Captain Dobbin Poem Rhyme Scheme

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CAPTAIN 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

Captain Dobbin Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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