An American Addresses Philomela Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBAA CCCCC DCCED AFFAA AGHAA IJJII CKKCC LKKML| Procne Philomela and Itylus | A |
| Your names are liquid your improbable tale | B |
| Is recited in the classic numbers of the nightingale | B |
| Ah but our numbers are not felicitous | A |
| It goes not liquidly for us | A |
| - | |
| Perched on a Roman ilex and duly apostrophised | C |
| The nightingale descanted unto Ovid | C |
| She has even appeared to the Teutons the swilled and gravid | C |
| At Fontainebleau it may be the bird was gallicised | C |
| Never was she baptised | C |
| - | |
| To England came Philomela with her strain | D |
| Fleeing the hawk her husband querulous ghost | C |
| She wanders when he sits heavy on his roost | C |
| Utters herself in the original again | E |
| The untranslatable refrain | D |
| - | |
| Not to these shores she came this other Thrace | A |
| Environ barbarous to the royal Attic | F |
| How could her delicate dirge run democratic | F |
| Delivered in a cloudless boundless public place | A |
| To a hypermuscular race | A |
| - | |
| I pernoctated with the Oxford students once | A |
| And in the quadrangles in the cloisters on the Cher | G |
| Precociously knocked at antique doors ajar | H |
| Fatuously touched the hems of the Hierophants | A |
| Sick of my dissonance | A |
| - | |
| I went out to Bagley Wood I climbed the hill | I |
| Even the moon had slanted off in a twinkling | J |
| I heard the sepulchral owl and a few bells tinkling | J |
| There was no more villainous day to unfulfill | I |
| The diuturnity was still | I |
| - | |
| Up from the darkest wood where Philomela sat | C |
| Her fairy numbers issued what then ailed me | K |
| My ears are called capacious but they failed me | K |
| Her classics registered a little flat | C |
| I rose and venomously spat | C |
| - | |
| Philomela Philomela lover of song | L |
| I have despaired of thee and am unworthy | K |
| My scene is prose this people and I are earthy | K |
| Unto more beautiful persistently more young | M |
| Thy fabulous provinces belong | L |
John Crowe Ransom
(1)
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