A Channel Passage Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDDEEFFCCGGHHIIII GGJJKKLLMMIIGGIIIINN OOPPQQDDRRSSTTIIBBGG OOUUCCIIIIVVWWXXYYForth from Calais at dawn of night when sunset summer on autumn shone | A |
Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone | B |
Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled and bade man welcome a dim sweet hour | C |
Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea and heaven was fair as a field in flower | C |
Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music the starbright air | D |
Made the face of the sea if aught may make the face of the sea more fair | D |
Whence came change Was the sweet night weary of rest What anguish awoke in the dark | E |
Sudden sublime the strong storm spake we heard the thunders as hounds that bark | E |
Lovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars we saw the lightnings exalt the sky | F |
Living and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to quicken and lighten and die | F |
Heaven's own heart at its highest of delight found utterance in music and semblance in fire | C |
Thunder on thunder exulted rejoicing to live and to satiate the night's desire | C |
And the night was alive and anhungered of life as a tiger from toils cast free | G |
And a rapture of rage made joyous the spirit and strength of the soul of the sea | G |
All the weight of the wind bore down on it freighted with death for fraught | H |
And the keen waves kindled and quickened as things transfigured or things distraught | H |
And madness fell on them laughing and leaping and madness came on the wind | I |
And the might and the light and the darkness of storm were as storm in the heart of Ind | I |
Such glory such terror such passion as lighten and harrow the far fierce East | I |
Rang shone spake shuddered around us the night was an altar with death for priest | I |
The channel that sunders England from shores where never was man born free | G |
Was clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and the wrath of a tropic sea | G |
As a wild steed ramps in rebellion and rears till it swerves from a backward fall | J |
The strong ship struggled and reared and her deck was upright as a sheer cliff's wall | J |
Stern and prow plunged under alternate a glimpse a recoil a breath | K |
And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the throat of death | K |
Three glad hours and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy | L |
Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea bird's heart in a boy | L |
For the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and flamed sublime | M |
As the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the pulse of time | M |
The glory beholden of man in a vision the music of light overheard | I |
The rapture and radiance of battle the life that abides in the fire of a word | I |
In the midmost heaven enkindled was manifest far on the face of the sea | G |
And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but when heaven breathed free | G |
Far eastward clear of the covering of cloud the sky laughed out into light | I |
From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that were flowerlike and white | I |
The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that laugh as they fade | I |
From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in the light they made | I |
Far westward throned in a silent sky where life was in lustrous tune | N |
Shone sweeter and surer than morning or evening the steadfast smile of the moon | N |
The limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams may behold and deep | O |
As life or as death revealed and transfigured may shine on the soul through sleep | O |
All glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it yearns to know | P |
Bore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship above and below | P |
The joys of the lightnings the songs of the thunders the strong sea's labour and rage | Q |
Were tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the soul to wage | Q |
No thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths that the night made bare | D |
Illimitable infinite awful and joyful alive in the summit of air | D |
Air stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its reign and the sea's | R |
Rebellious rapturous and transient as faith or as terror that bows men's knees | R |
No love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in dreams | S |
Than the world shone then when the sky and the sea were as love for a breath's length seems | S |
One utterly mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with love that subsides | T |
As the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm and released the tides | T |
In the dense mid channel the steam souled ship hung hovering assailed and withheld | I |
As a soul born royal if life or if death be against it is thwarted and quelled | I |
As the glories of myriads of glowworms in lustrous grass on a boundless lawn | B |
Were the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a light like dawn | B |
A thousand Phosphors a thousand Hespers awoke in the churning sea | G |
And the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a tune could be | G |
As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of life or of sleep | O |
Audible alway alive in the storm too fleet for a dream to keep | O |
Too fleet too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember awake | U |
Light subtler and swifter than lightning that whispers and laughs in the live storm's wake | U |
In the wild bright wake of the storm in the dense loud heart of the labouring hour | C |
A harvest of stars by the storm's hand reaped each fair as a star shaped flower | C |
And sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of tempest seemed | I |
When the light and the sound of it sank and the glory was gone as a dream half dreamed | I |
The glory the terror the passion that made of the midnight a miracle died | I |
Not slain at a stroke nor in gradual reluctance abated of power and of pride | I |
With strong swift subsidence awful as power that is wearied of power upon earth | V |
As a God that were wearied of power upon heaven and were fain of a new God's birth | V |
The might of the night subsided the tyranny kindled in darkness fell | W |
And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of heaven and of hell | W |
The waters heaving and hungering at heart made way and were wellnigh fain | X |
For the ship that had fought them and wrestled and revelled in labour to cease from her pain | X |
And an end was made of it only remembrance endures of the glad loud strife | Y |
And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the passage of life | Y |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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