Three Sonnets Written In Mid-channel Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCBBCCBDEDEDE AFGGFFGGFHIIHIH AJKKJJKKJLMLMLM| I | A |
| Now upon English soil I soon shall stand | B |
| Homeward from climes that fancy deems more fair | C |
| And well I know that there will greet me there | C |
| No soft foam fawning upon smiling strand | B |
| No scent of orange groves no zephyrs bland | B |
| But Amazonian March with breast half bare | C |
| And sleety arrows whistling through the air | C |
| Will be my welcome from that burly land | B |
| Yet he who boasts his birthplace yonder lies | D |
| Owns in his heart a mood akin to scorn | E |
| For sensuous slopes that bask 'neath Southern skies | D |
| Teeming with wine and prodigal of corn | E |
| And gazing through the mist with misty eyes | D |
| Blesses the brave bleak land where he was born | E |
| - | |
| II | A |
| And wherefore feels he thus Because its shore | F |
| Nor conqueror's foot nor despot's may defile | G |
| But Freedom walks unarmed about the isle | G |
| And Peace sits musing beside each man's door | F |
| Beyond these straits the wild beast mob may roar | F |
| Elsewhere the veering demagogue beguile | G |
| We hand in hand with the Past look on and smile | G |
| And tread the ways our fathers trod before | F |
| What though some wretch whose glory you may trace | H |
| Past lonely hearths and unrecorded graves | I |
| Round his Sword sceptre summoning swarms of slaves | I |
| Menace our shores with conflict or disgrace | H |
| We laugh behind the bulwark of the waves | I |
| And fling the foam defiant in his face | H |
| - | |
| III | A |
| And can it be when Heaven this deep moat made | J |
| And filled it with the ungovernable seas | K |
| Gave us the winds for rampart waves for frise | K |
| Behind which Freedom elsewhere if betrayed | J |
| Might shelter find and flourish unafraid | J |
| That men who learned to lisp at English knees | K |
| Of English fame to pamper womanish ease | K |
| And swell the surfeits of voracious trade | J |
| Shall the impregnable breakers undermine | L |
| Take ocean in reverse and basely bold | M |
| Burrow beneath the bastions of the brine | L |
| Nay England if the citadel be sold | M |
| For lucre thus Tarpeia's doom be thine | L |
| And perish smothered in a grave of gold | M |
Alfred Austin
(1)
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