The Wee Shop Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDED AFAFGHGH IJIJKLKL KKKKAMAM ININKKKK KKKKGOGO APAPKQKRShe risked her all they told me bravely sinking | A |
The pinched economies of thirty years | B |
And there the little shop was meek and shrinking | A |
The sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears | B |
Ere it was opened I would see them in it | C |
The gray haired dame the daughter with her crutch | D |
So fond so happy hoarding every minute | E |
Like artists for the final tender touch | D |
- | |
The opening day I'm sure that to their seeming | A |
Was never shop so wonderful as theirs | F |
With pyramids of jam jars rubbed to gleaming | A |
Such vivid cans of peaches prunes and pears | F |
And chocolate and biscuits in glass cases | G |
And bon bon bottles many hued and bright | H |
Yet nothing half so radiant as their faces | G |
Their eyes of hope excitement and delight | H |
- | |
I entered how they waited all a flutter | I |
How awkwardly they weighed my acid drops | J |
And then with all the thanks a tongue could utter | I |
They bowed me from the kindliest of shops | J |
I'm sure that night their customers they numbered | K |
Discussed them all in happy breathless speech | L |
And though quite worn and weary ere they slumbered | K |
Sent heavenward a little prayer for each | L |
- | |
And so I watched with interest redoubled | K |
That little shop spent in it all I had | K |
And when I saw it empty I was troubled | K |
And when I saw them busy I was glad | K |
And when I dared to ask how things were going | A |
They told me with a fine and gallant smile | M |
Not badly slow at first There's never knowing | A |
'Twill surely pick up in a little while | M |
- | |
I'd often see them through the winter weather | I |
Behind the shutters by a light's faint speck | N |
Poring o'er books their faces close together | I |
The lame girl's arm around her mother's neck | N |
They dressed their windows not one time but twenty | K |
Each change more pinched more desperately neat | K |
Alas I wondered if behind that plenty | K |
The two who owned it had enough to eat | K |
- | |
Ah who would dare to sing of tea and coffee | K |
The sadness of a stock unsold and dead | K |
The petty tragedy of melting toffee | K |
The sordid pathos of stale gingerbread | K |
Ignoble themes And yet those haggard faces | G |
Within that little shop Oh here I say | O |
One does not need to look in lofty places | G |
For tragic themes they're round us every day | O |
- | |
And so I saw their agony their fighting | A |
Their eyes of fear their heartbreak their despair | P |
And there the little shop is black and blighting | A |
And all the world goes by and does not care | P |
They say she sought her old employer's pity | K |
Content to take the pittance he would give | Q |
The lame girl yes she's working in the city | K |
She coughs a lot she hasn't long to live | R |
Robert Service
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Wee Shop poem by Robert Service
Best Poems of Robert Service