The Low-down White Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG| This is the pay day up at the mines when the bearded brutes come down | A |
| There's money to burn in the streets to night so I've sent my klooch to town | A |
| With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown | A |
| - | |
| And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles one two three | B |
| One for herself to drown her shame and two big bottles for me | B |
| To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be | B |
| - | |
| To make me forget the brand of the dog as I crouch in this hideous place | C |
| To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face | C |
| Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace | C |
| - | |
| Oh I have guarded my secret well And who would dream as I speak | D |
| In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung 'mid the ranch house filth and reek | D |
| I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek | D |
| - | |
| Yet I was a senior prizeman once and the pride of a college eight | E |
| Called to the bar my friends were true but they could not keep me straight | E |
| Then came the divorce and I went abroad and died on the River Plate | E |
| - | |
| But I'm not dead yet though with half a lung there isn't time to spare | F |
| And I hope that the year will see me out and thank God no one will care | F |
| Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair | F |
| - | |
| She will come with the dawn and the dawn is near I can see its evil glow | G |
| Like a corpse light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe | G |
| And yonder she comes by the bleak bull pines swift staggering through the snow | G |
Robert William Service
(1)
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