The Dead Christ Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBCDED AFCFDGDG DHDHCIJI DKLKEFEF EMDMDNON PQEQPRST| Take the dead Christ to my chamber | A |
| The Christ I brought from Rome | B |
| Over all the tossing ocean | C |
| He has reached his western home | B |
| Bear him as in procession | C |
| And lay him solemnly | D |
| Where through weary night and morning | E |
| He shall bear me company | D |
| - | |
| The name I bear is other | A |
| Than that I bore by birth | F |
| And I've given life to children | C |
| Who'll grow and dwell on earth | F |
| But the time comes swiftly towards me | D |
| Nor do I bid it stay | G |
| When the dead Christ will be more to me | D |
| Than all I hold to day | G |
| - | |
| Lay the dead Christ beside me | D |
| Oh press him on my heart | H |
| I would hold him long and painfully | D |
| Till the weary tears should start | H |
| Till the divine contagion | C |
| Heal me of self and sin | I |
| And the cold weight press wholly down | J |
| The pulse that chokes within | I |
| - | |
| Reproof and frost they fret me | D |
| Towards the free the sunny lands | K |
| From the chaos of existence | L |
| I stretch these feeble hands | K |
| And penitential kneeling | E |
| Pray God would not be wroth | F |
| Who gave not the strength of feeling | E |
| And strength of labor both | F |
| - | |
| Thou'rt but a wooden carving | E |
| Defaced of worms and old | M |
| Yet more to me thou couldst not be | D |
| Wert thou all wrapt in gold | M |
| Like the gem bedizened baby | D |
| Which at the Twelth day noon | N |
| They show from the Ara Coeli's steps | O |
| To a merry dancing tune | N |
| - | |
| I ask of thee no wonders | P |
| No changing white or red | Q |
| I dream not thou art living | E |
| I love and prize thee dead | Q |
| That salutary deadness | P |
| I seek through want and pain | R |
| From which God's own high power can bid | S |
| Our virtue rise again | T |
Julia Ward Howe
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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