The Wee Shop Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDED AFAFGHGH IJIJKLKL KKKKAMAM ININKKKK KKKKGOGO APAPKQKR| She 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 William Service
(1)
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