The Portrait Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB BCCDDEEFGHHIIJKBBLLM M NOPPQQMM RRSSTTUUVVWWAAVBBJ KTTVVXVVYYVVWWWWVV ZZA2VA2WWB2B2VC2VVWW VVWWWWD2WWIn some quaint Nurnberg | A |
maler atelier | B |
- | |
Uprummaged When and where was never clear | B |
Nor yet how he obtained it When by whom | C |
'Twas painted who shall say itself a gloom | C |
Resisting inquisition I opine | D |
It is a Duerer Mark that touch this line | D |
Are they deniable Distinguished grace | E |
Of the pure oval of the noble face | E |
Tarnished in color badly Half in light | F |
Extend it so Incline The exquisite | G |
Expression leaps abruptly piercing scorn | H |
Imperial beauty each an icy thorn | H |
Of light disdainful eyes and well no use | I |
Effaced and but beheld a sad abuse | I |
Of patience Often vaguely visible | J |
The portrait fills each feature making swell | K |
The heart with hope avoiding face and hair | B |
Start out in living hues astonished 'There | B |
The picture lives ' your soul exults when lo | L |
You hold a blur an undetermined glow | L |
Dislimns a daub 'Restore ' Ah I have tried | M |
Our best restorers and it has defied | M |
- | |
Storied mysterious say perhaps a ghost | N |
Lives in the canvas hers some artist lost | O |
A duchess' haply Her he worshiped dared | P |
Not tell he worshiped From his window stared | P |
Of Nuremberg one sunny morn when she | Q |
Passed paged to court Her cold nobility | Q |
Loved lived for like a purpose Seized and plied | M |
A feverish brush her face Despaired and died | M |
- | |
The narrow Judengasse gables frown | R |
Around a humpbacked usurer's where brown | R |
Neglected in a corner long it lay | S |
Heaped in a pile of riff raff such as say | S |
Retables done in tempera and old | T |
Panels by Wohlgemuth stiff paintings cold | T |
Of martyrs and apostles names forgot | U |
Holbeins and Duerers say a haloed lot | U |
Of praying saints madonnas these perchance | V |
'Mid wine stained purples mothed an old romance | V |
A crucifix and rosary inlaid | W |
Arms Saracen elaborate a strayed | W |
Niello of Byzantium rich work | A |
In bronze of Florence here a murderous dirk | A |
There holy patens | V |
So My ancestor | B |
The first De Herancour esteemed by far | B |
This piece most precious most desirable | J |
- | |
Purchased and brought to Paris It looked well | K |
In the dark paneling above the old | T |
Hearth of the room The head's religious gold | T |
The soft severity of the nun face | V |
Made of the room an apostolic place | V |
Revered and feared | X |
Like some lived scene I see | V |
That Gothic room its Flemish tapestry | V |
Embossed within the marble hearth a shield | Y |
Carved 'round with thistles in its argent field | Y |
Three sable mallets arms of Herancour | V |
Topped with the crest a helm and hands that bore | V |
Outstretched two mallets On a lectern laid | W |
Between two casements lozenge paned embayed | W |
A vellum volume of black lettered text | W |
Near by a taper winking as if vexed | W |
With silken gusts a nervous curtain sends | V |
Behind which haply daggered Murder bends | V |
- | |
And then I seem to see again the hall | Z |
The stairway leading to that room Then all | Z |
The terror of that night of blood and crime | A2 |
Passes before me | V |
It is Catherine's time | A2 |
The house De Herancour's On floors splashed red | W |
Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed | W |
Down carven corridors and rooms where couch | B2 |
And chairs lie shattered and black shadows crouch | B2 |
Torch pierced with fear a sound of swords draws near | V |
The stir of searching steel | C2 |
What find they here | V |
Torch bearer swordsman and fierce halberdier | V |
On St Bartholomew's A Huguenot | W |
Dead in his chair Eyes violently shot | W |
With horror glaring at the portrait there | V |
Coiling his neck a blood line like a hair | V |
Of finest fire The portrait like a fiend | W |
Looking exalted visitation leaned | W |
From its black panel in its eyes a hate | W |
Satanic hair a glowing auburn late | W |
A dull enduring golden | D2 |
'Just one thread | W |
Of the fierce hair around his throat ' they said | W |
'Twisting a burning ray he staring dead ' | - |
Madison Julius Cawein
(1)
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