The Dead Singer Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABC DDEE FFG H IIJJKK LLMM NNNOO| 'SHE is dead ' they say 'she is robed for the grave O there are lilies upon her breast | A |
| Her mother has kissed her clay cold lips and folded her hands to rest | A |
| Her blue eyes show through the waxen lids they have hidden her hair's gold crown | B |
| Her grave is dug and its heap of earth is waiting to press her down ' | C |
| - | |
| 'She is dead ' they say to the people her people for whom she sung | D |
| Whose hearts she touched with sorrow and love like a harp with life chords strung | D |
| And the people hear but behind their tear they smile as though they heard | E |
| Another voice like a mystery proclaim another word | E |
| - | |
| 'She is not dead ' it says to their hearts 'true Singers can never die | F |
| Their life is a voice of higher things unseen to the common eye | F |
| The truths and the beauties are clear to them God's right and the human wrong | G |
| The heroes who die unknown and the weak who are chained and scourged by the strong ' | - |
| And the people smile at the death word for the mystic voice is clear | H |
| 'THE SINGER WHO LIVED IS ALWAYS ALIVE WE HEARKEN AND ALWAYS HEAR ' | - |
| - | |
| And they raise her body with tender hands and bear her down to the main | I |
| They lay her in state on the mourning ship like the lily maid Elaine | I |
| And they sail to her isle across the sea where the people wait on the shore | J |
| To lift her in silence with heads all bare to her home forevermore | J |
| Her home in the heart of her country oh a grave among our own | K |
| Is warmer and dearer than living on in the stranger lands alone | K |
| - | |
| No need of a tomb for the Singer Her fair hair's pillow now | L |
| Is the sacred clay of her country and the sky above her brow | L |
| Is the same that smiled and wept on her youth and the grass around is deep | M |
| With the clinging leaves of the shamrock that cover her peaceful sleep | M |
| - | |
| Undreaming there she will rest and wait in the tomb her people make | N |
| Till she hears men's hearts like the seeds in Spring all stirring to be awake | N |
| Till she feels the moving of souls that strain till the bands around them break | N |
| And then I think her dead lips will smile and her eyes be oped to see | O |
| When the cry goes out to the Nations that the Singer's land is free | O |
John Boyle O'reilly
(1)
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