A Familiar Letter Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDED EFGF HIHI HFHF EJEF KHKH FKFK FLFL MFMF AHAH KNKN KOKO KFKF KKKK PQPF KFKF PHPH FKFK PRPR| YES write if you want to there's nothing like trying | A |
| Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold | B |
| I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying | A |
| If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold | B |
| - | |
| Here's a book full of words one can choose as he fancies | C |
| As a painter his tint as a workman his tool | D |
| Just think all the poems and plays and romances | E |
| Were drawn out of this like the fish from a pool | D |
| - | |
| You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes | E |
| And take all you want not a copper they cost | F |
| What is there to hinder your picking out phrases | G |
| For an epic as clever as quot Paradise Lost quot | F |
| - | |
| Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero | H |
| Use words that run smoothly whatever they mean | I |
| Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero | H |
| Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine | I |
| - | |
| There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother | H |
| That boarding school flavor of which we're afraid | F |
| There is quot lush quot is a good one and quot swirl quot is another | H |
| Put both in one stanza its fortune is made | F |
| - | |
| With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes | E |
| You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell | J |
| You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses | E |
| And we cry with delight quot Oh how sweet they do smell quot | F |
| - | |
| Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions | K |
| For winning the laurels to which you aspire | H |
| By docking the tails of the two prepositions | K |
| I' the style o' the bards you so greatly admire | H |
| - | |
| As for subjects of verse they are only too plenty | F |
| For ringing the changes on metrical chimes | K |
| A maiden a moonbeam a lover of twenty | F |
| Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes | K |
| - | |
| Let me show you a picture 't is far from irrelevant | F |
| By a famous old hand in the arts of design | L |
| 'T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant | F |
| The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine | L |
| - | |
| How easy no troublesome colors to lay on | M |
| It can't have fatigued him no not in the least | F |
| A dash here and there with a haphazard crayon | M |
| And there stands the wrinkled skinned baggy limbed beast | F |
| - | |
| Just so with your verse 't is as easy as sketching | A |
| You can reel off a song without knitting your brow | H |
| As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching | A |
| It is nothing at all if you only know how | H |
| - | |
| Well imagine you've printed your volume of verses | K |
| Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame | N |
| Your poems the eloquent school boy rehearses | K |
| Her album the school girl presents for your name | N |
| - | |
| Each morning the post brings you autograph letters | K |
| You'll answer them promptly an hour isn't much | O |
| For the honor of sharing a page with your betters | K |
| With magistrates members of Congress and such | O |
| - | |
| Of course you're delighted to serve the committees | K |
| That come with requests from the country all round | F |
| You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties | K |
| When they've got a new schoolhouse or poorhouse or pound | F |
| - | |
| With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners | K |
| You go and are welcome wherever you please | K |
| You're a privileged guest at all manner of dinners | K |
| You've a seat on the platform among the grandees | K |
| - | |
| At length your mere presence becomes a sensation | P |
| Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim | Q |
| With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration | P |
| As the whisper runs round of quot That's he quot or quot That's him quot | F |
| - | |
| But remember O dealer in phrases sonorous | K |
| So daintily chosen so tunefully matched | F |
| Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o'er us | K |
| The ovum was human from which you were hatched | F |
| - | |
| No will of your own with its puny compulsion | P |
| Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre | H |
| It comes if at all like the Sibyl's convulsion | P |
| And touches the brain with a finger of fire | H |
| - | |
| So perhaps after all it's as well to he quiet | F |
| If you've nothing you think is worth saying in prose | K |
| As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet | F |
| To the critics by publishing as you propose | K |
| - | |
| But it's all of no use and I'm sorry I've written | P |
| I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf | R |
| For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten | P |
| And music must cure you so pipe it yourself | R |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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