The Ancient Sage Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Ancient Sage Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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A thousand summers ere the time of Christ	A
From out his ancient city came a Seer	B
Whom one that loved and honour'd him and yet	C
Was no disciple richly garb'd but worn	D
From wasteful living follow'd in his hand	E
A scroll of verse till that old man before	F
A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour'd	G
From darkness into daylight turn'd and spoke	H
	-
This wealth of waters might but seem to draw	I
From yon dark cave but son the source is higher	J
Yon summit half a league in air and higher	J
The cloud that hides it higher still the heavens	K
Whereby the cloud was moulded and whereout	G
The cloud descended Force is from the heights	L
I am wearied of our city son and go	M
To spend my one last year among the hills	N
What hast thou there Some deathsong for the Ghouls	O
To make their banquet relish let me read	G
	-
How far thro' all the bloom and brake	P
That nightingale is heard	G
What power but the bird's could make	P
This music in the bird	G
How summer bright are yonder skies	Q
And earth as fair in lute	G
And yet what sign of aught that lies	Q
Behind the green and blue	R
But man to day is fancy's fool	S
As man hath ever been	T
The nameless Power or Powers that rule	S
Were never heard or seen	U
	-
If thou would'st hear the Nameless and wilt dive	V
Into the Temple cave of thine own self	W
There brooding by the central altar thou	X
May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice	Y
By which thou wilt abide if thou be wise	Q
As if thou knewest tho' thou canst not know	M
For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake	P
That sees and stirs the surface shadow there	Z
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm	A2
The Abysm of all Abysms beneath within	T
The blue of sky and sea the green of earth	B2
And in the million millionth of a grain	C2
Which cleft and cleft again for evermore	F
And ever vanishing never vanishes	D2
To me my son more mystic than myself	W
Or even than the Nameless is to me	A2
And when thou sendest thy free soul thro' heaven	E2
Nor understandest bound nor boundlessness	D2
Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred names	D2
And if the Nameless should withdraw from all	F2
Thy frailty counts most real all thy world	G
Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark	G2
	-
And since from when this earth began	H2
The Nameless never came	A2
Among us never spake with man	H2
And never named the Name	A2
	-
Thou canst not prove the Nameless O my son	E2
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in	T
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone	I2
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone	I2
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one	E2
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal no	M
Nor yet that thou art mortal nay my son	E2
Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee	A2
Am not thyself in converse with thyself	W
For nothing worthy proving can be proven	E2
Nor yet disproven wherefore thou be wise	D2
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt	G
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith	J2
She reels not in the storm of warring words	D2
She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No '	-
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst	G
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night	G
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud	G
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls	D2
She hears the lark within the songless egg	K2
She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'	L2
	-
What Power aught akin to Mind	G
The mind in me and you	R
Or power as of the Gods gone blind	G
Who see not what they do	R
	-
But some in yonder city hold my son	E2
That none but Gods could build this house of ours	D2
So beautiful vast various so beyond	G
All work of man yet like all work of man	H2
A beauty with defect till That which knows	D2
And is not known but felt thro' what we feel	M2
Within ourselves is highest shall descend	G
On this half deed and shape it at the last	G
According to the Highest in the Highest	G
	-
What Power but the Years that make	P
And break the vase of clay	N2
And stir the sleeping earth and wake	P
The bloom that fades away	N2
What rulers but the Days and Hours	D2
That cancel weal with woe	M
And wind the front of youth with flowers	D2
And cap our age with snow	M
	-
The days and hours are ever glancing by	O2
And seem to flicker past thro' sun and shade	G
Or short or long as Pleasure leads or Pain	C2
But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour	J
Tho' we thin minds who creep from thought to thought	G
Break into 'Thens' and 'Whens' the Eternal Now	X
This double seeming of the single world	G
My words are like the babblings in a dream	A2
Of nightmare when the habblings break the dream	A2
But thou be wise in this dream world of ours	D2
Nor take thy dial for thy deity	A2
But make the passing shadow serve thy will	P2
	-
The years that made the stripling wise	D2
Undo their work again	Q2
And leave him blind of heart and eyes	D2
The last and least of men	Q2
Who clings to earth and once would dare	Z
Hell heat or Arctic cold	G
And now one breath of cooler air	Z
Would loose him from his hold	G
His winter chills him to the root	G
He withers marrow and mind	G
The kernel of the shrivell'd fruit	G
Is jutting thro' the rind	G
The tiger spasms tear his chest	G
The palsy wags his head	G
The wife the sons who love him best	G
Would fain that he were dead	G
The griefs by which he once was wrung	R2
Were never worth the while	S2
	-
Who knows or whether this earth narrow life	W
Be yet but yolk and forming in the shell	T2
	-
The shaft of scorn that once had stung	R2
But wakes a dotard smile	S2
	-
The placid gleams of sunset after storm	A2
	-
The statesman's brain that sway'd the past	G
Is feebler than his knees	D2
The passive sailor wrecks at last	G
In ever silent seas	D2
The warrior hath forgot his arms	D2
The Learned all his lore	F
The changing market frets or charms	D2
The merchant's hope no more	F
The prophet's beacon burn'd in vain	C2
And now is lost in cloud	G
The plowman passes bent with pain	C2
To mix with what he plow'd	G
The poet whom his Age would quote	G
As heir of endless fame	A2
He knows not ev'n the book he wrote	G
Not even his own name	A2
For man has overlived his day	N2
And darkening in the light	G
Scarce feels the senses break away	N2
To mix with ancient Night	G
	-
The shell must break before the bird can fly	O2
	-
The years that when my Youth began	H2
Had set the lily and rose	D2
By all my ways where'er they ran	H2
Have ended mortal foes	D2
My rose of love for ever gone	U2
My lily of truth and trust	G
They made her lily and rose in one	E2
And changed her into dust	G
O rosetree planted in my grief	W
And growing on her tomb	A2
Her dust is greening in your leaf	W
Her blood is in your bloom	A2
O slender lily waving there	Z
And laughing back the light	G
In vain you tell me 'Earth is fair'	Z
When all is dark as night	G
	-
My son the world is dark with griefs and graves	D2
So dark that men cry out against the Heavens	D2
Who knows but that the darkness is in man	H2
The doors of Night may be the gates of Light	G
For wert thou born or blind or deaf and then	Q2
Suddenly heal'd how would'st thou glory in all	F2
The splendours and the voices of the world	G
And we the poor earth's dying race and yet	G
No phantoms watching from a phantom shore	Z
Await the last and largest sense to make	P
The phantom walls of this illusion fade	G
And show us that the world is wholly fair	Z
	-
But vain the tears for darken'd years	D2
As laughter over wine	V2
And vain the laughter as the tears	D2
O brother mine or thine	V2
	-
For all that laugh and all that weep	W2
And all that breathe are one	E2
Slight ripple on the boundless deep	W2
That moves and all is gone	U2
	-
But that one ripple on the boundless deep	W2
Feels that the deep is boundless and itself	W
For ever changing form but evermore	Z
One with the boundless motion of the deep	W2
	-
Yet wine and laughter friends and set	G
The lamps alight and call	F2
For golden music and forget	G
The darkness of the pall	X2
	-
If utter darkness closed the day my son	E2
But earth's dark forehead flings athwart the heavens	D2
Her shadow crown'd with stars and yonder out	G
To northward some that never set but pass	D2
From sight and night to lose themselves in day	N2
I hate the black negation of the bier	Z
And wish the dead as happier than ourselves	D2
And higher having climb'd one step beyond	G
Our village miseries might be borne in white	G
To burial or to burning hymn'd from hence	D2
With songs in praise of death and crown'd with flowers	D2
	-
O worms and maggots of to day	N2
Without their hope of wings	D2
	-
But louder than thy rhyme the silent Word	G
Of that world prophet in the heart of man	H2
	-
Tho' some have gleams or so they say	N2
Of more than mortal things	D2
	-
To day but what of yesterday for oft	G
On me when boy there came what then I call'd	G
Who knew no books and no philosophies	D2
In my boy phrase 'The Passion of the Past '	-
The first gray streak of earliest summer dawn	U2
The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom	A2
As if the late and early were but one	E2
A height a broken grange a grove a flower	Z
Had murmurs 'Lost and gone and lost and gone '	-
A breath a whisper some divine farewell	T2
Desolate sweetness far and far away	N2
What had he loved what had he lost the boy	Y2
I know not and I speak of what has been	T
And more my son for more than once when I	O2
Sat all alone revolving in myself	W
The word that is the symbol of myself	W
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed	G
And past into the Nameless as a cloud	G
Melts into Heaven I touch'd my limbs the limbs	D2
Were strange not mine and yet no shade of doubt	G
But utter clearness and thro' loss of Self	W
The gain of such large life as match'd with ours	D2
Were Sun to spark unshadowable in words	D2
Themselves but shadows of a shadow world	G
	-
And idle gleams will come and go	M
But still the clouds remain	C2
	-
The clouds themselves are children of the Sun	E2
	-
And Night and Shadow rule below	M
When only Day should reign	C2
	-
And Day and Night are children of the Sun	E2
And idle gleams to thee are light to me	A2
Some say the Light was father of the Night	G
And some the Night was father of the Light	G
No night no day I touch thy world again	Q2
No ill no good such counter terms my son	E2
Are border races holding each its own	I2
By endless war but night enough is there	Z
In yon dark city get thee back and since	D2
The key to that weird casket which for thee	A2
But holds a skull is neither thine nor mine	V2
But in the hand of what is more than man	H2
Or in man's hand when man is more than man	H2
Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men	Q2
And make thy gold thy vassal not thy king	Z2
And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl	A3
And send the day into the darken'd heart	G
Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men	Q2
A dying echo from a falling wall	F2
Nor care for Hunger hath the Evil eye	O2
To vex the noon with fiery gems or fold	G
Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous looms	D2
Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue	R2
Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine	V2
Nor thou he rageful like a handled bee	A2
And lose thy life by usage of thy sting	Z2
Nor harm an adder thro' the lust for harm	A2
Nor make a snail's horn shrink for wantonness	D2
And more think well Do well will follow thought	G
And in the fatal sequence of this world	G
An evil thought may soil thy children's blood	G
But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire	Z
And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness	D2
A cloud between the Nameless and thyself	W
And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel	M2
And climb the Mount of Blessing whence if thou	X
Look higher then perchance thou mayest beyond	G
A hundred ever rising mountain lines	D2
And past the range of Night and Shadow see	D2
The high heaven dawn of more than mortal day	N2
Strike on the Mount of Vision	E2
So farewell	T2