A Lost Friend Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DDEEFFGGHH AAII JJKKDL HHMM NN| MY friend he was my friend from all the rest | A |
| With childlike faith he oped to me his breast | A |
| No door was locked on altar grave or grief | B |
| No weakness veiled concealed no disbelief | B |
| The hope the sorrow and the wrong were bare | C |
| And ah the shadow only showed the fair | C |
| - | |
| I gave him love for love but deep within | D |
| I magnified each frailty into sin | D |
| Each hill topped foible in the sunset glowed | E |
| Obscuring vales where rivered virtttes flowed | E |
| Reproof became reproach till common grew | F |
| The captious word at every fault I knew | F |
| He smiled upon the censorship and bore | G |
| With patient love the touch that wounded sore | G |
| Until at length so had my blindness grown | H |
| He knew I judged him by his faults alone | H |
| - | |
| Alone of all men I who knew him best | A |
| Refused the gold to take the dross for test | A |
| Cold strangers honored for the worth they saw | I |
| His friend forgot the diamond in the flaw | I |
| - | |
| At last it came the day he stood apart | J |
| When from my eyes he proudly veiled his heart | J |
| When carping judgment and uncertain word | K |
| A stern resentment in his bosom stirred | K |
| When in his face I read what I had been | D |
| And with his vision saw what he had seen | L |
| - | |
| Too late too late Oh could he then have known | H |
| When his love died that mine had perfect grown | H |
| That when the veil was drawn abased chastised | M |
| The censor stood the lost one truly prized | M |
| - | |
| Too late we learn a man must hold his friend | N |
| Unjudged accepted trusted to the end | N |
John Boyle O'reilly
(1)
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