The Sangamon River Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DDEEFF GGHIJJ KKCCLL MMKKNN OPQQRR SSTTAA UUVVWW| O sunny Sangamon thy name to me | A |
| Soft syllabled like some sweet melody | A |
| Familiar is since adolescent years | B |
| As household phrases ringing in my ears | B |
| Its measured cadence sounding to and fro | C |
| From the dim corridors of long ago | C |
| - | |
| There was a time in happy days gone by | D |
| That rosy interval of youth when I | D |
| The scholar ardent early learned to trace | E |
| Great tributaries to their starting place | E |
| And thine some prairie hollow obsolete | F |
| Whose name how few remember or repeat | F |
| - | |
| Like thee meandering yet wafted back | G |
| From distant hearth and lonely bivouac | G |
| From strange vicissitudes in other lands | H |
| From half wrought labors and unfinished plans | I |
| I come in thy cool depths my brow to lave | J |
| And rest a moment by thy silver wave | J |
| - | |
| But ah what means thy muddy muggy hue | K |
| I thought thee limpid as yon ether blue | K |
| I thought an angel's wing might dip below | C |
| Thy sparkling surface and be white as snow | C |
| And of thy current I had dared to drink | L |
| If not as one imbibing draughts of ink | L |
| - | |
| Has some rough element of horrid clay | M |
| That spoils the earth like lava beds they say | M |
| Come sliding down as avalanches do | K |
| And thy fair bosom percolated through | K |
| Or some apothecary's compound vile | N |
| Polluted thee so many a murky mile | N |
| - | |
| Why not proud State beneficence insure | O |
| Selling thy soil or giving to the poor | P |
| For sad it is that dust of Illinois | Q |
| With coal and compost its conjoint alloy | Q |
| A morceau washed from Mississippi's mouth | R |
| Should build up acres for our neighbors south | R |
| - | |
| River I grieve but not for loss of dirt | S |
| Once stainless just because of what thou wert | S |
| Thus on thy banks I linger and reflect | T |
| That surely as all waterways connect | T |
| Forever flowing onward to the sea | A |
| Shall the great billow thy redemption be | A |
| - | |
| And now dear Sangamon farewell I wait | U |
| On that Elysian scene to meditate | U |
| When separated from the dregs of earth | V |
| Life's stream shall sweeter be of better worth | V |
| And like the ocean with its restless tide | W |
| By its own action cleansed and purified | W |
Hattie Howard
(3)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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