Crispus Attucks Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDDEE CCFF GGHHIIJJ KKLLCCMMNN OOPP QQRRSS QDTTUUVWXX YTXXZZ XXXXA2A2 XXA2A2B2B2 XXA2A2XXXXKK XXC2C2XX A LLA2A2XXD2D2 E2E2XXX XXXXWHERE shall we seek for a hero and where shall we find a story | A |
Our laurels are wreathed for conquest our songs for completed glory | A |
But we honor a shrine unfinished a column uncapped with pride | B |
If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died | B |
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Shall we take for a sign this Negro slave with unfamiliar name | C |
With his poor companions nameless too till their lives leaped forth in flame | C |
Yea sorely the verdict is not for us to render or deny | D |
We can only interpret the symbol God chose these men to die | D |
As teachers and types that to humble lives may chief award be made | E |
That from lowly ones and rejected stones the temple's base is laid | E |
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When the bullets leaped from the British guns no chance decreed their aim | C |
Men see what the royal hirelings saw a multitude and a flame | C |
But beyond the flame a mystery five dying men in the street | F |
While the streams of severed races in the well of a nation meet | F |
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O blood of the people changeless tide through century creed and race | G |
Still one as the sweet salt sea is one though tempered by sun and place | G |
The same in the ocean currents and the same in the sheltered seas | H |
Forever the fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies | H |
Indian and Negro Saxon and Celt Teuton and Latin and Gaul | I |
Mere surface shadow and sunshine while the sounding unifies all | I |
One love one hope one duty theirs No matter the time or ken | J |
There never was separate heart beat in all the races of men | J |
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But alien is one of class not race he has drawn the line for himself | K |
His roots drink life from inhuman soil from garbage of pomp and pelf | K |
His heart beats not with the common beat he has changed his life stream's hue | L |
He deems his flesh to be finer flesh he boasts that his blood is blue | L |
Patrician aristocrat tory whatever his age or name | C |
To the people's rights and liberties a traitor ever the same | C |
The natural crowd is a mob to him their prayer a vulgar rhyme | M |
The freeman's speech is sedition and the patriot's deed a crime | M |
Wherever the race the law the land whatever the time or throne | N |
The tory is always a traitor to every class but his own | N |
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Thank God for a land where pride is clipped where arrogance stalks apart | O |
Where law and song and loathing of wrong are words of the common heart | O |
Where the masses honor straightforward strength and know when veins are bled | P |
That the bluest blood is putrid blood that the people's blood is red | P |
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And honor to Crispus Attucks who was leader and voice that day | Q |
The first to defy and the first to die with Maverick Carr and Gray | Q |
Call it riot or revolution his hand first clenched at the crown | R |
His feet were the first in perilous place to pull the king's flag down | R |
His breast was the first one rent apart that liberty's stream might flow | S |
For our freedom now and forever his head was the first bid low | S |
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Call it riot or revolution or mob or crowd as you may | Q |
Such deaths have been seed of nations such lives shall be honored for aye | D |
They were lawless hinds to the lackeys but martyrs to Paul Revere | T |
And Otis and Hancock and Warren read spirit and meaning clear | T |
Ye teachers answer what shall be done when just men stand in the dock | U |
When the caitiff is robed in ermine and his sworders keep the lock | U |
When torture is robbed of clemency and guilt is without remorse | V |
When tiger and panther are gentler than the Christian slaver's curse | W |
When law is a satrap's menace and order the drill of a horde | X |
Shall the people kneel to be trampled and bare their neck to the sword | X |
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Not so by this Stone of Resistance that Boston raises here | Y |
By the old North Church's lantern and the watching of Paul Revere | T |
Not so by Paris of 'Ninety Three and Ulster of 'NinetyEight | X |
By Toussaint in St Domingo by the horror of Delhi's gate | X |
By Adams's word to Hutchinson by the tea that is brewing still | Z |
By the farmers that met the soldiers at Concord and Bunker Hill | Z |
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Not so not so Till the world is done the shadow of wrong is dread | X |
The crowd that bends to a lord to day to morrow shall strike him dead | X |
There is only one thing changeless the earth steals from under our feet | X |
The times and manners are passing moods and the laws are incomplete | X |
There is only one thing changes not one word that still survives | A2 |
The slave is the wretch who wields the lash and not the man in gyves | A2 |
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There is only one test of contract is it willing is it good | X |
There is only one guard of equal right the unity of blood | X |
There is never a mind unchained and true that class or race allows | A2 |
There is never a law to be obeyed that reason disavows | A2 |
There is never a legal sin but grows to the law's disaster | B2 |
The master shall dropp the whip and the slave shall enslave the master | B2 |
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O Planter of seed in thought and deed has the year of right revolved | X |
And brought the Negro patriot's cause with its problem to be solved | X |
His blood streamed first for the building and through all the century's years | A2 |
Our growth of story and fame of glory are mixed with his blood and tears | A2 |
He lived with men like a soul condemned derided defamed and mute | X |
Debased to the brutal level and instructed to be a brute | X |
His virtue was shorn of benefit his industry of reward | X |
His love O men it were mercy to have cut affection's cord | X |
Through the night of his woe no pity save that of his fellow slave | K |
For the wage of his priceless labor the scourging block and the grave | K |
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And now is the tree to blossom Is the bowl of agony filled | X |
Shall the price be paid and the honor said and the word of outrage stilled | X |
And we who have toiled for freedom's law have we sought for freedom's soul | C2 |
Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole | C2 |
That nothing is told while the clinging sin remains part unconfessed | X |
That the health of the nation is periled if one man be oppressed | X |
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Has he learned the slave from the rice swamps whose children were sold has he | A |
With broken chains on his limbs and the cry in his blood 'I am free ' | - |
Has he learned through affliction's teaching what our Crispus Attucks knew | L |
When Right is stricken the white and black are counted as one not two | L |
Has he learned that his century of grief was worth a thousand years | A2 |
In blending his life and blood with ours and that all his toils and tears | A2 |
Were heaped and poured on him suddenly to give him a right to stand | X |
From the gloom of African forests in the blaze of the freest land | X |
That his hundred years have earned for him a place in the human van | D2 |
Which others have fought for and thought for since the world of wrong began | D2 |
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For this shall his vengeance change to love and his retribution burn | E2 |
Defending the right the weak and the poor when each shall have his turn | E2 |
For this shall he set his woeful past afloat on the stream of night | X |
For this he forgets as we all forget when darkness turns to light | X |
For this he forgives as we all forgive when wrong has changed to right | X |
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And so must we come to the learning of Boston's lesson to day | X |
The moral that Crispus Attucks taught in the old heroic way | X |
God made mankind to be one in blood as one in spirit and thought | X |
And so great a boon by a brave man's death is never dearly bought | X |
John Boyle O'reilly
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