A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJ KLMMIINNOOPPQQRRSSTT AAUUOOCCNNCCOOVVCCCC WWXXYYZZA2OOOCCCCBBB 2B2C2C2D2D2E2E2F2F2G 2G2B2B2CCCCIIE2E2E2H 2I2E2J2Dear Anna Between friend and friend | A |
Prose answers every common end | A |
Serves in a plain and homely way | B |
To express the occurrence of the day | B |
Our health the weather and the news | C |
What walks we take what books we choose | C |
And all the floating thoughts we find | D |
Upon the surface of the mind | D |
But when a poet takes the pen | E |
Far more alive than other men | E |
He feels a gentle tingling come | F |
Down to his finger and his thumb | F |
Derived from nature's noblest part | G |
The centre of a glowing heart | G |
And this is what the world who knows | H |
No flights above the pitch of prose | H |
His more sublime vagaries slighting | I |
Denominates an itch for writing | I |
No wonder I who scribble rhyme | J |
To catch the triflers of the time | J |
And tell them truths divine and clear | K |
Which couched in prose they will not hear | L |
Who laboured hard to allure and draw | M |
The loiterers I never saw | M |
Should feel that itching and that tingling | I |
With all my purpose intermingling | I |
To your intrinsic merit true | N |
When called to address myself to you | N |
Mysterious are His ways whose power | O |
Brings forth that unexpected hour | O |
When minds that never met before | P |
Shall meet unite and part no more | P |
It is the allotment of the skies | Q |
The hand of the Supremely Wise | Q |
That guides and governs our affections | R |
And plans and orders our connections | R |
Directs us in our distant road | S |
And marks the bounds of our abode | S |
Thus we were settled when you found us | T |
Peasants and children all around us | T |
Not dreaming of so dear a friend | A |
Deep in the abyss of Silver End | A |
Thus Martha even against her will | U |
Perched on the top of yonder hill | U |
And you though you must needs prefer | O |
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre | O |
Are come from distant Loire to choose | C |
A cottage on the banks of Ouse | C |
This page of Providence quite new | N |
And now just opening to our view | N |
Employs our present thoughts and pains | C |
To guess and spell what it contains | C |
But day by day and year by year | O |
Will make the dark enigma clear | O |
And furnish us perhaps at last | V |
Like other scenes already past | V |
With proof that we and our affairs | C |
Are part of a Jehovah's cares | C |
For God unfolds by slow degrees | C |
The purport of his deep decrees | C |
Sheds every hour a clearer light | W |
In aid of our defective sight | W |
And spreads at length before the soul | X |
A beautiful and perfect whole | X |
Which busy man's inventive brain | Y |
Toils to anticipate in vain | Y |
Say Anna had you never grown | Z |
The beauties of a rose full blown | Z |
Could you though luminous your eye | A2 |
By looking on the bud descry | O |
Or guess with a prophetic power | O |
The future splendour of the flower | O |
Just so the Omnipotent who turns | C |
The system of a world's concerns | C |
From mere minutiae can educe | C |
Events of most important use | C |
And bid a dawning sky display | B |
The blaze of a meridian day | B |
The works of man tend one and all | B2 |
As needs they must from great to small | B2 |
And vanity absorbs at length | C2 |
The monuments of human strength | C2 |
But who can tell how vast the plan | D2 |
Which this day's incident began | D2 |
Too small perhaps the slight occasion | E2 |
For our dim sighted observation | E2 |
It passed unnoticed as the bird | F2 |
That cleaves the yielding air unheard | F2 |
And yet may prove when understood | G2 |
A harbinger of endless good | G2 |
Not that I deem or mean to call | B2 |
Friendship a blessing cheap or small | B2 |
But merely to remark that ours | C |
Like some of nature's sweetest flowers | C |
Rose from a seed of tiny size | C |
That seemed to promise no such prize | C |
A transient visit intervening | I |
And made almost without a meaning | I |
Hardly the effect of inclination | E2 |
Produced a friendship then begun | E2 |
That has cemented us in one | E2 |
And placed it in our power to prove | H2 |
By long fidelity and love | I2 |
That Solomon has wisely spoken | E2 |
'A threefold cord is not soon broken ' | J2 |
William Cowper
(1)
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