Despair Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABB ACCDDEEFFGGH AAAIIJJ KLLGGMM KNNOOPP KQQRR KSSTT KKKOOUU VW XXYYKKZZC A2A2 VKKVV VVVVV VB2B2EE VC2C2D2D2 KE2E2KK KYYVVB2B2 KVVF2F2G2H2BB KCCII KSSVV VJJI2I2 VKKVVJ2J2 VI2I2VVI | A |
Is it you that preach'd in the chapel there looking over the sand | B |
Follow'd us too that night and dogg'd us and drew me to land | B |
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II | A |
What did I feel that night You are curious How should I tell | C |
Does it matter so much what I felt You rescued me yet was it well | C |
That you came unwish'd for uncall'd between me and the deep and my doom | D |
Three days since three more dark days of the Godless gloom | D |
Of a life without sun without health with out hope without any delight | E |
In anything here upon earth but ah God that night that night | E |
When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse there on the fatal neck | F |
Of land running out into rock they had saved many hundreds from wreck | F |
Glared on our way toward death I remember I thought as we past | G |
Does it matter how many they saved we are all of us wreck'd at last | G |
'Do you fear ' and there came thro' the roar of the breaker a whisper a breath | H |
'Fear am I not with you I am frighted at life not death ' | - |
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III | A |
And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone in the sky | A |
Flashing with fires as of God but we knew that their light was a lie | A |
Bright as with deathless hope but however they sparkled and shone | I |
The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own | I |
No soul in the heaven above no soul on the earth below | J |
A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe | J |
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IV | K |
See we were nursed in the drear night fold of your fatalist creed | L |
And we turn'd to the growing dawn we had hoped for a dawn indeed | L |
When the light of a Sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the Past | G |
And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at last | G |
And we broke away from the Christ our human brother and friend | M |
For He spoke or it seem'd that He spoke of a Hell without help without end | M |
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V | K |
Hoped for a dawn and it came but the promise had faded away | N |
We had past from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day | N |
He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire | O |
The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire | O |
Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the strong | P |
Of a dying worm in a world all massacre murder and wrong | P |
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VI | K |
O we poor orphans of nothing alone on that lonely shore | Q |
Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she bore | Q |
Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly fruit | R |
Come from the brute poor souls no souls and to die with the brute | R |
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VII | K |
Nay but I am not claiming your pity I know you of old | S |
Small pity for those that have ranged from the narrow warmth of your fold | S |
Where you bawl'd the dark side of your faith and a God of eternal rage | T |
Till you flung us back on ourselves and the human heart and the Age | T |
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VIII | K |
But pity the Pagan held it a vice was in her and in me | K |
Helpless taking the place of the pitying God that should be | K |
Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power | O |
And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a flower | O |
Pity for all that suffers on land or in air or the deep | U |
And pity for our own selves till we long'd for eternal sleep | U |
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IX | V |
'Lightly step over the sands the waters you hear them call | W |
Life with its anguish and horrors and errors away with it all ' | - |
And she laid her hand in my own she was always loyal and sweet | X |
Till the points of the foam in the dusk came playing about our feet | X |
There was a strong sea current would sweep us out to the main | Y |
'Ah God' tho' I felt as I spoke I was taking the name in vain | Y |
'Ah God' and we turn'd to each other we kiss'd we embraced she and I | K |
Knowing the Love we were used to believe everlasting would die | K |
We had read their know nothing books and we lean'd to the darker side | Z |
Ah God should we find Him perhaps perhaps if we died if we died | Z |
We never had found Him on earth this earth is a fatherless Hell | C |
'Dear Love for ever and ever for ever and ever farewell ' | - |
Never a cry so desolate not since the world began | A2 |
Never a kiss so sad no not since the coming of man | A2 |
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X | V |
But the blind wave cast me ashore and you saved me a valueless life | K |
Not a grain of gratitude mine You have parted the man from the wife | K |
I am left alone on the land she is all alone in the sea | V |
If a curse meant ought I would curse you for not having let me be | V |
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XI | V |
Visions of youth for my brain was drunk with the water it seems | V |
I had past into perfect quiet at length out of pleasant dreams | V |
And the transient trouble of drowning what was it when match'd with the pains | V |
Of the hellish heat of a wretched life rushing back thro' the veins | V |
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XII | V |
Why should I live one son had forged on his father and fled | B2 |
And if I believed in a God I would thank him the other is dead | B2 |
And there was a baby girl that had never look'd on the light | E |
Happiest she of us all for she past from the night to the night | E |
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XIII | V |
But the crime if a crime of her eldest born her glory her boast | C2 |
Struck hard at the tender heart of the mother and broke it almost | C2 |
Tho' glory and shame dying out for ever in endless time | D2 |
Does it matter so much whether crown'd for a virtue or hang'd for a crime | D2 |
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XIV | K |
And ruin'd by him by him I stood there naked amazed | E2 |
In a world of arrogant opulence fear'd myself turning crazed | E2 |
And I would not be mock'd in a madhouse and she the delicate wife | K |
With a grief that could only be cured if cured by the surgeon's knife | K |
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XV | K |
Why should we bear with an hour of torture a moment of pain | Y |
If every man die for ever if all his griefs are in vain | Y |
And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space | V |
Motherless evermore of an ever vanishing race | V |
When the worm shall have writhed its last and its last brother worm will have fled | B2 |
From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead | B2 |
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XVI | K |
Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings O yes | V |
For these are the new dark ages you see of the popular press | V |
When the bat comes out of his cave and the owls are whooping at noon | F2 |
And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill and crows to the sun and the moon | F2 |
Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turn'd into blood | G2 |
And Hope will have broken her heart running after a shadow of good | H2 |
For their knowing and know nothing books are scatter'd from hand to hand | B |
We have knelt in your know all chapel too looking over the sand | B |
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XVII | K |
What I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well | C |
Infinite cruelty rather that made everlasting Hell | C |
Made us foreknew us foredoom'd us and does what he will with his own | I |
Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan | I |
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XVIII | K |
Hell if the souls of men were immortal as men have been told | S |
The lecher would cleave to his lusts and the miser would yearn for his gold | S |
And so there were Hell for ever but were there a God as you say | V |
His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanish'd away | V |
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XIX | V |
All yet I have had some glimmer at times in my gloomiest woe | J |
Of a God behind all after all the great God for aught that I know | J |
But the God of Love and of Hell together they cannot be thought | I2 |
If there be such a God may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought | I2 |
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XX | V |
Blasphemy whose is the fault is it mine for why would you save | K |
A madman to vex you with wretched words who is best in his grave | K |
Blasphemy ay why not being damn'd beyond hope of grace | V |
O would I were yonder with her and away from your faith and your face | V |
Blasphemy true I have scared you pale with my scandalous talk | J2 |
But the blasphemy to my mind lies all in the way that you walk | J2 |
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XXI | V |
Hence she is gone can I stay can I breathe divorced from the Past | I2 |
You needs must have good lynx eyes if I do not escape you at last | I2 |
Our orthodox coroner doubtless will find it a felo de se | V |
And the stake and the cross road fool if you will does it matter to me | V |
Alfred Lord Tennyson
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