A Ballad Of John Silver Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH IIJJ KKLL| We were schooner rigged and rakish with a long and lissome hull | A |
| And we flew the pretty colours of the cross bones and the skull | A |
| We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore | B |
| And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore | B |
| - | |
| We'd a long brass gun amidships like a well conducted ship | C |
| We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip | C |
| It's a point which tells against us and a fact to be deplored | D |
| But we chased the goodly merchant men and laid their ships aboard | D |
| - | |
| Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains | E |
| And the paint work all was spatter dashed with other people's brains | E |
| She was boarded she was looted she was scuttled till she sank | F |
| And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank | F |
| - | |
| O then it was while standing by the taffrail on the poop | G |
| We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken coop | G |
| Then having washed the blood away we'd little else to do | H |
| Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to | H |
| - | |
| O the fiddle on the fo'c's'le and the slapping naked soles | I |
| And the genial Down the middle Jake and curtsey when she rolls | I |
| With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead | J |
| And the look out not a looking and his pipe bowl glowing red | J |
| - | |
| Ah the pig tailed quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played | K |
| All have since been put a stop to by the naughty Board of Trade | K |
| The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest | L |
| A little south the sunset in the Islands of the Blest | L |
John Masefield
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