An After-dinner Poem Poem Rhyme Scheme

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TERPSICHORE	A
	-
Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at	B
Cambridge August	C
	-
	-
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
	-
	-
	-
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
	-
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
	-
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
	-
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
	-
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
	-
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
	-
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
	-
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

An After-dinner Poem Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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