Randall Jarrell

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Children Selecting Books In A Library Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEDFGHIJKLIMNOPII IIQRSIIITUVIWXYPZ

With beasts and gods above the wall is brightA
The child's head bent to the book colored shelvesB
Is slow and sidelong and food gatheringC
Moving in blind grace yet from the mural CareD
The grey eyed one fishing the morning mistE
Seizes the baby hero by the hairD
And whispers in the tongue of gods and childrenF
Words of a doom as ecumenical as dawnG
But blanched like dawn with dewH
The children's criesI
Are to men the cries of crickets dense with warmthJ
But dip a finger into Fafnir taste itK
And all their words are plain as chance and painL
Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogresI
Because their lives are the capricious infiniteM
That like parents no one has yet escapedN
Except by luck or magic and since strengthO
And wit are useless be kind or stupid waitP
Some power's gratitude the tide of thingsI
Read meanwhile hunt among the shelves as dogs do grassesI
And find one cure for Everychild's diseasesI
Beginning Once upon a time there wasI
A wolf that fed a mouse that warned a bear that rodeQ
A boy Us men alas wolves mice bears boreR
And yet wolves mice bears children gods and menS
In slow preambulation up and down the shelvesI
Of the universe are seeking who knows except themselvesI
What some escape to some escape if we find Swann'sI
Way better than our own an trudge on at the backT
Of the north wind to to somewhere eastU
Of the sun west of the moon it is because we liveV
By trading another's sorrow for our own another'sI
Impossibilities still unbelieved in for our ownW
I am myself still For a little while forgetX
The world's selves cure that short disease myselfY
And we see bending to us dewy eyed the greatP
CHANGE dear to all things not to themselves endearedZ

Randall Jarrell



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