Prologue To The Broken Heart Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDDEEFFGGHIJJKKLL MMNNOOEEPPQQKKRRSSTT| The mightiest choir of song that memory hears | A |
| Gave England voice for fifty lustrous years | B |
| Sunrise and thunder fired and shook the skies | C |
| That saw the sun god Marlowe's opening eyes | C |
| The morn's own music answered of the sea | D |
| Spake when his living lips bade Shakespeare be | D |
| And England made by Shakespeare's quickening breath | E |
| Divine and deathless even till life be death | E |
| Brought forth to time such godlike sons of men | F |
| That shamefaced love grows pride and now seems then | F |
| Shame that their day so shone so sang so died | G |
| Remembering finds remembrance one with pride | G |
| That day was clouding toward a stormlit close | H |
| When Ford's red sphere upon the twilight rose | I |
| Sublime with stars and sunset fire the sky | J |
| Glowed as though day nigh dead should never die | J |
| Sorrow supreme and strange as chance or doom | K |
| Shone spake and shuddered through the lustrous gloom | K |
| Tears lit with love made all the darkening air | L |
| Bright as though death's dim sunrise thrilled it there | L |
| And life re risen took comfort Stern and still | M |
| As hours and years that change and anguish fill | M |
| The strong secluded spirit ere it woke | N |
| Dwelt dumb till power possessed it and it spoke | N |
| Strange calm and sure as sense of beast or bird | O |
| Came forth from night the thought that breathed the word | O |
| That chilled and thrilled with passion stricken breath | E |
| Halls where Calantha trod the dance of death | E |
| A strength of soul too passionately pure | P |
| To change for aught that horror bids endure | P |
| To quail and wail and weep faint life away | Q |
| Ere sovereign sorrow smite relent and slay | Q |
| Sustained her silent till her bridal bloom | K |
| Changed smiled and waned in rapture toward the tomb | K |
| Terror twin born with pity kissed and thrilled | R |
| The lips that Shakespeare's word or Webster's filled | R |
| Here both cast out fell silent pity shrank | S |
| Rebuked and terror spirit stricken sank | S |
| The soul assailed arose afar above | T |
| All reach of all but only death and love | T |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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