Elegy Ix: The Autumnal Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFGHIJJ EEIKJJJJJJJJLLMMNNNN NNJJOPLLNNQQMM| No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace | A |
| As I have seen in one autumnall face | A |
| Young beauties force our love and that's a rape | B |
| This doth but counsel yet you cannot 'scape | B |
| If 'twere a shame to love here 'twere no shame | C |
| Affection here takes Reverence's name | C |
| Were her first years the Golden Age that's true | D |
| But now she's gold oft tried and ever new | D |
| That was her torrid and inflaming time | E |
| This is her tolerable Tropique clime | E |
| Fair eyes who asks more heat than comes from hence | F |
| He in a fever wishes pestilence | G |
| Call not these wrinkles graves if graves they were | H |
| They were Love's graves for else he is no where | I |
| Yet lies not Love dead here but here doth sit | J |
| Vowed to this trench like an Anachorit | J |
| - | |
| And here till hers which must be his death come | E |
| He doth not dig a grave but build a tomb | E |
| Here dwells he though he sojourn ev'ry where | I |
| In progress yet his standing house is here | K |
| Here where still evening is not noon nor night | J |
| Where no voluptuousness yet all delight | J |
| In all her words unto all hearers fit | J |
| You may at revels you at counsel sit | J |
| This is Love's timber youth his under wood | J |
| There he as wine in June enrages blood | J |
| Which then comes seasonabliest when our taste | J |
| And appetite to other things is past | J |
| Xerxes' strange Lydian love the Platane tree | L |
| Was loved for age none being so large as she | L |
| Or else because being young nature did bless | M |
| Her youth with age's glory Barrenness | M |
| If we love things long sought Age is a thing | N |
| Which we are fifty years in compassing | N |
| If transitory things which soon decay | N |
| Age must be loveliest at the latest day | N |
| But name not winter faces whose skin's slack | N |
| Lank as an unthrift's purse but a soul's sack | N |
| Whose eyes seek light within for all here's shade | J |
| Whose mouths are holes rather worn out than made | J |
| Whose every tooth to a several place is gone | O |
| To vex their souls at Resurrection | P |
| Name not these living deaths heads unto me | L |
| For these not ancient but antique be | L |
| I hate extremes yet I had rather stay | N |
| With tombs than cradles to wear out a day | N |
| Since such love's natural lation is may still | Q |
| My love descend and journey down the hill | Q |
| Not panting after growing beauties so | M |
| I shall ebb out with them who homeward go | M |
John Donne
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