Pan And Fortune Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCC DD CCEEFF GHIIJJKKLLMMNO PPQQQQRR SSTTUUCCRR VVQQWWQQ LLAXQQYYZZCNQQ QQQQQQQQSSQQA2A2FF| To a Young Heir | A |
| - | |
| - | |
| No sooner was thy father's death | B |
| Proclaimed to some with bated breath | B |
| Than every gambler was agog | C |
| To win your rents and gorge your prog | C |
| - | |
| One counted how much income clear | D |
| You had in ready by the year | D |
| - | |
| Another cast his eyelid dark | C |
| Over the mansion and the park | C |
| Some weighed the jewels and the plate | E |
| And all the unentailed estate | E |
| So much in land from mortgage free | F |
| So much in personality | F |
| - | |
| Would you to highwaymen abroad | G |
| Display your treasures on the road | H |
| Would you abet their raid of stealth | I |
| By the display of hoarded wealth | I |
| And are you yet with blacklegs fain | J |
| With loaded dice to throw a main | J |
| It is not charity for shame | K |
| The rascals look on you as game | K |
| And you you feed the rogues with bread | L |
| By you rascality is fed | L |
| Nay more you of the gallows cheat | M |
| The scoundrels who would be its meat | M |
| The risks of the highway they shun | N |
| Having your rents to prey upon | O |
| - | |
| Consider ere you lose the bet | P |
| That you might pay your duns and debt | P |
| Consider as the dice box rattles | Q |
| Your honour and unpaid for chattels | Q |
| Think of to morrow and its duns | Q |
| Usurious interest how it runs | Q |
| And scoundrel sharpers how they cheat you | R |
| Think of your honour I entreat you | R |
| - | |
| Look round and see the wreck of play | S |
| Estate and honour thrown away | S |
| Their one time owner unconfined | T |
| Wanders in equal wreck of mind | T |
| Or tries to learn the trade by which | U |
| He ruined fell and so grow rich | U |
| But failing there for want of cunning | C |
| Subsists on charity by dunning | C |
| Ah you will find this maxim true | R |
| Fools are the game which knaves pursue | R |
| - | |
| And now the sylvans groan the wood | V |
| Must make the gamester's losses good | V |
| The antique oaks the stately elms | Q |
| One common ruin overwhelms | Q |
| The brawny arms of boor and clown | W |
| Cast with the axe their honours down | W |
| With Echo's repetitive sounds | Q |
| Complaining of the raided bounds | Q |
| - | |
| Pan dropt a tear he hung his head | L |
| To see such desolation spread | L |
| He said To slugs I hatred bear | A |
| To locusts that devour the ear | X |
| To caterpillars fly and lice | Q |
| But what are they to cursed dice | Q |
| Or what to cards A bet is made | Y |
| Which ruin is to mount or glade | Y |
| My glory and my realm defaced | Z |
| And my best regions run to waste | Z |
| It is that hag's that Fortune's doing | C |
| She ever meditates my ruin | N |
| False fickle jade who more devours | Q |
| Than frost in merry May eats flowers | Q |
| - | |
| But Fortune heard Pan railing thus | Q |
| Old Pan said Fortune what's this fuss | Q |
| Am I the patroness of dice | Q |
| Is not she our fair cousin Vice | Q |
| Do I cog dice or mark the cards | Q |
| Do gamesters offer me regards | Q |
| They trust to their own fingers' ends | Q |
| On Vice not me the game depends | Q |
| So would I save the fools if they | S |
| Would not defy my rule by play | S |
| They worship Folly and the knaves | Q |
| Own all her votaries for slaves | Q |
| They cast their elm and oak trees low | A2 |
| 'Tis Folly Folly is thy foe | A2 |
| Dear Pan then do not rail on me | F |
| I would have saved him every tree | F |
John Gay
(1)
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