A Birthday Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCCAADDAAAAEE FFAACCGGGG FFGGHHII JJHHAAGG HHAAAAEEAAKK LLGGGGMNCC AAAAGG OOAAAA KKGGAAGG GGPP QQIRGGAALS AAAATT RRAAAAAA AAUVGGWWRRAAWWGGRRXX AAAAGGYJGGGG AAA| quot Aug quot | A |
| - | |
| Full moon to night and six and twenty years | B |
| Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres | B |
| A year of infinite love unwearying | C |
| No circling seasons but perennial spring | C |
| A year of triumph trampling through defeat | A |
| The first made holy and the last made sweet | A |
| By this same love a year of wealth and woe | D |
| Joy poverty health sickness all one glow | D |
| In the pure light that filled our firmament | A |
| Of supreme silence and unbarred extent | A |
| Wherein one sacrament was ours one Lord | A |
| One resurrection one recurrent chord | A |
| One incarnation one descending dove | E |
| All these being one and that one being Love | E |
| - | |
| You sent your spirit into tunes my soul | F |
| Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll | F |
| Its happiness I left no flower unplucked | A |
| That might have graced your garland I induct | A |
| Tragedy comedy farce fable song | C |
| Each longing a little each a little long | C |
| But each aspiring only to express | G |
| Your excellence and my unworthiness | G |
| Nay but my worthiness since I was sense | G |
| And spirit too of that same excellence | G |
| - | |
| So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle | F |
| I could write verse and you could play the fiddle | F |
| While as for love the sun went through the signs | G |
| And not a star but told him how love twines | G |
| A wreath for every decanate degree | H |
| Minute and second linked eternally | H |
| In chains of flowers that never fading are | I |
| Each one as sempiternal as a star | I |
| - | |
| Let me go back to your last birthday Then | J |
| I was already your one man of men | J |
| Appointed to complete you and fulfil | H |
| From everlasting the eternal will | H |
| We lay within the flood of crimson light | A |
| In my own balcony that August night | A |
| And conjuring the aright and the averse | G |
| Created yet another universe | G |
| - | |
| We worked together dance and rite and spell | H |
| Arousing heaven and constraining hell | H |
| We lived together every hour of rest | A |
| Was honied from your tiger lily breast | A |
| We oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed | A |
| My life to fate we parted Was I afraid | A |
| I was afraid afraid to live my love | E |
| Afraid you played the serpent I the dove | E |
| Afraid of what I know not I am glad | A |
| Of all the shame and wretchedness I had | A |
| Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you | K |
| And also that I cannot live without you | K |
| - | |
| Then I came back to you black treasons rear | L |
| Their heads blind hates deaf agonies of fear | L |
| Cruelty cowardice falsehood broken pledges | G |
| The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges | G |
| Sickness and poverty a thousand evils | G |
| Concerted malice of a million devils | G |
| You never swerved your high pooped galleon | M |
| Went marvellously majestically on | N |
| Full sailed while every other braver bark | C |
| Drove on the rocks or foundered in the dark | C |
| - | |
| Then Easter and the days of all delight | A |
| God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight | A |
| While above all true centre of our world | A |
| True source of light our great love passion pearled | A |
| Gave all its life and splendour to the sea | G |
| Above whose tides stood our stability | G |
| - | |
| Then sudden and fierce no monitory moan | O |
| Smote the mad mischief of the great cyclone | O |
| How far below us all its fury rolled | A |
| How vainly sulphur tries to tarnish gold | A |
| We lived together all its malice meant | A |
| Nothing but freedom of a continent | A |
| - | |
| It was the forest and the river that knew | K |
| The fact that one and one do not make two | K |
| We worked we walked we slept we were at ease | G |
| We cried we quarrelled all the rocks and trees | G |
| For twenty miles could tell how lovers played | A |
| And we could count a kiss for every glade | A |
| Worry starvation illness and distress | G |
| Each moment was a mine of happiness | G |
| - | |
| Then we grew tired of being country mice | G |
| Came up to Paris lived our sacrifice | G |
| There giving holy berries to the moon | P |
| July's thanksgiving for the joys of June | P |
| - | |
| And you are gone away and how shall I | Q |
| Make August sing the raptures of July | Q |
| And you are gone away what evil star | I |
| Makes you so competent and popular | R |
| How have I raised this harpy hag of Hell's | G |
| Malice that you are wanted somewhere else | G |
| I wish you were like me a man forbid | A |
| Banned outcast nice society well rid | A |
| Of the pair of us then who would interfere | L |
| With us my darling you would now be here | S |
| - | |
| But no we must fight on win through succeed | A |
| Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed | A |
| Lash dogs to kennel trample snakes put bit | A |
| In the mule mouths that have such need of it | A |
| Until the world there's so much to forgive in | T |
| Becomes a little possible to live in | T |
| - | |
| God alone knows if battle or surrender | R |
| Be the true courage either has its splendour | R |
| But since we chose the first God aid the right | A |
| And damn me if I fail you in the fight | A |
| God join again the ways that lie apart | A |
| And bless the love of loyal heart to heart | A |
| God keep us every hour in every thought | A |
| And bring the vessel of our love to port | A |
| - | |
| These are my birthday wishes Dawn's at hand | A |
| And you're an exile in a lonely land | A |
| But what were magic if it could not give | U |
| My thought enough vitality to live | V |
| Do not then dream this night has been a loss | G |
| All night I have hung a god upon the cross | G |
| All night I have offered incense at the shrine | W |
| All night you have been unutterably mine | W |
| Miner in the memory of the first wild hour | R |
| When my rough grasp tore the unwilling flower | R |
| From your closed garden mine in every mood | A |
| In every tense in every attitude | A |
| In every possibility still mine | W |
| While the sun's pomp and pageant sign to sign | W |
| Stately proceeded mine not only so | G |
| In the glamour of memory and austral glow | G |
| Of ardour but by image of my brow | R |
| Stronger than sense you are even here and now | R |
| Miner utterly mine my sister and my wife | X |
| Mother of my children mistress of my life | X |
| - | |
| O wild swan winging through the morning mist | A |
| The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed | A |
| The infinite device our love devised | A |
| If by some chance its truth might be surprised | A |
| Are these all past Are these to come Believe me | G |
| There is no parting they can never leave me | G |
| I have built you up into my heart and brain | Y |
| So fast that we can never part again | J |
| Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms | G |
| When all the time I have you in my arms | G |
| Why 'tis the murmur of our love that swells | G |
| Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles | G |
| - | |
| But this is dawn my soul shall make its nest | A |
| Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest | A |
| Love's thurible your tiger lily breast | A |
Aleister Crowley
(1)
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About A Birthday
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