A Rhymeless Song.

Edward Shanks 1892 (London) – 1953



Rhyme with its jingle still betrays
The song that's meant for one alone.
Dearest, I dedicate to you
A little song without a rhyme.
  
The most unpractised schoolboy knows
That quiet kisses are the sweetest.
Safe locked within my arms you lie,
Let not a single sound betray us.
  
Suppose your jealous mother came
By chance this way and found us here...
Be still, be still, and not a sound
Shall give her warning that we love.
  
  
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

24 sec read
19

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXXX XXXX XXXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 419
Words 80
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4

Edward Shanks

Edward Richard Buxton Shanks was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, then as an academic and journalist, and literary critic and biographer. He also wrote some science fiction. He was born in London, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He passed his B.A. in History in 1913. He was editor of Granta from 1912-13. He served in World War I with the British Army in France, but was invalided out in 1915, and did administrative work until war's end. He was later a literary reviewer, working for the London Mercury and for a short while a lecturer at the University of Liverpool. He was the chief leader-writer for the Evening Standard from 1928 to 1935. The People of the Ruins was a science-fiction novel in which a man wakes after being put into suspended animation, to discover a devastated Britain. more…

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    "A Rhymeless Song." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/55051/a-rhymeless-song.>.

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