Vanitas Vanitatum Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCB DEFG HIJI AKCK BGBE FBFB LMKM FBDB KNLN LMLM OPOQ RSRP TPPP UVUB WBWB XLXL| How spake of old the Royal Seer | A |
| His text is one I love to treat on | B |
| This life of ours he said is sheer | C |
| Mataiotes Mataioteton | B |
| - | |
| O Student of this gilded Book | D |
| Declare while musing on its pages | E |
| If truer words were ever spoke | F |
| By ancient or by modern sages | G |
| - | |
| The various authors' names but note | H |
| French Spanish English Russians Germans | I |
| And in the volume polyglot | J |
| Sure you may read a hundred sermons | I |
| - | |
| What histories of life are here | A |
| More wild than all romancers' stories | K |
| What wondrous transformations queer | C |
| What homilies on human glories | K |
| - | |
| What theme for sorrow or for scorn | B |
| What chronicle of Fate's surprises | G |
| Of adverse fortune nobly borne | B |
| Of chances changes ruins rises | E |
| - | |
| Of thrones upset and sceptres broke | F |
| How strange a record here is written | B |
| Of honors dealt as if in joke | F |
| Of brave desert unkindly smitten | B |
| - | |
| How low men were and how they rise | L |
| How high they were and how they tumble | M |
| O vanity of vanities | K |
| O laughable pathetic jumble | M |
| - | |
| Here between honest Janin's joke | F |
| And his Turk Excellency's firman | B |
| I write my name upon the book | D |
| I write my name and end my sermon | B |
| - | |
| - | |
| - | |
| O Vanity of vanities | K |
| How wayward the decrees of Fate are | N |
| How very weak the very wise | L |
| How very small the very great are | N |
| - | |
| What mean these stale moralities | L |
| Sir Preacher from your desk you mumble | M |
| Why rail against the great and wise | L |
| And tire us with your ceaseless grumble | M |
| - | |
| Pray choose us out another text | O |
| O man morose and narrow minded | P |
| Come turn the page I read the next | O |
| And then the next and still I find it | Q |
| - | |
| Read here how Wealth aside was thrust | R |
| And Folly set in place exalted | S |
| How Princes footed in the dust | R |
| While lackeys in the saddle vaulted | P |
| - | |
| Though thrice a thousand years are past | T |
| Since David's son the sad and splendid | P |
| The weary King Ecclesiast | P |
| Upon his awful tablets penned it | P |
| - | |
| Methinks the text is never stale | U |
| And life is every day renewing | V |
| Fresh comments on the old old tale | U |
| Of Folly Fortune Glory Ruin | B |
| - | |
| Hark to the Preacher preaching still | W |
| He lifts his voice and cries his sermon | B |
| Here at St Peter's of Cornhill | W |
| As yonder on the Mount of Hermon | B |
| - | |
| For you and me to heart to take | X |
| O dear beloved brother readers | L |
| To day as when the good King spake | X |
| Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars | L |
William Makepeace Thackeray
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