The Eve Of Revolution Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABABABCCBAADEE FGFHFHFHIIGJJHAA KIKIKIKILLIMMINN AOAOAOAPAAOQQORR SESESESETTEUUEVV ASASAAASWWSAASCC XFXFXFXFAAFXXFAA AXAXAXAXAAXIIXXX AOAOAOAOPPOXXOPP PAPAPAPAYYAXXAAA XAXAXAXAXXAAAAXX TXThe trumpets of the four winds of the world | A |
From the ends of the earth blow battle the night heaves | B |
With breasts palpitating and wings refurled | A |
With passion of couched limbs as one who grieves | B |
Sleeping and in her sleep she sees uncurled | A |
Dreams serpent shapen such as sickness weaves | B |
Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled | A |
Dead leaves of sleep thicker than autumn leaves | B |
Shadows of storm shaped things | C |
Flights of dim tribes of kings | C |
The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves | B |
And without grain to yield | A |
Their scythe swept harvest field | A |
Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives | D |
Dead foliage of the tree of sleep | E |
Leaves blood coloured and golden blown from deep to deep | E |
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I hear the midnight on the mountains cry | F |
With many tongues of thunders and I hear | G |
Sound and resound the hollow shield of sky | F |
With trumpet throated winds that charge and cheer | H |
And through the roar of the hours that fighting fly | F |
Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant fear | H |
A sound sublimer than the heavens are high | F |
A voice more instant than the winds are clear | H |
Say to my spirit Take | I |
Thy trumpet too and make | I |
A rallying music in the void night's ear | G |
Till the storm lose its track | J |
And all the night go back | J |
Till as through sleep false life knows true life near | H |
Thou know the morning through the night | A |
And through the thunder silence and through darkness light | A |
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I set the trumpet to my lips and blow | K |
The height of night is shaken the skies break | I |
The winds and stars and waters come and go | K |
By fits of breath and light and sound that wake | I |
As out of sleep and perish as the show | K |
Built up of sleep when all her strengths forsake | I |
The sense compelling spirit the depths glow | K |
The heights flash and the roots and summits shake | I |
Of earth in all her mountains | L |
And the inner foamless fountains | L |
And wellsprings of her fast bound forces quake | I |
Yea the whole air of life | M |
Is set on fire of strife | M |
Till change unmake things made and love remake | I |
Reason and love whose names are one | N |
Seeing reason is the sunlight shed from love the sun | N |
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The night is broken eastward is it day | A |
Or but the watchfires trembling here and there | O |
Like hopes on memory's devastated way | A |
In moonless wastes of planet stricken air | O |
O many childed mother great and grey | A |
O multitudinous bosom and breasts that bare | O |
Our fathers' generations whereat lay | A |
The weanling peoples and the tribes that were | P |
Whose new born mouths long dead | A |
Those ninefold nipples fed | A |
Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair | O |
Fostress of obscure lands | Q |
Whose multiplying hands | Q |
Wove the world's web with divers races fair | O |
And cast it waif wise on the stream | R |
The waters of the centuries where thou sat'st to dream | R |
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O many minded mother and visionary | S |
Asia that sawest their westering waters sweep | E |
With all the ships and spoils of time to carry | S |
And all the fears and hopes of life to keep | E |
Thy vesture wrought of ages legendary | S |
Hides usward thine impenetrable sleep | E |
And thy veiled head night's oldest tributary | S |
We know not if it speak or smile or weep | E |
But where for us began | T |
The first live light of man | T |
And first born fire of deeds to burn and leap | E |
The first war fair as peace | U |
To shine and lighten Greece | U |
And the first freedom moved upon the deep | E |
God's breath upon the face of time | V |
Moving a present spirit seen of men sublime | V |
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There where our east looks always to thy west | A |
Our mornings to thine evenings Greece to thee | S |
These lights that catch the mountains crest by crest | A |
Are they of stars or beacons that we see | S |
Taygetus takes here the winds abreast | A |
And there the sun resumes Thermopylae | A |
The light is Athens where those remnants rest | A |
And Salamis the sea wall of that sea | S |
The grass men tread upon | W |
Is very Marathon | W |
The leaves are of that time unstricken tree | S |
That storm nor sun can fret | A |
Nor wind since she that set | A |
Made it her sign to men whose shield was she | S |
Here as dead time his deathless things | C |
Eurotas and Cephisus keep their sleepless springs | C |
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O hills of Crete are these things dead O waves | X |
O many mouthed streams are these springs dry | F |
Earth dost thou feed and hide now none but slaves | X |
Heaven hast thou heard of men that would not die | F |
Is the land thick with only such men's graves | X |
As were ashamed to look upon the sky | F |
Ye dead whose name outfaces and outbraves | X |
Death is the seed of such as you gone by | F |
Sea have thy ports not heard | A |
Some Marathonian word | A |
Rise up to landward and to Godward fly | F |
No thunder that the skies | X |
Sent not upon us rise | X |
With fire and earthquake and a cleaving cry | F |
Nay light is here and shall be light | A |
Though all the face of the hour be overborne with night | A |
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I set the trumpet to my lips and blow | A |
The night is broken northward the pale plains | X |
And footless fields of sun forgotten snow | A |
Feel through their creviced lips and iron veins | X |
Such quick breath labour and such clean blood flow | A |
As summer stricken spring feels in her pains | X |
When dying May bears June too young to know | A |
The fruit that waxes from the flower that wanes | X |
Strange tyrannies and vast | A |
Tribes frost bound to their past | A |
Lands that are loud all through their length with chains | X |
Wastes where the wind's wings break | I |
Displumed by daylong ache | I |
And anguish of blind snows and rack blown rains | X |
And ice that seals the White Sea's lips | X |
Whose monstrous weights crush flat the sides of shrieking ships | X |
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Horrible sights and sounds of the unreached pole | A |
And shrill fierce climes of inconsolable air | O |
Shining below the beamless aureole | A |
That hangs about the north wind's hurtling hair | O |
A comet lighted lamp sublime and sole | A |
Dawn of the dayless heaven where suns despair | O |
Earth skies and waters smitten into soul | A |
Feel the hard veil that iron centuries wear | O |
Rent as with hands in sunder | P |
Such hands as make the thunder | P |
And clothe with form all substance and strip bare | O |
Shapes shadows sounds and lights | X |
Of their dead days and nights | X |
Take soul of life too keen for death to bear | O |
Life conscience forethought will desire | P |
Flood men's inanimate eyes and dry drawn hearts with fire | P |
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Light light and light to break and melt in sunder | P |
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind | A |
Eyes hands and spirits forged by fear and wonder | P |
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind | A |
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder | P |
Nor are the links not malleable that wind | A |
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder | P |
The hands are mighty were the head not blind | A |
Priest is the staff of king | Y |
And chains and clouds one thing | Y |
And fettered flesh with devastated mind | A |
Open thy soul to see | X |
Slave and thy feet are free | X |
Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind | A |
And of thy fears thine irons wrought | A |
Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought | A |
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O soul O God O glory of liberty | X |
To night and day their lightning and their light | A |
With heat of heart thou kindlest the quick sea | X |
And the dead earth takes spirit from thy sight | A |
The natural body of things is warm with thee | X |
And the world's weakness parcel of thy might | A |
Thou seest us feeble and forceless fit to be | X |
Slaves of the years that drive us left and right | A |
Drowned under hours like waves | X |
Wherethrough we row like slaves | X |
But if thy finger touch us these take flight | A |
If but one sovereign word | A |
Of thy live lips be heard | A |
What man shall stop us and what God shall smite | A |
Do thou but look in our dead eyes | X |
They are stars that light each other till thy sundawn rise | X |
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Thou art the eye of this blind body of man | T |
The tongue of this | X |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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