Arabian Night's Entertainments Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEEEFEEEGHIJ KELMEEENOIIPIQEECRIE EEEBSITISSUEEE VIICSEEIWIEIISSXYIEZ TA2B2IO EXTETIEEEIZTTETIEETC 2TEIIEB2IEITEIEID2IE SOEEZE2EI SIF2 B2EAG2H2SEEI2ZOTESII TSJ2EB2SK2EB2ES AB2ISGIISIETIEIC2IIT EB2IJ2ZSSIIIETISIIIE IESTSEIIISB2 IIL2M2ITOnce on a time | A |
There was a little boy a master mage | B |
By virtue of a Book | C |
Of magic O so magical it filled | D |
His life with visionary pomps | E |
Processional And Powers | E |
Passed with him where he passed And Thrones | E |
And Dominations glaived and plumed and mailed | F |
Thronged in the criss cross streets | E |
The palaces pell mell with playing fields | E |
Domes cloisters dungeons caverns tents arcades | E |
Of the unseen silent City in his soul | G |
Pavilioned jealously and hid | H |
As in the dusk profound | I |
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere | J |
- | |
I shut mine eyes And lo | K |
A flickering snatch of memory that floats | E |
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five | L |
And thirty dead years deep | M |
Antic in girlish broideries | E |
And skirts and silly shoes with straps | E |
And a broad ribanded leghorn he walks | E |
Plain in the shadow of a church | N |
St Michael's in whose brazen call | O |
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed | I |
Sedate for all his haste | I |
To be at home and nestled in his arm | P |
Inciting still to quiet and solitude | I |
Boarded in sober drab | Q |
With small square agitating cuts | E |
Let in a top of the double columned close | E |
Quakerlike print a Book | C |
What but that blessed brief | R |
Of what is gallantest and best | I |
In all the full shelved Libraries of Romance | E |
The Book of rocs | E |
Sandalwood ivory turbans ambergris | E |
Cream tarts and lettered apes and calendars | E |
And ghouls and genies O so huge | B |
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower | S |
Hands down as schoolboys take a post | I |
In truth the Book of Camaralzaman | T |
Schemselnihar and Sindbad Scheherezade | I |
The peerless Bedreddin Badroulbadour | S |
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar | S |
And Caspian and the dim terrific bulk | U |
Ice ribbed fiend visited isled in spells and storms | E |
Of Kaf That centre of miracles | E |
The sole unparalleled Arabian Nights | E |
- | |
Old friends I had a many kindly and grim | V |
Familiars cronies quaint | I |
And goblin Never a Wood but housed | I |
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings No Brook | C |
But had his nunnery | S |
Of green haired silvry curving sprites | E |
To cabin in his grots and pace | E |
His lilied margents Every lone Hillside | I |
Might open upon Elf Land Every Stalk | W |
That curled about a Bean stick was of the breed | I |
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs | E |
You climbed beyond the clouds and found | I |
The Farm House where the Ogre gorged | I |
And drowsy from his great oak chair | S |
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire | S |
Called for his Faery Harp And in it flew | X |
And perching on the kitchen table sang | Y |
Jocund and jubilant with a sound | I |
Of those gay golden vowered madrigals | E |
The shy thrush at mid May | Z |
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn | T |
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still | A2 |
In old world woodlands rapt with an old world spring | B2 |
For Pan's own whistle savage and rich and lewd | I |
And mocked him call for call | O |
- | |
I could not pass | E |
The half door where the cobbler sat in view | X |
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun | T |
In square cut faded reds and buckle shoes | E |
Bent at his work in the hedge side and know | T |
Just how he tapped his brogue and twitched | I |
His wax end this and that way both with wrists | E |
And elbows In the rich June fields | E |
Where the ripe clover drew the bees | E |
And the tall quakers trembled and the West Wind | I |
Lolled his half holiday away | Z |
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own | T |
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son | T |
On his white horse along the leafy lanes | E |
For at his stirrup linked and ran | T |
Not cynical and trapesing as he loped | I |
From wall to wall above the espaliers | E |
But in the bravest tops | E |
That market town a town of tops could show | T |
Bold subtle adventurous his tail | C2 |
A banner flaunted in disdain | T |
Of human stratagems and shifts | E |
King over All the Catlands present and past | I |
And future that moustached | I |
Artificer of fortunes Puss in Boots | E |
Or Bluebeard's Closet with its plenishing | B2 |
Of meat hooks sawdust blood | I |
And wives that hung like fresh dressed carcases | E |
Odd fangled most a butcher's part | I |
A faery chamber hazily seen | T |
And hazily figured on dark afternoons | E |
And windy nights was visiting of the best | I |
Then too the pelt of hoofs | E |
Out in the roaring darkness told | I |
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm | D2 |
Galloping as with despatches from the Pit | I |
Between his hell born Hounds | E |
And Rip Van Winkle often I lurked to hear | S |
Outside the long low timbered tarry wall | O |
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls | E |
Down the lean plank before they fluttered the pins | E |
For listening I could help him play | Z |
His wonderful game | E2 |
In those blue booming hills with Mariners | E |
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world | I |
- | |
But what were these so near | S |
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought | I |
The run of Ali Baba's Cave | F2 |
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame ' | - |
With gold to measure peck by peck | B2 |
In round brown wooden stoups | E |
You borrowed at the chandler's Or one time | A |
Made you Aladdin's friend at school | G2 |
Free of his Garden of Jewels Ring and Lamp | H2 |
In perfect trim Or Ladies fair | S |
For all the embrowning scars in their white breasts | E |
Went labouring under some dread ordinance | E |
Which made them whip and bitterly cry the while | I2 |
Strange Curs that cried as they | Z |
Till there was never a Black Bitch of all | O |
Your consorting but might have gone | T |
Spell driven miserably for crimes | E |
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire | S |
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night | I |
While you lay wondering and acold | I |
Your sense was fearfully purged and soon | T |
Queen Labe abominable and dear | S |
Rose from your side opened the Box of Doom | J2 |
Scattered the yellow powder which I saw | E |
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk | B2 |
And muttered certain words you could not hear | S |
And there a living stream | K2 |
The brook you bathed in with its weeds and flags | E |
And cresses glittered and sang | B2 |
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness | E |
Fair scrubbed and decent of your bedroom floor | S |
- | |
I was how many a time | A |
That Second Calendar Son of a King | B2 |
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined | I |
Pausing at one mysterious door | S |
To pry no closer but content his soul | G |
With his kind Forty Yet I could not rest | I |
For idleness and ungovernable Fate | I |
And the Black Horse which fed on sesame | S |
That wonder working word | I |
Vouchsafed his back to me and spread his vans | E |
And soaring soaring on | T |
From air to air came charging to the ground | I |
Sheer like a lark from the midsummer clouds | E |
And shaking me out of the saddle where I sprawled | I |
Flicked at me with his tail | C2 |
And left me blinded miserable distraught | I |
Even as I was in deed | I |
When doctors came and odious things were done | T |
On my poor tortured eyes | E |
With lancets or some evil acid stung | B2 |
And wrung them like hot sand | I |
And desperately from room to room | J2 |
Fumble I must my dark disconsolate way | Z |
To get to Bagdad how I might But there | S |
I met with Merry Ladies O you three | S |
Safie Amine Zobeide when my heart | I |
Forgets you all shall be forgot | I |
And so we supped we and the rest | I |
On wine and roasted lamb rose water dates | E |
Almonds pistachios citrons And Haroun | T |
Laughed out of his lordly beard | I |
On Giaffar and Mesrour I knew the Three | S |
For all their Mossoul habits And outside | I |
The Tigris flowing swift | I |
Like Severn bend for bend twinkled and gleamed | I |
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars | E |
The vast blue night | I |
Was murmurous with peris' plumes | E |
And the leathern wings of genies words of power | S |
Were whispering and old fishermen | T |
Casting their nets with prayer might draw to shore | S |
Dead loveliness or a prodigy in scales | E |
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold | I |
Or copper vessels stopped with lead | I |
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed | I |
In durance under potent charactry | S |
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King | B2 |
- | |
Then as the Book was glassed | I |
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint | I |
Bewildering angles so would Life | L2 |
Flash light on light back on the Book and both | M2 |
Were changed Once in a house decayed | I |
From better days harbourin | T |
William Ernest Henley
(1)
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