A Familiar Letter - To Several Correspondents Poem Rhyme Scheme

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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 Paradise Lost	H
	-
Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero	I
Use words that run smoothly whatever they mean	J
Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero	I
Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine	J
	-
There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother	I
That boarding school flavor of which we 're afraid	K
There is lush is a good one and swirl another	I
Put both in one stanza its fortune is made	K
	-
With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes	E
You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell	L
You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses	E
And we cry with delight Oh how sweet they do smell	L
	-
Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions	M
For winning the laurels to which you aspire	I
By docking the tails of the two prepositions	M
I' the style o' the bards you so greatly admire	I
	-
As for subjects of verse they are only too plenty	N
For ringing the changes on metrical chimes	M
A maiden a moonbeam a lover of twenty	N
Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes	M
	-
Let me show you a picture 'tis far from irrelevant	O
By a famous old hand in the arts of design	P
'T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant	O
The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine	P
	-
How easy no troublesome colors to lay on	Q
It can't have fatigued him no not in the least	R
A dash here and there with a hap hazard crayon	Q
And there stands the wrinkled skinned baggy limbed beast	R
	-
Just so with your verse 't is as easy as sketching	A
You can reel off a song without knitting your brow	I
As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching	A
It is nothing at all if you only know how	I
	-
Well imagine you've printed your volume of verses	M
Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame	S
Your poems the eloquent school boy rehearses	M
Her album the school girl presents for your name	S
	-
Each morning the post brings you autograph letters	M
You'll answer them promptly an hour is n't much	T
For the honor of sharing a page with your betters	M
With magistrates members of Congress and such	T
	-
Of course you're delighted to serve the committees	M
That come with requests from the country all round	U
You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties	M
When they've got a new schoolhouse or poor house or pound	U
	-
With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners	M
You go and are welcome wherever you please	M
You're a privileged guest at all manner of dinners	M
You've a seat on the platform among the grandees	M
	-
At length your mere presence becomes a sensation	V
Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim	W
With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration	V
As the whisper runs round of That's he or That Is him	W
	-
But remember O dealer in phrases sonorous	M
So daintily chosen so tunefully matched	X
Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o'er us	M
The ovum was human from which you were hatched	X
	-
No will of your own with its puny compulsion	V
Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre	I
It comes if at all like the Sibyl's convulsion	V
And touches the brain with a finger of fire	I
	-
So perhaps after all it's as well to be quiet	Y
If you've nothing you think is worth saying in prose	M
As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet	Y
To the critics by publishing as you propose	M
	-
But it's all of no use and I 'm sorry I've written	V
I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf	Z
For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten	V
And music must cure you so pipe it yourself	Z

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Familiar Letter - To Several Correspondents Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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