On A Pen Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCCCDDCCEEFFGGHH CCCCIICCJJKKLLMMCCCC CC| In youth exalted high in air | A |
| Or bathing in the waters fair | A |
| Nature to form me took delight | B |
| And clad my body all in white | B |
| My person tall and slender waist | C |
| On either side with fringes graced | C |
| Till me that tyrant man espied | C |
| And dragg'd me from my mother's side | C |
| No wonder now I look so thin | D |
| The tyrant stript me to the skin | D |
| My skin he flay'd my hair he cropt | C |
| At head and foot my body lopt | C |
| And then with heart more hard than stone | E |
| He pick'd my marrow from the bone | E |
| To vex me more he took a freak | F |
| To slit my tongue and make me speak | F |
| But that which wonderful appears | G |
| I speak to eyes and not to ears | G |
| He oft employs me in disguise | H |
| And makes me tell a thousand lies | H |
| To me he chiefly gives in trust | C |
| To please his malice or his lust | C |
| From me no secret he can hide | C |
| I see his vanity and pride | C |
| And my delight is to expose | I |
| His follies to his greatest foes | I |
| All languages I can command | C |
| Yet not a word I understand | C |
| Without my aid the best divine | J |
| In learning would not know a line | J |
| The lawyer must forget his pleading | K |
| The scholar could not show his reading | K |
| Nay man my master is my slave | L |
| I give command to kill or save | L |
| Can grant ten thousand pounds a year | M |
| And make a beggar's brat a peer | M |
| But while I thus my life relate | C |
| I only hasten on my fate | C |
| My tongue is black my mouth is furr'd | C |
| I hardly now can force a word | C |
| I die unpitied and forgot | C |
| And on some dunghill left to rot | C |
Jonathan Swift
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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