Valediction To His Book Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBACCCDD BEEBFFFBB BGHBBBBBB EIJEBBBKK LBBLBBBMM LBBLNNNEE EBBELLLEE| I'LL tell thee now dear love what thou shalt do | A |
| To anger destiny as she doth us | B |
| How I shall stay though she eloign me thus | B |
| And how posterity shall know it too | A |
| How thine may out endure | C |
| Sibyl's glory and obscure | C |
| Her who from Pindar could allure | C |
| And her through whose help Lucan is not lame | D |
| And her whose book they say Homer did find and name | D |
| - | |
| Study our manuscripts those myriads | B |
| Of letters which have past 'twixt thee and me | E |
| Thence write our annals and in them will be | E |
| To all whom love's subliming fire invades | B |
| Rule and example found | F |
| There the faith of any ground | F |
| No schismatic will dare to wound | F |
| That sees how Love this grace to us affords | B |
| To make to keep to use to be these his records | B |
| - | |
| This book as long lived as the elements | B |
| Or as the world's form this all grav d tome | G |
| In cypher writ or new made idiom | H |
| We for Love's clergy only are instruments | B |
| When this book is made thus | B |
| Should again the ravenous | B |
| Vandals and Goths invade us | B |
| Learning were safe in this our universe | B |
| Schools might learn sciences spheres music angels verse | B |
| - | |
| Here Love's divines since all divinity | E |
| Is love or wonder may find all they seek | I |
| Whether abstract spiritual love they like | J |
| Their souls exhaled with what they do not see | E |
| Or loth so to amuse | B |
| Faith's infirmity they choose | B |
| Something which they may see and use | B |
| For though mind be the heaven where love doth sit | K |
| Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it | K |
| - | |
| Here more than in their books may lawyers find | L |
| Both by what titles mistresses are ours | B |
| And how prerogative these states devours | B |
| Transferr'd from Love himself to womankind | L |
| Who though from heart and eyes | B |
| They exact great subsidies | B |
| Forsake him who on them relies | B |
| And for the cause honour or conscience give | M |
| Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative | M |
| - | |
| Here statesmen or of them they which can read | L |
| May of their occupation find the grounds | B |
| Love and their art alike it deadly wounds | B |
| If to consider what 'tis one proceed | L |
| In both they do excel | N |
| Who the present govern well | N |
| Whose weakness none doth or dares tell | N |
| In this thy book such will there something see | E |
| As in the Bible some can find out alchemy | E |
| - | |
| Thus vent thy thoughts abroad I'll study thee | E |
| As he removes far off that great heights takes | B |
| How great love is presence best trial makes | B |
| But absence tries how long this love will be | E |
| To take a latitude | L |
| Sun or stars are fitliest view'd | L |
| At their brightest but to conclude | L |
| Of longitudes what other way have we | E |
| But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be | E |
John Donne
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