Brahm Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAABCCDEEEF GGGFHHHFFFFFF IIIFJJJFJJFFFFF KKLLMMFFNNJJJJJJFFFF OOPPQQRRSSTTUU FFJJVVWWJJXX YYZA2JJJJB2B2 C2C2YYD2E2YYFFFJJFFF F JJF2F2FA2A2A2F2FSSF G2B2FFFF H2H2H2H2H2FJJF TTTTTFI2I2I2F JJJFZZZZZZZZZZZFJ2J2 J2FJJJJF YYYYFK2K2YYFSSFJJJJFA spectral film that came and went | A |
In its elusive way gave vent | A |
In some unreal words which meant | A |
'I think therefore I am ' | B |
That phantasm only thought it thought | C |
A vain conception crudely wrought | C |
An egotistic sham | D |
Which brings us up against the fact | E |
By Chunder's attestation backed | E |
There is no Substance Thought nor Act | E |
Nothing exists but Brahm | F |
- | |
This quaint contraption here below | G |
Is not a magic shadow show | G |
Where phantom figures come and go | G |
As held by old Khayyam | F |
A show has time and space enough | H |
But here we only have such stuff | H |
As dreams are made of mental fluff | H |
And visionary flam | F |
Throughout the universal scheme | F |
Be sure things tare not what they seem | F |
To quote a well known psalm | F |
They're only whimsies of a dream | F |
A transient dream of Brahm | F |
- | |
All through the cycles of the Past | I |
At which Notation stands aghast | I |
He has subsisted first and last | I |
Lone functionless and calm | F |
Nothing extraneous can obtrude | J |
Upon his Sabbath quietude | J |
Or discompose his tranquil mood | J |
For nothing is but Brahm | F |
'The Past and Present here unite | J |
Beneath Time's flowing tide' to cite | J |
A Bard of Uncle Sam | F |
For Time stretched out in aeons dim | F |
To Apprehension's very rim | F |
Is insignificant to him | F |
A Bagetelle to Brahm | F |
- | |
For once in his negation deep | K |
He somehow chanced to drop asleep | K |
And through that forty wings there ran | L |
A flitting dream So time began | L |
He dreamed this stellar lens of ours | M |
Which mocks at telescopic powers | M |
Innumerable suns sublime | F |
At furious speed yet keeping time | F |
And so remote that to the eye | N |
They look like fixtures in the sky | N |
But that's a trifle Round about | J |
A million light years further out | J |
The wisps of nebular portend | J |
Sidereal schemes without an end | J |
And this is no poetic flight | J |
Nor idiotic blatherskite | J |
Nor what is termed a cram | F |
However vast these plans may seem | F |
They're only figments of a dream | F |
A trifling dream of Brahm | F |
- | |
He dreamed our System's fiery gas | O |
Condensing into solid mass | O |
And during several billion years | P |
Evolving planetary spheres | P |
But take this globe alone to prove | Q |
How things have moved or seemed to move | Q |
He dreamed some pulpy form of life | R |
Mutation slow and savage strife | R |
With Nature's forces all in play | S |
And Darwin's system under way | S |
While bits of hide and tufts of hair | T |
For countless centuries fill'd the air | T |
And only those were left alive | U |
Whose fitness caused them to survive | U |
- | |
Monsters that lived in Gulfs of slime | F |
With names that balk and baffle rhyme | F |
Prodigious sloths whose daily food | J |
Was half a ton of leaves and wood | J |
Grim saurians of terrific strength | V |
A quarter of a mile in length | V |
Unsightly bats with twelve foot wings | W |
And endless tribes of fearsome things | W |
Cull'd down in point of fact so fit | J |
That they should thrive in Sheol's pit | J |
And breathe its exhalations thick | X |
Holding their own with Ancient Nick | X |
- | |
- | |
And so while ocean bottoms rose | Y |
To stand awhile as high plateaus | Y |
And mountains sank beneath the main | Z |
To rise time after time again | A2 |
And rocks were formed and strata rent | J |
And Polar ice caps came and went | J |
And geological ages pass'd | J |
Each an improvement on the last | J |
And on the wrinkled crust of earth | B2 |
More decent forms of life had birth | B2 |
- | |
Man was evolved a product queer | C2 |
A breed that it would pay to sheer | C2 |
And which it might be safe to say | Y |
Has reached a higher stage to day | Y |
Since restless generations gone | D2 |
Have passed a few ideas on | E2 |
But bear in mind this human race | Y |
Diverse in colour smell and face | Y |
These off shoots from the simian stem | F |
The Sons of Japheth and of Shem | F |
The progeny of Ham | F |
With mongrel races that infest | J |
The isles and mainlands east and west | J |
From Chili to Siam | F |
Are less than ripples in a stream | F |
They're only ripples on a dream | F |
Namely the dream of BRAHM | F |
- | |
Even that race divinely nursed | J |
Which for its virtues has been cursed | J |
And booted into seven times seven | F2 |
By every nation under Heaven | F2 |
The seed of Abraham | F |
And those brave lions in their den | A2 |
Each one a match for aliens ten | A2 |
With fist or rifle bat or pen | A2 |
I mean God's modest Englishmen | F2 |
Whose very fog is balm | F |
These are less tangible withal | S |
Than shadowy rabbits on the wall | S |
Nothing exists but BRAHM | F |
- | |
Our swarming brethren of the North | G2 |
Whatever you may judge them worth | B2 |
Sling Muck and Soogoo Ram | F |
Are fantoids like yourself and me | F |
Though differing somewhat in degree | F |
Nothing exists but BRAHM | F |
- | |
That Fatman dining at his club | H2 |
On costly wet and sumptuous grub | H2 |
The pilgrims in the roadside pub | H2 |
The washerwoman at her tub | H2 |
And Jacky in his native scrub | H2 |
On bandicoot and yam | F |
Are momentary sports of thought | J |
That flicker out and come to nought | J |
In this brief dream of BRAHM | F |
- | |
Illusion in the very air | T |
If such an envelope were there | T |
And things that seem to claim your care | T |
Your Wife with her untidy hair | T |
And Grandma in her easy chair | T |
And baby in the pram | F |
Are all a visionary crew | I2 |
Which fact need never worry you | I2 |
For you're an apparition too | I2 |
Nothing exists but BRAHM | F |
- | |
But flies are in the ointment sweet | J |
And jumpers in the cheese we eat | J |
And maggots in the treacherous meat | J |
And mildew on the jam | F |
That is to say we might complain | Z |
Of many a kink in things mundane | Z |
Of barbarisms that still remain | Z |
For instance 'Sport' imposing pain | Z |
Monarchial 'loyalty' inane | Z |
The gnats at which the Wowsers strain | Z |
The camels that they entertain | Z |
Sectarian bigotry insane | Z |
The ruthless quest of sordid gain | Z |
A sad perennial stream of bane | Z |
Which only in a sense profane | Z |
We're competent to dam | F |
The feckless poet's cult of grog | J2 |
The idle bummer's cadge for prog | J2 |
The stern official's odious 'gog' | J2 |
The flunkey's meek Salaam | F |
Such provocations daily met | J |
And grounds of meddlesome regret | J |
Shall find their panacea yet | J |
With ratling promptitude you bet | J |
In this same dream of BRAHM | F |
- | |
Unquestionably no one knows | Y |
The likely period of his doze | Y |
But this we know that when he wakes | Y |
We vanish in a brace of shakes | Y |
Without dismay or qualm | F |
The earth the sun and every star | K2 |
Shall vanish like the freaks they are | K2 |
The corn and oil the flower and grass | Y |
The fig and vine shall simply pass | Y |
The eucalypt and palm | F |
The microbe small the ponderous whale | S |
The greyhound swift the tardy snail | S |
The lion and the lamb | F |
The sand and granite quartz and schist | J |
Shall vanish like a so called mist | J |
Which the fictitious sun has kiss'd | J |
Of course they never did exist | J |
NOTHING EXISTS BUT BRAHM | F |
Joseph Furphy
(1)
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