The Empty Niche Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCE FGF HIHI JKJI LMLN OAOA PQPQ R RS TDTE| A KING once made a gallery of art | A |
| With portraits of dead friends and living graced | B |
| And at the end 'neath curtains drawn apart | A |
| An empty marble pedestal was placed | B |
| - | |
| Here every day the king would come and pace | C |
| With eyes well pleased along the statued hall | D |
| But ere he left he turned with saddened face | C |
| And mused before the curtained pedestal | E |
| - | |
| And once a courtier asked him why he kept | F |
| The shadowed niche to fill his heart with dole | G |
| 'For absent friends ' the monarch said and wept | F |
| 'There still must be one absent to the soul ' | - |
| - | |
| And this is true of all the hearts that beat | H |
| Though days be soft and summer pathways fair | I |
| Be sure while joyous glances round us meet | H |
| The curtained crypt and vacant plinth are there | I |
| - | |
| To day we stand before our draped recess | J |
| There is none absent all we love are here | K |
| To morrow's hands the opening curtains press | J |
| And lo the pallid pediment is bare | I |
| - | |
| The cold affection that plain duty breeds | L |
| May see its union severed and approve | M |
| But when our bond is touched it throbs and bleeds | L |
| We pay no meed of duty but of love | N |
| - | |
| As creeping tendrils shudder from the stone | O |
| The vines of love avoid the frigid heart | A |
| The work men do is not their test alone | O |
| The love they win is far the better chart | A |
| - | |
| They say the citron tree will never thrive | P |
| Transplanted from the soil where it matured | Q |
| Ah would 'twere so that men could only live | P |
| Through working on where they had love secured | Q |
| - | |
| 'The People of the Book ' men called the Jews | R |
| Our priests are truly ' People of the Word ' | - |
| And he who serves the Master must not choose | R |
| He renders feudal service to the Lord | S |
| - | |
| But we who love and lose will like the king | T |
| Still keep the alcove empty in the hall | D |
| And hope firm hearted that some day will bring | T |
| Our absent one to fill his pedestal | E |
John Boyle O'reilly
(1)
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