Arabian Nights' Entertainments Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B CDEFGGGHGGGIJKL MGNOGGGBPKKQKRGGESKG GGGDTKUKTTVGGG WKKETGGKXKGKKTTYZKGA 2UB2C2KP GYUGUKGGGKA2UUGUKGGU D2UGKKGC2KGKUGKGKE2K GTPGGA2F2GK TKG2 C2GCH2I2TGGJ2A2PUGTK KUTK2GC2TL2GC2GT CC2KTIKKTKGUKGKD2KKU GC2KK2A2TTKKKGUKTKKK GKGTUTGKKKTC2 KKM2N2KUKGGIKKGK2UKG GTC2UGUKKKGUGC2UO2KG GAP2KTTC2KTGTJ2GGGTT D2 GD2TGQ2KKUKKGUUGC2GD 2D2TKR2KC2G2NGGC2GTK UGKUGGGS2GD2D2SDKTKD 2UKC2UGGGUGD2GUC2GD2 GUD2SD2Q2GUGGK KGKGGKQGGGKGGKGGKGD2 TM2TGUGKQGKKTGGGKC2U TGGGGGGGKTT2KKKDUC2U 2GGL2To Elizabeth Robins Pennell | A |
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'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits ' Fantasio | B |
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Once on a time | C |
There was a little boy a master mage | D |
By virtue of a Book | E |
Of magic O so magical it filled | F |
His life with visionary pomps | G |
Processional And Powers | G |
Passed with him where he passed And Thrones | G |
And Dominations glaived and plumed and mailed | H |
Thronged in the criss cross streets | G |
The palaces pell mell with playing fields | G |
Domes cloisters dungeons caverns tents arcades | G |
Of the unseen silent City in his soul | I |
Pavilioned jealously and hid | J |
As in the dusk profound | K |
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere | L |
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I shut mine eyes And lo | M |
A flickering snatch of memory that floats | G |
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five | N |
And thirty dead years deep | O |
Antic in girlish broideries | G |
And skirts and silly shoes with straps | G |
And a broad ribanded leghorn he walks | G |
Plain in the shadow of a church | B |
St Michael's in whose brazen call | P |
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed | K |
Sedate for all his haste | K |
To be at home and nestled in his arm | Q |
Inciting still to quiet and solitude | K |
Boarded in sober drab | R |
With small square agitating cuts | G |
Let in a top of the double columned close | G |
Quakerlike print a Book | E |
What but that blessed brief | S |
Of what is gallantest and best | K |
In all the full shelved Libraries of Romance | G |
The Book of rocs | G |
Sandalwood ivory turbans ambergris | G |
Cream tarts and lettered apes and calendars | G |
And ghouls and genies O so huge | D |
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower | T |
Hands down as schoolboys take a post | K |
In truth the Book of Camaralzaman | U |
Schemselnihar and Sindbad Scheherezade | K |
The peerless Bedreddin Badroulbadour | T |
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar | T |
And Caspian and the dim terrific bulk | V |
Ice ribbed fiend visited isled in spells and storms | G |
Of Kaf That centre of miracles | G |
The sole unparalleled Arabian Nights | G |
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Old friends I had a many kindly and grim | W |
Familiars cronies quaint | K |
And goblin Never a Wood but housed | K |
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings No Brook | E |
But had his nunnery | T |
Of green haired silvry curving sprites | G |
To cabin in his grots and pace | G |
His lilied margents Every lone Hillside | K |
Might open upon Elf Land Every Stalk | X |
That curled about a Bean stick was of the breed | K |
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs | G |
You climbed beyond the clouds and found | K |
The Farm House where the Ogre gorged | K |
And drowsy from his great oak chair | T |
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire | T |
Called for his Faery Harp And in it flew | Y |
And perching on the kitchen table sang | Z |
Jocund and jubilant with a sound | K |
Of those gay golden vowered madrigals | G |
The shy thrush at mid May | A2 |
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn | U |
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still | B2 |
In old world woodlands rapt with an old world spring | C2 |
For Pan's own whistle savage and rich and lewd | K |
And mocked him call for call | P |
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I could not pass | G |
The half door where the cobbler sat in view | Y |
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun | U |
In square cut faded reds and buckle shoes | G |
Bent at his work in the hedge side and know | U |
Just how he tapped his brogue and twitched | K |
His wax end this and that way both with wrists | G |
And elbows In the rich June fields | G |
Where the ripe clover drew the bees | G |
And the tall quakers trembled and the West Wind | K |
Lolled his half holiday away | A2 |
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own | U |
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son | U |
On his white horse along the leafy lanes | G |
For at his stirrup linked and ran | U |
Not cynical and trapesing as he loped | K |
From wall to wall above the espaliers | G |
But in the bravest tops | G |
That market town a town of tops could show | U |
Bold subtle adventurous his tail | D2 |
A banner flaunted in disdain | U |
Of human stratagems and shifts | G |
King over All the Catlands present and past | K |
And future that moustached | K |
Artificer of fortunes Puss in Boots | G |
Or Bluebeard's Closet with its plenishing | C2 |
Of meat hooks sawdust blood | K |
And wives that hung like fresh dressed carcases | G |
Odd fangled most a butcher's part | K |
A faery chamber hazily seen | U |
And hazily figured on dark afternoons | G |
And windy nights was visiting of the best | K |
Then too the pelt of hoofs | G |
Out in the roaring darkness told | K |
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm | E2 |
Galloping as with despatches from the Pit | K |
Between his hell born Hounds | G |
And Rip Van Winkle often I lurked to hear | T |
Outside the long low timbered tarry wall | P |
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls | G |
Down the lean plank before they fluttered the pins | G |
For listening I could help him play | A2 |
His wonderful game | F2 |
In those blue booming hills with Mariners | G |
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world | K |
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But what were these so near | T |
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought | K |
The run of Ali Baba's Cave | G2 |
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame ' | - |
With gold to measure peck by peck | C2 |
In round brown wooden stoups | G |
You borrowed at the chandler's Or one time | C |
Made you Aladdin's friend at school | H2 |
Free of his Garden of Jewels Ring and Lamp | I2 |
In perfect trim Or Ladies fair | T |
For all the embrowning scars in their white breasts | G |
Went labouring under some dread ordinance | G |
Which made them whip and bitterly cry the while | J2 |
Strange Curs that cried as they | A2 |
Till there was never a Black Bitch of all | P |
Your consorting but might have gone | U |
Spell driven miserably for crimes | G |
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire | T |
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night | K |
While you lay wondering and acold | K |
Your sense was fearfully purged and soon | U |
Queen Labe abominable and dear | T |
Rose from your side opened the Box of Doom | K2 |
Scattered the yellow powder which I saw | G |
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk | C2 |
And muttered certain words you could not hear | T |
And there a living stream | L2 |
The brook you bathed in with its weeds and flags | G |
And cresses glittered and sang | C2 |
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness | G |
Fair scrubbed and decent of your bedroom floor | T |
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I was how many a time | C |
That Second Calendar Son of a King | C2 |
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined | K |
Pausing at one mysterious door | T |
To pry no closer but content his soul | I |
With his kind Forty Yet I could not rest | K |
For idleness and ungovernable Fate | K |
And the Black Horse which fed on sesame | T |
That wonder working word | K |
Vouchsafed his back to me and spread his vans | G |
And soaring soaring on | U |
From air to air came charging to the ground | K |
Sheer like a lark from the midsummer clouds | G |
And shaking me out of the saddle where I sprawled | K |
Flicked at me with his tail | D2 |
And left me blinded miserable distraught | K |
Even as I was in deed | K |
When doctors came and odious things were done | U |
On my poor tortured eyes | G |
With lancets or some evil acid stung | C2 |
And wrung them like hot sand | K |
And desperately from room to room | K2 |
Fumble I must my dark disconsolate way | A2 |
To get to Bagdad how I might But there | T |
I met with Merry Ladies O you three | T |
Safie Amine Zobeide when my heart | K |
Forgets you all shall be forgot | K |
And so we supped we and the rest | K |
On wine and roasted lamb rose water dates | G |
Almonds pistachios citrons And Haroun | U |
Laughed out of his lordly beard | K |
On Giaffar and Mesrour I knew the Three | T |
For all their Mossoul habits And outside | K |
The Tigris flowing swift | K |
Like Severn bend for bend twinkled and gleamed | K |
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars | G |
The vast blue night | K |
Was murmurous with peris' plumes | G |
And the leathern wings of genies words of power | T |
Were whispering and old fishermen | U |
Casting their nets with prayer might draw to shore | T |
Dead loveliness or a prodigy in scales | G |
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold | K |
Or copper vessels stopped with lead | K |
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed | K |
In durance under potent charactry | T |
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King | C2 |
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Then as the Book was glassed | K |
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint | K |
Bewildering angles so would Life | M2 |
Flash light on light back on the Book and both | N2 |
Were changed Once in a house decayed | K |
From better days harbouring an errant show | U |
For all its stories of dry rot | K |
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax | G |
Inhuman hushed ghastly with Painted Eyes | G |
I wandered and no living soul | I |
Was nearer than the pay box and I stared | K |
Upon them staring staring Till at last | K |
Three sets of rafters from the streets | G |
I strayed upon a mildewed rat run room | K2 |
With the two Dancers horrible and obscene | U |
Guarding the door and there in a bedroom set | K |
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords | G |
With an aspect of frills | G |
And dimities and dishonoured privacy | T |
That made you hanker and hesitate to look | C2 |
A Woman with her litter of Babes all slain | U |
All in their nightgowns all with Painted Eyes | G |
Staring still staring so that I turned and ran | U |
As for my neck but in the street | K |
Took breath The same it seemed | K |
And yet not all the same I was to find | K |
As I went up For afterwards | G |
Whenas I went my round alone | U |
All day alone in long stern silent streets | G |
Where I might stretch my hand and take | C2 |
Whatever I would still there were Shapes of Stone | U |
Motionless lifelike frightening for the Wrath | O2 |
Had smitten them but they watched | K |
This by her melons and figs that by his rings | G |
And chains and watches with the hideous gaze | G |
The Painted Eyes insufferable | A |
Now of those grisly images and I | P2 |
Pursued my best beloved quest | K |
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear | T |
So the night fell with never a lamplighter | T |
And through the Palace of the King | C2 |
I groped among the echoes and I felt | K |
That they were there | T |
Dreadfully there the Painted staring Eyes | G |
Hall after hall Till lo from far | T |
A Voice And in a little while | J2 |
Two tapers burning And the Voice | G |
Heard in the wondrous Word of God was whose | G |
Whose but Zobeide's | G |
The lady of my heart like me | T |
A True Believer and like me | T |
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale | D2 |
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Or sailing to the Isles | G |
Of Khaledan I spied one evenfall | D2 |
A black blotch in the sunset and it grew | T |
Swiftly and grew Tearing their beards | G |
The sailors wept and prayed but the grave ship | Q2 |
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls went mad | K |
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand | K |
And turning broadside on | U |
As the most iron would was haled and sucked | K |
Nearer and nearer yet | K |
And all awash with horrible lurching leaps | G |
Rushed at that Portent casting a shadow now | U |
That swallowed sea and sky and then | U |
Anchors and nails and bolts | G |
Flew screaming out of her and with clang on clang | C2 |
A noise of fifty stithies caught at the sides | G |
Of the Magnetic Mountain and she lay | D2 |
A broken bundle of firewood strown piecemeal | D2 |
About the waters and her crew | T |
Passed shrieking one by one and I was left | K |
To drown All the long night I swam | R2 |
But in the morning O the smiling coast | K |
Tufted with date trees meadowlike | C2 |
Skirted with shelving sands And a great wave | G2 |
Cast me ashore and I was saved alive | N |
So giving thanks to God I dried my clothes | G |
And faring inland in a desert place | G |
I stumbled on an iron ring | C2 |
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays | G |
When scenting a trap door | T |
I dug and dug until my biggest blade | K |
Stuck into wood And then | U |
The flight of smooth hewn easy falling stairs | G |
Sunk in the naked rock The cool clean vault | K |
So neat with niche on niche it might have been | U |
Our beer cellar but for the rows | G |
Of brazen urns like monstrous chemist's jars | G |
Full to the wide squat throats | G |
With gold dust but a top | S2 |
A layer of pickled walnut looking things | G |
I knew for olives And far O far away | D2 |
The Princess of China languished Far away | D2 |
Was marriage with a Vizier and a Chief | S |
Of Eunuchs and the privilege | D |
Of going out at night | K |
To play unkenned majestical secure | T |
Where the old brown friendly river shaped | K |
Like Tigris shore for shore Haply a Ghoul | D2 |
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon | U |
A thighbone in his fist and glared | K |
At supper with a Lady she who took | C2 |
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain | U |
Or you might stumble there by the iron gates | G |
Of the Pump Room underneath the limes | G |
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers | G |
Just as the civil Genie laid him down | U |
Or those red curtained panes | G |
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily | D2 |
Of beer pots and spittoons and new long pipes | G |
Might turn a caravansery's wherein | U |
You found Noureddin Ali loftily drunk | C2 |
And that fair Persian bathed in tears | G |
You'd not have given away | D2 |
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous | G |
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon | U |
Escaped on a roc's claw | D2 |
Disguised like Sindbad but in Christmas beef | S |
And all the blissful while | D2 |
The schoolboy satchel at your hip | Q2 |
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze | G |
Grey whiskered chapmen drawn | U |
From over Caspian yea the Chief Jewellers | G |
Of Tartary and the bazaars | G |
Seething with traffic of enormous Ind | K |
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Thus cried thus called aloud to the child heart | K |
The magian East thus the child eyes | G |
Spelled out the wizard message by the light | K |
Of the sober workaday hours | G |
They saw week in week out pass and still pass | G |
In the sleepy Minster City folded kind | K |
In ancient Severn's arm | Q |
Amongst her water meadows and her docks | G |
Whose floating populace of ships | G |
Galliots and luggers light heeled brigantines | G |
Bluff barques and rake hell fore and afters brought | K |
To her very doorsteps and geraniums | G |
The scents of the World's End the calls | G |
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride | K |
Like fire on some high errand of the race | G |
The irresistible appeals | G |
For comradeship that sound | K |
Steadily from the irresistible sea | G |
Thus the East laughed and whispered and the tale | D2 |
Telling itself anew | T |
In terms of living labouring life | M2 |
Took on the colours busked it in the wear | T |
Of life that lived and laboured and Romance | G |
The Angel Playmate raining down | U |
His golden influences | G |
On all I saw and all I dreamed and did | K |
Walked with me arm in arm | Q |
Or left me as one bediademed with straws | G |
And bits of glass to gladden at my heart | K |
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find | K |
His fiery hearted presence everywhere | T |
Even so dear Hesper bringer of all good things | G |
Sends the same silver dews | G |
Of happiness down her dim delighted skies | G |
On some poor collier hamlet mound on mound | K |
Of sifted squalor here a soot throated stalk | C2 |
Sullenly smoking over a row | U |
Of flat faced hovels black in the gritty air | T |
A web of rails and wheels and beams with strings | G |
Of hurtling tipping trams | G |
As on the amorous nightingales | G |
And roses of Shiraz or the walls and towers | G |
Of Samarcand the Ineffable whence you espy | G |
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears | G |
Like listed lightnings | G |
Samarcand | K |
That name of names That star vaned belvedere | T |
Builded against the Chambers of the South | T2 |
That outpost on the Infinite | K |
And behold | K |
Questing therefrom you knew not what wild tide | K |
Might overtake you for one fringe | D |
One suburb is stablished on firm earth but one | U |
Floats founded vague | C2 |
In lubberlands delectable isles of palm | U2 |
And lotus fortunate mains far shimmering seas | G |
The promise of wistful hills | G |
The shining shifting Sovranties of Dream | L2 |
William Ernest Henley
(1)
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