To Sir Henry Wotton Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJ KLMMNNDDMJMMDDMMOOII JJPOQHMMRRMMSSDDTTUU VVWWDDXYHH| SIR more than kisses letters mingle souls | A |
| For thus friends absent speak This ease controls | A |
| The tediousness of my life but for these | B |
| I could ideate nothing which could please | B |
| But I should wither in one day and pass | C |
| To a bottle of hay that am a lock of grass | C |
| Life is a voyage and in our lives' ways | D |
| Countries courts towns are rocks or remoras | D |
| They break or stop all ships yet our state's such | E |
| That though than pitch they stain worse we must touch | E |
| If in the furnace of the raging line | F |
| Or under th' adverse icy pole thou pine | F |
| Thou know'st two temperate regions girded in | G |
| Dwell there but O what refuge canst thou win | G |
| Parch'd in the court and in the country frozen | H |
| Shall cities built of both extremes be chosen | H |
| Can dung or garlic be perfume Or can | I |
| A scorpion or torpedo cure a man | I |
| Cities are worst of all three of all three | J |
| O knotty riddle each is worst equally | J |
| Cities are sepulchres they who dwell there | K |
| Are carcases as if no such there were | L |
| And courts are theatres where some men play | M |
| Princes some slaves all to one end of one clay | M |
| The country is a desert where the good | N |
| Gain'd inhabits not born is not understood | N |
| There men become beasts and prone to more evils | D |
| In cities blocks and in a lewd court devils | D |
| As in the first chaos confusedly | M |
| Each element's qualities were in th' other three | J |
| So pride lust covetise being several | M |
| To these three places yet all are in all | M |
| And mingled thus their issue is incestuous | D |
| Falsehood is denizen'd virtue is barbarous | D |
| Let no man say there Virtue's flinty wall | M |
| Shall lock vice in me I'll do none but know all | M |
| Men are sponges which to pour out receive | O |
| Who know false play rather than lose deceive | O |
| For in best understandings sin began | I |
| Angels sinn'd first then devils and then man | I |
| Only perchance beasts sin not wretched we | J |
| Are beasts in all but white integrity | J |
| I think if men which in these place live | P |
| Durst look in themselves and themselves retrieve | O |
| They would like strangers greet themselves seeing then | Q |
| Utopian youth grown old Italian | H |
| Be then thine own home and in thyself dwell | M |
| Inn anywhere continuance maketh hell | M |
| And seeing the snail which everywhere doth roam | R |
| Carrying his own house still still is at home | R |
| Follow for he is easy paced this snail | M |
| Be thine own palace or the world's thy gaol | M |
| And in the world's sea do not like cork sleep | S |
| Upon the water's face nor in the deep | S |
| Sink like a lead without a line but as | D |
| Fishes glide leaving no print where they pass | D |
| Nor making sound so closely thy course go | T |
| Let men dispute whether thou breathe or no | T |
| Only in this be no Galenist to make | U |
| Courts' hot ambitions wholesome do not take | U |
| A dram of country's dullness do not add | V |
| Correctives but as chemics purge the bad | V |
| But sir I advise not you I rather do | W |
| Say o'er those lessons which I learn'd of you | W |
| Whom free from Germany's schisms and lightness | D |
| Of France and fair Italy's faithlessness | D |
| Having from these suck'd all they had of worth | X |
| And brought home that faith which you carried forth | Y |
| I thoroughly love but if myself I've won | H |
| To know my rules I have and you have DONNE | H |
John Donne
(1)
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