Story Of Lilavanti Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IBIB AJAJ KBKB LMLM ENEO PQRQ STST UEUE VWVX| They lay the slender body down | A |
| With all its wealth of wetted hair | B |
| Only a daughter of the town | A |
| But very young and slight and fair | B |
| - | |
| The eyes whose light one cannot see | C |
| Are sombre doubtless like the tresses | D |
| The mouth's soft curvings seem to be | C |
| A roseate series of caresses | D |
| - | |
| And where the skin has all but dried | E |
| The air is sultry in the room | F |
| Upon her breast and either side | E |
| It shows a soft and amber bloom | F |
| - | |
| By women here who knew her life | G |
| A leper husband I am told | H |
| Took all this loveliness to wife | G |
| When it was barely ten years old | H |
| - | |
| And when the child in shocked dismay | I |
| Fled from the hated husband's care | B |
| He caught and tied her so they say | I |
| Down to his bedside by her hair | B |
| - | |
| To some low quarter of the town | A |
| Escaped a second time she flew | J |
| Her beauty brought her great renown | A |
| And many lovers here she knew | J |
| - | |
| When as the mystic Eastern night | K |
| With purple shadow filled the air | B |
| Behind her window framed in light | K |
| She sat with jasmin in her hair | B |
| - | |
| At last she loved a youth who chose | L |
| To keep this wild flower for his own | M |
| He in his garden set his rose | L |
| Where it might bloom for him alone | M |
| - | |
| Cholera came her lover died | E |
| Want drove her to the streets again | N |
| And women found her there who tried | E |
| To turn her beauty into gain | O |
| - | |
| But she who in those garden ways | P |
| Had learnt of Love would now no more | Q |
| Be bartered in the market place | R |
| For silver as in days before | Q |
| - | |
| That former life she strove to change | S |
| She sold the silver off her arms | T |
| While all the world grew cold and strange | S |
| To broken health and fading charms | T |
| - | |
| Till finding lovers but no friend | U |
| Nor any place to rest or hide | E |
| She grew despairing at the end | U |
| Slipped softly down a well and died | E |
| - | |
| And yet how short when all is said | V |
| This little life of love and tears | W |
| Her age they say beside her bed | V |
| To day is only fifteen years | X |
Laurence Hope (adela Florence Cory Nicolson)
(1)
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