The Bough Of Nonsense: An Idyll Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCC DEDEFF AGAGAA HIHIAA JKJKAA AAAAAA| Back from the Somme two Fusiliers | A |
| Limped painfully home the elder said | B |
| S Robert I've lived three thousand years | A |
| This Summer and I'm nine parts dead | B |
| R But if that's truly so I cried quick now | C |
| Through these great oaks and see the famous bough | C |
| - | |
| Where once a nonsense built her nest | D |
| With skulls and flowers and all things queer | E |
| In an old boot with patient breast | D |
| Hatching three eggs and the next year | E |
| S Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath and rid | F |
| Wales of drink melancholy and psalms she did | F |
| - | |
| Said he Before this quaint mood fails | A |
| We'll sit and weave a nonsense hymn | G |
| R Hanging it up with monkey tails | A |
| In a deep grove all hushed and dim | G |
| S To glorious yellow bunched banana trees | A |
| R Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese | A |
| - | |
| S Which men are wise beyond their time | H |
| And worship nonsense no one more | I |
| R Hard by among old quince and lime | H |
| They've built a temple with no floor | I |
| S And whosoever worships in that place | A |
| He disappears from sight and leaves no trace | A |
| - | |
| R Once the Galatians built a fane | J |
| To Sense what duller God than that | K |
| S But the first day of autumn rain | J |
| The roof fell in and crushed them flat | K |
| R Ay for a roof of subtlest logic falls | A |
| When nonsense is foundation for the walls | A |
| - | |
| - | |
| I tell him old Galatian tales | A |
| He caps them in quick Portuguese | A |
| While phantom creatures with green scales | A |
| Scramble and roll among the trees | A |
| The hymn swells on a bough above us sings | A |
| A row of bright pink birds flapping their wings | A |
Robert Graves
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