The Gipsy's Camp Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCBBDDEECCFFGGHH IJKKLLLLMNHHHHHH| How oft on Sundays when I'd time to tramp | A |
| My rambles led me to a gipsy's camp | A |
| Where the real effigy of midnight hags | B |
| With tawny smoked flesh and tattered rags | B |
| Uncouth brimmed hat and weather beaten cloak | C |
| Neath the wild shelter of a knotty oak | C |
| Along the greensward uniformly pricks | B |
| Her pliant bending hazel's arching sticks | B |
| While round topt bush or briar entangled hedge | D |
| Where flag leaves spring beneath or ramping sedge | D |
| Keeps off the bothering bustle of the wind | E |
| And give the best retreat she hopes to find | E |
| How oft I've bent me oer her fire and smoke | C |
| To hear her gibberish tale so quaintly spoke | C |
| While the old Sybil forged her boding clack | F |
| Twin imps the meanwhile bawling at her back | F |
| Oft on my hand her magic coin's been struck | G |
| And hoping chink she talked of morts of luck | G |
| And still as boyish hopes did first agree | H |
| Mingled with fears to drop the fortune's fee | H |
| I never failed to gain the honours sought | I |
| And Squire and Lord were purchased with a groat | J |
| But as man's unbelieving taste came round | K |
| She furious stampt her shoeless foot aground | K |
| Wiped bye her soot black hair with clenching fist | L |
| While through her yellow teeth the spittle hist | L |
| Swearing by all her lucky powers of fate | L |
| Which like as footboys on her actions wait | L |
| That fortune's scale should to my sorrow turn | M |
| And I one day the rash neglect should mourn | N |
| That good to bad should change and I should be | H |
| Lost to this world and all eternity | H |
| That poor as Job I should remain unblest | H |
| Alas for fourpence how my die is cast | H |
| Of not a hoarded farthing be possesst | H |
| And when all's done be shoved to hell at last | H |
John Clare
(1)
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