Dorothy Q. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDD EEFFGGHH IIJJKKEE LLMMNNOO FFPPQQRRSSMMTTUU AAVVWWXX YYZZSSA2B2 DDMMKKC2C2| GRANDMOTHER's mother her age I guess | A |
| Thirteen summers or something less | A |
| Girlish bust but womanly air | B |
| Smooth square forehead with uprolled hair | B |
| Lips that lover has never kissed | C |
| Taper fingers and slender wrist | C |
| Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade | D |
| So they painted the little maid | D |
| - | |
| On her hand a parrot green | E |
| Sits unmoving and broods serene | E |
| Hold up the canvas full in view | F |
| Look there's a rent the light shines through | F |
| Dark with a century's fringe of dust | G |
| That was a Red Coat's rapier thrust | G |
| Such is the tale the lady old | H |
| Dorothy's daughter's daughter told | H |
| - | |
| Who the painter was none may tell | I |
| One whose best was not over well | I |
| Hard and dry it must be confessed | J |
| Fist as a rose that has long been pressed | J |
| Yet in her cheek the hues are bright | K |
| Dainty colors of red and white | K |
| And in her slender shape are seen | E |
| Hint and promise of stately mien | E |
| - | |
| Look not on her with eyes of scorn | L |
| Dorothy Q was a lady born | L |
| Ay since the galloping Normans came | M |
| England's annals have known her name | M |
| And still to the three hilled rebel town | N |
| Dear is that ancient name's renown | N |
| For many a civic wreath they won | O |
| The youthful sire and the gray haired son | O |
| - | |
| O Damsel Dorothy Dorothy Q | F |
| Strange is the gift that I owe to you | F |
| Such a gift as never a king | P |
| Save to daughter or son might bring | P |
| All my tenure of heart and hand | Q |
| All my title to house and land | Q |
| Mother and sister and child and wife | R |
| And joy and sorrow and death and life | R |
| What if a hundred years ago | S |
| Those close shut lips had answered NO | S |
| When forth the tremulous question came | M |
| That cost the maiden her Norman name | M |
| And under the folds that look so still | T |
| The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill | T |
| Should I be I or would it be | U |
| One tenth another to nine tenths me | U |
| - | |
| Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES | A |
| Not the light gossamer stirs with less | A |
| But never a cable that holds so fast | V |
| Through all the battles of wave and blast | V |
| And never an echo of speech or song | W |
| That lives in the babbling air so long | W |
| There were tones in the voice that whispered then | X |
| You may hear to day in a hundred men | X |
| - | |
| O lady and lover how faint and far | Y |
| Your images hover and here we are | Y |
| Solid and stirring in flesh and bone | Z |
| Edward's and Dorothy's all their own | Z |
| A goodly record for Time to show | S |
| Of a syllable spoken so long ago | S |
| Shall I bless you Dorothy or forgive | A2 |
| For the tender whisper that bade me live | B2 |
| - | |
| It shall be a blessing my little maid | D |
| I will heal the stab of the Red Coat's blade | D |
| And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame | M |
| And gild with a rhyme your household name | M |
| So you shall smile on us brave and bright | K |
| As first you greeted the morning's light | K |
| And live untroubled by woes and fears | C2 |
| Through a second youth of a hundred years | C2 |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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