Sunrise Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCAABBCCDDCCEEFF AAAACCCCGGBBAACCAA| If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the past and hereafter | A |
| In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and of laughter | A |
| And the blithest of singers were back with a song if again from his tomb as from prison | B |
| If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had arisen | B |
| With the gold feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon earth at his shoulders | C |
| And the gold flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips for a joy to beholders | C |
| He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate measure | A |
| The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of their sense and the pleasure | A |
| For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here and the season | B |
| When desire was a longing and absence a thorn and rejoicing a word without reason | B |
| For the roof overhead of the pines is astir with delight as of jubilant voices | C |
| And the floor underfoot of the bracken and heather alive as a heart that rejoices | C |
| For the house that was childless awhile and the light of it darkened the pulse of it dwindled | D |
| Rings radiant again with a child's bright feet with the light of his face is rekindled | D |
| And the ways of the meadows that knew him the sweep of the down that the sky's belt closes | C |
| Grow gladder at heart than the soft wind made them whose feet were but fragrant with roses | C |
| Though the fall of the year be upon us who trusted in June and by June were defrauded | E |
| And the summer that brought us not back the desire of our eyes be gone hence unapplauded | E |
| For July came joyless among us and August went out from us arid and sterile | F |
| And the hope of our hearts as it seemed was no more than a flower that the seasons imperil | F |
| And the joy of our hearts as it seemed than a thought which regret had not heart to remember | A |
| Till four dark months overpast were atoned for and summer began in September | A |
| Hark April again as a bird in the house with a child's voice hither and thither | A |
| See May in the garden again with a child's face cheering the woods ere they wither | A |
| June laughs in the light of his eyes and July on the sunbright cheeks of him slumbers | C |
| And August glows in a smile more sweet than the cadence of gold mouthed numbers | C |
| In the morning the sight of him brightens the sun and the noon with delight in him flushes | C |
| And the silence of nightfall is music about him as soft as the sleep that it hushes | C |
| We awake with a sense of a sunrise that is not a gift of the sundawn's giving | G |
| And a voice that salutes us is sweeter than all sounds else in the world of the living | G |
| And a presence that warms us is brighter than all in the world of our visions beholden | B |
| Though the dreams of our sleep were as those that the light of a world without grief makes golden | B |
| For the best that the best of us ever devised as a likeness of heaven and its glory | A |
| What was it of old or what is it and will be for ever in song or in story | A |
| Or in shape or in colour of carven or painted resemblance adored of all ages | C |
| But a vision recorded of children alive in the pictures of old or the pages | C |
| Where children are not heaven is not and heaven if they come not again shall be never | A |
| But the face and the voice of a child are assurance of heaven and its promise for ever | A |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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