An Elective Course Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCCDDEE FFGGHHIIJJ KKLLLLMMNN OOPPLLQQRSLLLL HHLLTTOOLL UUVVLLTTKWEE| LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE | A |
| - | |
| The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek | B |
| Is all my Latin all my Greek | B |
| The only sciences I know | C |
| Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow | C |
| Siberia and Italy | D |
| Lie in her sweet geography | D |
| No scolarship have I but such | E |
| As teaches me to love her much | E |
| - | |
| Why should I strive to read the skies | F |
| Who know the midnight of her eyes | F |
| Why should I go so very far | G |
| To learn what heavenly bodies are | G |
| Not Berenice's starry hair | H |
| With Fanny's tresses can compare | H |
| Not Venus on a cloudless night | I |
| Enslaving Science with her light | I |
| Ever reveals so much as when | J |
| She stares and droops her lids again | J |
| - | |
| If Nature's secrets are forbidden | K |
| To mortals she may keep them hidden | K |
| ons and ons we progressed | L |
| And did not let that break our rest | L |
| Little we cared if Mars o'erhead | L |
| Were or were not inhabited | L |
| Without the aid of Saturn's rings | M |
| Fair girls were wived in those fair springs | M |
| Warm lips met ours and conquered us | N |
| Or ere thou wert Copernicus | N |
| - | |
| Graybeards who wish to bridge the chasm | O |
| 'Twixt man to day and protoplasm | O |
| Who theorize and probe and gape | P |
| And finally evolve an ape | P |
| Yours is a harmless sort of cult | L |
| If you are pleased with the result | L |
| Some folks admit with cynic grace | Q |
| That you have rather proved your case | Q |
| Those dogmatists are so severe | R |
| Enough for me that Fanny's here | S |
| Enough that having survived | L |
| Pre Eveic forms she has arrived | L |
| An illustration the completest | L |
| Of the survival of the sweetest | L |
| - | |
| Linn us aveunt I only care | H |
| To know what flower she wants to wear | H |
| I leave it to the addle pated | L |
| To guess how pinks originated | L |
| As if it mattered The chief thing | T |
| Is that we have them in the Spring | T |
| And Fanny likes them When they come | O |
| I straightaway send and purchase some | O |
| The Origin of Plants go to | L |
| Their proper end I have in view | L |
| - | |
| O loveliest book that ever man | U |
| Looked into since the world began | U |
| Is Woman As I turn those pages | V |
| As fresh as in the primal ages | V |
| As day by day I scan perplext | L |
| The ever subtly changing text | L |
| I feel that I am slowly growing | T |
| To think no other work worth knowing | T |
| And in my copy there is none | K |
| So perfect as the one I own | W |
| I find no thing set down as such | E |
| As teaches me to love it much | E |
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
(1)
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