Death Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCD CCCCCECE FGHGIJIJ KLKLMCMC NONOFOHO OCOCOMOM BPBPCQCQ RGRGSTST| Why should man's high aspiring mind | A |
| Burn in him with so proud a breath | B |
| When all his haughty views can find | A |
| In this world yields to death | B |
| The fair the brave the vain the wise | C |
| The rich the poor the great and small | D |
| Are each but worm's anatomies | C |
| To strew his quiet hall | D |
| - | |
| Power may make many earthly gods | C |
| Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails | C |
| But death's unwelcome honest odds | C |
| Kick o'er the unequal scales | C |
| The flattered great may clamours raise | C |
| Of power and their own weakness hide | E |
| But death shall find unlooked for ways | C |
| To end the farce of pride | E |
| - | |
| An arrow hurtled eer so high | F |
| From een a giant's sinewy strength | G |
| In Time's untraced eternity | H |
| Goes but a pigmy length | G |
| Nay whirring from the tortured string | I |
| With all its pomp of hurried flight | J |
| Tis by the skylark's little wing | I |
| Outmeasured in its height | J |
| - | |
| Just so man's boasted strength and power | K |
| Shall fade before death's lightest stroke | L |
| Laid lower than the meanest flower | K |
| Whose pride oer topt the oak | L |
| And he who like a blighting blast | M |
| Dispeopled worlds with war's alarms | C |
| Shall be himself destroyed at last | M |
| By poor despised worms | C |
| - | |
| Tyrants in vain their powers secure | N |
| And awe slaves' murmurs with a frown | O |
| For unawed death at last is sure | N |
| To sap the babels down | O |
| A stone thrown upward to the sky | F |
| Will quickly meet the ground agen | O |
| So men gods of earth's vanity | H |
| Shall drop at last to men | O |
| - | |
| And Power and Pomp their all resign | O |
| Blood purchased thrones and banquet halls | C |
| Fate waits to sack Ambition's shrine | O |
| As bare as prison walls | C |
| Where the poor suffering wretch bows down | O |
| To laws a lawless power hath passed | M |
| And pride and power and king and clown | O |
| Shall be Death's slaves at last | M |
| - | |
| Time the prime minister of Death | B |
| There's nought can bribe his honest will | P |
| He stops the richest tyrant's breath | B |
| And lays his mischief still | P |
| Each wicked scheme for power all stops | C |
| With grandeurs false and mock display | Q |
| As eve's shades from high mountain tops | C |
| Fade with the rest away | Q |
| - | |
| Death levels all things in his march | R |
| Nought can resist his mighty strength | G |
| The palace proud triumphal arch | R |
| Shall mete its shadow's length | G |
| The rich the poor one common bed | S |
| Shall find in the unhonoured grave | T |
| Where weeds shall crown alike the head | S |
| Of tyrant and of slave | T |
John Clare
(1)
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About Death
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