The Babysitters Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCADAEF AGHIAJK L MNLOAPQRA GAFACACHA SMGTUAVSAe sun flamed straight down that noon on the water off Marblehead | A |
That summer we wore black glasses to hide our eyes | B |
We were always crying in our spare rooms little put upon sisters | C |
In the two huge white handsome houses in Swampscott | A |
When the sweetheart from England appeared with her cream skin and Yardley cosmetics | D |
I had to sleep in the same room with the baby on a too short cot | A |
And the seven year old wouldn't go out unless his jersey stripes | E |
Matched the stripes of his socks | F |
- | |
Or it was richness eleven rooms and a yacht | A |
With a polished mahogany stair to let into the water | G |
And a cabin boy who could decorate cakes in six colored frosting | H |
But I didn't know how to cook and babies depressed me | I |
Nights I wrote in my diary spitefully my fingers red | A |
With triangular scorch marks from ironing tiny ruchings and puffed sleeves | J |
When the sporty wife and her doctor husband went on one of their cruises | K |
They left me a borrowed maid named Ellen 'for protection ' | - |
And a small Dalmation | L |
- | |
In your house the main house you were better off | M |
You had a rose garden and a guest cottage and a model apothecary shop | N |
And a cook and a maid and knew about the key to the bourbon | L |
I remember you playing 'Ja Da' in a pink piqu dress | O |
On the game room piano when the 'big people' were out | A |
And the maid smoked and shot pool under a green shaded lamp | P |
The cook had one walleye and couldn't sleep she was so nervous | Q |
On trial from Ireland she burned batch after batch of cookies | R |
Till she was fired | A |
- | |
O what has come over us my sister | G |
On that day off the two of us cried so hard to get | A |
We lifted a sugared ham and a pineapple from the grownups' icebox | F |
And rented an old green boat I rowed You read | A |
Aloud cross legged on the stern seat from the Generation of Vipers | C |
So we bobbed out to the island It was deserted | A |
A gallery of creaking porches and still interiors | C |
Stopped and awful as a photograph of somebody laughing | H |
But ten years dead | A |
- | |
The bold gulls dove as if they owned it all | S |
We picked up sticks of driftwood and beat them off | M |
Then stepped down the steep beach shelf and into the water | G |
We kicked and talked The thick salt kept us up | T |
I see us floating there yet inseparable two cork dolls | U |
What keyhole have we slipped through what door has shut | A |
The shadows of the grasses inched round like hands of a clock | V |
And from our opposite continents we wave and call | S |
Everything has happened | A |
Sylvia Plath
(1)
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