The Poet And The Woodlouse Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDCECEFGFGHHIH JKJKJIJJLJFJMLLLJJJJ JNJNCOCOLPLP| Said a poet to a woodlouse Thou art certainly my brother | A |
| I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole | B |
| And I recognize in spite of all the terrene smut and smother | A |
| In the colours shaded off thee the suggestions of a soul | B |
| Yea the poet said I smell thee by some passive divination | C |
| I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house | D |
| What had happened I conjecture in a blank and rhythmic passion | C |
| Had the ons thought of making thee a man and me a louse | D |
| The broad lives of upper planets their absorption and digestion | C |
| Food and famine health and sickness I can scrutinize and test | E |
| Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question | C |
| And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best | E |
| Man the fleshly marvel alway feels a certain kind of awe stick | F |
| To the skirts of contemplation cramped with nympholeptic weight | G |
| Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic | F |
| On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate | G |
| Notwithstanding which O poet spake the woodlouse very blandly | H |
| I am likewise the created I the equipoise of thee | H |
| I the particle the atom I behold on either hand lie | I |
| The inane of measured ages that were embryos of me | H |
| I am fed with intimations I am clothed with consequences | J |
| And the air I breathe is coloured with apocalyptic blush | K |
| Ripest budded odours blossom out of dim chaotic stenches | J |
| And the Soul plants spirit lilies in sick leagues of human slush | K |
| I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings | J |
| Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee | I |
| And earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs | J |
| Like a madrepore if mesmerized in rapt catalepsy | J |
| And I sacrifice a Levite and I palpitate a poet | L |
| Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things | J |
| Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of the heroic | F |
| Earth's worst spawn you said and cursed me look approve me I have wings | J |
| Ah men's poets men's conventions crust you round and swathe you mist like | M |
| And the world's wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye overtrod | L |
| We stand sinlessly stark naked in effulgence of the Christlight | L |
| And our polecat chokes not cherubs and our skunk smells sweet to God | L |
| For He grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles | J |
| Till a Godshine bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunderstorms | J |
| Shimmers up the non existent round the churning feet of angels | J |
| And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs being worms | J |
| Friends your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us | J |
| Ye with social sores unbandaged can ye sing right and steer wrong | N |
| For the transient cosmic rooted in imperishable chaos | J |
| Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song | N |
| Eyes once purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian passion | C |
| See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism | O |
| Hands that rip the soul up reeking from divine evisceration | C |
| Not with priestlike oil anoint him but a stronger smelling chrism | O |
| Pass O poet retransfigured God the psychometric rhapsode | L |
| Fills with fiery rhythms the silence stings the dark with stars that blink | P |
| All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collaps d | L |
| While he makes his mundane music and he will not stop I think | P |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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