Haunted By Tigers Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCDD EEFFGG HIIJJFFKKGGDDLLEMNNO OPP OOQQOORS TTGGUU RSVVRR PPPWWW LLXX LLYYOOKKQQPP ZZA2A2KKGGB2B2C2C2OO L D2D2L OOE2E2QQF2F2 G2G2QQQQH2H2LLUUOOQONATHAN BEANS and William Lambert were two wild New England boys | A |
Known from infancy to revel only in forbidden joys | A |
Many a mother of Nantucket bristled when she heard them come | B |
With a horrid skulking whistle tempting her good lad from home | C |
But for all maternal bristling little did they seem to care | D |
And they loved each other dearly did this good for nothing pair | D |
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So they lived till eighteen summers found them in the same repute | E |
They had well developed muscles and loose characters to boot | E |
Then they did what wild Nantucket boys have never failed to do | F |
Went and filled two oily bunks among a whaler's oily crew | F |
And the mothers ah they raised their hands and blessed the lucky day | G |
While Nantucket waved its handkerchief to see them sail away | G |
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On a four years' cruise they started in the brave old 'Patience Parr ' | - |
And were soon initiated in the mysteries of tar | H |
There they found the truth that whalers' tales are unsubstantial wiles | I |
They were sick and sore and sorry ere they passed the Western Isles | I |
And their captain old man Sculpin gave their fancies little scope | J |
For he argued with a marlinspike and reasoned with a rope | J |
But they stuck together bravely they were Ishmaels with the crew | F |
Nathan's voice was never raised but Bill's support was uttered too | F |
And whenever Beans was floored by Sculpin's cruel marlinspike | K |
Down beside him went poor Lambert for his hand was clenched to strike | K |
So they passed two years in cruising till one breathless burning day | G |
The old 'Patience Parr' in Sunda Straits with flapping canvas lay | G |
On her starboard side Sumatra's woods were dark beneath the glare | D |
And on her port stretched Java slumbering in the yellow air | D |
Slumbering as the jaguar slumbers as the tropic ocean sleeps | L |
Smooth and smiling on its surface with a devil in its deeps | L |
So swooned Java's moveless forest but the jungle round its root | E |
Knew the rustling anaconda and the tiger's padded foot | M |
There in Nature's rankest garden Nature's worst alone is rife | N |
And a glorious land is wild beast ruled for want of human life | N |
Scarce a harmless thing moved on it not a living soul was near | O |
From the frowning rocks of Java Head right northward to Anjier | O |
Crestless swells like wind raised canvas made the whaler rise and dip | P |
Else she lay upon the water like a paralytic ship | P |
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And beneath a topsail awning lay the lazy languid crew | O |
Drinking in the precious coolness of the shadow all save two | O |
Two poor Ishmaels they were absent Heaven help them roughly tied | Q |
'Neath the blistering cruel sun glare in the fore chains side by side | Q |
Side by side as it was always each one with a word of cheer | O |
For the other and for his sake bravely choking back the tear | O |
Side by side their pain or pastime never yet seemed good for one | R |
But whenever pain came each in secret wished the other gone | S |
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You who stop at home and saunter o'er your flower scattered path | T |
With life's corners velvet cushioned have you seen a tyrant's wrath | T |
Wrath the rude and reckless demon not the drawing room display | G |
Of an anger led by social lightning rods upon its way | G |
Ah my friends wrath's raw materials on the land may sometimes be | U |
But the manufactured article is only found at sea | U |
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And the wrath of old man Sculpin was of texture Number One | R |
Never absent when the man smiled it was hidden but not gone | S |
Old church members of Nantucket knew him for a shining lamp | V |
But his chronic Christian spirit was of pharisaic stamp | V |
When ashore he prayed aloud of how he'd sinned and been forgiven | R |
How his evil ways had brought him 'thin an ace of losing heaven | R |
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Thank the Lord his eyes were opened and so on but when the ship | P |
Was just ready for a voyage you could see old Sculpin's lip | P |
Have a sort of nervous tremble like a carter's long leashed whip | P |
Ere it cracks and so the skipper's lip was trembling for an oath | W |
At the watch on deck for idleness the watch below for sloth | W |
For the leash of his anathemas was long enough for both | W |
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Well ' twas burning noon off Java Beans and Lambert in the chains | L |
Sank their heads and all was silent but the voices of their pains | L |
Night came ere their bonds were loosened then the boys sank down and slept | X |
And the dew in place of loved ones on their wounded bodies wept | X |
- | |
All was still within the whaler on the sea no fanning breeze | L |
And the moon alone was moving over Java's gloomy trees | L |
Midnight came one sleeper's waking glance went out the moon to meet | Y |
Nathan rose and turned from Lambert who still slumbered at his feet | Y |
Out toward Java went his vision as if something in the air | O |
Came with promises of kindness and of peace to be found there | O |
Then toward the davits moved he where the lightest whaleboat hung | K |
And he worked with silent caution till upon the sea she swung | K |
When he paused and looked at Lambert and the spirit in him cried | Q |
Not to leave him but to venture as since childhood side by side | Q |
And the spirit's cry was answered for he touched the sleeper's lip | P |
Who awoke and heard of Nathan's plan to leave th' accursed ship | P |
- | |
When 'twas told they rose in silence and looked outward to the land | Z |
they only saw Nantucket with its homely boat lined strand | Z |
But they saw it oh so plainly through the glass of coming doom | A2 |
Then they crept into the whale boat and pulled toward the forest's gloom | A2 |
All their suffering clear that moment like the moonlight on their wake | K |
Now contracting now expanding like a phosphorescent snake | K |
Hours speed on the dark horizon yet shows scarce a streak of gray | G |
When old Sculpin comes on deck to walk his restlessness away | G |
All the scene is still and solemn and mayhap the man's cold heart | B2 |
Feels its teaching for the wild beast cries from shoreward make him start | B2 |
As if they had warning in them and he o'er its meaning pored | C2 |
Till at length one shriek from Java splits the darkness like a sword | C2 |
And he almost screams in answer such the nearness of the cry | O |
As he clutches at the rigging with a horror in his eye | O |
And with faltering accents mutters as against the mast he leans | L |
'Darn the tigers that one shouted with the voice of Nathan Beans '' | - |
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When the boys were missed soon after Sculpin never breathed a word | D2 |
Of his terror in the morning at the fearful sound he'd heard | D2 |
But he entered in the log book and 'twas witnessed by the mates | L |
Just their names and following after 'Ran away in Sunda Straits ' | - |
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Two years after Captain Sculpin saw again the Yankee shore | O |
With the comfortable feeling that he'd go to sea no more | O |
And 'twas strange the way he altered when he saw Nantucket light | E2 |
Holy lines spread o'er his face and chased the old ones out of sight | E2 |
And for many a year thereafter did his zeal spread far and wide | Q |
And with all his pious doings was the township edified | Q |
For he led the sacred singing in an unctuous nasal tone | F2 |
And he looked as if the sermon and the scriptures were his own | F2 |
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But one day the white haired preacher spoke of how God's justice fell | G2 |
Soon or late with awful sureness on the man whose heart could tell | G2 |
Of a wrong done to the widow or the orphan and he said | Q |
That such wrongs were ever living though the injured ones were dead | Q |
And old Sculpin's heart was writhing though his heavy eyes were closed | Q |
For despite his solemn sanctity at sermon times he dozed | Q |
But his half awakened senses heard the preacher speak of death | H2 |
And of wrongs done unto orphans and he dreamed with wheezing breath | H2 |
That cold hands were tearing from his heart its pharisaic screens | L |
That the preacher was a tiger with the voice of Nathan Beans | L |
And he shrieked and jumped up wildly and upon the seat stood he | U |
As if standing on the whaler looking outward on the sea | U |
And he clutched as at the rigging with a horror in his eye | O |
For he saw the woods of Java and he heard that human cry | O |
As he crouched and cowered earthward And the simple folk around | Q |
Stood with looks of kindly sympathy they raised him from the gro | O |
John Boyle O'reilly
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