The Atlas Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBABAAAACAAADAEABFA GHIDIBJGJDDKDLMNMOPD PBQEQHDAD AARSAAADEAAATAATABAA AUAAAVVSALLWVBXLAVVD VSV VLLAABBAAAABBDDAALLB BAAVV AAABBDBAAYAAAAAVVAAA AWAZAZAABBDVBLLVVAAB DD VA2B2A2B2DDDDALALZC2 D2C2ADADE2VF2VI The King of Cuckooz | A |
THE King of Cuckooz Contrey | B |
Hangs peaked above Argier | B |
With Janzaries and Marabutts | A |
To bid a sailor fear | B |
With lantern eyed astrologers | A |
Who walk upon the walls | A |
And ram with stars their basilisks | A |
Instead of cannon balls | A |
And in that floating castle | C |
I tell you it is so | A |
Five thousand naked Concubines | A |
With dulcimers do go | A |
Each rosy nose anoints a tile | D |
Bang bang the fort salutes | A |
When He the King of Cuckooz Land | E |
Comes forth in satin boots | A |
Each rosy darling flies before | B |
When he desires his tent | F |
Or like a tempest driving flowers | A |
Inspects a battlement | G |
And this I spied by moonlight | H |
Behind a royal bamboo | I |
That Monarch in a curricle | D |
Which ninety virgins drew | I |
That Monarch drinking nectar | B |
Lord God my tale attest | J |
Milked from a snow white elephant | G |
As white as your white breast | J |
And this is no vain fable | D |
As other knaves may lie | D |
Have I not got that Fowl aboard | K |
Which no man may deny | D |
The King's own hunting falcon | L |
I limed across the side | M |
When by the Bayes of Africa | N |
King James's Fleet did ride | M |
What crest is there emblazoned | O |
Whose mark is this I beg | P |
Stamped on the silver manacle | D |
Around that dainty leg | P |
Let this be news to you my dear | B |
How Man should be revered | Q |
Though I'm no King of Cuckooz Land | E |
Behold as fierce a beard | Q |
I have as huge an appetite | H |
As deep a kiss my girl | D |
And somewhere for the hand that seeks | A |
Perhaps a Sultan's pearl | D |
- | |
Post Roads | A |
POST ROADS that clapped with tympan heels | A |
Of tilburies and whiskys rapidly spanking | R |
Where's now the tireless ghost of Ogilby | S |
Post roads | A |
That buoyed the rich and plunging springs | A |
Of coaches vaster than Escurials | A |
Where now does Ogilby propel that Wheel | D |
What milestones does he pause to reprimand | E |
In what unmapped savanna of dumb shades | A |
Ye know not ye are silent brutish ducts | A |
Numbed by the bastinadoes of iron boots | A |
Three hundred years asnore Do you forget | T |
The phaetons and fiacres flys and breaks | A |
The world of dead men staring out of glass | A |
That drummed upon your bones Do you forget | T |
Those nostrils oozing smoke those floating tails | A |
Those criniers whipped with air | B |
And kidnapped lights | A |
Floats of rubbed yellow towed from window panes | A |
Rushing their lozenges through headlong stones | A |
And smells of hackneys mohair sour with damp | U |
Leather and slopped madeira partridge pies | A |
Long buried under floors and yawning Fares | A |
With bumping flap dark spatulas of cards | A |
'Knave takes the ten oh God I wish that it | V |
I wish that it was Guildford' | V |
Ogilby | S |
Did not forget could not escape such ecstacies | A |
Even in the monasteries of mensuration | L |
Could not forget the roads that he had gone | L |
In fog and shining air Each line was joy | W |
Each computation a beatitude | V |
A diagram of Ogilby's eye and ear | B |
With soundings for the nose Wherefore I think | X |
Wherefore I think some English gentleman | L |
Some learned doctor of the steak houses | A |
Ending late dinner having strolled outside | V |
To quell the frivolous hawthorn may behold | V |
There in the moonshine rolling up an hill | D |
Steered by no fleshly hand with spokes of light | V |
The Wheel John Ogilby's Wheel the WHEEL hiss by | S |
Measuring mileposts of eternity | V |
- | |
Dutch Seacoast | V |
No wind of Life may strike within | L |
This little country's crystal bin | L |
Nor calendar compute the days | A |
Tubed in their capsule of soft glaze | A |
Naked and rinsed the bubble clear | B |
Canals of Amsterdam appear | B |
The blue tiled turrets china clocks | A |
And glittering beaks of weathercocks | A |
A gulf of sweet and winking hoops | A |
Whereon there ride poops | A |
With flying mouths and fleeting hair | B |
Of saints hung up like candles there | B |
Fox coloured mansions lean and tall | D |
That burst in air but never fall | D |
Whose bolted shadows row by row | A |
Float changeless on the stones below | A |
Sky full of ships bay full of town | L |
A port of waters jellied brown | L |
Such is the world no tide may stir | B |
Sealed by the great cartographer | B |
O could he but clap up like this | A |
My decomposed metropolis | A |
Those other countries of the mind | V |
So tousled dark and undefined | V |
- | |
Mermaids | A |
ONCE Mermaids mocked your ships | A |
With wet and scarlet lips | A |
And fish dark difficult hips Conquistador | B |
Then Ondines danced with Sirens on the shore | B |
Then from his cloudy stall you heard the Kraken call | D |
And mad with twisting flame the Firedrake roar | B |
Such old established Ladies | A |
No mariner eyed askance | A |
But coming on deck would swivel his neck | Y |
To watch the darlings dance | A |
Or in the gulping dark of nights | A |
Would cast his tranquil eyes | A |
On singular kinds of Hermaphrodites | A |
Without the least surprise | A |
Then portulano maps were scrolled | V |
With compass roses green and gold | V |
That fired the stiff old Needle with their dyes | A |
And wagged their petals over parchment skies | A |
Then seas were full of Dolphins' fins | A |
Full of swept bones and flying Jinns | A |
Beaches were filled with Anthropophagi | W |
And Antient Africa with Palanquins | A |
Then sailors with a flaked and rice pale flesh | Z |
Staring from maps in sweet and poisoned places | A |
Diced the old Skeleton afresh | Z |
In brigs no bigger than their moon bunched faces | A |
Those well known and respected Harpies | A |
Dance no more on the shore to and fro | B |
All that has ended long ago | B |
Nor do they sing outside the captain's porthole | D |
A proceeding fiercely reprehended | V |
By the governors of the P O | B |
Nor do they tumble in the sponges of the moon | L |
For the benefit of tourists in the First Saloon | L |
Nor fork their foaming lily fins below the side | V |
On the ranges of the ale clear tide | V |
And scientists now with binocular eyes | A |
Remark in a tone of complacent surprise | A |
'Those pisciform mammals pure Spectres I fear | B |
Must be Doctor Gerbrandus's Mermaids my dear ' | - |
But before they can cause the philosopher trouble | D |
They are GONE like the cracking of a bubble | D |
- | |
The Seafight | V |
HERE in a gulf of golden leaf | A2 |
You'll find a seafight ringed with flame | B2 |
Cannons that cry Tirduf Tirduf | A2 |
Daggers that collop guns that maim | B2 |
Jaws beaked with blood men flung to hell | D |
Men blasting trumpets men that flee | D |
Men crimped by death and under all | D |
Old patient baleful spying Sea | D |
Old Sea that in a dicebox rolls | A |
Their trundling skulls their jacks of bone | L |
That sucks them out of broken hulls | A |
When other mumbling mouths have gone | L |
Old hungry Sea that holds our flesh | Z |
In the huge forceps of the storm | C2 |
And they are given to the fish | D2 |
And we plucked forth and we made warm | C2 |
But ye that kill why heed the face | A |
Of Ocean Not alone you slay | D |
Since deeper seas are dammed in space | A |
And fiercer storms can scream in clay | D |
Existence has as bitter teeth | E2 |
But we can always find a minute | V |
For the festivities of death | F2 |
Who sail upon this dangerous planet | V |
Kenneth Slessor
(1)
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