Captain Dobbin Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST BUOHVWOXYZA2B2C2AD2E 2F2EG2HXH2D2I2J2K2L2 M2N2EO2P2Q2R2O2O2S2O 2T2U2O2O2OO2O2V2W2HX 2O2O2O2Y2EZ2O2OOX2EA 3X2ONNO2O2O2O2O2O2EO 2X2B3B3B3O2O2X2O2X2O O2O2C3O2X2HO2NO2D2O2 X2O2X2D2O2O2X2D3X2HX 2X2X2O2X2O2NEE3X2OEE X2X2X2OO2OX2HX2X2O2X 2X2OEEOHX2EO2EO2O2F3 O2O2O2CAPTAIN Dobbin having retired from the South Seas | A |
In the dumb tides of with a handful of shells | B |
A few poisoned arrows a cask of pearls | C |
And five thousand pounds in the colonial funds | D |
Now sails the street in a brick villa 'Laburnum Villa' | E |
In whose blank windows the harbour hangs | F |
Like a fog against the glass | G |
Golden and smoky or stoned with a white glitter | H |
And boats go by suspended in the pane | I |
Blue Funnel Red Funnel Messageries Maritimes | J |
Lugged down the port like sea beasts taken alive | K |
That scrape their bellies on sharp sands | L |
Of which particulars Captain Dobbin keeps | M |
A ledger sticky with ink | N |
Entries of time and weather state of the moon | O |
Nature of cargo and captain's name | P |
For some mysterious and awful purpose | Q |
Never divulged | R |
For at night when the stars mock themselves with lanterns | S |
So late the chimes blow loud and faint | T |
Like a hand shutting and unshutting over the bells | B |
Captain Dobbin having observed from bed | U |
The lights like a great fiery snake of the Comorin | O |
Going to sea will note the hour | H |
For subsequent recording in his gazette | V |
But the sea is really closer to him than this | W |
Closer to him than a dead lovely woman | O |
For he keeps bits of it like old letters | X |
Salt tied up in bundles | Y |
Or pressed flat | Z |
What you might call a lock of the sea's hair | A2 |
So Captain Dobbin keeps his dwarfed memento | B2 |
His urn burial a chest of mummied waves | C2 |
Gales fixed in print and the sweet dangerous countries | A |
Of shark and casuarina tree | D2 |
Stolen and put in coloured maps | E2 |
Like a flask of seawater or a bottled ship | F2 |
A schooner caught in a glass bottle | E |
But Captain Dobbin keeps them in books | G2 |
Crags of varnished leather | H |
Pimply with gilt by learned mariners | X |
And masters of hydrostatics or the childish tales | H2 |
Of simple heroes taken by Turks or dropsy | D2 |
So nightly he sails from shelf to shelf | I2 |
Or to the quadrants dangling with rusty screws | J2 |
Or the hanging gardens of old charts | K2 |
So old they bear the authentic protractor lines | L2 |
Traced in faint ink as fine as Chinese hairs | M2 |
Over the flat and painted atlas leaves | N2 |
His reading glass would tremble | E |
Over the fathoms pricked in tiny rows | O2 |
Water shelving to the coast | P2 |
Quietly the bone rimmed lens would float | Q2 |
Till through the glass he felt the barb d rush | R2 |
Of bubbles foaming spied the albicores | O2 |
The blue fined admirals heard the wind swallowed cries | O2 |
Of planters running on the beach | S2 |
Who filched their swags of yams and ambergris | O2 |
Birds' nests and sandalwood from pastures numbed | T2 |
By the sun's yellow too meek for honest theft | U2 |
But he less delicate robber climbed the walls | O2 |
Broke into dozing houses | O2 |
Crammed with black bottles marish wine | O |
Crusty and salt corroded fading prints | O2 |
Sparkle daubed almanacs and playing cards | O2 |
With rusty cannon left by the French outside | V2 |
Half buried in sand | W2 |
Even to the castle of Queen Pomaree | H |
In the Yankee's footsteps and found her throne room piled | X2 |
With golden candelabras mildewed swords | O2 |
Guitars and fowling pieces tossed in heaps | O2 |
With greasy cakes and flung down calabashes | O2 |
Then Captain Dobbin's eye | Y2 |
That eye of wild and wispy scudding blue | E |
Voluptuously prying would light up | Z2 |
Like mica scratched by gully suns | O2 |
And he would be fearful to look upon | O |
And shattering in his conversation | O |
Nor would he tolerate the harmless chanty | X2 |
No 'Shenandoah' or the dainty mew | E |
That landsmen offer in a silver dish | A3 |
To Neptune sung to pianos in candlelight | X2 |
Of these he spoke in scorn | O |
For there was but one way of singing 'Stormalong' | N |
He said and that was not really singing | N |
But howling rather shrieked in the wind's jaws | O2 |
By furious men not tinkled in drawing rooms | O2 |
By lap dogs in clean shirts | O2 |
And at these words | O2 |
The galleries of photographs men with rich beards | O2 |
Pea jackets and brass buttons with folded arms | O2 |
Would scowl approval for they were shipmates too | E |
Companions of no cruise by reading glass | O2 |
But fellows of storm and honey from the past | X2 |
'The Charlotte Java ' ' | B3 |
'Knuckle and Fred at Port au Prince ' | B3 |
'William in his New Rig ' | B3 |
Even that notorious scoundrel Captain Baggs | O2 |
Who as all knew owed Dobbin Twenty Pounds | O2 |
Lost at fair cribbage but he never paid | X2 |
Or paid 'with the slack of the tops'l sheets' | O2 |
As Captain Dobbin frequently expressed it | X2 |
There were their faces grilled a trifle now | O |
Cigar hued in various spots | O2 |
By the brown breath of sodium eating years | O2 |
On quarter decks long burnt to the water's edge | C3 |
A resurrection of the dead by chemicals | O2 |
And the voyages they had made | X2 |
Their labours in a country of water | H |
Were they not marked by inadequate lines | O2 |
On charts tied up like skins in a rack | N |
Or his own Odysseys his lonely travels | O2 |
His trading days an autobiography | D2 |
Of angles and triangles and lozenges | O2 |
Ruled tack by tack across the sheet | X2 |
That with a single scratch expressed the stars | O2 |
Merak and Alamak and Alpherat | X2 |
The wind the moon the sun the clambering sea | D2 |
Sails bleached with light salt in the eyes | O2 |
Bamboos and Tahiti oranges | O2 |
From some forgotten countless day | X2 |
One foundered day from a forgotten month | D3 |
A year sucked quietly from the blood | X2 |
Dead with the rest remembered by no more | H |
Than a scratch on a dry chart | X2 |
Or when the return grew too choking bitter sweet | X2 |
And laburnum berries manifestly tossed | X2 |
Beyond the window not the fabulous leaves | O2 |
Of Hotoo or canoe tree or palmetto | X2 |
There were the wanderings of other keels | O2 |
Magellan Bougainville and Cook | N |
Who found no greater a memorial | E |
Than footprints over a lithograph | E3 |
For Cook he worshipped that captain with the sad | X2 |
And fine white face who never lost a man | O |
Or flinched a peril and of Bougainville | E |
He spoke with graceful courtesy as a rival | E |
To whom the honours of the hunting field | X2 |
Must be accorded Not so with the Spaniard | X2 |
Sebastian Juan del Cano at whom he sneered | X2 |
Openly calling him a fool of fortune | O |
Blown to a sailors' abbey by chance winds | O2 |
And blindfold currents who slept in a fine cabin | O |
Blundered through five degrees of latitude | X2 |
Was bullied by mutineers a hundred more | H |
And woke and found himself across the world | X2 |
Coldly in the window | X2 |
Like a fog rubbed up and down the glass | O2 |
The harbour bony with mist | X2 |
And ropes of water glittered and the blind tide | X2 |
That crawls it knows not where nor for what gain | O |
Pushed its drowned shoulders against the wheel | E |
Against the wheel of the mill | E |
Flowers rocked far down | O |
And white dead bodies that were anchored there | H |
In marshes of spent light | X2 |
Blue Funnel Red Funnel | E |
The ships went over them and bells in engine rooms | O2 |
Cried to their bowels of flaring oil | E |
And stokers groaned and sweated with burnt skins | O2 |
Clawed to their shovels | O2 |
But quietly in his room | F3 |
In his little cemetery of sweet essences | O2 |
With fond memorial stones and lines of grace | O2 |
Captain Dobbin went on reading about the sea | O2 |
Kenneth Slessor
(1)
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