The Black Sheep Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AA BBBBBBCCDDEEF GGHHIIJ JKKLLMNBBBOOPQRRSSTU VVGW| 'Black sheep black sheep have you any wool ' | A |
| 'Yes sir yes sir three bags full ' | A |
| - | |
| 'I don't want any New Thought ' said he | B |
| 'Or any Theosophy for you see | B |
| The faith I learned at my mother's knee | B |
| Is good enough for me | B |
| Of course I'm a wee bit broader than she | B |
| Hearing one sermon where she heard three | B |
| And I read my paper on Sunday instead | C |
| Of the Bible only My mother said | C |
| I was a black sheep when she saw | D |
| I strayed a trifle away from the law | D |
| And didn't think everyone left in the lurch | E |
| Who happened to go to a different church | E |
| But still in the main her creed is mine | F |
| And I don't want anything more divine ' | - |
| Yet his mother's mother was more austere | G |
| She taught her children a creed of fear | G |
| And she called them 'black sheep' when with a shock | H |
| She saw them straying away from the flock | H |
| Just far enough | I |
| To get around places they thought too rough | I |
| Like infant damnation and endless hell | J |
| - | |
| - | |
| But his mother's mother's mother would tell | J |
| How her mother thought it was God's sweet will | K |
| To punish and torture a heretic till | K |
| They drove out the devil that made him dare | L |
| Think for himself in the matter of prayer | L |
| And faith and salvation So we see how it is | M |
| If we look back over the centuries | N |
| The creeds men learned at their mother's knee | B |
| When Salem witches were hanged to a tree | B |
| And the pious dames flocked thither to see | B |
| Are not deemed Christian or holy to day | O |
| And the bold black sheep who went straying away | O |
| From rut worn paths in their search for God | P |
| And leaped over the fence into pastures broad | Q |
| Are the great trail makers for mortal souls | R |
| Leading the race up to higher goals | R |
| And a larger religion where man must find | S |
| God dwelling ever within his mind | S |
| Christ in his conduct and heaven in his thought | T |
| And hell but the places where love is not | U |
| A mighty religion that makes this earth | V |
| But the cradle that fits us for death's new birth | V |
| And the life beyond it that is so near | G |
| Its echoes may reach to the listening ear | W |
| - | |
| 'Black sheep black sheep have you any wool ' | - |
| 'Yes sir yes sir a whole world full ' | - |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1)
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