To Sir Joshua Reynolds Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIJKK LMNOPPQQNORRSTFFUUVV WW| Dear President whose art sublime | A |
| Gives perpetuity to time | A |
| And bids transactions of a day | B |
| That fleeting hours would waft away | B |
| To dark futurity survive | C |
| And in unfading beauty live | C |
| You cannot with a grace decline | D |
| A special mandate of the Nine | D |
| Yourself whatever task you choose | E |
| So much indebted to the Muse | E |
| Thus say the sisterhood We come | F |
| Fix well your pallet on your thumb | F |
| Prepare the pencil and the tints | G |
| We come to furnish you with hints | G |
| French disappointment British glory | H |
| Must be the subject of the story | H |
| First strike a curve a graceful bow | I |
| Then slope it to a point below | J |
| Your outline easy airy light | K |
| Filled up becomes a paper kite | K |
| Let independence sanguine horrid | L |
| Blaze like a meteor in the forehead | M |
| Beneath but lay aside your graces | N |
| Draw six and twenty rueful faces | O |
| Each with a staring steadfast eye | P |
| Fixed on his great and good ally | P |
| France flies the kite 'tis on the wing | Q |
| Britannia's lightning cuts the string | Q |
| The wind that raised it ere it ceases | N |
| Just rends it into thirteen pieces | O |
| Takes charge of every fluttering sheet | R |
| And lays them all at George's feet | R |
| Iberia trembling from afar | S |
| Renounces the confederate war | T |
| Her efforts and her arts o'ercome | F |
| France calls her shattered navies home | F |
| Repenting Holland learns to mourn | U |
| The sacred treaties she has torn | U |
| Astonishment and awe profound | V |
| Are stamped upon the nations round | V |
| Without one friend above all foes | W |
| Britannia gives the world repose | W |
William Cowper
(1)
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