A Forsaken Garden Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABBCBC DEDEBFBF GHGHDIDI JKJKLMLM BNBNOPOP LBLBJJJJ LBLBQRQR BBBBLSLS LJLJOBOB TUTULJLJ| In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland | A |
| At the sea down's edge between windward and lee | B |
| Walled round with rocks as an inland island | A |
| The ghost of a garden fronts the sea | B |
| A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses | B |
| The steep square slope of the blossomless bed | C |
| Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses | B |
| Now lie dead | C |
| - | |
| The fields fall southward abrupt and broken | D |
| To the low last edge of the long lone land | E |
| If a step should sound or a word be spoken | D |
| Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand | E |
| So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless | B |
| Through branches and briars if a man make way | F |
| He shall find no life but the sea wind's restless | B |
| Night and day | F |
| - | |
| The dense hard passage is blind and stifled | G |
| That crawls by a track none turn to climb | H |
| To the strait waste place that the years have rifled | G |
| Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time | H |
| The thorns he spares when the rose is taken | D |
| The rocks are left when he wastes the plain | I |
| The wind that wanders the weeds wind shaken | D |
| These remain | I |
| - | |
| Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not | J |
| As the heart of a dead man the seed plots are dry | K |
| From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not | J |
| Could she call there were never a rose to reply | K |
| Over the meadows that blossom and wither | L |
| Rings but the note of a sea bird's song | M |
| Only the sun and the rain come hither | L |
| All year long | M |
| - | |
| The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels | B |
| One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath | N |
| Only the wind here hovers and revels | B |
| In a round where life seems barren as death | N |
| Here there was laughing of old there was weeping | O |
| Haply of lovers none ever will know | P |
| Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping | O |
| Years ago | P |
| - | |
| Heart handfast in heart as they stood Look thither | L |
| Did he whisper look forth from the flowers to the sea | B |
| For the foam flowers endure when the rose blossoms wither | L |
| And men that love lightly may die but we | B |
| And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened | J |
| And or ever the garden's last petals were shed | J |
| In the lips that had whispered the eyes that had lightened | J |
| Love was dead | J |
| - | |
| Or they loved their life through and then went whither | L |
| And were one to the end but what end who knows | B |
| Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither | L |
| As the rose red seaweed that mocks the rose | B |
| Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them | Q |
| What love was ever as deep as a grave | R |
| They are loveless now as the grass above them | Q |
| Or the wave | R |
| - | |
| All are at one now roses and lovers | B |
| Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea | B |
| Not a breath of the time that has been hovers | B |
| In the air now soft with a summer to be | B |
| Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter | L |
| Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep | S |
| When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter | L |
| We shall sleep | S |
| - | |
| Here death may deal not again for ever | L |
| Here change may come not till all change end | J |
| From the graves they have made they shall rise up never | L |
| Who have left nought living to ravage and rend | J |
| Earth stones and thorns of the wild ground growing | O |
| While the sun and the rain live these shall be | B |
| Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing | O |
| Roll the sea | B |
| - | |
| Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble | T |
| Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink | U |
| Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble | T |
| The fields that lessen the rocks that shrink | U |
| Here now in his triumph where all things falter | L |
| Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread | J |
| As a god self slain on his own strange altar | L |
| Death lies dead | J |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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