Old Dame And Cats Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDDEFGGHHIIJJKLMM GGNNOOPPQQ| He who holds friendship with a knave | A |
| Will reputation hardly save | A |
| And thus upon our choice of friends | B |
| Our good or evil name depends | B |
| - | |
| A wrinkled hag of naughty fame | C |
| Sat hovering o'er a flickering flame | C |
| Propped with both hands upon her knees | D |
| She shook with palsy and the breeze | D |
| She had perhaps seen fourscore years | E |
| And backwards said her daily prayers | F |
| Her troop of cats with hunger mewed | G |
| Tabbies and toms a numerous brood | G |
| Teased with their murmuring out she flew | H |
| In angry passion Hence ye crew | H |
| What made me take to keeping cats | I |
| Ye are as bad as bawling brats | I |
| With brats I might perhaps have grown rich | J |
| I never had been thought a known witch | J |
| Boys pester me and strive to awe | K |
| Across my path they place a straw | L |
| They nail the horse shoe hide the broom stick | M |
| Put pins and every sort of trick | M |
| - | |
| Dame said a tabby cease your prate | G |
| Enough to break a pussy's pate | G |
| What is our lot beneath your roof | N |
| Within starvation out reproof | N |
| Elsewhere we had been honest mousers | O |
| And slept by fireside carousers | O |
| Here we are imps who serve a hag | P |
| And yonder broom stick's thought your nag | P |
| Boys hunt us with a doom condign | Q |
| To take one life out of our nine | Q |
John Gay
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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