Suum Cuique Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEEFFGGHIFFI IJJFFIIKLIIFFIIMMFFF FFFFFIIIIINODDPQIIFI IIIIRRIIIIOOIISTUVII IIIWWIIIIWhen lawless men their neighbours dispossess | A |
The tenants they extirpate or oppress | A |
And make rude havoc in the fruitful soil | B |
Which the right owners ploughed with careful toil | B |
The same proportion does in kingdoms hold | C |
A new prince breaks the fences of the old | C |
And will o'er carcases and deserts reign | D |
Unless the land its rightful lord regain | D |
He gripes the faithless owners of the place | E |
And buys a foreign army to deface | E |
The feared and hated remnant of their race | E |
He starves their forces and obstructs their trade | F |
Vast sums are given and yet no native paid | F |
The church itself he labours to assail | G |
And keeps fit tools to break the sacred pale | G |
Of those let him the guilty roll commence | H |
Who has betrayed a master and a prince | I |
A man seditious lewd and impudent | F |
An engine always mischievously bent | F |
One who from all the bans of duty swerves | I |
No tie can hold but that which he deserves | I |
An author dwindled to a pamphleteer | J |
Skilful to forge and always insincere | J |
Careless exploded practices to mend | F |
Bold to attack yet feeble to defend | F |
Fate's blindfold reign the atheist loudly owns | I |
And providence blasphemously dethrones | I |
In vain the leering actor strains his tongue | K |
To cheat with tears and empty noise the throng | L |
Since all men know whate'er he says or writes | I |
Revenge or stronger interest indites | I |
And that the wretch employs his venal wit | F |
How to confute what formerly he writ | F |
Next him the grave Socinian claims a place | I |
Endowed with reason though bereft of grace | I |
A preaching pagan of surpassing fame | M |
No register records his borrowed name | M |
O had the child more happily been bred | F |
A radiant mitre would have graced his head | F |
But now unfit the most he should expect | F |
Is to be entered of T wblank F wblank 's sect | F |
To him succeeds with looks demurely sad | F |
A gloomy soul with revelation mad | F |
False to his friend and careless of his word | F |
A dreaming prophet and a gripping lord | F |
He sells the livings which he can't possess | I |
And forms that sinecure his diocese | I |
Unthinking man to quit thy barren see | I |
And vain endeavours in chronology | I |
For the more fruitless care of royal charity | I |
Thy hoary noddle warns thee to return | N |
The treason of old age in Wales to mourn | O |
Nor think the city poor may less sustain | D |
Thy place may well be vacant in this reign | D |
I should admit the booted prelate now | P |
But he is even for lampoon too low | Q |
The scum and outcast of a royal race | I |
The nation's grievance and the gown's disgrace | I |
None so unlearned did e'er at London sit | F |
This driveller does the sacred chair besh t | I |
I need not brand the spiritual parricide | I |
Nor draw the weapon dangling by his side | I |
The astonished world remembers that offence | I |
And knows he stole the daughter of his prince | I |
'Tis time enough in some succeeding age | R |
To bring this mitred captain on the stage | R |
These are the leaders in apostasy | I |
And the blind guides of poor elective majesty | I |
A thing which commonwealths men did devise | I |
Till plots were ripe to catch the people's eyes | I |
Their king's a monster in a quagmire born | O |
Of all the native brutes the grief and scorn | O |
With a big snout cast in a crooked mould | I |
Which runs with glanders and an inborn cold | I |
His substance is of clammy snot and phlegm | S |
Sleep is his essence and his life a dream | T |
To Caprea this Tiberius does retire | U |
To quench with catamite his feeble fire | V |
Dear catamite who rules alone the state | I |
While monarch dozes on his unpropt height | I |
Silent yet thoughtless and secure of fate | I |
Could you but see the fulsome hero led | I |
By loathing vassals to his noble bed | I |
In flannel robes the coughing ghost does walk | W |
And his mouth moats like cleaner breech of hawk | W |
Corruption springing from his cankered breast | I |
Furs up the channel and disturbs his rest | I |
With head propt up the bolstered engine lies | I |
If pillow slip aside the monarch dies | I |
John Dryden
(1)
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