An After-dinner Poem Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BC DDEE AAFFGGAAAAHHIIJKLLMM NN OOPPQQEERRSSTT DDRRUVWWXXWWYYAAWWWW ZZA2A2B2B2WWC2C2D2D2 EEAA WWWWB2 E2E2WWC2C2WWF2F2WWWW WWG2W WWH2H2WWAA TTWW WWWWI2I2SSIIWWWWJ2J2 IIWWK2K2WWWWL2L2WWWW M2M2 N2N2SSO2P2WWQ2Q2R2R2 S2S2A2A2T2T2SSU2U2AA V2ATERPSICHORE | A |
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Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at | B |
Cambridge August | C |
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IN narrowest girdle O reluctant Muse | D |
In closest frock and Cinderella shoes | D |
Bound to the foot lights for thy brief display | E |
One zephyr step and then dissolve away | E |
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Short is the space that gods and men can spare | A |
To Song's twin brother when she is not there | A |
Let others water every lusty line | F |
As Homer's heroes did their purple wine | F |
Pierian revellers Know in strains like these | G |
The native juice the real honest squeeze | G |
Strains that diluted to the twentieth power | A |
In yon grave temple might have filled an hour | A |
Small room for Fancy's many chorded lyre | A |
For Wit's bright rockets with their trains of fire | A |
For Pathos struggling vainly to surprise | H |
The iron tutor's tear denying eyes | H |
For Mirth whose finger with delusive wile | I |
Turns the grim key of many a rusty smile | I |
For Satire emptying his corrosive flood | J |
On hissing Folly's gas exhaling brood | K |
The pun the fun the moral and the joke | L |
The hit the thrust the pugilistic poke | L |
Small space for these so pressed by niggard Time | M |
Like that false matron known to nursery rhyme | M |
Insidious Morey scarce her tale begun | N |
Ere listening infants weep the story done | N |
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Oh had we room to rip the mighty bags | O |
That Time the harlequin has stuffed with rags | O |
Grant us one moment to unloose the strings | P |
While the old graybeard shuts his leather wings | P |
But what a heap of motley trash appears | Q |
Crammed in the bundles of successive years | Q |
As the lost rustic on some festal day | E |
Stares through the concourse in its vast array | E |
Where in one cake a throng of faces runs | R |
All stuck together like a sheet of buns | R |
And throws the bait of some unheeded name | S |
Or shoots a wink with most uncertain aim | S |
So roams my vision wandering over all | T |
And strives to choose but knows not where to fall | T |
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Skins of flayed authors husks of dead reviews | D |
The turn coat's clothes the office seeker's shoes | D |
Scraps from cold feasts where conversation runs | R |
Through mouldy toasts to oxidated puns | R |
And grating songs a listening crowd endures | U |
Rasped from the throats of bellowing amateurs | V |
Sermons whose writers played such dangerous tricks | W |
Their own heresiarchs called them heretics | W |
Strange that one term such distant poles should link | X |
The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc | X |
Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs | W |
A blindfold minuet over addled eggs | W |
Where all the syllables that end in ed | Y |
Like old dragoons have cuts across the head | Y |
Essays so dark Champollion might despair | A |
To guess what mummy of a thought was there | A |
Where our poor English striped with foreign phrase | W |
Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise | W |
Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots | W |
Or prove by monkeys men should stick to fruits | W |
Delusive error as at trifling charge | Z |
Professor Gripes will certify at large | Z |
Mesmeric pamphlets which to facts appeal | A2 |
Each fact as slippery as a fresh caught eel | A2 |
And figured heads whose hieroglyphs invite | B2 |
To wandering knaves that discount fools at sight | B2 |
Such things as these with heaps of unpaid bills | W |
And candy puffs and homoeopathic pills | W |
And ancient bell crowns with contracted rim | C2 |
And bonnets hideous with expanded brim | C2 |
And coats whose memory turns the sartor pale | D2 |
Their sequels tapering like a lizard's tale | D2 |
How might we spread them to the smiling day | E |
And toss them fluttering like the new mown hay | E |
To laughter's light or sorrow's pitying shower | A |
Were these brief minutes lengthened to an hour | A |
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The narrow moments fit like Sunday shoes | W |
How vast the heap how quickly must we choose | W |
A few small scraps from out his mountain mass | W |
We snatch in haste and let the vagrant pass | W |
This shrunken CRUST that Cerberus could not bite | B2 |
Stamped in one corner 'Pickwick copyright ' | - |
Kneaded by youngsters raised by flattery's yeast | E2 |
Was once a loaf and helped to make a feast | E2 |
He for whose sake the glittering show appears | W |
Has sown the world with laughter and with tears | W |
And they whose welcome wets the bumper's brim | C2 |
Have wit and wisdom for they all quote him | C2 |
So many a tongue the evening hour prolongs | W |
With spangled speeches let alone the songs | W |
Statesmen grow merry lean attorneys laugh | F2 |
And weak teetotals warm to half and half | F2 |
And beardless Tullys new to festive scenes | W |
Cut their first crop of youth's precocious greens | W |
And wits stand ready for impromptu claps | W |
With loaded barrels and percussion caps | W |
And Pathos cantering through the minor keys | W |
Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze | W |
While the great Feasted views with silent glee | G2 |
His scattered limbs in Yankee fricassee | W |
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Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays | W |
The pleasing game of interchanging praise | W |
Self love grimalkin of the human heart | H2 |
Is ever pliant to the master's art | H2 |
Soothed with a word she peacefully withdraws | W |
And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws | W |
And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur | A |
With the light tremor of her grateful purr | A |
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But what sad music fills the quiet hall | T |
If on her back a feline rival fall | T |
And oh what noises shake the tranquil house | W |
If old Self interest cheats her of a mouse | W |
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Thou O my country hast thy foolish ways | W |
Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise | W |
But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws | W |
Off goes the velvet and out come the claws | W |
And thou Illustrious but too poorly paid | I2 |
In toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade | I2 |
Though while the echoes labored with thy name | S |
The public trap denied thy little game | S |
Let other lips our jealous laws revile | I |
The marble Talfourd or the rude Carlyle | I |
But on thy lids which Heaven forbids to close | W |
Where'er the light of kindly nature glows | W |
Let not the dollars that a churl denies | W |
Weigh like the shillings on a dead man's eyes | W |
Or if thou wilt be more discreetly blind | J2 |
Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined | J2 |
Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smile | I |
That crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle | I |
There white cheeked Luxury weaves a thousand charms | W |
Here sun browned Labor swings his naked arms | W |
Long are the furrows he must trace between | K2 |
The ocean's azure and the prairie's green | K2 |
Full many a blank his destined realm displays | W |
Yet sees the promise of his riper days | W |
Far through yon depths the panting engine moves | W |
His chariots ringing in their steel shod grooves | W |
And Erie's naiad flings her diamond wave | L2 |
O'er the wild sea nymph in her distant cave | L2 |
While tasks like these employ his anxious hours | W |
What if his cornfields are not edged with flowers | W |
Though bright as silver the meridian beams | W |
Shine through the crystal of thine English streams | W |
Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirled | M2 |
That drains our Andes and divides a world | M2 |
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But lo a PARCHMENT Surely it would seem | N2 |
The sculptured impress speaks of power supreme | N2 |
Some grave design the solemn page must claim | S |
That shows so broadly an emblazoned name | S |
A sovereign's promise Look the lines afford | O2 |
All Honor gives when Caution asks his word | P2 |
There sacred Faith has laid her snow white hands | W |
And awful Justice knit her iron bands | W |
Yet every leaf is stained with treachery's dye | Q2 |
And every letter crusted with a lie | Q2 |
Alas no treason has degraded yet | R2 |
The Arab's salt the Indian's calumet | R2 |
A simple rite that bears the wanderer's pledge | S2 |
Blunts the keen shaft and turns the dagger's edge | S2 |
While jockeying senates stop to sign and seal | A2 |
And freeborn statesmen legislate to steal | A2 |
Rise Europe tottering with thine Atlas load | T2 |
Turn thy proud eye to Freedom's blest abode | T2 |
And round her forehead wreathed with heavenly flame | S |
Bind the dark garland of her daughter's shame | S |
Ye ocean clouds that wrap the angry blast | U2 |
Coil her stained ensign round its haughty mast | U2 |
Or tear the fold that wears so foul a scar | A |
And drive a bolt through every blackened star | A |
Once more once only we must stop so soon | V2 |
What have we here A GER | A |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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