Morality. A Familiar Epistle Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCDEEBBBBFFGGDCHHII JJKKLLMMNN OOPPQQ RRIIBBSSTTPPBB KKPPUUJJ HHMMVVWWXXYYZZA2A2KK B2C2 D2D2E2E2F2F2QQA2A2LL G2G2MM| ADDRESSED TO J ATKINSON ESQ M R I A | A |
| - | |
| - | |
| Though long at school and college dozing | B |
| O'er books of verse and books of prosing | B |
| And copying from their moral pages | C |
| Fine recipes for making sages | D |
| Though long with' those divines at school | E |
| Who think to make us good by rule | E |
| Who in methodic forms advancing | B |
| Teaching morality like dancing | B |
| Tell us for Heaven or money's sake | B |
| What steps we are through life to take | B |
| Though thus my friend so long employed | F |
| With so much midnight oil destroyed | F |
| I must confess my searches past | G |
| I've only learned to doubt at last | G |
| I find the doctors and the sages | D |
| Have differed in all climes and ages | C |
| And two in fifty scarce agree | H |
| On what is pure morality | H |
| 'Tis like the rainbow's shifting zone | I |
| And every vision makes its own | I |
| - | |
| The doctors of the Porch advise | J |
| As modes of being great and wise | J |
| That we should cease to own or know | K |
| The luxuries that from feeling flow | K |
| Reason alone must claim direction | L |
| And Apathy's the soul's perfection | L |
| Like a dull lake the heart must lie | M |
| Nor passion's gale nor pleasure's sigh | M |
| Though Heaven the breeze the breath supplied | N |
| Must curl the wave or swell the tide | N |
| - | |
| Such was the rigid Zeno's plan | O |
| To form his philosophic man | O |
| Such were the modes he taught mankind | P |
| To weed the garden of the mind | P |
| They tore from thence some weeds 'tis true | Q |
| But all the flowers were ravaged too | Q |
| - | |
| Now listen to the wily strains | R |
| Which on Cyrene's sandy plains | R |
| When Pleasure nymph with loosened zone | I |
| Usurped the philosophic throne | I |
| Hear what the courtly sage's tongue | B |
| To his surrounding pupils sung | B |
| Pleasure's the only noble end | S |
| To which all human powers should tend | S |
| And Virtue gives her heavenly lore | T |
| But to make Pleasure please us more | T |
| Wisdom and she were both designed | P |
| To make the senses more refined | P |
| That man might revel free from cloying | B |
| Then most a sage when most enjoying | B |
| - | |
| Is this morality Oh no | K |
| Even I a wiser path could show | K |
| The flower within this vase confined | P |
| The pure the unfading flower of mind | P |
| Must not throw all its sweets away | U |
| Upon a mortal mould of clay | U |
| No no its richest breath should rise | J |
| In virtue's incense to the skies | J |
| - | |
| But thus it is all sects we see | H |
| Have watchwords of morality | H |
| Some cry out Venus others Jove | M |
| Here 'tis Religion there 'tis Love | M |
| But while they thus so widely wander | V |
| While mystics dream and doctors ponder | V |
| And some in dialectics firm | W |
| Seek virtue in a middle term | W |
| While thus they strive in Heaven's defiance | X |
| To chain morality with science | X |
| The plain good man whose action teach | Y |
| More virtue than a sect can preach | Y |
| Pursues his course unsagely blest | Z |
| His tutor whispering in his breast | Z |
| Nor could he act a purer part | A2 |
| Though he had Tully all by heart | A2 |
| And when he drops the tear on woe | K |
| He little knows or cares to know | K |
| That Epictetus blamed that tear | B2 |
| By Heaven approved to virtue dear | C2 |
| - | |
| Oh when I've seen the morning beam | D2 |
| Floating within the dimpled stream | D2 |
| While Nature wakening from the night | E2 |
| Has just put on her robes of light | E2 |
| Have I with cold optician's gaze | F2 |
| Explored the doctrine of those rays | F2 |
| No pedants I have left to you | Q |
| Nicely to separate hue from hue | Q |
| Go give that moment up to art | A2 |
| When Heaven and nature claim the heart | A2 |
| And dull to all their best attraction | L |
| Go measure angles of refraction | L |
| While I in feeling's sweet romance | G2 |
| Look on each daybeam as a glance | G2 |
| From the great eye of Him above | M |
| Wakening his world with looks of love | M |
Thomas Moore
(1)
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