On The Memory Of Mr. Edward King, Drown'd In The Irish Seas Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCDDCEFFDDGHCCEEIJ KKLLDDEECCDDDDCC CCAAMNOODDPPQQAAAAI like not tears in tune nor do I prize | A |
His artificial grief that scans his eyes | A |
Mine weep down pious beads but why should I | B |
Confine them to the Muses' rosary | C |
I am no poet here my pen's the spout | D |
Where the rain water of my eyes runs out | D |
In pity of that name whose fate we see | C |
Thus copied out in grief's hydrography | E |
The Muses are not mermaids though upon | F |
His death the ocean might turn Helicon | F |
The sea's too rough for verse who rhymes upon 't | D |
With Xerxes strives to fetter th' Hellespont | D |
My tears will keep no channel know no laws | G |
To guide their streams but like the waves their cause | H |
Run with disturbance till they swallow me | C |
As a description of his misery | C |
But can his spacious virtue find a grave | E |
Within th' imposthum'd bubble of a wave | E |
Whose learning if we sound we must confess | I |
The sea but shallow and him bottomless | J |
Could not the winds to countermand thy death | K |
With their whole card of lungs redeem thy breath | K |
Or some new island in thy rescue peep | L |
To heave thy resurrection from the deep | L |
That so the world might see thy safety wrought | D |
With no less miracle than thyself was thought | D |
The famous Stagirite who in his life | E |
Had Nature as familiar as his wife | E |
Bequeath'd his widow to survive with thee | C |
Queen Dowager of all philosophy | C |
An ominous legacy that did portend | D |
Thy fate and predecessor's second end | D |
Some have affirm'd that what on earth we find | D |
The sea can parallel in shape and kind | D |
Books arts and tongues were wanting but in thee | C |
Neptune hath got an university | C |
- | |
We'll dive no more for pearls the hope to see | C |
Thy sacred reliques of mortality | C |
Shall welcome storms and make the seaman prize | A |
His shipwreck now more than his merchandise | A |
He shall embrace the waves and to thy tomb | M |
As to a royaler exchange shall come | N |
What can we now expect Water and fire | O |
Both elements our ruin do conspire | O |
And that dissolves us which doth us compound | D |
One Vatican was burnt another drown'd | D |
We of the gown our libraries must toss | P |
To understand the greatness of our loss | P |
Be pupils to our grief and so much grow | Q |
In learning as our sorrows overflow | Q |
When we have fill'd the rundlets of our eyes | A |
We'll issue 't forth and vent such elegies | A |
As that our tears shall seem the Irish Seas | A |
We floating islands living Hebrides | A |
John Cleveland
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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