Prologue To Sophonisba; Spoken At Oxford, 1680 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFGHHIIAABB GGAAJJKKEE| Thespis the first professor of our art | A |
| At country wakes sung ballads from a cart | A |
| To prove this true if Latin be no trespass | B |
| Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis | B |
| But schylus says Horace in some page | C |
| Was the first mountebank that trod the stage | C |
| Yet Athens never knew your learned sport | D |
| Of tossing poets in a tennis court | D |
| But 'tis the talent of our English nation | E |
| Still to be plotting some new reformation | E |
| And few years hence if anarchy goes on | F |
| Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne | G |
| Knock out a tub with preaching once a day | H |
| And every prayer be longer than a play | H |
| Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot | I |
| For disbelieving of a Popish Plot | I |
| Nor should we scape the sentence to depart | A |
| Even in our first original a cart | A |
| Your poets shall be used like infidels | B |
| And worst the author of the Oxford bells | B |
| No zealous brother there would want a stone | G |
| To maul us cardinals and pelt Pope Joan | G |
| Religion learning wit would be supprest | A |
| Rags of the whore and trappings of the beast | A |
| Scot Suarez Tom of Aquin must go down | J |
| As chief supporters of the triple crown | J |
| And Aristotle's for destruction ripe | K |
| Some say he called the soul an organ pipe | K |
| Which by some little help of derivation | E |
| Shall then be proved a pipe of inspiration | E |
John Dryden
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Prologue To Sophonisba; Spoken At Oxford, 1680 poem by John Dryden
Best Poems of John Dryden