Prologue To "sophonisba," Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B CCDDEEFFGGHIJJKKDDCC IILMNNOOGG| ACTED AT OXFORD | A |
| - | |
| WRITTEN BY NATHAN LEE | B |
| - | |
| - | |
| Thespis the first professor of our art | C |
| At country wakes sung ballads from a cart | C |
| To prove this true if Latin be no trespass | D |
| Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis | D |
| But schylus says Horace in some page | E |
| Was the first mountebank that trod the stage | E |
| Yet Athens never knew your learned sport | F |
| Of tossing poets in a tennis court | F |
| But 'tis the talent of our English nation | G |
| Still to be plotting some new reformation | G |
| And few years hence if anarchy goes on | H |
| Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne | I |
| Knock out a tub with preaching once a day | J |
| And every prayer be longer than a play | J |
| Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot | K |
| For disbelieving of a Popish plot | K |
| Your poets shall be used like infidels | D |
| And worst the author of the Oxford bells | D |
| Nor should we 'scape the sentence to depart | C |
| Even in our first original a cart | C |
| No zealous brother there would want a stone | I |
| To maul us cardinals and pelt Pope Joan | I |
| Religion learning wit would be suppress'd | L |
| Rags of the whore and trappings of the beast | M |
| Scot Suarez Tom of Aquin must go down | N |
| As chief supporters of the triple crown | N |
| And Aristotle's for destruction ripe | O |
| Some say he call'd the soul an organ pipe | O |
| Which by some little help of derivation | G |
| Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration | G |
John Dryden
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