The Nabob Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBDEAEFGHGIHEHHHHH HJGKGHAHHFGFGGGLA| To the memory of William Hickey Esq | A |
| COMING out of India with ten thousand a year | B |
| Exchanged for flesh and temper a dry Faust | C |
| Whose devil barters with digestion has he paid dear | B |
| For dipping his fingers in the Roc's valley | D |
| Who knows It's certain that he owns a rage | E |
| A face like shark skin full of Yellow Jack | A |
| And that unreckoning tyranny of age | E |
| That calls for turtles' eggs in Twickenham | F |
| Sometimes by moonlight in a barge he'll float | G |
| Whilst hirelings blow their skulking flageolets | H |
| Served by a Rajah in a golden coat | G |
| With pigeon pie Madeira and Madeira | I |
| Or in his Bon de Paris with silver frogs | H |
| He rolls puff bellied in an equipage | E |
| Elegant chariot through a gulf of fogs | H |
| To dine on dolphin steak with Post Captains | H |
| Who knows There are worse things than steak perhaps | H |
| Worse things than oyster sauces and tureens | H |
| And worlds of provender like painted maps | H |
| Pricked out with ports of claret and pitchcocked eels | H |
| And hubbubs of billiard matches burnt champagne | J |
| Beautiful ladies 'of the establishment' | G |
| Always in tempers or melting out again | K |
| Bailiffs and Burgundy and writs of judgment | G |
| Thus to inhabit huge lugubrious halls | H |
| Damp with the steam of entrees glazed with smoke | A |
| Raw drinking greasy eating bussing and brawls | H |
| Drinking and eating and bursting into bed chambers | H |
| But in the end one says farewell to them | F |
| And if he'd curse to day God damn your blood | G |
| Even his curses I'd not altogether condemn | F |
| Not altogether scorn and if phantoms ate | G |
| Hickey I'd say sit down pull up set to | G |
| Here's knife and fork there's wine and there's a barmaid | G |
| Let us submerge ourselves in onion soup | L |
| Anything but this 'damned profession of writing' | A |
Kenneth Slessor
(1)
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