Identity Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBCBDBEEFCBGHBIAJKL MNBNBOO| When Hans Hofmann became a hedgehog | A |
| somewhere in a Germany that has | B |
| vanished with its forests and hedgerows | B |
| Shakespeare would have been a young actor | C |
| starting out in a country that was | B |
| only a word to Hans who had learned | D |
| from those who had painted animals | B |
| only from hearing tales about them | E |
| without ever setting eyes on them | E |
| or from corpses with the lingering | F |
| light mute and deathly still forever | C |
| held fast in the fur or the feathers | B |
| hanging or lying on a table | G |
| and he had learned from others who had | H |
| arranged the corpses of animals | B |
| as though they were still alive in full | I |
| flight or on their way but this hedgehog | A |
| was there in the same life as his own | J |
| looking around at him with his brush | K |
| of camel hair and his stretched parchment | L |
| of sheepskin as he turned to each sharp | M |
| particular quill and every black | N |
| whisker on the long live snout and those | B |
| flat clawed feet made only for trundling | N |
| and for feeling along the dark undersides | B |
| of stones and as Hans took them in he | O |
| turned into the Hans that we would see | O |
William Stanley Merwin
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Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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