At The "atlantic" Dinner Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAAAAABB CCAADDEEFF GGHHCCCCIIJJ KKEECCCCCC LLCCCCCC FFFFCCMMNLOOLLLLPPLL| I suppose it's myself that you're making allusion to | A |
| And bringing the sense of dismay and confusion to | A |
| Of course some must speak they are always selected to | A |
| But pray what's the reason that I am expected to | A |
| I'm not fond of wasting my breath as those fellows do | A |
| That want to be blowing forever as bellows do | A |
| Their legs are uneasy but why will you jog any | B |
| That long to stay quiet beneath the mahogany | B |
| - | |
| Why why call me up with your battery of flatteries | C |
| You say He writes poetry that 's what the matter is | C |
| It costs him no trouble a pen full of ink or two | A |
| And the poem is done in the time of a wink or two | A |
| As for thoughts never mind take the ones that lie uppermost | D |
| And the rhymes used by Milton and Byron and Tupper most | D |
| The lines come so easy at one end he jingles 'em | E |
| At the other with capital letters he shingles 'em | E |
| Why the thing writes itself and before he's half done with it | F |
| He hates to stop writing he has such good fun with it | F |
| - | |
| - | |
| Ah that is the way in which simple ones go about | G |
| And draw a fine picture of things they don't know about | G |
| We all know a kitten but come to a catamount | H |
| The beast is a stranger when grown up to that amount | H |
| A stranger we rather prefer should n't visit us | C |
| A felis whose advent is far from felicitous | C |
| The boy who can boast that his trap has just got a mouse | C |
| Must n't draw it and write underneath hippopotamus | C |
| Or say unveraciously This is an elephant | I |
| Don't think let me beg these examples irrelevant | I |
| What they mean is just this that a thing to be painted well | J |
| Should always be something with which we're acquainted well | J |
| - | |
| You call on your victim for things he has plenty of | K |
| Those copies of verses no doubt at least twenty of | K |
| His desk is crammed full for he always keeps writing 'em | E |
| And reading to friends as his way of delighting 'em | E |
| I tell you this writing of verses means business | C |
| It makes the brain whirl in a vortex of dizziness | C |
| You think they are scrawled in the languor of laziness | C |
| I tell you they're squeezed by a spasm of craziness | C |
| A fit half as bad as the staggering vertigos | C |
| That seize a poor fellow and down in the dirt he goes | C |
| - | |
| And therefore it chimes with the word's etytology | L |
| That the sons of Apollo are great on apology | L |
| For the writing of verse is a struggle mysterious | C |
| And the gayest of rhymes is a matter that's serious | C |
| For myself I'm relied on by friends in extremities | C |
| And I don't mind so much if a comfort to them it is | C |
| 'T is a pleasure to please and the straw that can tickle us | C |
| Is a source of enjoyment though slightly ridiculous | C |
| - | |
| I am up for a something and since I 've begun with it | F |
| I must give you a toast now before I have done with it | F |
| Let me pump at my wits as they pumped the Cochituate | F |
| That moistened it may be the very last bit you ate | F |
| Success to our publishers authors and editors | C |
| To our debtors good luck pleasant dreams to our creditors | C |
| May the monthly grow yearly till all we are groping for | M |
| Has reached the fulfilment we're all of us hoping for | M |
| Till the bore through the tunnel it makes me let off a sigh | N |
| To think it may possibly ruin my prophecy | L |
| Has been punned on so often 't will never provoke again | O |
| One mild adolescent to make the old joke again | O |
| Till abstinent all go to meeting society | L |
| Has forgotten the sense of the word inebriety | L |
| Till the work that poor Hannah and Bridget and Phillis do | L |
| The humanized civilized female gorillas do | L |
| Till the roughs as we call them grown loving and dutiful | P |
| Shall worship the true and the pure and the beautiful | P |
| And preying no longer as tiger and vulture do | L |
| All read the Atlantic as persons of culture do | L |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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