To Elsie Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABB CBD EFG HIJ KLB MFN OJP QHJ BOF RFS TUJ VWD XYF BJH FZF A2BF B2JC2 FD2L FE2X JF2F G2IH2 HFI2| The pure products of America | A |
| go crazy | B |
| mountain folk from Kentucky | B |
| - | |
| or the ribbed north end of | C |
| Jersey | B |
| with its isolate lakes and | D |
| - | |
| valleys its deaf mutes thieves | E |
| old names | F |
| and promiscuity between | G |
| - | |
| devil may care men who have taken | H |
| to railroading | I |
| out of sheer lust of adventure | J |
| - | |
| and young slatterns bathed | K |
| in filth | L |
| from Monday to Saturday | B |
| - | |
| to be tricked out that night | M |
| with gauds | F |
| from imaginations which have no | N |
| - | |
| peasant traditions to give them | O |
| character | J |
| but flutter and flaunt | P |
| - | |
| sheer rags succumbing without | Q |
| emotion | H |
| save numbed terror | J |
| - | |
| under some hedge of choke cherry | B |
| or viburnum | O |
| which they cannot express | F |
| - | |
| Unless it be that marriage | R |
| perhaps | F |
| with a dash of Indian blood | S |
| - | |
| will throw up a girl so desolate | T |
| so hemmed round | U |
| with disease or murder | J |
| - | |
| that she'll be rescued by an | V |
| agent | W |
| reared by the state and | D |
| - | |
| sent out at fifteen to work in | X |
| some hard pressed | Y |
| house in the suburbs | F |
| - | |
| some doctor's family some Elsie | B |
| voluptuous water | J |
| expressing with broken | H |
| - | |
| brain the truth about us | F |
| her great | Z |
| ungainly hips and flopping breasts | F |
| - | |
| addressed to cheap | A2 |
| jewelry | B |
| and rich young men with fine eyes | F |
| - | |
| as if the earth under our feet | B2 |
| were | J |
| an excrement of some sky | C2 |
| - | |
| and we degraded prisoners | F |
| destined | D2 |
| to hunger until we eat filth | L |
| - | |
| while the imagination strains | F |
| after deer | E2 |
| going by fields of goldenrod in | X |
| - | |
| the stifling heat of September | J |
| Somehow | F2 |
| it seems to destroy us | F |
| - | |
| It is only in isolate flecks that | G2 |
| something | I |
| is given off | H2 |
| - | |
| No one | H |
| to witness | F |
| and adjust no one to drive the car | I2 |
William Carlos Williams
(1)
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