King Billy's Skull. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEEFEEGGHHII EEHHEEFFJKHHHHLLMMEE EEENNBBOOEEPPHHQQRRH HIIIISSSSEETTHHHHEEP PSSUUEEVVEEEEWXEESSE XEEEXYYEEPXPPEESSSSE EEVVZZA2A2EEVXEXSSSS ZZKXB2B2C2C2SSYYEEEE EEEESSD2D2VVXEEXSSEE E2E2SSSMMHXPPEXD2D2F 2F2EEEHHSETHE scene is the Southern Hemisphere | A |
The time oh any time of the year | A |
Will do as well as another say June | B |
Put it down likewise as the full of the moon | B |
And midnight to boot when churchyards they say | C |
Yawn in a most unmannerly way | C |
And restless ghosts in winding sheets | D |
Go forth and gibber about the streets | D |
And rehearse old crimes that were better hid | E |
In the darkness beneath the coffin lid | E |
Observe that I merely say on dit | E |
But though it never happened to me | F |
To encounter either in doors or out | E |
A posthumous gentleman walking about | E |
In regulation sepulchral guise | G |
Or in shirt Crimean or otherwise | G |
Or in hat and boots and usual wear | H |
Or save for a cloud unbecomingly bare | H |
Or in gaseous form with the stars shining through him | I |
Beckoning me to interview him | I |
On mission of solemnest import bound | E |
Or merely a constitutional round | E |
Beginning at twelve as books declare | H |
And ending at first sniff of morning air | H |
Though all such things you will understand | E |
Have reached me only at second hand | E |
Or third or fourth as the case may be | F |
Yet there really did occur to me | F |
Something which I perforce must call | J |
Ultra super natural | K |
In fact trans ultra super preter | H |
Natural suits both truth and metre | H |
There is an Island I won't say where | H |
For some yet live who mightn't care | H |
To have the address too widely known | L |
Suffice it to say South Temperate Zone | L |
In that same Isle thus precisely set down | M |
There's a certain township and also a town | M |
For to ears colonial I need not state | E |
That the two do not always homologate | E |
And in that same town there's a certain street | E |
And in that same street the locals to complete | E |
There's a certain Surgery trim and neat | E |
Kept by well perhaps it were rash | N |
To call him other than Doctor Dash | N |
At midnight then in the month of June | B |
And don't forget the full of the moon | B |
I sat in that Surgery writhing with pain | O |
Having waited fully two hours in vain | O |
For Doctor Dash who I understood | E |
Was engaged in the questionable good | E |
Of adding one to the sum of woe | P |
That includes all creatures here below | P |
Especially those whose particular dolour | H |
As mine was then is a rotten molar | H |
Have you noted that midnight's final stroke | Q |
Has a way of solemnizing folk | Q |
Though goodness knows in my special case | R |
With a cheek that was quite a three quarter face | R |
There needed no solemnizing power | H |
No eerie vibration of midnight hour | H |
Chilling through heart and thrilling through limb | I |
To put me en rapport with all things grim | I |
With all things dreary and dismal and dim | I |
The whole Night side of Nature see Crow not Jim | I |
Hardly was tolled the day's decease | S |
From the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece | S |
When a running fire of perplexing knocks | S |
Seemed to proceed from a rosewood box | S |
That stood on a table whereon were laid | E |
The horrible tools of the surgical trade | E |
Somewhat slowly the notes began | T |
With minims and then into crotchets ran | T |
From crotchets to quavers then faster they grew | H |
Galloping galloping thirty two | H |
Beats to the semibreve doubling once more | H |
To a semibreve split into sixty four | H |
Till failing to follow so rapid a rate | E |
I gave in at a hundred and twenty eight | E |
I was scared I confess but the wish to know | P |
Was stronger than terror of ghostly foe | P |
And stealthily stealthily nearing the knocks | S |
I pressed my ear on the rosewood box | S |
And fancied I could discern beneath | U |
The peculiar rattle of chattering teeth | U |
Which as need hardly be said or penned | E |
Set each particular hair on end | E |
Froze all my young blood in a moment of time | V |
And curdled my bile and my chyle and my chyme | V |
But though terror undoubtedly gained the day | E |
Yet curiosity too had its way | E |
And the first had no sooner sung out Avaunt | E |
When the second cried Stay what the deuce do you want | E |
Often as I have told the tale | W |
This particular part is so 'like a whale ' | X |
That I always feel an apology due | E |
For insisting upon it as perfectly true | E |
This is what followed a grinding noise | S |
A friction of bones that grew to a voice | S |
And I heard these words on my honour I did | E |
'Hi Cooey You fella Open 'm lid ' | X |
Trembling all over from foot to head | E |
'How shall I open it Spirit ' I said | E |
'Lies there oh lies there no key about | E |
For how can I open the coffer without ' | X |
A kind of an audible ossified grin | Y |
A gnashing of laughter came from within | Y |
And little by little I understood | E |
'You fella new chum You no good | E |
White fella crawler you no go | P |
Key in 'm lock my word 'tis so ' | X |
It was so indeed I opened and lo | P |
An afrit A goblin A bottle imp No | P |
Simply a Human Skull enshrined | E |
In rosewood padded and velvet lined | E |
A low type of skull as one could see | S |
From the brutish depression where forehead should be | S |
Yet surely precious in some degree | S |
To judge from the case not to mention the key | S |
And the lock by a well known patentee | E |
All was still for three minutes at least | E |
Knocks and voices alike had ceased | E |
There lay the skull as silent and dumb | V |
As Lot's wife's salted cranium | V |
Had it been all a gross mistake | Z |
In the frenzy begotten of molar ache | Z |
Was the whole affair but a fancy freak | A2 |
Forged in the heat of a throbbing cheek | A2 |
Was it all but rather than wait the event | E |
I determined to make the experiment | E |
So summoning courage a query to frame | V |
I boldly inquired 'You there what name ' | X |
Which to supply explanation due | E |
Is the Lingua Nigra for 'Who are you ' | X |
This is what followed a grinding noise | S |
A friction of bones that grew to a voice | S |
And a slight elevation I certainly saw | S |
Of the skull as if raised on the under jaw | S |
And this time beyond the chance of mistake | Z |
My senses about me and wide awake | Z |
No victim of frenzy no fancy's gull | K |
I heard the words 'Me King Billy's Skull ' | X |
Alas poor Billy I knew him well | B2 |
In his full corporeal personnel | B2 |
But a man might give his own father the go by | C2 |
Were there only his brain pan left to know by | C2 |
And this was Billy the last of his race | S |
That sightless mask was his regal face | S |
How oft from the cavity within | Y |
Those fangs now set in ghastly grin | Y |
Had I seen the curling smoke proceed | E |
Of the eleemosynary weed | E |
A cavity even now displayed | E |
Through a gap for his pipe expressly made | E |
Here where the Kingly glance shot through | E |
Two eyeless sockets appal the view | E |
And where flourished the fibre of Cocoa nut | E |
Is an utterly towless occiput | E |
But scant was the time to moralize | S |
For soon a light in the place of the eyes | S |
A wild looking diabolical spark | D2 |
Like the eye of an angry cat in the dark | D2 |
Came and went and went and came | V |
The spirit of Billy perhaps aflame | V |
And deeming it such 'What would you pray ' | X |
I asked in a stammering tremulous way | E |
'What is your will oh William say | E |
William rex dei gratia ' | X |
This is what followed a grinding noise | S |
A friction of bones that grew to a voice | S |
'You take me out go long o'street | E |
You come place where three road meet | E |
S'pos'n keep middle till come to bridge | E2 |
Cross over creek an' go up ridge | E2 |
Up on 'im top lie down hollow tree | S |
Lift up big sheet o' bark you see | S |
Bones of brother belongin' to me | S |
Take 'im up head put mine fella down | M |
You fetch 'im brother head back to town | M |
Put 'im in box lock 'im up like o' here | H |
Dash no do me my oath No fear ' | X |
What COULD it all mean Three days ago | P |
I had seen this monarch in earth laid low | P |
How had his fleshless skull returned | E |
From the grave where I saw him so 'quietly inurned ' | X |
And what upon earth was the drift of the dark | D2 |
Allusion to Dash in his closing remark | D2 |
And what could import a mission so strange | F2 |
This visit to death this mysterious exchange | F2 |
And wherefore of all men should I be selected | E |
To pending an answer I did as directed | E |
And in less than an hour the exchange was effected | E |
King Billy supplanted the box closed once more | H |
And myself fleeing forth from the surgery door | H |
Time and the hour as Shakespeare says | S |
Run through the very roughest of da | E |
James Brunton Stephens
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