Everyday Characters V - Portrait Of A Lady Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB CBDBEFEF GFGFEBEB HI JEJ KLKLMNMO PFPFQFQF RFRFSTST UEUEVBVB TTTTTTTT FWFWXWXW TTTTTLTL TTTTLELE YTYTZTZT A2TA2TLFLF B2LB2LC2TC2TIN THE EXHIBITION OP THE ROYAL | A |
ACADEMY | B |
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What are you Lady nought is here | C |
To tell us of your name or story | B |
To claim the gazer's smile or fear | D |
To dub you Whig or damn you Tory | B |
It is beyond a poet's skill | E |
To form the slightest notion whether | F |
We e'er shall walk through one quadrille | E |
Or look upon one moon together | F |
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You're very pretty all the world | G |
Are talking of your bright brow's splendour | F |
And of your locks so softly curled | G |
And of your hands so white and slender | F |
Some think you 're blooming in Bengal | E |
Some say you're blowing in the city | B |
Some know you 're nobody at all | E |
I only feel you're very pretty | B |
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But bless my heart it 's very wrong | H |
You 're making all our belles ferocious | I |
Anne 'never saw a chin so long ' | - |
And Laura thinks your dress 'atrocious ' | - |
And Lady Jane who now and then | J |
Is taken for the village steeple | E |
Is sure you can't be four feet ten | J |
And 'wonders at the taste of people ' | - |
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Soon pass the praises of a face | K |
Swift fades the very best vermillion | L |
Fame rides a most prodigious pace | K |
Oblivion follows on the pillion | L |
And all who in these sultry rooms | M |
To day have stared and pushed and fainted | N |
Will soon forget your pearls and plumes | M |
As if they never had been painted | O |
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You'll be forgotten as old debts | P |
By persons who are used to borrow | F |
Forgotten as the sun that sets | P |
When shines a new one on the morrow | F |
Forgotten like the luscious peach | Q |
That blessed the schoolboy last September | F |
Forgotten like a maiden speech | Q |
Which all men praise but none remember | F |
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Yet ere you sink into the stream | R |
That whelms alike sage saint and martyr | F |
And soldier's sword and minstrel's theme | R |
And Canning's wit and Gatton's charter | F |
Here of the fortunes of your youth | S |
My fancy weaves her dim conjectures | T |
Which have perhaps as much of truth | S |
As passion's vows or Cobbett's lectures | T |
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Was 't in the north or in the south | U |
That summer breezes rocked your cradle | E |
And had you in your baby mouth | U |
A wooden or a silver ladle | E |
And was your first unconscious sleep | V |
By Brownie banned or blessed by Fairy | B |
And did you wake to laugh or weep | V |
And were you christened Maud or Mary | B |
- | |
And was your father called 'your grace' | T |
And did he bet at Ascot races | T |
And did he chat at commonplace | T |
And did he fill a score of places | T |
And did your lady mother's charms | T |
Consist in picklings broilings bastings | T |
Or did she prate about the arms | T |
Her brave forefathers wore at Hastings | T |
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Where were you finished tell me where | F |
Was it at Chelsea or at Chiswick | W |
Had you the ordinary share | F |
Of books and backboard harp and physic | W |
And did they bid you banish pride | X |
And mind your Oriental tinting | W |
And did you learn how Dido died | X |
And who found out the art of printing | W |
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And are you fond of lanes and brooks | T |
A votary of the sylvan Muses | T |
Or do you con the little books | T |
Which Baron Brougham and Vaux diffuses | T |
Or do you love to knit and sew | T |
The fashionable world's Arachne | L |
Or do you canter down the Row | T |
Upon a very long tailed hackney | L |
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And do you love your brother James | T |
And do you pet his mares and setters | T |
And have your friends romantic names | T |
And do you write them long long letters | T |
And are you since the world began | L |
All women are a little spiteful | E |
And don't you dote on Malibran | L |
And don't you think Tom Moore delightful | E |
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I see they've brought you flowers to day | Y |
Delicious food for eyes and noses | T |
But carelessly you turn away | Y |
From all the pinks and all the roses | T |
Say is that fond look sent in search | Z |
Of one whose look as fondly answers | T |
And is he fairest in the Church | Z |
Or is he ain't he in the Lancers | T |
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And is your love a motley page | A2 |
Of black and white half joy half sorrow | T |
Are you to wait till you 're of age | A2 |
Or are you to be his to morrow | T |
Or do they bid you in their scorn | L |
Your pure and sinless flame to smother | F |
Is he so very meanly born | L |
Or are you married to another | F |
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Whate'er you are at last adieu | B2 |
I think it is your bounden duty | L |
To let the rhymes I coin for you | B2 |
Be prized by all who prize your beauty | L |
From you I seek nor gold nor fame | C2 |
From you I fear no cruel strictures | T |
I wish some girls that I could name | C2 |
Were half as silent as their pictures | T |
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
(1)
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