On A Pen Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCCCDDCCEEFFGGHH CCCCIICCJJKKLLMMCCCC CCIn 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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