Ovid. Trist. Lib. V. Elegy Xii. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCDEEEFFGGHHBBIIE EJKLLFFMMNNOOPPQQRRS STTEUJKVWEUXXYYZZA2A 2B2B2C2D2E2E2| You bid me write to amuse the tedious hours | A |
| And save from withering my poetic powers | A |
| Hard is the task my friend for verse should flow | B |
| From the free mind not fettered down by woe | B |
| Restless amidst unceasing tempests tossed | C |
| Whoe'er has cause for sorrow I have most | D |
| Would you bid Priam laugh his sons all slain | E |
| Or childless Niobe from tears refrain | E |
| Join the gay dance and lead the festive train | E |
| Does grief or study most befit the mind | F |
| To this remote this barbarous nook confined | F |
| Could you impart to my unshaken breast | G |
| The fortitude by Socrates possessed | G |
| Soon would it sink beneath such woes as mine | H |
| For what is human strength to wrath divine | H |
| Wise as he was and Heaven pronounced him so | B |
| My sufferings would have laid that wisdom low | B |
| Could I forget my country thee and all | I |
| And e'en the offence to which I owe my fall | I |
| Yet fear alone would freeze the poet's vein | E |
| While hostile troops swarm o'er the dreary plain | E |
| Add that the fatal rust of long disuse | J |
| Unfits me for the service of the Muse | K |
| Thistles and weeds are all we can expect | L |
| From the best soil impoverished by neglect | L |
| Unexercised and to his stall confined | F |
| The fleetest racer would be left behind | F |
| The best built bark that cleaves the watery way | M |
| Laid useless by would moulder and decay | M |
| No hope remains that time shall me restore | N |
| Mean as I was to what I was before | N |
| Think how a series of desponding cares | O |
| Benumbs the genius and its force impairs | O |
| How oft as now on this devoted sheet | P |
| My verse constrained to move with measured feet | P |
| Reluctant and laborious limps along | Q |
| And proves itself a wretched exile's song | Q |
| What is it tunes the most melodious lays | R |
| 'Tis emulation and the thirst of praise | R |
| A noble thirst and not unknown to me | S |
| While smoothly wafted on a calmer sea | S |
| But can a wretch like Ovid pant for fame | T |
| No rather let the world forget my name | T |
| Is it because that world approved my strain | E |
| You prompt me to the same pursuit again | U |
| No let the Nine the ungrateful truth excuse | J |
| I charge my hopeless ruin on the Muse | K |
| And like Perillus meet my just desert | V |
| The victim of my own pernicious art | W |
| Fool that I was to be so warned in vain | E |
| And shipwrecked once to tempt the deep again | U |
| Ill fares the bard in this unlettered land | X |
| None to consult and none to understand | X |
| The purest verse has no admirers here | Y |
| Their own rude language only suits their ear | Y |
| Rude as it is at length familiar grown | Z |
| I learn it and almost unlearn my own | Z |
| Yet to say truth even here the Muse disdains | A2 |
| Confinement and attempts her former strains | A2 |
| But finds the strong desire is not the power | B2 |
| And what her taste condemns the flames devour | B2 |
| A part perhaps like this escapes the doom | C2 |
| And though unworthy finds a friend at Rome | D2 |
| But oh the cruel art that could undo | E2 |
| Its votary thus would that could perish too | E2 |
William Cowper
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