Evening On The Broads Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGCGCCHCH IJKJKLKLLLLLCLCLKMKH NKNKOLOLLFLFOPOPOQOQ LJLJKLKLOROROSOSNQNQ OHOHNCNCNLNLCTCTQLQL CKCKKUKUONONQCQCKVKV KWKWNLNLLLLLCCCCCDCDOver two shadowless waters adrift as a pinnace in peril | A |
Hangs as in heavy suspense charged with irresolute light | B |
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile | A |
Waves and wastes of the land half repossessed by the night | B |
Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless | C |
Twilight yonder the depths darken afar and asleep | D |
Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless | C |
Waters hardly the light lives on the face of the deep | D |
Hardly but here for awhile All over the grey soft shallow | E |
Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight void of a star | F |
As a bird unfledged is the broad winged night whose winglets are callow | E |
Yet but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar | F |
Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom | G |
Thick as the darkness of leaf shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers | C |
World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom | G |
Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours | C |
Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles | C |
Still with itself being sick of division and dimmed by dismay | H |
Nay not so but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles | C |
Fearful and fain of the night lovely with love of the day | H |
Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death and begotten | I |
Out of the womb of the tomb born of the seed of the grave | J |
Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten | K |
Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave | J |
Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon in a vision | K |
Blindly beheld but in vain ghosts that are tired and would rest | L |
But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division | K |
Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest | L |
Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season enkindled | L |
Wane and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them fade | L |
Loftier aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled | L |
Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new made | L |
New made night new born of the sunset immeasurable endless | C |
Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart | L |
In the deep sweet heart full charged with faultless love of the friendless | C |
Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart | L |
Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden | K |
Full sailed wide winged poised softly for ever asway | M |
Nay not so but at least for a little awhile at the golden | K |
Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay | H |
Here on the bar of the sand bank steep yet aslope to the gleaming | N |
Waste of the water without waste of the water within | K |
Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming | N |
Whether the day be done whether the night may begin | K |
Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover | O |
Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud | L |
Colder again and slowly remoter afraid to recover | O |
Breath yet fain to revive as it seems from the skirt of the shroud | L |
Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward | L |
Heaven as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star | F |
Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast ward | L |
Eagerly yearning forth of the deeps where the ways of them are | F |
Glad of the glory of the gift of their life and the wealth of its wonder | O |
Fain of the night and the sea and the sweet wan face of the earth | P |
Over them air grows deeper intense with delight in them under | O |
Things are thrilled in their sleep as with sense of a sure new birth | P |
But here by the sand bank watching with eyes on the sea line stranger | O |
Grows to me also the weight of the sea ridge gazed on of me | Q |
Heavily heaped up changefully changeless void though of danger | O |
Void not of menace but full of the might of the dense dull sea | Q |
Like as the wave is before me behind is the bank deep drifted | L |
Yellow and thick as the bank is behind me in front is the wave | J |
As the wall of a prison imprisoning the mere is the girth of it lifted | L |
But the rampire of water in front is erect as the wall of a grave | J |
And the crests of it crumble and topple and change but the wall is not broken | K |
Standing still dry shod I see it as higher than my head | L |
Moving inland alway again reared up as in token | K |
Still of impending wrath still in the foam of it shed | L |
And even in the pauses between them dividing the rollers in sunder | O |
High overhead seems ever the sea line fixed as a mark | R |
And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder | O |
Cloud and torrent and storm darkening the depths of the dark | R |
Up to the sea not upon it or over it upward from under | O |
Seems he to gaze whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore | S |
A wall of turbid water aslope to the wide sky's wonder | O |
Of colour and cloud it climbs or spreads as a slanted floor | S |
And the large lights change on the face of the mere like things that were living | N |
Winged and wonderful beams like as birds are that pass and are free | Q |
But the light is dense as darkness a gift withheld in the giving | N |
That lies as dead on the fierce dull face of the landward sea | Q |
Stained and stifled and soiled made earthier than earth is and duller | O |
Grimly she puts back light as rejected a thing put away | H |
No transparent rapture a molten music of colour | O |
No translucent love taken and given of the day | H |
Fettered and marred and begrimed is the light's live self on her falling | N |
As the light of a man's life lighted the fume of a dungeon mars | C |
Only she knows of the wind when her wrath gives ear to him calling | N |
The delight of the light she knows not nor answers the sun or the stars | C |
Love she hath none to return for the luminous love of their giving | N |
None to reflect from the bitter and shallow response of her heart | L |
Yearly she feeds on her dead yet herself seems dead and not living | N |
Or confused as a soul heavy laden with trouble that will not depart | L |
In the sound of her speech to the darkness the moan of her evil remorse is | C |
Haply for strong ships gnawed by the dog toothed sea bank's fang | T |
And trampled to death by the rage of the feet of her foam lipped horses | C |
Whose manes are yellow as plague and as ensigns of pestilence hang | T |
That wave in the foul faint air of the breath of a death stricken city | Q |
So menacing heaves she the manes of her rollers knotted with sand | L |
Discoloured opaque suspended in sign as of strength without pity | Q |
That shake with flameless thunder the low long length of the strand | L |
Here far off in the farther extreme of the shore as it lengthens | C |
Northward lonely for miles ere ever a village begin | K |
On the lapsing land that recedes as the growth of the strong sea strengthens | C |
Shoreward thrusting further and further its outworks in | K |
Here in Shakespeare's vision a flower of her kin forsaken | K |
Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave's edge | U |
Surely by no shore else but here on the bank storm shaken | K |
Perdita bright as a dew drop engilt of the sun on the sedge | U |
Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her | O |
Outcast fair as a fairy the child of a far off king | N |
And over the babe flower gently the head of a pastoral elder | O |
Bowed compassionate hoar as the hawthorn blossom in spring | N |
And kind as harvest in autumn a shelter of shade on the lonely | Q |
Shelterless unknown shore scourged of implacable waves | C |
Here where the wind walks royal alone in his kingdom and only | Q |
Sounds to the sedges a wail as of triumph that conquers and craves | C |
All these waters and wastes are his empire of old and awaken | K |
From barren and stagnant slumber at only the sound of his breath | V |
Yet the hunger is eased not that aches in his heart nor the goal overtaken | K |
That his wide wings yearn for and labour as hearts that yearn after death | V |
All the solitude sighs and expects with a blind expectation | K |
Somewhat unknown of its own sad heart grown heart sick of strife | W |
Till sometime its wild heart maddens and moans and the vast ululation | K |
Takes wing with the clouds on the waters and wails to be quit of its life | W |
For the spirit and soul of the waste is the wind and his wings with their waving | N |
Darken and lighten the darkness and light of it thickened or thinned | L |
But the heart that impels them is even as a conqueror's insatiably craving | N |
That victory can fill not as power cannot satiate the want of the wind | L |
All these moorlands and marshes are full of his might and oppose not | L |
Aught of defence nor of barrier of forest or precipice piled | L |
But the will of the wind works ever as his that desires what he knows not | L |
And the wail of his want unfulfilled is as one making moan for her child | L |
And the cry of his triumph is even as the crying of hunger that maddens | C |
The heart of a strong man aching in vain as the wind's heart aches | C |
And the sadness itself of the land for its infinite solitude saddens | C |
More for the sound than the silence athirst for the sound that slakes | C |
And the sunset at last and the twilight are dead and the darkness is breathless | C |
With fear of the wind's breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep | D |
But a sense of the sound of it alway a spirit unsleeping and deathless | C |
Ghost or God evermore moves on the face of the deep | D |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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