Siena Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDD EFEFGGHHH HHDDBBIII JKLKIIDDD IIMGIINNN IOIOIIPPP IIQQPPRRR SIGIIIRHH TUIIIIIII VHVHIIPPP IIPPPPWWW PWPWIIPPP XXYYPPZZZ IA2IA2MGB2B2B2 C2D2PPPPIII HIHIE2E2RRR IIIIPPF2A2G2 IH2G2H2PPI2I2I2 J2J2IIIIPPP G2IG2IG2G2G2G2G2 IIIIIIK2K2L2 IRIM2G2G2PPP PPHHI2I2G2G2G2 PPPPIII2I2I2 H2H2PPN2I2Inside this northern summer's fold | A |
The fields are full of naked gold | A |
Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves | B |
The green veiled air is full of doves | B |
Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let | C |
Light on the small warm grasses wet | C |
Fall in short broken kisses sweet | D |
And break again like waves that beat | D |
Round the sun's feet | D |
- | |
But I for all this English mirth | E |
Of golden shod and dancing days | F |
And the old green girt sweet hearted earth | E |
Desire what here no spells can raise | F |
Far hence with holier heavens above | G |
The lovely city of my love | G |
Bathes deep in the sun satiate air | H |
That flows round no fair thing more fair | H |
Her beauty bare | H |
- | |
There the utter sky is holier there | H |
More pure the intense white height of air | H |
More clear men's eyes that mine would meet | D |
And the sweet springs of things more sweet | D |
There for this one warm note of doves | B |
A clamour of a thousand loves | B |
Storms the night's ear the day's assails | I |
From the tempestuous nightingales | I |
And fills and fails | I |
- | |
O gracious city well beloved | J |
Italian and a maiden crowned | K |
Siena my feet are no more moved | L |
Toward thy strange shapen mountain bound | K |
But my heart in me turns and moves | I |
O lady loveliest of my loves | I |
Toward thee to lie before thy feet | D |
And gaze from thy fair fountain seat | D |
Up the sheer street | D |
- | |
And the house midway hanging see | I |
That saw Saint Catherine bodily | I |
Felt on its floors her sweet feet move | M |
And the live light of fiery love | G |
Burn from her beautiful strange face | I |
As in the sanguine sacred place | I |
Where in pure hands she took the head | N |
Severed and with pure lips still red | N |
Kissed the lips dead | N |
- | |
For years through sweetest of the saints | I |
In quiet without cease she wrought | O |
Till cries of men and fierce complaints | I |
From outward moved her maiden thought | O |
And prayers she heard and sighs toward France | I |
God send us back deliverance | I |
Send back thy servant lest we die | P |
With an exceeding bitter cry | P |
They smote the sky | P |
- | |
Then in her sacred saving hands | I |
She took the sorrows of the lands | I |
With maiden palms she lifted up | Q |
The sick time's blood embittered cup | Q |
And in her virgin garment furled | P |
The faint limbs of a wounded world | P |
Clothed with calm love and clear desire | R |
She went forth in her soul's attire | R |
A missive fire | R |
- | |
Across the might of men that strove | S |
It shone and over heads of kings | I |
And molten in red flames of love | G |
Were swords and many monstrous things | I |
And shields were lowered and snapt were spears | I |
And sweeter tuned the clamorous years | I |
And faith came back and peace that were | R |
Fled for she bade saying Thou God's heir | H |
Hast thou no care | H |
- | |
Lo men lay waste thine heritage | T |
Still and much heathen people rage | U |
Against thee and devise vain things | I |
What comfort in the face of kings | I |
What counsel is there Turn thine eyes | I |
And thine heart from them in like wise | I |
Turn thee unto thine holy place | I |
To help us that of God for grace | I |
Require thy face | I |
- | |
For who shall hear us if not thou | V |
In a strange land what doest thou there | H |
Thy sheep are spoiled and the ploughers plough | V |
Upon us why hast thou no care | H |
For all this and beyond strange hills | I |
Liest unregardful what snow chills | I |
Thy foldless flock or what rains beat | P |
Lo in thine ears before thy feet | P |
Thy lost sheep bleat | P |
- | |
And strange men feed on faultless lives | I |
And there is blood and men put knives | I |
Shepherd unto the young lamb's throat | P |
And one hath eaten and one smote | P |
And one had hunger and is fed | P |
Full of the flesh of these and red | P |
With blood of these as who drinks wine | W |
And God knoweth who hath sent thee a sign | W |
If these were thine | W |
- | |
But the Pope's heart within him burned | P |
So that he rose up seeing the sign | W |
And came among them but she turned | P |
Back to her daily way divine | W |
And fed her faith with silent things | I |
And lived her life with curbed white wings | I |
And mixed herself with heaven and died | P |
And now on the sheer city side | P |
Smiles like a bride | P |
- | |
You see her in the fresh clear gloom | X |
Where walls shut out the flame and bloom | X |
Of full breathed summer and the roof | Y |
Keeps the keen ardent air aloof | Y |
And sweet weight of the violent sky | P |
There bodily beheld on high | P |
She seems as one hearing in tune | Z |
Heaven within heaven at heaven's full noon | Z |
In sacred swoon | Z |
- | |
A solemn swoon of sense that aches | I |
With imminent blind heat of heaven | A2 |
While all the wide eyed spirit wakes | I |
Vigilant of the supreme Seven | A2 |
Whose choral flames in God's sight move | M |
Made unendurable with love | G |
That without wind or blast of breath | B2 |
Compels all things through life and death | B2 |
Whither God saith | B2 |
- | |
There on the dim side chapel wall | C2 |
Thy mighty touch memorial | D2 |
Razzi raised up for ages dead | P |
And fixed for us her heavenly head | P |
And rent with plaited thorn and rod | P |
Bared the live likeness of her God | P |
To men's eyes turning from strange lands | I |
Where pale from thine immortal hands | I |
Christ wounded stands | I |
- | |
And the blood blots his holy hair | H |
And white brows over hungering eyes | I |
That plead against us and the fair | H |
Mute lips forlorn of words or sighs | I |
In the great torment that bends down | E2 |
His bruised head with the bloomless crown | E2 |
White as the unfruitful thorn flower | R |
A God beheld in dreams that were | R |
Beheld of her | R |
- | |
In vain on all these sins and years | I |
Falls the sad blood fall the slow tears | I |
In vain poured forth as watersprings | I |
Priests on your altars and ye kings | I |
About your seats of sanguine gold | P |
Still your God spat upon and sold | P |
Bleeds at your hands but now is gone | F2 |
All his flock from him saving one | A2 |
Judas alone | G2 |
- | |
Surely your race it was that he | I |
O men signed backward with his name | H2 |
Beholding in Gethsemane | G2 |
Bled the red bitter sweat of shame | H2 |
Knowing how the word of Christian should | P |
Mean to men evil and not good | P |
Seem to men shameful for your sake | I2 |
Whose lips for all the prayers they make | I2 |
Man's blood must slake | I2 |
- | |
But blood nor tears ye love not you | J2 |
That my love leads my longing to | J2 |
Fair as the world's old faith of flowers | I |
O golden goddesses of ours | I |
From what Idalian rose pleasance | I |
Hath Aphrodite bidden glance | I |
The lovelier lightnings of your feet | P |
From what sweet Paphian sward or seat | P |
Led you more sweet | P |
- | |
O white three sisters three as one | G2 |
With flowerlike arms for flowery bands | I |
Your linked limbs glitter like the sun | G2 |
And time lies beaten at your hands | I |
Time and wild years and wars and men | G2 |
Pass and ye care not whence or when | G2 |
With calm lips over sweet for scorn | G2 |
Ye watch night pass O children born | G2 |
Of the old world morn | G2 |
- | |
Ah in this strange and shrineless place | I |
What doth a goddess what a Grace | I |
Where no Greek worships her shrined limbs | I |
With wreaths and Cytherean hymns | I |
Where no lute makes luxurious | I |
The adoring airs in Amathus | I |
Till the maid knowing her mother near | K2 |
Sobs with love aching with sweet fear | K2 |
What do ye here | L2 |
- | |
For the outer land is sad and wears | I |
A raiment of a flaming fire | R |
And the fierce fruitless mountain stairs | I |
Climb yet seem wroth and loth to aspire | M2 |
Climb and break and are broken down | G2 |
And through their clefts and crests the town | G2 |
Looks west and sees the dead sun lie | P |
In sanguine death that stains the sky | P |
With angry dye | P |
- | |
And from the war worn wastes without | P |
In twilight in the time of doubt | P |
One sound comes of one whisper where | H |
Moved with low motions of slow air | H |
The great trees nigh the castle swing | I2 |
In the sad coloured evening | I2 |
Ricorditi di me che son | G2 |
La Pia that small sweet word alone | G2 |
Is not yet gone | G2 |
- | |
Ricorditi di me the sound | P |
Sole out of deep dumb days remote | P |
Across the fiery and fatal ground | P |
Comes tender as a hurt bird's note | P |
To where a ghost with empty hands | I |
A woe worn ghost her palace stands | I |
In the mid city where the strong | I2 |
Bells turn the sunset air to song | I2 |
And the towers throng | I2 |
- | |
With other face with speech the same | H2 |
A mightier maiden's likeness came | H2 |
Late among mourning men that slept | P |
A sacred ghost that went and wept | P |
White as the passion wounded Lamb | N2 |
Saying | I2 |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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