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Some talk there was of music pictures books | T |
But of musicians painters authors more | U |
The way they lived their methods and their looks | T |
The colour of their eyes the clothes they wore | U |
And whether it was true as had been stated | V |
That gifted people were quite sure to be mis mated | W |
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They talked of servants menus and disease | N |
And operations Each one came in line | X |
With some astounding tale to tell of these | N |
And of her surgeon's skill which seemed divine | X |
But of that vast Domain where live our dead | Y |
And where we all are hurrying no word was said | Y |
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When we know that goal awaits each one of us a little farther on | Z |
When we know how an ever increasing company of friends is gathered there | A2 |
Why do we not speak of it in our daily conversation | B2 |
Why do we not familiarise our minds with thoughts of worlds unseen | C2 |
There are many beautiful things to be learned of that country | M |
There are sacred books of great travellers whose souls have cried 'Hail across the border' | M |
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There are truths which have been learned in visions and by revelations | D2 |
All the revelations were not given to St John alone | B |
All the wise men of the world did not die two thousand years ago | E2 |
Why do we not talk of these eternal truths | F2 |
Instead of wasting all our words on the evanesent the ever | M |
changing the trivial and the unimportant | G2 |
There is but one important theme and that is Life Immortal | H2 |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1)
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