Russia: An Ode Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBCCDDEEFFGHIIJJKKI ILLMMNN AOOPPIIIIIIHGNNQQRRF FPPQQII ASSFFGGKTPPIIGGPPIIU UVVIIWW| I | A |
| Out of hell a word comes hissing dark as doom | B |
| Fierce as fire and foul as plague polluted gloom | B |
| Out of hell wherein the sinless damned endure | C |
| More than ever sin conceived of pains impure | C |
| More than ever ground men's living souls to dust | D |
| Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous lust | D |
| Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas | E |
| Ears have heard not tongues have told not things like these | E |
| Dante led by love's and hate's accordant spell | F |
| Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of hell | F |
| Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire | G |
| Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire | H |
| Saw not where the filth was foulest and the night | I |
| Darkest depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite | I |
| Set beside this truth his deadliest vision seems | J |
| Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams | J |
| Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash and wives | K |
| Rent with deadlier pangs than death for shame survives | K |
| Naked mad starved scourged spurned frozen fallen deflowered | I |
| Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured | I |
| Sounds that hell would hear not sights no thought could shape | L |
| Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape | L |
| Filth of raging crime and shame that crime enjoys | M |
| Age made one with youth in torture girls with boys | M |
| These and worse if aught be worse than these things are | N |
| Prove thee regent Russia praise thy mercy Czar | N |
| - | |
| II | A |
| Sons of man men born of women may we dare | O |
| Say they sin who dare be slain and dare not spare | O |
| They who take their lives in hand and smile on death | P |
| Holding life as less than sleep's most fitful breath | P |
| So their life perchance or death may serve and speed | I |
| Faith and hope that die if dream become not deed | I |
| Nought is death and nought is life and nought is fate | I |
| Save for souls that love has clothed with fire of hate | I |
| These behold them weigh them prove them find them nought | I |
| Save by light of hope and fire of burning thought | I |
| What though sun be less than storm where these aspire | H |
| Dawn than lightning song than thunder light than fire | G |
| Help is none in heaven hope sees no gentler star | N |
| Earth is hell and hell bows down before the Czar | N |
| All its monstrous murderous lecherous births acclaim | Q |
| Him whose empire lives to match its fiery fame | Q |
| Nay perchance at sight or sense of deeds here done | R |
| Here where men may lift up eyes to greet the sun | R |
| Hell recoils heart stricken horror worse than hell | F |
| Darkens earth and sickens heaven life knows the spell | F |
| Shudders quails and sinks or filled with fierier breath | P |
| Rises red in arms devised of darkling death | P |
| Pity mad with passion anguish mad with shame | Q |
| Call aloud on justice by her darker name | Q |
| Love grows hate for love's sake life takes death for guide | I |
| Night hath none but one red star Tyrannicide | I |
| - | |
| III | A |
| God or man be swift hope sickens with delay | S |
| Smite and send him howling down his father's way | S |
| Fall O fire of heaven and smite as fire from hell | F |
| Halls wherein men's torturers crowned and cowering dwell | F |
| These that crouch and shrink and shudder girt with power | G |
| These that reign and dare not trust one trembling hour | G |
| These omnipotent whom terror curbs and drives | K |
| These whose life reflects in fear their victims' lives | T |
| These whose breath sheds poison worse than plague's thick breath | P |
| These whose reign is ruin these whose word is death | P |
| These whose will turns heaven to hell and day to night | I |
| These if God's hand smite not how shall man's not smite | I |
| So from hearts by horror withered as by fire | G |
| Surge the strains of unappeasable desire | G |
| Sounds that bid the darkness lighten lit for death | P |
| Bid the lips whose breath was doom yield up their breath | P |
| Down the way of Czars awhile in vain deferred | I |
| Bid the Second Alexander light the Third | I |
| How for shame shall men rebuke them how may we | U |
| Blame whose fathers died and slew to leave us free | U |
| We though all the world cry out upon them know | V |
| Were our strife as theirs we could not strike but so | V |
| Could not cower and could not kiss the hands that smite | I |
| Could not meet them armed in sunlit battle's light | I |
| Dark as fear and red as hate though morning rise | W |
| Life it is that conquers death it is that dies | W |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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