The Improvisatore Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B CDEF GH CCII JKL C MCNOPF QR E S T GC U RVW X GGFAY Z CCA2 GB2ZC GC2 E GZ D2 A G E2 F2G2H2GGI2LGJ2K2L2M2 E2R CN2 CX GGO2P2Q2R2XFF2JFRO2G RS2GGQ2T2T2F G G CSU2GGV2FL2CCV2FW2N2 JX2RALE2Y2A Z2GF CVA3| Scene A spacious drawing room with music room adjoining | A |
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| Katharine What are the words | B |
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| Eliza Ask our friend the Improvisatore here he comes Kate has a favour | C |
| to ask of you Sir it is that you will repeat the ballad Believe me if | D |
| all those endearing young charms EHC's note that Mr sang so | E |
| sweetly | F |
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| Friend It is in Moore's Irish Melodies but I do not recollect the | G |
| words distinctly The moral of them however I take to be this | H |
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| Love would remain the same if true | C |
| When we were neither young nor new | C |
| Yea and in all within the will that came | I |
| By the same proofs would show itself the same | I |
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| Eliza What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher which my | J |
| mother admired so much It begins with something about two vines so close | K |
| that their tendrils intermingle | L |
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| Friend You mean Charles' speech to Angelina in The Elder Brother | C |
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| We'll live together like two neighbour vines | M |
| Circling our souls and loves in one another | C |
| We'll spring together and we'll bear one fruit | N |
| One joy shall make us smile and one grief mourn | O |
| One age go with us and one hour of death | P |
| Shall close our eyes and one grave make us happy | F |
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| Katharine A precious boon that would go far to reconcile one to old | Q |
| age this love if true But is there any such true love | R |
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| Friend I hope so | E |
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| Katharine But do you believe it | S |
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| Eliza eagerly I am sure he does | T |
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| Friend From a man turned of fifty Katharine I imagine expects a | G |
| less confident answer | C |
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| Katharine A more sincere one perhaps | U |
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| Friend Even though he should have obtained the nick name of | R |
| Improvisatore by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at | V |
| Christmas times | W |
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| Eliza Nay but be serious | X |
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| Friend Serious Doubtless A grave personage of my years giving a | G |
| Love lecture to two young ladies cannot well be otherwise The | G |
| difficulty I suspect would be for them to remain so It will be | F |
| asked whether I am not the elderly gentleman' who sate despairing | A |
| beside a clear stream' with a willow for his wig block | Y |
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| Eliza Say another word and we will call it downright affectation | Z |
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| Katharine No we will be affronted drop a courtesy and ask pardon for | C |
| our presumption in expecting that Mr would waste his sense on two | C |
| insignificant girls | A2 |
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| Friend Well well I will be serious Hem Now then commences the | G |
| discourse Mr Moore's song being the text Love as distinguished | B2 |
| from Friendship on the one hand and from the passion that too often | Z |
| usurps its name on the other | C |
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| Lucius Eliza's brother who had just joined the trio in a whisper to the | G |
| Friend But is not Love the union of both | C2 |
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| Friend aside to Lucius He never loved who thinks so | E |
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| Eliza Brother we don't want you There Mrs H cannot arrange the | G |
| flower vase without you Thank you Mrs Hartman | Z |
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| Lucius I'll have my revenge I know what I will say | D2 |
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| Eliza Off Off Now dear Sir Love you were saying | A |
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| Friend Hush Preaching you mean Eliza | G |
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| Eliza impatiently Pshaw | E2 |
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| Friend Well then I was saying that Love truly such is itself not | F2 |
| the most common thing in the world and that mutual love still less | G2 |
| so But that enduring personal attachment so beautifully delineated | H2 |
| by Erin's sweet melodist and still more touchingly perhaps in the | G |
| well known ballad John Anderson my Jo John ' in addition to a | G |
| depth and constancy of character of no every day occurrence supposes | I2 |
| a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature a constitutional | L |
| communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul a delight in the | G |
| detail of sympathy in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament | J2 |
| within to count as it were the pulses of the life of love But | K2 |
| above all it supposes a soul which even in the pride and summer tide | L2 |
| of life even in the lustihood of health and strength had felt | M2 |
| oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away and which | E2 |
| in all our lovings is the Love | R |
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| Eliza There is something here pointing to her heart that seems to | C |
| understand you but wants the word that would make it understand itself | N2 |
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| Katharine I too seem to feel what you mean Interpret the feeling for | C |
| us | X |
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| Friend I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the | G |
| self for itself which predisposes a generous nature to see in the | G |
| total being of another the supplement and completion of its own | O2 |
| that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved | P2 |
| object modulates not suspends where the heart momently finds and | Q2 |
| finding again seeks on lastly when life's changeful orb has | R2 |
| pass'd the full' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity thus | X |
| brought home and pressed as it were to the very bosom of hourly | F |
| experience it supposes I say a heartfelt reverence for worth not | F2 |
| the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit by | J |
| familiarity by mutual infirmities and even by a feeling of modesty | F |
| which will arise in delicate minds when they are conscious of | R |
| possessing the same or the correspondent excellence in their own | O2 |
| characters In short there must be a mind which while it feels the | G |
| beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own and by right of | R |
| love appropriates it can call Goodness its Playfellow and dares | S2 |
| make sport of time and infirmity while in the person of a | G |
| thousand foldly endeared partner we feel for aged Virtue the | G |
| caressing fondness that belongs to the Innocence of childhood and | Q2 |
| repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been | T2 |
| dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in | T2 |
| feminine loveliness or in manly beauty | F |
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| Eliza What a soothing what an elevating idea | G |
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| Katharine If it be not only an idea | G |
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| Friend At all events these qualities which I have enumerated are | C |
| rarely found united in a single individual How much more rare must it | S |
| be that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world | U2 |
| under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife A | G |
| person may be highly estimable on the whole nay amiable as a | G |
| neighbour friend housemate in short in all the concentric circles | V2 |
| of attachment save only the last and inmost and yet from how many | F |
| causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this Pride | L2 |
| coldness or fastidiousness of nature worldly cares an anxious or | C |
| ambitious disposition a passion for display a sullen temper one or | C |
| the other too often proves the dead fly in the compost of spices' | V2 |
| and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction | F |
| For some mighty good sort of people too there is not seldom a sort | W2 |
| of solemn saturnine or if you will ursine vanity that keeps itself | N2 |
| alive by sucking the paws of its own self importance And as this high | J |
| sense or rather sensation of their own value is for the most part | X2 |
| grounded on negative qualities so they have no better means of | R |
| preserving the same but by negatives that is but not doing or saying | A |
| any thing that might be put down for fond silly or nonsensical | L |
| or to use their own phrase by never forgetting themselves which | E2 |
| some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most | Y2 |
| worthless object they could be employed in remembering | A |
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| Eliza in answer to a whisper from Katharine To a hair He must have | Z2 |
| sate for it himself Save me from such folks But they are out of the | G |
| question | F |
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| Friend True but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too | C |
| general insensibility to a very important truth this namely that | V |
| the MISERY of human life is made up of la | A3 |
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1)
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