Mother's Birthday Review Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCCDDEFEFGHHIIJ JKLLMMNNOOPPQQIIFR FS STTUUVVNN W XXXYYZZA2A2B2B2C2C2D 2E2FFMMMII I F2F2IIF2F2KKJJG2H2H2 GIIMMI2I2IIJ2J2QQDDK 2K2| BROTHER BILL | A |
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| To have a good birthday for a grown up person is very difficult indeed | B |
| We don't give it up for Mother says the harder things are the harder you must try till you succeed | B |
| Still our birthdays are different we want so many things and choosing your own pudding and even half holidays are treats | C |
| But what can you do for people who always order the dinner and never have lessons and don't even like sweets | C |
| I know Mother does not Baby put a big red comfit in her mouth and I saw her take it out again on the sly | D |
| I don't believe she even enjoys going a gypseying for she gets neuralgia if she stands about where it isn't dry | D |
| And how can you boil the kettle if you're not near the brook But it's the last time she shall go there | E |
| I told her so I said What's the good of having five sons except to mount guard over you you Queen of all Mothers that ever were | F |
| But she's not easy to manage and she shams sometimes and shamming is a thing I can't bear | E |
| She shammed about the red comfit when she didn't think Baby could see her | F |
| And because they're the only things we can think of for birthday presents for her she shams wearing out a needle book and a pin cushion every year | G |
| The only things we can think of for Father are paper cutters but there's no sham about his wearing them out | H |
| He would always lose them long before his next birthday if Mother did not keep finding them lying about | H |
| Last year's paper cutter was as big as a sword not as big as Father's sword but as big as a wooden one like ours | I |
| And he left it behind in a railway carriage when he'd had it just thirty six hours | I |
| So we knew he was ready for another It was Mother's birthday that bothered us so | J |
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| And if it hadn't been for Dolly's Major he's her Godfather and she calls him my Major what we should have done I really don't know | J |
| He said What's the matter And Dolly said | K |
| Mother's birthday's the matter And I said We can't think what to devise | L |
| To give her a birthday treat that won't give her neuralgia and will take her by surprise | L |
| Look here Major How can you give people treats who can order what they wish for far better than you | M |
| I wonder what they do for the Queen her birthday must be the hardest of all But he said Not a bit of it They have a review | M |
| Cocked hats and all the rest of it and a salute and a feu de joie and a March Past | N |
| That's the way we keep the Queen's Birthday and every year the same as the last | N |
| So I settled at once to have a Mother's Birthday Review and that she should be Queen and I should be the General in command | O |
| I thought she couldn't come to any harm by sitting in a fur cloak and a birthday wreath at the window and bowing and waving her hand | O |
| We did not tell her what was coming we only asked for leave to have all the seven donkeys for an hour and a half | P |
| We always hire them from the same old man two for the girls and five for me and my brothers I told him for me and my Staff | P |
| We could have managed with five if the girls would only have been Maids of Honour and stayed indoors with the Queen | Q |
| Maggie would if I'd asked her but Dolly will go her own way and that's into the thick of everything to see whatever there is to be seen | Q |
| She's only four years old but she's ridiculously like the picture of an ancient ancestress of ours | I |
| Who defended an old castle in Cornwall against the French for hours and hours | I |
| Her husband was away so she was in command and all her household obeyed her | F |
| She made them strip the lead off the roofs and they did and she boiled it down and gave it very hot indeed to the | R |
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| French invader | F |
| Maggie would have let the French in she doesn't like me to say so but I know she would you can get anything out of Maggie by talking | S |
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| She likes to hire a donkey and then sham she'd rather not ride for fear of being too heavy and to take Spike out for a run and then carry him to save him the trouble of walking | S |
| But she's very good she made all our cocked hats and at the review she and Dolly and Spike were the loyal crowd | T |
| Dick and Tom and Harry were the troops and I was the General and Mother looked quite like a Queen at the window and bowed | T |
| The donkeys made very good chargers on the whole and especially mine | U |
| Jem's was the only one that gave trouble and neither fair means nor foul would keep him in line | U |
| Just when I'd dressed all their noses to a nice level you can do nothing with their ears then back went Jem's brute | V |
| And Jem caught him a whack with the flat of his sword a thing you never see done on the Staff and it rather spoilt the salute | V |
| But the spirit of the troops was excellent and we'd a feu de joie with penny pistols Jem's donkey was the only one that shied and Dolly's Major says that all things considered he never saw a better March Past | N |
| And Mother was delighted with her first Birthday Review and she is none the worse for it and says she only hopes that it won't be the last | N |
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| DOLLY | W |
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| They call me Dolly but I'm not a doll and I'm not a baby though Baby is sometimes my name | X |
| I behave beautifully at meals and at church and I can put on my own boots and can say a good deal of the Catechism and ride a donkey and play at any boys' game | X |
| I've ridden a donkey that kicks at least I rode him as long as I was on and a donkey that rolls and an old donkey that goes lame | X |
| I mean to ride like a lady now but that's because I ought not because I easily can | Y |
| For what with your legs and your pommels I mean the saddle's pommels it would be much easier always to ride like a man | Y |
| Boys look braver but I think it's really more dangerous to ride sideways because of the saddle slipping round | Z |
| I didn't cry I played at slipping round the world and getting to New Zealand with my head upside down on the ground | Z |
| The reason the saddle is slippery is not because it's smooth for it's rather rough and there's a hard ridge behind | A2 |
| And the horse's hair coming through the donkey's back I mean through his saddle scratches you dreadfully but I tuck my things under me and pretend I don't mind | A2 |
| They work out again though particularly when they are starched and I think frocks get shorter every time they go to the wash | B2 |
| But I don't complain if it's very uncomfortable I make an ugly face to myself and say Bosh | B2 |
| We've all of us had a good deal of practice so we ought to know how to ride | C2 |
| We've ridden a great deal since we came to live on the Heath and we rode a good deal when Father was stationed at the sea side | C2 |
| My Major taught me to ride sideways and at first he would hold me on | D2 |
| But I don't like being touched and I don't call it riding like a lady if you're held on by an officer and I'd rather tumble off if I can't stick on by myself so I sent him away and the nasty saddle slipped round directly he was gone | E2 |
| I only crushed my sun bonnet and the donkey stood quite still We always call that one the old stager | F |
| I wasn't frightened except just the tiniest bit but he says he was dreadfully frightened So I said Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself considering all your medals and that you're a Major | F |
| He likes me very much and I like him and when my fifth birthday comes he says I'm to choose a donkey and he'll buy it for me but the saddle and bridle shall be quite new | M |
| So I've made up my mind to choose the one Brother Bill had for his charger at Mother's Birthday Review | M |
| And Maggie is so glad she says her life is quite miserable with thinking how miserable other lives are if only we knew | M |
| Maggie loves every creature that lives she won't confess to black beetles but she can't stamp on them I've stamped out lots in my winter boots and she doesn't even think a donkey ugly when he brays | I |
| And she says she shall buy a brush out of her pocket money and brush my donkey every day till he looks like a horse and that it shan't be her fault if there isn't one poor old brute beast who lives happily to the end of his days | I |
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| JACK ASS | I |
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| The dew falls over the Heath Brother Donkeys and the darkness falls but still through the gathering night | F2 |
| All around us spreads the Heath Bed straw in glimmering sheets of white | F2 |
| Dragged and trampled and plucked and wasted it patiently spreads and survives | I |
| Kicked and thwacked and prodded and over laden we patiently cling to our lives | I |
| Hee haw for the rest and silence of darkness that follow the labours of light | F2 |
| Hee haw for the hours from night to morning that balance the hours from morning to night | F2 |
| Hee haw for the sweet night air that gives human beings cold in the head | K |
| Hee haw for the civilization that sends human beings to bed | K |
| Rest Brother Donkeys rest from the bit the burden the blow | J |
| The dust the flies the restless children the brutal roughs the greedy donkey master the greedier donkey hirer the holiday maker who knows no better and the holiday makers who ought to know | J |
| When the odorous furze bush prickles the seeking nose and the short damp grass refreshes the tongue lend Brother Donkeys lend a long and attentive ear | G2 |
| Whilst I proudly bray | H2 |
| Of the one bright day | H2 |
| In our hard and chequered career | G |
| I've dragged pots and vegetables and invalids and fish and I've galloped with four costermongers to the races | I |
| I've carried babies and sea coal and sea sand and sea weed in panniers and been sold to the gypsies and been bought back for the sea side and ridden in a white saddle cloth with scarlet braid by the fashionable visitors There was always a certain distinction in my paces | I |
| Though I say it who shouldn't I've spent a summer on the Heath and next winter near Covent Garden and moved the following year to the foot of a mountain to take people up to the top to show them the view | M |
| But how little we know what's before us And how little I guessed I should ever be chief charger at a Queen's Birthday Review | M |
| Did I triumph alone No Brother Donkeys no You also took your place with the defenders of the nation | I2 |
| Subordinate positions to my own but meritoriously filled though a little more style would have well become so great an occasion | I2 |
| That malevolent old Moke may his next thistle choke him disgraced us all with his jibbing the ill tempered old ass | I |
| Young Neddy is shaggy and shy but not amiss if he'd held his ears up and not kept his eyes on the grass | I |
| Nothing is more je june I may say vulgar than to seem anxious to eat when the crisis calls for public spirit enthusiasm and an elevated tone | J2 |
| And I wish Brother Donkeys I wish that all had felt as I felt the responsibility of a March Past the Throne | J2 |
| Respect and self respect delicately blended one ear up and the other lowered to salute as I passed the window from which we were seen | Q |
| Unless I grievously misunderstood the young General this morning by no less a personage than her Most Gracious Majesty THE QUEEN | Q |
| Sleep Brother Donkeys sleep But I fancy you're sleeping already for you make no reply | D |
| Not a quiver of your ears not a sign from your motionless drooping noses dark against the dusky night sky | D |
| As black and immovable as the silent fir trees you solemnly slumber beneath | K2 |
| Whilst I wakefully meditate on a glorious past and painfully ponder the future as the dews fall over the Heath | K2 |
Juliana Horatia Ewing
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