Vice Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A A BBCCDD EEFFGGHI JJKKLL MMGGNNOOPPCCGGMM OOQQRRNNSSOOTTOONNUV WWXX YYZZJJ A2A2B2B2| From Farmer Harrington's Calendar | A |
| - | |
| SEPTEMBER | A |
| - | |
| Ah me it makes a sinner wondrous blue | B |
| To see so many other sinners too | B |
| When I rake over all my faults and then | C |
| Notice the same or worse in other men | C |
| It makes me very much surprised and sad | D |
| That Heaven should see Earth turning out so bad | D |
| - | |
| Vice vice vice vice The country's mean enough | E |
| And has some villains that are pretty rough | E |
| But in this town where art and nature both | F |
| Are shoved into their very greatest growth | F |
| And where the utmost of all things is found | G |
| The Devil has his best men on the ground | G |
| And gives them weapons meeting his own views | H |
| And all the ammunition they can use | I |
| - | |
| Vice vice vice vice I never had been led | J |
| To think that Evil had so long a head | J |
| I've seen more ingenuity displayed | K |
| In one crime than 'twould take to learn a trade | K |
| Such cute inventions Sin will take in charge | L |
| Old Satan's patent office must be large | L |
| - | |
| And yet for all their craft in time how brief | M |
| How many of these rascals come to grief | M |
| For though within them cunning may abound | G |
| The plain clothed Truth is always standing round | G |
| Or following rogues through every land and clime | N |
| And gets them if you'll only give him time | N |
| I don't believe as some good people say | O |
| The Devil leads men on from day to day | O |
| And takes them to a rock and first they know | P |
| Pitches them off into some gulf below | P |
| Or baits them into different traps and then | C |
| Doesn't try at all to get them out again | C |
| I think he'd like to keep them safe and sound | G |
| Doing his nasty work the whole year round | G |
| And when a rogue fails up and comes to grief | M |
| It hurts his brimstone clothed but helpless chief | M |
| - | |
| These thoughts limped past my saddened mind to day | O |
| As through State's prison I pursued my way | O |
| Led round by one who didn't seem to be knowing | Q |
| What melancholy pictures he was showing | Q |
| Those walls and guards that all escape opposed | R |
| Those thick iron doors it thundered when they closed | R |
| The cells each one a closet full of gloom | N |
| I'd just as soon sleep in a metal tomb | N |
| The hard faced men who worked away no doubt | S |
| For fear of hard faced men that stood about | S |
| Wearing that garb of stripes a free man loathes | O |
| As if Law whipped them even with their clothes | O |
| The way they glance up at you from within | T |
| Their drooping eyelids hard with grief or sin | T |
| Wondering as they gaze upon you so | O |
| If you are not some one they used to know | O |
| The ghosts you feel that creep 'round all the time | N |
| Among these men who've shaken hands with crime | N |
| The mournful hope that some are toiling here | U |
| Whose innocence in heaven is proved out clear | V |
| All these things to my inmost spirit talked | W |
| As through those regions dark I slowly walked | W |
| And when the front door closed behind me free | X |
| The fresh air seemed like heaven itself to me | X |
| - | |
| I recollect once getting sick with pain | Y |
| When sitting near a sheriff on the train | Y |
| Who had a young man with him not of age | Z |
| Whom he was taking to this stone bound cage | Z |
| The poor boy talked to him with drooping head | J |
| And these are something like the words he said | J |
| - | |
| And yet 'twas quite affecting I declare | A2 |
| How some had ornaments up even there | A2 |
| Not crime itself or sad misfortune's smart | B2 |
| Can crush all sense of beauty from the heart | B2 |
William Mckendree Carleton
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