Scum O' The Earth Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCD CBCBDBCEEDED A FFGGFFHFHIJIJFDKKD A LMLMMMLNNMMOOMPPPDD CDQCFQFQDQQRRQRQQ DDQD F RMRMMMSSMQQMMMMMMQQ MMRRDD| I | A |
| - | |
| At the gate of the West I stand | B |
| On the isle where the nations throng | C |
| We call them scum o' the earth | D |
| - | |
| Stay are we doing you wrong | C |
| Young fellow from Socrates' land | B |
| You like a Hermes so lissome and strong | C |
| Fresh from the Master Praxiteles' hand | B |
| So you're of Spartan birth | D |
| Descended perhaps from one of the band | B |
| Deathless in story and song | C |
| Who combed their long hair at Thermopyl 's pass | E |
| Ah I forget the straits alas | E |
| More tragic than theirs more compassion worth | D |
| That have doomed you to march in our immigrant class | E |
| Where you're nothing but scum o' the earth | D |
| - | |
| II | A |
| - | |
| You Pole with the child on your knee | F |
| What dower bring you to the land of the free | F |
| Hark does she croon | G |
| That sad little tune | G |
| That Chopin once found on his Polish lea | F |
| And mounted in gold for you and for me | F |
| Now a ragged young fiddler answers | H |
| In wild Czech melody | F |
| That Dvorak took whole from the dancers | H |
| And the heavy faces bloom | I |
| In the wonderful Slavic way | J |
| The little dull eyes the brows a gloom | I |
| Suddenly dawn like the day | J |
| While watching these folk and their mystery | F |
| I forget that they're nothing worth | D |
| That Bohemians Slovaks Croatians | K |
| And men of all Slavic nations | K |
| Are polacks and scum o' the earth | D |
| - | |
| III | A |
| - | |
| Genoese boy of the level brow | L |
| Lad of the lustrous dreamy eyes | M |
| A stare at Manhattan's pinnacles now | L |
| In the first sweet shock of a hushed surprise | M |
| Within your far rapt seer's eyes | M |
| I catch the glow of the wild surmise | M |
| That played on the Santa Maria's prow | L |
| In that still gray dawn | N |
| Four centuries gone | N |
| When a world from the wave began to rise | M |
| Oh it's hard to foretell what high emprise | M |
| Is the goal that gleams | O |
| When Italy's dreams | O |
| Spread wing and sweep into the skies | M |
| C sar dreamed him a world ruled well | P |
| Dante dreamed Heaven out of Hell | P |
| Angelo brought us there to dwell | P |
| And you are you of a different birth | D |
| You're only a dago and scum o' the earth | D |
| - | |
| IV | - |
| - | |
| Stay are we doing you wrong | C |
| Calling you scum o' the earth | D |
| Man of the sorrow bowed head | Q |
| Of the features tender yet strong | C |
| Man of the eyes full of wisdom and mystery | F |
| Mingled with patience and dread | Q |
| Have not I known you in history | F |
| Sorrow bowed head | Q |
| Were you the poet king worth | D |
| Treasures of Ophir unpriced | Q |
| Were you the prophet perchance whose art | Q |
| Foretold how the rabble would mock | R |
| That shepherd of spirits erelong | R |
| Who should carry the lambs on his heart | Q |
| And tenderly feed his flock | R |
| Man lift that sorrow bowed head | Q |
| Lo 't is the face of the Christ | Q |
| - | |
| The vision dies at its birth | D |
| You're merely a butt for our mirth | D |
| You're a sheeny and therefore despised | Q |
| And rejected as scum o' the earth | D |
| - | |
| V | F |
| - | |
| Countrymen bend and invoke | R |
| Mercy for us blasphemers | M |
| For that we spat on these marvelous folk | R |
| Nations of darers and dreamers | M |
| Scions of singers and seers | M |
| Our peers and more than our peers | M |
| Rabble and refuse we name them | S |
| And scum o' the earth to shame them | S |
| Mercy for us of the few young years | M |
| Of the culture so callow and crude | Q |
| Of the hands so grasping and rude | Q |
| The lips so ready for sneers | M |
| At the sons of our ancient more than peers | M |
| Mercy for us who dare despise | M |
| Men in whose loins our Homer lies | M |
| Mothers of men who shall bring to us | M |
| The glory of Titian the grandeur of Huss | M |
| Children in whose frail arms shall rest | Q |
| Prophets and singers and saints of the West | Q |
| - | |
| Newcomers all from the eastern seas | M |
| Help us incarnate dreams like these | M |
| Forget and forgive that we did you wrong | R |
| Help us to father a nation strong | R |
| In the comradeship of an equal birth | D |
| In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth | D |
Robert Haven Schauffler
(1)
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