Poseidon's Low Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CDEE FFGG HHII JJKK LLMM KKNNWhen the robust and Brass bound Man commissioned first for sea | A |
His fragile raft Poseidon laughed and Mariner said he | A |
Behold a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine | B |
That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine | B |
- | |
Let Zeus adjudge your landward kin whose votive meal and sale | C |
At easy cheated altars win oblivion for the fault | D |
But you the unhoodwinked wave shall test the immediate gulf condemn | E |
Except ye owe the Fates a jest be slow to jest with them | E |
- | |
Ye shall not clear by Greekly speech nor cozen from your path | F |
The twinkling shoal the leeward beach or Hadria's white lipped wrath | F |
Nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud avenging hosts | G |
Nor make at all or all make good your bulwarks and your boasts | G |
- | |
Now and henceforward serve unshod through wet and wakeful shifts | H |
A present and oppressive God but take to aid my gifts | H |
The wide and windward opening eye the large and lavish hand | I |
The soul that cannot tell a lie except upon the land | I |
- | |
In dromond and in catafract wet wakeful windward eyed | J |
He kept Poseidon's Law intact his ship and freight beside | J |
But once discharged the dromond's hold the bireme beached once more | K |
Splendaciously mendacious rolled the Brass bound Man ashore | K |
- | |
The thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high | L |
And where three hundred blades bit white the twin propellers ply | L |
The God that hailed the keel that sailed are changed beyond recall | M |
But the robust and Brass bound Man he is not changed at all | M |
- | |
From Punt returned from Phormio's Fleet from Javan and Gadire | K |
He strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire | K |
And moist with much Falernian or smoked Massilian juice | N |
Revenges there the Brass bound Man his long enforced truce | N |
Rudyard Kipling
(1)
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