The Litany Of Nations Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCCBDEFDGHHGIFFIJKKJ CKKCLGGLKJJKLKKLJJJJ J JMJMNJNJOLOL J JOJOPQPQJJJJ R JJJJJJJJJLJL J LSLSJJJJJJJJ J JJJJJTJTLLLL J GRRRJJJJJJJJ R JJJJJUJURLRL J RRRRJJJJJJJJ J LLLLPJPJRJRJRJRJVJVJ WJWJRJRJVXVXYJYJRJRJCHORUS | A |
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If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee | B |
We thy latter sons the men thine after birth | C |
We the children of thy grey grown age O Earth | C |
O our mother everlasting we beseech thee | B |
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life | D |
By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces | E |
By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses | F |
By thine own song hoarse and hollow and shrill with strife | D |
By thy voice distuned and marred of modulation | G |
By the discord of thy measure's march with theirs | H |
By the beauties of thy bosom and the cares | H |
By thy glory of growth and splendour of thy station | G |
By the shame of men thy children and the pride | I |
By the pale cheeked hope that sleeps and weeps and passes | F |
As the grey dew from the morning mountain grasses | F |
By the white lipped sightless memories that abide | I |
By the silence and the sound of many sorrows | J |
By the joys that leapt up living and fell dead | K |
By the veil that hides thy hands and breasts and head | K |
Wrought of divers coloured days and nights and morrows | J |
Isis thou that knowest of God what worlds are worth | C |
Thou the ghost of God the mother uncreated | K |
Soul for whom the floating forceless ages waited | K |
As our forceless fancies wait on thee O Earth | C |
Thou the body and soul the father God and mother | L |
If at all it move thee knowing of all things done | G |
Here where evil things and good things are not one | G |
But their faces are as fire against each other | L |
By thy morning and thine evening night and day | K |
By the first white light that stirs and strives and hovers | J |
As a bird above the brood her bosom covers | J |
By the sweet last star that takes the westward way | K |
By the night whose feet are shod with snow or thunder | L |
Fledged with plumes of storm or soundless as the dew | K |
By the vesture bound of many folded blue | K |
Round her breathless breasts and all the woven wonder | L |
By the golden growing eastern stream of sea | J |
By the sounds of sunrise moving in the mountains | J |
By the forces of the floods and unsealed fountains | J |
Thou that badest man be born bid man be free | J |
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GREECE | J |
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I am she that made thee lovely with my beauty | J |
From north to south | M |
Mine the fairest lips took first the fire of duty | J |
From thine own mouth | M |
Mine the fairest eyes sought first thy laws and knew them | N |
Truths undefiled | J |
Mine the fairest hands took freedom first into them | N |
A weanling child | J |
By my light now he lies sleeping seen above him | O |
Where none sees other | L |
By my dead that loved and living men that love him | O |
Cho Hear us O mother | L |
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ITALY | J |
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I am she that was the light of thee enkindled | J |
When Greece grew dim | O |
She whose life grew up with man's free life and dwindled | J |
With wane of him | O |
She that once by sword and once by word imperial | P |
Struck bright thy gloom | Q |
And a third time casting off these years funereal | P |
Shall burst thy tomb | Q |
By that bond 'twixt thee and me whereat affrighted | J |
Thy tyrants fear us | J |
By that hope and this remembrance reunited | J |
Cho O mother hear us | J |
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SPAIN | R |
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I am she that set my seal upon the nameless | J |
West worlds of seas | J |
And my sons as brides took unto them the tameless | J |
Hesperides | J |
Till my sins and sons through sinless lands dispersed | J |
With red flame shod | J |
Made accurst the name of man and thrice accursed | J |
The name of God | J |
Lest for those past fires the fires of my repentance | J |
Hell's fume yet smother | L |
Now my blood would buy remission of my sentence | J |
Cho Hear us O mother | L |
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FRANCE | J |
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I am she that was thy sign and standard bearer | L |
Thy voice and cry | S |
She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer | L |
The same was I | S |
Were not these the hands that raised thee fallen and fed thee | J |
These hands defiled | J |
Was not I thy tongue that spake thine eye that led thee | J |
Not I thy child | J |
By the darkness on our dreams and the dead errors | J |
Of dead times near us | J |
By the hopes that hang around thee and the terrors | J |
Cho O mother hear us | J |
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RUSSIA | J |
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I am she whose hands are strong and her eyes blinded | J |
And lips athirst | J |
Till upon the night of nations many minded | J |
One bright day burst | J |
Till the myriad stars be molten into one light | J |
And that light thine | T |
Till the soul of man be parcel of the sunlight | J |
And thine of mine | T |
By the snows that blanch not him nor cleanse from slaughter | L |
Who slays his brother | L |
By the stains and by the chains on me thy daughter | L |
Cho Hear us O mother | L |
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SWITZERLAND | J |
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I am she that shews on mighty limbs and maiden | G |
Nor chain nor stain | R |
For what blood can touch these hands with gold unladen | R |
These feet what chain | R |
By the surf of spears one shieldless bosom breasted | J |
And was my shield | J |
Till the plume plucked Austrian vulture heads twin crested | J |
Twice drenched the field | J |
By the snows and souls untrampled and untroubled | J |
That shine to cheer us | J |
Light of those to these responsive and redoubled | J |
Cho O mother hear us | J |
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GERMANY | R |
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I am she beside whose forest hidden fountains | J |
Slept freedom armed | J |
By the magic born to music in my mountains | J |
Heart chained and charmed | J |
By those days the very dream whereof delivers | J |
My soul from wrong | U |
By the sounds that make of all my ringing rivers | J |
None knows what song | U |
By the many tribes and names of my division | R |
One from another | L |
By the single eye of sun compelling vision | R |
Cho Hear us O mother | L |
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ENGLAND | J |
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I am she that was and was not of thy chosen | R |
Free and not free | R |
She that fed thy springs till now her springs are frozen | R |
Yet I am she | R |
By the sea that clothed and sun that saw me splendid | J |
And fame that crowned | J |
By the song fires and the sword fires mixed and blended | J |
That robed me round | J |
By the star that Milton's soul for Shelley's lighted | J |
Whose rays insphere us | J |
By the beacon bright Republic far off sighted | J |
Cho O mother hear us | J |
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CHORUS | J |
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Turn away from us the cross blown blasts of error | L |
That drown each other | L |
Turn away the fearful cry the loud tongued terror | L |
O Earth O mother | L |
Turn away their eyes who track their hearts who follow | P |
The pathless past | J |
Shew the soul of man as summer shews the swallow | P |
The way at last | J |
By the sloth of men that all too long endure men | R |
On man to tread | J |
By the cry of men the bitter cry of poor men | R |
That faint for bread | J |
By the blood sweat of the people in the garden | R |
Inwalled of kings | J |
By his passion interceding for their pardon | R |
Who do these things | J |
By the sightless souls and fleshless limbs that labour | V |
For not their fruit | J |
By the foodless mouth with foodless heart for neighbour | V |
That mad is mute | J |
By the child that famine eats as worms the blossom | W |
Ah God the child | J |
By the milkless lips that strain the bloodless bosom | W |
Till woe runs wild | J |
By the pastures that give grass to feed the lamb in | R |
Where men lack meat | J |
By the cities clad with gold and shame and famine | R |
By field and street | J |
By the people by the poor man by the master | V |
That men call slave | X |
By the cross winds of defeat and of disaster | V |
By wreck by wave | X |
By the helm that keeps us still to sunwards driving | Y |
Still eastward bound | J |
Till as night watch ends day burn on eyes reviving | Y |
And land be found | J |
We thy children that arraign not nor impeach thee | R |
Though no star steer us | J |
By the waves that wash the morning we beseech thee | R |
O mother hear us | J |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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