Lines -- For Berkshire Jubilee, Aug. 23, 1844 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDE FFGG HHII JJKK LLMM NMOO PPQQ RRSS TUVV WWXX YYGG ZZA2A2| Come back to your mother ye children for shame | A |
| Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame | A |
| With a smile on her face and a sprig in her cap | B |
| She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap | B |
| - | |
| Come out from your alleys your courts and your lanes | C |
| And breathe like young eagles the air of our plains | C |
| Take a whiff from our fields and your excellent wives | D |
| Will declare it s all nonsense insuring your lives | E |
| - | |
| Come you of the law who can talk if you please | F |
| Till the man in the moon will allow it s a cheese | F |
| And leave the old lady that never tells lies | G |
| To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes | G |
| - | |
| Ye healers of men for a moment decline | H |
| Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line | H |
| While you shut up your turnpike your neighbors can go | I |
| The old roundabout road to the regions below | I |
| - | |
| You clerk on whose ears are a couple of pens | J |
| And whose head is an ant hill of units and tens | J |
| Though Plato denies you we welcome you still | K |
| As a featherless biped in spite of your quill | K |
| - | |
| Poor drudge of the city how happy he feels | L |
| With the burs on his legs and the grass at his heels | L |
| No dodger behind his bandannas to share | M |
| No constable grumbling You must n t walk there | M |
| - | |
| In yonder green meadow to memory dear | N |
| He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear | M |
| The dew drops hang round him on blossoms and shoots | O |
| He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots | O |
| - | |
| There stands the old school house hard by the old church | P |
| That tree at its side had the flavor of birch | P |
| Oh sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks | Q |
| Though the prairie of youth had so many big licks | Q |
| - | |
| By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps | R |
| The boots fill with water as if they were pumps | R |
| Till sated with rapture he steals to his bed | S |
| With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head | S |
| - | |
| T is past he is dreaming I see him again | T |
| The ledger returns as by legerdemain | U |
| His neckcloth is damp with an easterly flaw | V |
| And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw | V |
| - | |
| He dreams the chill gust is a blossomy gale | W |
| That the straw is a rose from his dear native vale | W |
| And murmurs unconscious of space and of time | X |
| A Extra super Ah is n t it prime | X |
| - | |
| Oh what are the prizes we perish to win | Y |
| To the first little shiner we caught with a pin | Y |
| No soil upon earth is so dear to our eyes | G |
| As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies | G |
| - | |
| Then come from all parties and parts to our feast | Z |
| Though not at the Astor we ll give you at least | Z |
| A bite at an apple a seat on the grass | A2 |
| And the best of old water at nothing a glass | A2 |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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