For The Centennial Dinner Of The Proprietors Of Boston Pier, Or The Long Wharf, April 16, 1873 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH IIJJ KKLL BBMM BBJJ NNOO PQRR SSLL FFTT| Dear friends we are strangers we never before | A |
| Have suspected what love to each other we bore | A |
| But each of us all to his neighbor is dear | B |
| Whose heart has a throb for our time honored pier | B |
| - | |
| As I look on each brother proprietor's face | C |
| I could open my arms in a loving embrace | C |
| What wonder that feelings undreamed of so long | D |
| Should burst all at once in a blossom of song | D |
| - | |
| While I turn my fond glance on the monarch of piers | E |
| Whose throne has stood firm through his eightscore of years | E |
| My thought travels backward and reaches the day | F |
| When they drove the first pile on the edge of the bay | F |
| - | |
| - | |
| See The joiner the shipwright the smith from his forge | G |
| The redcoat who shoulders his gun for King George | G |
| The shopman the 'prentice the boys from the lane | H |
| The parson the doctor with gold headed cane | H |
| - | |
| Come trooping down King Street where now may be seen | I |
| The pulleys and ropes of a mighty machine | I |
| The weight rises slowly it drops with a thud | J |
| And to the great timber sinks deep in the mud | J |
| - | |
| They are gone the stout craftsmen that hammered the piles | K |
| And the square toed old boys in the three cornered tiles | K |
| The breeches the buckles have faded from view | L |
| And the parson's white wig and the ribbon tied queue | L |
| - | |
| The redcoats have vanished the last grenadier | B |
| Stepped into the boat from the end of our pier | B |
| They found that our hills were not easy to climb | M |
| And the order came Countermarch double quick time | M |
| - | |
| They are gone friend and foe anchored fast at the pier | B |
| Whence no vessel brings back its pale passengers here | B |
| But our wharf like a lily still floats on the flood | J |
| Its breast in the sunshine its roots in the mud | J |
| - | |
| Who who that has loved it so long and so well | N |
| The flower of his birthright would barter or sell | N |
| No pride of the bay while its ripples shall run | O |
| You shall pass as an heirloom from father to son | O |
| - | |
| Let me part with the acres my grandfather bought | P |
| With the bonds that my uncle's kind legacy brought | Q |
| With my bank shares old Union whose ten per cent stock | R |
| Stands stiff through the storms as the Eddystone rock | R |
| - | |
| With my rights or my wrongs in the Erie alas | S |
| With my claims on the mournful and Mutual Mass | S |
| With my Phil Wil and Balt with my C B and Q | L |
| But I never no never will sell out of you | L |
| - | |
| We drink to thy past and thy future to day | F |
| Strong right arm of Boston stretched out o'er the bay | F |
| May the winds waft the wealth of all nations to thee | T |
| And thy dividends flow like the waves of the sea | T |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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