The Mind-s Diet Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDD EEFF GGHHIIJJKKIILL| No life worth naming ever comes to good | A |
| If always nourished on the selfsame food | B |
| The creeping mite may live so if he please | C |
| And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese | C |
| But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt | D |
| If mammals try it that their eyes drop out | D |
| - | |
| No reasoning natures find it safe to feed | E |
| For their sole diet on a single creed | E |
| It spoils their eyeballs while it spares their tongues | F |
| And starves the heart to feed the noisy lungs | F |
| - | |
| When the first larvae on the elm are seen | G |
| The crawling wretches like its leaves are green | G |
| Ere chill October shakes the latest down | H |
| They like the foliage change their tint to brown | H |
| On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy | I |
| You stretch to pluck it 'tis a butterfly | I |
| The flattened tree toads so resemble bark | J |
| They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark | J |
| The woodcock stiffening to fictitious mud | K |
| Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood | K |
| So by long living on a single lie | I |
| Nay on one truth will creatures get its dye | I |
| Red yellow green they take their subject's hue | L |
| Except when squabbling turns them black and blue | L |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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