The Only Way Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCCBBCCB DEDEDE A FBBFFBBF GHHGHG A IJJIIJJJ JJJJJJ EKKEEKKE JJJJJJ| I | A |
| - | |
| Memphis and Karnak Luxor Thebes the Nile | B |
| Of these your letters told and I who read | C |
| Saw loom on dim horizons Egypt's dead | C |
| In march across the desert mile on mile | B |
| A ghostly caravan in slow defile | B |
| Between the sand and stars and at their head | C |
| From unmapped darkness into darkness fled | C |
| The gods that Egypt feared a little while | B |
| - | |
| There black against the night I saw them loom | D |
| With captive kings and armies in array | E |
| Remembered only by their sculptured doom | D |
| And thought What Egypt was are we to day | E |
| Then rose obscure against the rearward gloom | D |
| The march of Empires yet to pass away | E |
| - | |
| II | A |
| - | |
| I looked in vision down the centuries | F |
| And saw how Athens stood a sunlit while | B |
| A sovereign city free from greed and guile | B |
| The half embodied dream of Pericles | F |
| Then saw I one of smooth words swift to please | F |
| At laggard virtue mock with shrug and smile | B |
| With Cleon's creed rang court and peristyle | B |
| Then sank the sun in far Sicilian seas | F |
| - | |
| From brows ignoble fell the violet crown | G |
| Again the warning sounds the hosts engage | H |
| In Cleon's face we fling our battle gage | H |
| We win as foes of Cleon loud renown | G |
| But while we think to build the coming age | H |
| The laurel on our brows is turning brown | G |
| - | |
| III | A |
| - | |
| We top the poisonous blooms that choke the state | I |
| At flower and fruit our flashing strokes are made | J |
| The whetted scythe on stalk and stem is laid | J |
| But deeper must we strike to extirpate | I |
| The rooted evil that within our gate | I |
| Will sprout again and flourish branch and blade | J |
| For only from within can ill be stayed | J |
| While Adam's seed is unregenerate | J |
| - | |
| With zeal redoubled let our strength be strained | J |
| To cut the rooted causes where they hold | J |
| Nor spend our sinews on the fungus mold | J |
| When all the breeding marshes must be drained | J |
| Be this our aim and let our youth be trained | J |
| To honor virtue more than place and gold | J |
| - | |
| IV | - |
| - | |
| A hundred cities sapped by slow decay | E |
| A hundred codes and systems proven vain | K |
| Lie hearsed in sand upon the heaving plain | K |
| Memorial ruins mounded still and gray | E |
| And we who plod the barren waste to day | E |
| Another code evolving think to gain | K |
| Surcease of man's inheritance of pain | K |
| And mold a state immune from evil's sway | E |
| - | |
| Not laws but virtue in the soul we need | J |
| The old Socratic justice in the heart | J |
| The golden rule become the people's creed | J |
| When years of training have performed their part | J |
| For thus alone in home and church and mart | J |
| Can evil perish and the race be freed | J |
Louis V. Ledoux
(1)
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