Universally Respected Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCC DCDC CECEFGFH IJIJ KLKL CMCI NONO PQPQ PQPQ IDID RSRS ICIC ICIC ACTCTDFDF PSPA ICIC QQQ Q CQCQ CDCD CUCU VCVC FWFW PXPX CYCY ICICI | A |
Biggs was missing Biggs had vanished all the town was in a ferment | B |
For if ever man was looked to for an edifying end | C |
With due mortuary outfit and a popular interment | C |
It was Biggs the universal guide philosopher and friend | C |
- | |
But the man had simply vanished speculation wove no tissue | D |
That would hold a drop of water each new theoryfell flat | C |
It was most unsatisfactory and hanging on the issue | D |
Were a thousand wagers ranging from a pony to a hat | C |
- | |
Not a trace could search discover in the township or without it | C |
And the river had been dragged from morn till night with no avail | E |
His continuity had ceased and that was all about it | C |
And there wasn't even a grease spot left behind to tell the tale | E |
That so staid a man as Biggs was should be swallowed up in mystery | F |
Lent an increment to wonder he who trod no doubtful paths | G |
But stood square to his surroundings with no cloud upon his history | F |
As the much respected lessee of the Corporation Baths | H |
- | |
His affairs were all in order since the year the alligator | I |
With a startled river bather made attempt to coalesce | J |
The resulting wave of decency had greater grown and greater | I |
And the Corporation Baths had been a marvellous success | J |
- | |
Nor could trouble in the household solve the riddle of his clearance | K |
For his bride was now in heaven and the issue of the match | L |
Was a patient drudge whose virtues were as plain as her appearance | K |
Just the sort whereto no scandal could conceivably attach | L |
- | |
So the Whither and the Why alike mysterious were counted | C |
And as Faith steps in to aid where baffled Reason must retire | M |
There were those averred so good a man as Biggs might well have mounted | C |
Up to glory like Elijah in a chariot of fire | I |
- | |
For indeed he was a good man when he sat beside the portal | N |
Of the Bath house at his pigeon hole a saint within a frame | O |
We used to think his face was as the face of an immortal | N |
As he handed us our tickets and took payment for the same | O |
- | |
And oh the sweet advice with which he made of such occasion | P |
A duplicate detergent for our morals and our limbs | Q |
For he taught us that decorum was the essence of salvation | P |
And that cleanliness and godliness were merely synonyms | Q |
- | |
But that open air ablution in the river was a treason | P |
To the purer instincts fit for dogs and aborigines | Q |
And that wrath at such misconduct was the providential reason | P |
For the jaws of alligators and the tails of stingarees | Q |
- | |
But alas our friend was gone our guide philosopher and tutor | I |
And we doubled our potations just to clear the inner view | D |
But we only saw the darklier through the bottom of the pewter | I |
And the mystery seemed likewise to be multiplied by two | D |
- | |
And the worst was that our failure to unriddle the enigma | R |
In the rags of rival towns was made a by word and a scoff | S |
Till each soul in the community felt branded with the stigma | R |
Of the unexplained damnation of poor Biggs's taking off | S |
- | |
So a dozen of us rose and swore this thing should be no longer | I |
Though the means that Nature furnished had been tried without result | C |
There were forces supersensual that higher were and stronger | I |
And with consentaneous clamour we pronounced for the occult | C |
- | |
Then Joe Thomson slung a tenner and Jack Robinson a tanner | I |
And each according to his means respectively disbursed | C |
And a letter in your humble servant's most seductive manner | I |
Was despatched to Sludge the Medium recently of Darlinghurst | C |
- | |
II | A |
I am Biggs the spirit said 't was through the medium's lips he said it | C |
But the voice that spoke the accent too were Biggs's very own | T |
Be it therefore not set down to our unmerited discredit | C |
That collectively we sickened as we recognized the tone | T |
From a saurian interior Christian friends I now address you | D |
And Oh heaven or its correlative groaned shudderingly we | F |
While there yet remains a scrap of my identity for bless you | D |
This ungodly alligator's fast assimilating me | F |
- | |
For although through nine abysmal days I've fought with his digestion | P |
Being hostile to his processes and loth to pulpify | S |
It is rapidly becoming a most complicated question | P |
How much of me is crocodile how much of him is I | A |
- | |
And oh my friends 'tis sorrow's crown of sorrow to remember | I |
That this sacrilegious reptile owed me nought but gratitude | C |
For I bought him from a showman twenty years since come November | I |
And I dropped him in the river for his own and others' good | C |
- | |
It had grieved me that the spouses of our townsmen and their daughters | Q |
Should be shocked by river bathers and their indecorous ways | Q |
So I cast my bread that is my alligator on the waters | Q |
- | |
And I found it in a credit balance after many days | Q |
- | |
Years I waited but at last there came the rumour long expected | C |
And the out of door ablutionists forsook their wicked paths | Q |
And the issues of my handiwork divinely were directed | C |
In a constant flow of custom to the Corporation Baths | Q |
- | |
'Twas a weakling when I bought it 'twas so young that you could pet it | C |
But with all its disadvantages I reckoned it would do | D |
And it did Oh lay the moral well to heart and don't forget it | C |
Put decorum first and all things shall be added unto you | D |
- | |
Lies all lies I've done with virtue Why should I be interested | C |
In the cause of moral progress that I served so long in vain | U |
When the fifteen hundred odd I've so judiciously invested | C |
Will but go to pay the debts of some young rip who marries Jane | U |
- | |
But the reptile overcomes me my identity is sinking | V |
Let me hasten to the finish let my words be few and fit | C |
I was walking by the river in the starry silence thinking | V |
Of what Providence had done for me and I had done for it | C |
- | |
I had reached the saurian's rumoured haunt where oft in fatal folly | F |
I had dropped garotted dogs to keep his carnal craving up | W |
Said Joe Thomson in a whisper That explains my Highland collie | F |
Said Bob Williams sotto voce That explains my Dandy pup | W |
- | |
I had passed to moral questions and found comfort in the notion | P |
That fools are none the worse for things not being what they seem | X |
When behold a seeming log became instinct with life and motion | P |
And with sudden curvature of tail upset me in the stream | X |
- | |
Then my leg as in a vice But here the revelation faltered | C |
And the medium rose and shook himself remarking with a smile | Y |
That the requisite conditions were irrevocably altered | C |
For the personality of Biggs was lost in crocodile | Y |
- | |
- | |
Now whether Sludge's story would succeed in holding water | I |
Is more perhaps than one has any business to expect | C |
But I know that on the strength of it I married Biggs's daughter | I |
And I found a certain portion of the narrative correct | C |
James Brunton Stephens
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
<< To A Black Gin Poem
Next Poem
Write your comment about Universally Respected poem by James Brunton Stephens
Best Poems of James Brunton Stephens