On A Street Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABACDEDE FGFGHIHI JKJKELEL MNMNOPOP QRQRSTST UNUNLPLP VWVWGXGX JTJTYZYZ A2B2A2B2C2D2C2E2 VDVDF2G2F2G2 H2DH2DI2WI2W HJ2HJ2MK2MK2 EOEOTL2TL2I dread that street its haggard face | A |
I have not seen for eight long years | B |
A mother's curse is on the place | A |
There's blood my reader in her tears | C |
No child of man shall ever track | D |
Through filthy dust the singer's feet | E |
A fierce old memory drags me back | D |
I hate its name I dread that street | E |
- | |
Upon the lap of green sweet lands | F |
Whose months are like your English Mays | G |
I try to hide in Lethe's sands | F |
The bitter old Bohemian days | G |
But sorrow speaks in singing leaf | H |
And trouble talketh in the tide | I |
The skirts of a stupendous grief | H |
Are trailing ever at my side | I |
- | |
I will not say who suffered there | J |
'Tis best the name aloof to keep | K |
Because the world is very fair | J |
Its light should sing the dark to sleep | K |
But let me whisper in that street | E |
A woman faint through want of bread | L |
Has often pawned the quilt and sheet | E |
And wept upon a barren bed | L |
- | |
How gladly would I change my theme | M |
Or cease the song and steal away | N |
But on the hill and by the stream | M |
A ghost is with me night and day | N |
A dreadful darkness full of wild | O |
Chaotic visions comes to me | P |
I seem to hear a dying child | O |
Its mother's face I seem to see | P |
- | |
Here surely on this bank of bloom | Q |
My verse with shine would ever flow | R |
But ah it comes the rented room | Q |
With man and wife who suffered so | R |
From flower and leaf there is no hint | S |
I only see a sharp distress | T |
A lady in a faded print | S |
A careworn writer for the press | T |
- | |
I only hear the brutal curse | U |
Of landlord clamouring for his pay | N |
And yonder is the pauper's hearse | U |
That comes to take a child away | N |
Apart and with the half grey head | L |
Of sudden age again I see | P |
The father writing by the dead | L |
To earn the undertaker's fee | P |
- | |
No tear at all is asked for him | V |
A drunkard well deserves his life | W |
But voice will quiver eyes grow dim | V |
For her the patient pure young wife | W |
The gentle girl of better days | G |
As timid as a mountain fawn | X |
Who used to choose untrodden ways | G |
And place at night her rags in pawn | X |
- | |
She could not face the lighted square | J |
Or show the street her poor thin dress | T |
In one close chamber bleak and bare | J |
She hid her burden of distress | T |
Her happy schoolmates used to drive | Y |
On gaudy wheels the town about | Z |
The meat that keeps a dog alive | Y |
She often had to go without | Z |
- | |
I tell you this is not a tale | A2 |
Conceived by me but bitter truth | B2 |
Bohemia knows it pinched and pale | A2 |
Beside the pyre of burnt out youth | B2 |
These eyes of mine have often seen | C2 |
The sweet girl wife in winters rude | D2 |
Steal out at night through courts unclean | C2 |
To hunt about for chips of wood | E2 |
- | |
Have I no word at all for him | V |
Who used down fetid lanes to slink | D |
And squat in tap room corners grim | V |
And drown his thoughts in dregs of drink | D |
This much I'll say that when the flame | F2 |
Of reason reassumed its force | G2 |
The hell the Christian fears to name | F2 |
Was heaven to his fierce remorse | G2 |
- | |
Just think of him beneath the ban | H2 |
And steeped in sorrow to the neck | D |
Without a friend a feeble man | H2 |
In failing health a human wreck | D |
With all his sense and scholarship | I2 |
How could he face his fading wife | W |
The devil never lifted whip | I2 |
With thongs like those that scourged his life | W |
- | |
But He in whom the dying thief | H |
Upon the Cross did place his trust | J2 |
Forgets the sin and feels the grief | H |
And lifts the sufferer from the dust | J2 |
And now because I have a dream | M |
The man and woman found the light | K2 |
A glory burns upon the stream | M |
With gold and green the woods are bright | K2 |
- | |
But still I hate that haggard street | E |
Its filthy courts its alleys wild | O |
In dreams of it I always meet | E |
The phantom of a wailing child | O |
The name of it begets distress | T |
Ah song be silent show no more | L2 |
The lady in the perished dress | T |
The scholar on the tap room floor | L2 |
Henry Kendall
(1)
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