Rhyme Scheme

"Midstairs"

By: Virginia Hamilton Adair

(poem from intertwingled.net)

Praying, thy will be done,

How will I know, I also pray,

What is this will for me, for mine?

Shall I find windows full of sun

Or walls of darkness all of the way?

And here on this turning of the stair

Between passion and doubt,

I pause and say a double prayer,

One for you, and one for you,

And so they cancel out.

And now I come the creaking tread,

Not my way, Lord, but thine.
The steps of grief have bowed my head,
Though it is not a long climb
To the lonely bed.

Biographical Information

       Though born in New York City in 1913, poet Virginia Hamilton Adair spent much of her youth in neighboring New Jersey. Her father, Robert Browning Hamilton, was a poet as well and read to her when she was a baby. Adair composed her first poem at the age of two; since then, she has written over a thousand poems, and more than seventy have been published in journals and major magazines, such as the Atlantic and the New Yorker. 

       When Adair was eighty-three years old and blind, her first book of poetry was published. With selection help from her friend and fellow professor Robert Mezey, who urged Adair to the task, her first collection, Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems, saw print in 1996. The volume met with much acclaim, and Adair's poetry has since been compared to that of famed poets such as T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost. John Elson, discussing Adair's work in Time magazine, quoted critic Eric Ormsby as calling her "the best American poet since Wallace Stevens." 

     It is the presence of "belief" in Adair's poems that sets her work apart from "so much contemporary poetry" according to Bruce F. Murphy, who further described Beliefs and Blasphemies in his Poetry appraisal: "It is also a poetry without ambiguity, without multiple interpretations, and in a sense without a door; it offers not a world to enter but a picture of the world to look at." "Adair's poetry goes completely against the postmodern, virtually post-twentieth-century style and its ornate cynicisms, where hardly is a positive assertion brought forth than it is plunged into a bath of irony, cleansed of any appearance of claiming to be the Truth," analyzed Murphy. APublishers Weekly reviewer maintained that the non-contemporary feel of Adair's poems results in an incomplete "unfurling [of] their insights." 

(biographical information from poetryfoundation.org)

Explanation of Technique

           Rhyme scheme poems are poems in which syllables are repeated, usually at the end of a line. Examples of patterns featured in rhyme scheme poems are ABBA and BCCB. This type of poem can be classified by the similarity between the sounds within words. In, "Midstairs", there are different rhyming patterns in the poem. The first stanza has a ABCAB pattern, the second stanza has a ABACB pattern, and the third stanza has a ABABC pattern.

Interpretation of Poem

           In Virginia Hamilton Adair's poem she describes a woman praying to the Lord. I think what the author is trying to get across to the reader in this poem is praying being a pivotal part in Christianity. She describes prayer as submitting to God's will and not yours. I agree with her statement.

(picture from patcegan.files.wordpress.com)

Visual Explanation

         The picture above is of a woman praying beside her bed. This is what the whole poem was about. Also, the poem described the importance of prayer in Christianity, such a submitting to God's will. Prayer is also important, because it is when you talk to God and build your relationship with Him.