The Organ-blower Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCBB DDBBEEBB FFBBGGHH BBBBBBII JJKKLLMM BBNNOOBB PPQQPPPP BBFFRRBB| DEVOUTEST of my Sunday friends | A |
| The patient Organ blower bends | A |
| I see his figure sink and rise | B |
| Forgive me Heaven my wandering eyes | B |
| A moment lost the next half seen | C |
| His head above the scanty screen | C |
| Still measuring out his deep salaams | B |
| Through quavering hymns and panting psalms | B |
| - | |
| No priest that prays in gilded stole | D |
| To save a rich man's mortgaged soul | D |
| No sister fresh from holy vows | B |
| So humbly stoops so meekly bows | B |
| His large obeisance puts to shame | E |
| The proudest genuflecting dame | E |
| Whose Easter bonnet low descends | B |
| With all the grace devotion lends | B |
| - | |
| O brother with the supple spine | F |
| How much we owe those bows of thine | F |
| Without thine arm to lend the breeze | B |
| How vain the finger on the keys | B |
| Though all unmatched the player's skill | G |
| Those thousand throats were dumb and still | G |
| Another's art may shape the tone | H |
| The breath that fills it is thine own | H |
| - | |
| Six days the silent Memnon waits | B |
| Behind his temple's folded gates | B |
| But when the seventh day's sunshine falls | B |
| Through rainbowed windows on the walls | B |
| He breathes he sings he shouts he fills | B |
| The quivering air with rapturous thrills | B |
| The roof resounds the pillars shake | I |
| And all the slumbering echoes wake | I |
| - | |
| The Preacher from the Bible text | J |
| With weary words my soul has vexed | J |
| Some stranger fumbling far astray | K |
| To find the lesson for the day | K |
| He tells us truths too plainly true | L |
| And reads the service all askew | L |
| Why why the mischief can't he look | M |
| Beforehand in the service book | M |
| - | |
| But thou with decent mien and face | B |
| Art always ready in thy place | B |
| Thy strenuous blast whate'er the tune | N |
| As steady as the strong monsoon | N |
| Thy only dread a leathery creak | O |
| Or small residual extra squeak | O |
| To send along the shadowy aisles | B |
| A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles | B |
| - | |
| Not all the preaching O my friend | P |
| Comes from the church's pulpit end | P |
| Not all that bend the knee and bow | Q |
| Yield service half so true as thou | Q |
| One simple task performed aright | P |
| With slender skill but all thy might | P |
| Where honest labor does its best | P |
| And leaves the player all the rest | P |
| - | |
| This many diapasoned maze | B |
| Through which the breath of being strays | B |
| Whose music makes our earth divine | F |
| Has work for mortal hands like mine | F |
| My duty lies before me Lo | R |
| The lever there Take hold and blow | R |
| And He whose hand is on the keys | B |
| Will play the tune as He shall please | B |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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