A Christmas Childhood Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABA CDCD EFEF GHGI FJKL MGDN OPQA RSGT GFSF OUGG SVES SSWX FGSG| ful that was how wonderful | A |
| And when we put our ears to the paling post | B |
| The music that came out was magical | A |
| - | |
| The light between the ricks of hay and straw | C |
| Was a hole in Heaven's gable An apple tree | D |
| With its December glinting fruit we saw | C |
| O you Eve were the world that tempted me | D |
| - | |
| To eat the knowledge that grew in clay | E |
| And death the germ within it Now and then | F |
| I can remember something of the gay | E |
| Garden that was childhood's Again | F |
| - | |
| The tracks of cattle to a drinking place | G |
| A green stone lying sideways in a ditch | H |
| Or any common sight the transfigured face | G |
| Of a beauty that the world did not touch | I |
| - | |
| My father played the melodion | F |
| Outside at our gate | J |
| There were stars in the morning east | K |
| And they danced to his music | L |
| - | |
| Across the wild bogs his melodion called | M |
| To Lennons and Callans | G |
| As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry | D |
| I knew some strange thing had happened | N |
| - | |
| Outside in the cow house my mother | O |
| Made the music of milking | P |
| The light of her stable lamp was a star | Q |
| And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle | A |
| - | |
| A water hen screeched in the bog | R |
| Mass going feet | S |
| Crunched the wafer ice on the pot holes | G |
| Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel | T |
| - | |
| My child poet picked out the letters | G |
| On the grey stone | F |
| In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland | S |
| The winking glitter of a frosty dawn | F |
| - | |
| Cassiopeia was over | O |
| Cassidy's hanging hill | U |
| I looked and three whin bushes rode across | G |
| The horizon the Three Wise Kings | G |
| - | |
| And old man passing said | S |
| Can't he make it talk | V |
| The melodion ' I hid in the doorway | E |
| And tightened the belt of my box pleated coat | S |
| - | |
| I nicked six nicks on the door post | S |
| With my penknife's big blade | S |
| there was a little one for cutting tobacco | W |
| And I was six Christmases of age | X |
| - | |
| My father played the melodion | F |
| My mother milked the cows | G |
| And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned | S |
| On the Virgin Mary's blouse | G |
Patrick Kavanagh
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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