Memory's River Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDED AFAFGHCH IJIJCKAK LMLMANAN ANANNAOA| In Nature's bright blossoms not always reposes | A |
| That strange subtle essence more rare than their bloom | B |
| Which lies in the hearts of carnations and roses | A |
| That unexplained something by men called perfume | B |
| Though modest the flower yet great is its power | C |
| And pregnant with meaning each pistil and leaf | D |
| If only it hides there if only abides there | E |
| The fragrance suggestive of love joy and grief | D |
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| Not always the air that a master composes | A |
| Can stir human heart strings with pleasure or pain | F |
| But strange subtle chords like the scent of the roses | A |
| Breathe out of some measures though simple the strain | F |
| And lo when you hear them you love them and fear them | G |
| You tremble with anguish you thrill with delight | H |
| For back of them slumber old dreams without number | C |
| And faces long vanished peer out into sight | H |
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| Those dear foolish days when the earth seemed all beauty | I |
| Before you had knowledge enough to be sad | J |
| When youth held no higher ideal of duty | I |
| Than just to lilt on through the world and be glad | J |
| On harmony's river they seemed to float hither | C |
| With all the sweet fancies that hung round that time | K |
| Life's burdens and troubles turn into air bubbles | A |
| And break on the music's swift current of rhyme | K |
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| Fair Folly comes back with her spell while you listen | L |
| And points to the paths where she led you of old | M |
| You gaze on past sunsets you see dead stars glisten | L |
| You bathe in life's glory you swoon in death's cold | M |
| All pains and all pleasures surge up through those measures | A |
| Your heart is wrenched open with earthquakes of sound | N |
| From ashes and embers rise Junes and Decembers | A |
| Lost islands in fathoms of feeling refound | N |
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| Some airs are like outlets of memory's oceans | A |
| They rise in the past and flow into the heart | N |
| And down them float shipwrecks of mighty emotions | A |
| All sea soaked and storm tossed and drifting apart | N |
| Their fair timbers battered their lordly sails tattered | N |
| Their skeleton crew of dead days on their decks | A |
| Then a crash of chords blending a crisis an ending | O |
| The music is over and vanished the wrecks | A |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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