Longevity Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DDEEFF DDGGDD HHIIFF HJKKLLEE EEMMEENO PPQQRR SSEE| I watched one day a parrot grey 'twas in a barber shop | A |
| Cuckold he cried until I sighed You feathered devil stop | A |
| Then balefully he looked at me and slid along his perch | B |
| With sneering eye that seemed to pry me very soul to search | B |
| So fierce so bold so grim so cold so agate was his stare | C |
| And then that bird I thought I heard this sentiment declare | C |
| - | |
| As it appears a hundred years a parrot may survive | D |
| When you are gone I'll sit upon this perch and be alive | D |
| In this same spot I'll drop my crot and crack my sunflower seeds | E |
| And cackle loud when in a shroud you rot beneath the weeds | E |
| I'll carry on when carrion you lie beneath the yew | F |
| With claw and beak my grub I'll seek when grubs are seeking you | F |
| - | |
| Foul fowl said I don't prophesy I'll jolly well contrive | D |
| That when I rot in bone yard lot you cease to be alive | D |
| So I bespoke that barber bloke Joe here's a five pound note | G |
| It's crisp and new and yours if you will slice that parrot's throat | G |
| In part says he I must agree for poor I be in pelf | D |
| With right good will I'll take your bill but cut his throat yourself | D |
| - | |
| So it occurred I took that bird to my ancestral hall | H |
| And there he sat and sniggered at the portraits on the wall | H |
| I sought to cut his wind pipe but he gave me such a peck | I |
| So cross was I I swore I'd try to wring his blasted neck | I |
| When shrill he cried It's parrotcide what you propose to do | F |
| For every time you make a rhyme you're just a parrot too | F |
| - | |
| Said I It's true I bow to you Poor parrots are we all | H |
| And now I sense with reverence the wisdom of his poll | J |
| For every time I want a rhyme he seems to find the word | K |
| In any doubt he helps me out a most amazing bird | K |
| This line that lies before your eyes he helped me to indite | L |
| I sling the ink but often think it's he who ought to write | L |
| It's he who should in mystic mood concoct poetic screeds | E |
| And I who ought to drop my crot and crackle sunflower seeds | E |
| - | |
| A parrot nears a hundred years or so the legend goes | E |
| So were I he this century I might see to its close | E |
| Then I might swing within my ring while revolutions roar | M |
| And watch a world to ruin hurled and find it all a bore | M |
| As upside down I cling and clown I might with parrot eyes | E |
| Blink blandly when excited men are moulding Paradise | E |
| New Christs might die while grimly I would croak and carry on | N |
| Till gnarled and old I should behold the year TWO THOUSAND dawn | O |
| - | |
| But what a fate How I should hate upon my perch to sit | P |
| And nothing do to make anew a world for angels fit | P |
| No better far though feeble are my lyric notes and flat | Q |
| Be dead and done than anyone who lives a life like that | Q |
| Though critic scarred a humble bard I feel I'd rather be | R |
| Than flap and flit and shriek and spit through all a century | R |
| - | |
| So feathered friend until the end you may divide my den | S |
| And make a mess which more or less I clean up now and then | S |
| But I prefer the doom to share of dead and gone compeers | E |
| Than parrot be and live to see ten times a hundred years | E |
Robert William Service
(1)
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