Hoops Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: A B CDEFGHIJKGLMNGOPQRST UVWXYZA2B2C2D2E2F2YG 2H2I2J2K2L2A2M2MN2N2 O2P2Q2R2VS2N2T2U2V2W 2X2N2Y2Z2GA3B3A2C3D3 E3F3D2G3B2H3R2J2N2GN 2I3B2N2T2 M J3K3 B L3 M TM3 B N3N2O3V M P3MA2Q3 B TE3R3N2N2S3J3E3N2T2T 3Q2N2 M U3V3C2W3V3V3V3X3N2 B Y3MH2J3N2R3G2H2 M MZ3H3N2A4B4MG2A2SMC4 N B TMMG2C2TD4MMSNA2TG2 M E4L B L M N2 B TNE3H2MLF4N2D4N2P2N2 I2G4N2H4TMN2G2J3N2A2 T2J3N2TH2CT2F4I4T2J4 K4E3T2N2J3G2MLTN2TA2 O2N2G2N2A2ST2B2N2A2T L4L3TN2N2N2N2M4N4N2O 4G2MN2N2K3P2G2 M P4SB3O2 B N2Q4N2MN2E4MN2N2R4N2 Y3S4Q2T2U3T2P2N2T4U4 IG2MG4V4N2T2N2TH2T W4T2O3X4C2M2T2I2G2MN 2Y4I3T2MZ4Q4N2NT2 G2 H2 B I4N2N2G2MH G2 HH2G2G2G2 B N2N2N2L3M4H4HB3N2N2M 2N2N2O4G2M2Z3T4MDY3O 2G2JN2T2DN2N2T2N2T2D MN2TN2DN2N2DN2N2E4J3 DG4 D P4 D B DP4DMN2

Scene The big tent stable of a travelling circus On the ground near the entrance GENTLEMAN JOHN stableman and general odd job man lies smoking beside MERRY ANDREW the clown GENTLEMAN JOHN is a little hunched man with a sensitive face and dreamy eyes MERRY ANDREW who is resting between the afternoon and evening performances with his clown's hat lying beside him wears a crimson wig and a baggy suit of orange coloured cotton patterned with purple cats His face is chalked dead white and painted with a set grin so that it is impossible to see what manner of man he is In the back ground are camels and elephants feeding dimly visible in the steamy dusk of the tent	A
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Gentleman John	B
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And then consider camels only think	C
Of camels long enough and you'ld go mad	D
With all their humps and lumps their knobbly knees	E
Splay feet and straddle legs their sagging necks	F
Flat flanks and scraggy tails and monstrous teeth	G
I've not forgotten the first fiend I met	H
'Twas in a lane in Smyrna just a ditch	I
Between the shuttered houses and so narrow	J
The brute's bulk blocked the road the huge green stack	K
Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath	G
Brushing the yellow walls on either hand	L
And shutting out the strip of burning blue	M
And I'd to face that vicious bobbing head	N
With evil eyes slack lips and nightmare teeth	G
And duck beneath the snaky squirming neck	O
Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads	P
That seemed to wriggle every way at once	Q
As though it were a hydra Allah's beard	R
But I was scared and nearly turned and ran	S
I felt that muzzle take me by the scruff	T
And heard those murderous teeth crunching my spine	U
Before I stooped though I dodged safely under	V
I've always been afraid of ugliness	W
I'm such a toad myself I hate all toads	X
And the camel is the ugliest toad of all	Y
To my mind and it's just my devil's luck	Z
I've come to this to be a camel's lackey	A2
To fetch and carry for original sin	B2
For sure enough the camel's old evil incarnate	C2
Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil	D2
No eye's more evil than a camel's eye	E2
The elephant is quite a comely brute	F2
Compared with Satan camel trunk and all	Y
His floppy ears and his inconsequent tail	G2
He's stolid but at least a gentleman	H2
It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him	I2
And bring his shaving water He's a lord	J2
Only the bluest blood that has come down	K2
Through generations from the mastodon	L2
Could carry off that tail with dignity	A2
That tail and trunk He cannot look absurd	M2
For all the monkey tricks you put him through	M
Your paper hoops and popguns He just makes	N2
His masters look ridiculous when his pomp's	N2
Butchered to make a bumpkin's holiday	O2
He's dignity itself and proper pride	P2
That stands serenely in a circus world	Q2
Of mountebanks and monkeys He has weight	R2
Behind him ons of primeval power	V
Have shaped that pillared bulk and he stands sure	S2
Solid substantial on the world's foundations	N2
And he has form form that's too big a thing	T2
To be called beauty Once long since I thought	U2
To be a poet and shape words and mould	V2
A poem like an elephant huge sublime	W2
To front oblivion and because I failed	X2
And all my rhymes were gawky shambling camels	N2
Or else obscene blue buttocked apes I'm doomed	Y2
To lackey it for things such as I've made	Z2
Till one of them crunches my backbone with his teeth	G
Or knocks my wind out with a forthright kick	A3
Clean in the midriff crumpling up in death	B3
The hunched and stunted body that was me	A2
John the apostle of the Perfect Form	C3
Jerusalem I'm talking like a book	D3
As you would say and a bad book at that	E3
A maundering kiss mammy book The Hunch back's End	F3
Or The Camel Keeper's Reward would be its title	D2
I froth and bubble like a new broached cask	G3
No wonder you look glum for all your grin	B2
What makes you mope You've naught to growse about	H3
You've got no hump Your body's brave and straight	R2
So shapely even that you can afford	J2
To trick it in fantastic shapelessness	N2
Knowing that there's a clean limbed man beneath	G
Preposterous pantaloons and purple cats	N2
I would have been a poet if I could	I3
But better than shaping poems 'twould have been	B2
To have had a comely body and clean limbs	N2
Obedient to my bidding	T2
	-
	-
Merry Andrew	M
	-
I missed a hoop	J3
This afternoon	K3
	-
	-
Gentleman John	B
	-
You missed a hoop You mean	L3
	-
	-
Merry Andrew	M
	-
That I am done used up scrapped on the shelf	T
Out of the running only that no more	M3
	-
	-
Gentleman John	B
	-
Well I've been missing hoops my whole life long	N3
Though when I come to think of it perhaps	N2
There's little consolation to be chewed	O3
From crumbs that I can offer	V
	-
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Merry Andrew	M
	-
I've not missed	P3
A hoop since I was six I'm forty two	M
This is the first time that my body's failed me	A2
But 'twill not be the last And	Q3
	-
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Gentleman John	B
	-
Such is life	T
You're going to say You see I've got it pat	E3
Your jaded wheeze Lord what a wit I'ld make	R3
If I'd a set grin painted on my face	N2
And such is life I'ld say a hundred times	N2
And each time set the world aroar afresh	S3
At my original humour Missed a hoop	J3
Why man alive you've naught to grumble at	E3
I've boggled every hoop since I was six	N2
I'm fifty five and I've run round a ring	T2
Would make this potty circus seem a pinhole	T3
I wasn't born to sawdust I'd the world	Q2
For circus	N2
	-
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Merry Andrew	M
	-
It's no time for crowing now	U3
I know a gentleman and take on trust	V3
The silver spoon and all My teeth were cut	C2
Upon a horseshoe and I wasn't born	W3
To purple and fine linen but to sawdust	V3
To sawdust as you say brought up on sawdust	V3
I've had to make my daily bread of sawdust	V3
Ay and my children's children's that's the rub	X3
As Shakespeare says	N2
	-
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Gentleman John	B
	-
Ah there you go again	Y3
What a rare wit to set the ring aroar	M
As Shakespeare says Crowing A gentleman	H2
Man didn't you say you'd never missed a hoop	J3
It's only gentlemen who miss no hoops	N2
Clean livers easy lords of life who take	R3
Each obstacle at a leap who never fail	G2
You are the gentleman	H2
	-
	-
Merry Andrew	M
	-
Now don't you try	M
Being funny at my expense or you'll soon find	Z3
I'm not quite done for yet not quite snuffed out	H3
There's still a spark of life You may have words	N2
But I've a fist will be a match for them	A4
Words slaver feebly from a broken jaw	B4
I've always lived straight as a man must do	M
In my profession if he'ld keep in fettle	G2
But I'm no gentleman for I fail to see	A2
There's any sport in baiting a poor man	S
Because he's losing grip at forty two	M
And sees his livelihood slipping from his grasp	C4
Ay and his children's bread	N
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	-
Gentleman John	B
	-
Why man alive	T
Who's baiting you This winded broken cur	M
That limps through life to bait a bull like you	M
You don't want pity man The beaten bull	G2
Even when the dogs are tearing at his gullet	C2
Turns no eye up for pity I myself	T
Crippled and hunched and twisted as I am	D4
Would make a brave fend to stand up to you	M
Until you swallowed your words if you should slobber	M
Your pity over me A bull Nay man	S
You're nothing but a bear with a sore head	N
A bee has stung you you who've lived on honey	A2
Sawdust forsooth You've had the sweet of life	T
You've munched the honeycomb till	G2
	-
	-
Merry Andrew	M
	-
Ay talk's cheap	E4
But you've no children You don't understand	L
	-
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Gentleman John	B
	-
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I have no children I don't understand	L
	-
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Merry Andrew	M
	-
It's children make the difference	N2
	-
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Gentleman John	B
	-
Man alive	T
Alive and kicking though you're shamming dead	N
You've hit the truth at last It's that just that	E3
Makes all the difference If you hadn't children	H2
I'ld find it in my heart to pity you	M
Granted you'ld let me I don't understand	L
I've seen you stripped I've seen your children stripped	F4
You've never seen me naked but you can guess	N2
The misstitched gnarled and crooked thing I am	D4
Now do you understand I may have words	N2
But you man do you never burn with pride	P2
That you've begotten those six limber bodies	N2
Firm flesh and supple sinew and lithe limb	I2
Six nimble lads each like young Absalom	G4
With red blood running lively in his veins	N2
Bone of your bone your very flesh and blood	H4
It's you don't understand God what I'ld give	T
This moment to be you just as you are	M
Preposterous pantaloons and purple cats	N2
And painted leer and crimson curls and all	G2
To be you now with only one missed hoop	J3
If I'd six clean limbed children of my loins	N2
Born of the ecstasy of life within me	A2
To keep it quick and valiant in the ring	T2
When I but I Man man you've missed a hoop	J3
But they'll take every hoop like blooded colts	N2
And 'twill be you in them that leaps through life	T
And in their children and their children's children	H2
God doesn't it make you hold your breath to think	C
There'll always be an Andrew in the ring	T2
The very spit and image of you stripped	F4
While life's old circus lasts And I at least	I4
There is no twisted thing of my begetting	T2
To keep my shame alive and that's the most	J4
That I've to pride myself upon But God	K4
I'm proud ay proud as Lucifer of that	E3
Think what it means with all the urge and sting	T2
When such a lust of life runs in the veins	N2
You with your six sons and your one missed hoop	J3
Put that thought in your pipe and smoke it Well	G2
And how d'you like the flavour Something bitter	M
And burns the tongue a trifle That's the brand	L
That I must smoke while I've the breath to puff	T
Pause	N2
I've always worshipped the body all my life	T
The body quick with the perfect health which is beauty	A2
Lively lissom alert and taking its way	O2
Through the world with the easy gait of the early gods	N2
The only moments I've lived my life to the full	G2
And that live again in remembrance unfaded are those	N2
When I've seen life compact in some perfect body	A2
The living God made manifest in man	S
A diver in the Mediterranean resting	T2
With sleeked black hair and glistening salt tanned skin	B2
Gripping the quivering gunwale with tense hands	N2
His torso lifted out of the peacock sea	A2
Like Neptune carved in amber come to life	T
A stark Egyptian on the Nile's edge poised	L4
Like a bronze Osiris against the lush rank green	L3
A fisherman dancing reels on New Year's Eve	T
In a hall of shadowy rafters and flickering lights	N2
At St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast to the skirl of the pipes	N2
The lift of the wave in his heels the sea in his veins	N2
A Cherokee Indian as though he were one with his horse	N2
His coppery shoulders agleam his feathers aflame	M4
With the last of the sun descending a gulch in Alaska	N4
A brawny Cleveland puddler stripped to the loins	N2
On the cauldron's brink stirring the molten iron	O4
In the white hot glow a man of white hot metal	G2
A Cornish ploughboy driving an easy share	M
Through the grey light soil of a headland against a sea	N2
Of sapphire gay in his new white corduroys	N2
Blue eyed dark haired and whistling a careless tune	K3
Jack Johnson stripped for the ring in his swarthy pride	P2
Of sleek and rippling muscle	G2
	-
	-
Merry Andrew	M
	-
Jack's the boy	P4
Ay he's the proper figure of a man	S
But he'll grow fat and flabby and scant of breath	B3
He'll miss his hoop some day	O2
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Gentleman John	B
	-
But what are words	N2
To shape the joy of form The Greeks did best	Q4
To cut in marble or to cast in bronze	N2
Their ecstasy of living I remember	M
A marvellous Hermes that I saw in Athens	N2
Fished from the very bottom of the deep	E4
Where he had lain two thousand years or more	M
Wrecked with a galleyful of Roman pirates	N2
Among the white bones of his plunderers	N2
Whose flesh had fed the fishes as they sank	R4
Serene in cold imperishable beauty	N2
Biding his time till he should rise again	Y3
Exultant from the wave for all men's worship	S4
The morning spring of life the youth of the world	Q2
Shaped in sea coloured bronze for everlasting	T2
Ay the Greeks knew but men have forgotten now	U3
Not easily do we meet beauty walking	T2
The world to day in all the body's pride	P2
That's why I'm here a stable boy to camels	N2
For in the circus ring there's more delight	T4
Of seemly bodies goodly in sheer health	U4
Bodies trained and tuned to the perfect pitch	I
Eager blithe debonair from head to heel	G2
Aglow and alive in every pulse than elsewhere	M
In this machine ridden land of grimy glum	G4
Round shouldered coughing mechanics Once I lived	V4
In London in a slum called Paradise	N2
Sickened to see the greasy pavements crawling	T2
With puny flabby babies thick as maggots	N2
Poor brats I'ld soon go mad if I'd to live	T
In London with its stunted men and women	H2
But little better to look on than myself	T
	-
Yet there's an island where the men keep fit	W4
St Kilda's a stark fastness of high crag	T2
They must keep fit or famish their main food	O3
The Solan goose and it's a chancy job	X4
To swing down a sheer face of slippery granite	C2
And drop a noose over the sentinel bird	M2
Ere he can squawk to rouse the sleeping flock	T2
They must keep fit their bodies taut and trim	I2
To have the nerve and they're like tempered steel	G2
Suppled and fined But even they've grown slacker	M
Through traffic with the mainland in these days	N2
A hundred years ago the custom held	Y4
That none should take a wife till he had stood	I3
His left heel on the dizziest point of crag	T2
His right leg and both arms stretched in mid air	M
Above the sea three hundred feet to drop	Z4
To death if he should fail a Spartan test	Q4
But any man who could have failed would scarce	N2
Have earned his livelihood or his children's bread	N
On that bleak rock	T2
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Merry Andrew drowsily	G2
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Ay children that's it children	H2
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Gentleman John	B
	-
St Kilda's children had a chance at least	I4
With none begotten idly of weakling fathers	N2
A Spartan test for fatherhood Should they miss	N2
Their hoop 'twas death and childless You have still	G2
Six lives to take unending hoops for you	M
And you yourself are not done yet	H
	-
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Merry Andrew more drowsily	G2
	-
Not yet	H
And there's much comfort in the thought of children	H2
They're bonnie boys enough and should do well	G2
If I can but keep going a little while	G2
A little longer till	G2
	-
	-
Gentleman John	B
	-
Six strapping sons	N2
And I have naught but camels	N2
Pause	N2
Yet I've seen	L3
A vision in this stable that puts to shame	M4
Each ecstasy of mortal flesh and blood	H4
That's been my eyes' delight I never breathed
A word of it to man or woman yet	H
I couldn't whisper it now to you if you looked
Like any human thing this side of death	B3
'Twas on the night I stumbled on the circus	N2
I'd wandered all day lost among the fells	N2
Over snow smothered hills through blinding blizzard	M2
Whipped by a wind that seemed to strip and skin me	N2
Till I was one numb ache of sodden ice	N2
Quite done and drunk with cold I'ld soon have dropped
Dead in a ditch when suddenly a lantern	O4
Dazzled my eyes I smelt a queer warm smell	G2
And felt a hot puff in my face and blundered	M2
Out of the flurry of snow and raking wind	Z3
Dizzily into a glowing Arabian night	T4
Of elephants and camels having supper	M
I thought that I'd gone mad stark staring mad	D
But I was much too sleepy to mind just then	Y3
Dropped dead asleep upon a truss of hay	O2
And lay a log till well I cannot tell	G2
How long I lay unconscious I but know	J
I slept and wakened and that 'twas no dream
I heard a rustle in the hay beside me	N2
And opening sleepy eyes scarce marvelling	T2
I saw her standing naked in the lamplight	D
Beneath the huge tent's cavernous canopy	N2
Against the throng of elephants and camels	N2
That champed unwondering in the golden dusk	T2
Moon white Diana mettled Artemis	N2
Her body quick and tense as her own bowstring	T2
Her spirit an arrow barbed and strung for flight	D
White snowflakes melting on her night black hair	M
And on her glistening breasts and supple thighs	N2
Her red lips parted her keen eyes alive	T
With fierce far ranging hungers of the chase	N2
Over the hills of morn The lantern guttered	D
And I was left alone in the outer darkness	N2
Among the champing elephants and camels	N2
And I'll be a camel keeper to the end	D
Though never again my eyes	N2
Pause	N2
So you can sleep	E4
You Merry Andrew for all you missed your hoop	J3
It's just as well perhaps Now I can hold	D
My secret to the end Ah here they come	G4
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	-
Six lads between the ages of three and twelve clad in pink tights covered with silver spangles tumble into the tent	D
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The Eldest Boy	P4
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Daddy the bell's rung and	D
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Gentleman John	B
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He's snoozing sound	D
to the youngest boy	P4
You just creep quietly and take tight hold	D
Of the crimson curls and tug and you will hear	M
The purple pussies all caterwaul at once	N2

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

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