Seven Sonnets On The Thought Of Death 1 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A ABBACBBADEDECC A FGGFFGGFHIIHJJ A KBBKKBBKLMMM G NOONNONPQPLLQ G RSSRTSSRPPUVVW G OOOOOOOOGLGOOX G OOOOOOOOGGOXLOI | A |
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That children in their loveliness should die | A |
Before the dawning beauty which we know | B |
Cannot remain has yet begun to go | B |
That when a certain period has passed by | A |
People of genius and of faculty | C |
Leaving behind them some result to show | B |
Having performed some function should forego | B |
The task which younger hands can better ply | A |
Appears entirely natural But that one | D |
Whose perfectness did not at all consist | E |
In things towards forming which time can have done | D |
Anything whose sole office was to exist | E |
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be | C |
Is the extreme of all perplexity | C |
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II | A |
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That there are better things within the womb | F |
Of Nature than to our unworthy view | G |
She grants for a possession may be true | G |
The cycle of the birthplace and the tomb | F |
Fulfils at least the order and the doom | F |
Of earth that has not ordinance to do | G |
More than to withdraw and to renew | G |
To show one moment and the next resume | F |
The law that we return from whence we came | H |
May for the flowers beasts and most men remain | I |
If for ourselves we ask not nor complain | I |
But for a being that demands the name | H |
We highest deem a Person and a Soul | J |
It troubles us that this should be the whole | J |
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III | A |
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To see the rich autumnal tint depart | K |
And view the fading of the roseate glow | B |
That veils some Alpine altitude of snow | B |
To hear of some great masterpiece of art | K |
Lost or destroyed may to the adult heart | K |
Impatient of the transitory show | B |
Of lovelinesses that but come and go | B |
A positive strange thankfulness impart | K |
When human pure perfections disappear | L |
Not at the first but at some later day | M |
The buoyancy of such reaction may | M |
With strong assurance conquer blank dismay | M |
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IV | G |
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But whether in the uncoloured light of truth | N |
This inward strong assurance be indeed | O |
More than the self willed arbitrary creed | O |
Manhood's inheritor to the dream of youth | N |
Whether to shut out fact because forsooth | N |
To live were insupportable unfreed | O |
Be not or be the service of untruth | N |
Whether this vital confidence be more | P |
Than his who upon death's immediate brink | Q |
Knowing perforce determines to ignore | P |
Or than the bird's that when the hunter's near | L |
Burying her eyesight can forget her fear | L |
Who about this shall tell us what to think | Q |
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V | G |
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If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws | R |
What it at first as casually did make | S |
Say what amount of ages it will take | S |
With tardy rare concurrences of laws | R |
And subtle multiplicities of cause | T |
The thing they once had made us to remake | S |
May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake | S |
E'en after utmost interval of pause | R |
What revolutions must have passed before | P |
The great celestial cycles shall restore | P |
The starry sign whose present hour is gone | U |
What worse than dubious chances interpose | V |
With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose | V |
The skiey picture we had gazed upon | W |
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VI | G |
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But if as not by that the soul desired | O |
Swayed in the judgment wisest men have thought | O |
And furnishing the evidence it sought | O |
Man's heart hath ever fervently required | O |
And story for that reason deemed inspired | O |
To every clime in every age hath taught | O |
If in this human complex there be aught | O |
Not lost in death as not in birth acquired | O |
O then though cold the lips that did convey | G |
Rich freights of meaning dead each living sphere | L |
Where thought abode and fancy loved to play | G |
Thou yet we think somewhere somehow still art | O |
And satisfied with that the patient heart | O |
The where and how doth not desire to hear | X |
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VII | G |
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Shall I decide it by a random shot | O |
Our happy hopes so happy and so good | O |
Are not mere idle motions of the blood | O |
And when they seem most baseless most are not | O |
A seed there must have been upon the spot | O |
Where the flowers grow without it ne'er they could | O |
The confidence of growth least understood | O |
Of some deep intuition was begot | O |
What if despair and hope alike be true | G |
The heart 'tis manifest is free to do | G |
Whichever Nature and itself suggest | O |
And always 'tis a fact that we are here | X |
And with being here doth palsy giving fear | L |
Whoe'er can ask or hope accord the best | O |
Arthur Hugh Clough
(1)
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