The Bush Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: ABABCCADAD EAEAFFGHGG IJKJLMNJNJ ODODJJAJAJ POPOQQGRGR SDSDDDJGJT OJAJDDUFUF VOVOWWQJQJ JJJJOOQOQO JXJYUUODOD UOUODDADAD JVJVZZAA2AA2 B2AB2AC2C2QD2QD2 JDJDAAQJQJ OAOAJE2E2JE2J ODODDDDVDV JAJAOOQDQDOJO AAQVQV OGOJ

I wonder if the spell the mysteryA
That like a haze about your silence clingsB
Moulding your void until we seem to seeA
Tangible Presences of Deathless ThingsB
Patterned but little to our spirits' woofC
Yet from our love or hate not all aloofC
Can be the matrix where are forming slowlyA
Troy tales of Old Australia to refineD
Eras to come of ordered melancholyA
'Neath lily pale Perfection's anodyneD
-
For Troy hath ever been and Homer sangE
Its younger story for a lodging's feeA
While o'er Scamander settlers' axes rangE
Amid the Bush where Ilium was to beA
For Cretan Art dim centuries beforeF
Minoan Dream times some Briseis boreF
Sumerian Phoebus by a willowed waterG
Song built a Troy for far Chaldea whereH
The sons of God beholding Leda's daughterG
Bartered eternal thrones for love of herG
-
Across each terraced aeon Time hath sowedI
With green tautology of vanished yearsJ
Gaping aghast or webbed with shining lodeK
Achilles' anger's earthquake rift appearsJ
The towers that Phoebus builds can never fallL
Desire that Helen lights can never pallM
Yea wounded Love hath still but gods to fly toN
When lust of war inflames DiomedesJ
Must some Australian Hector vainly die tooN
Captives in ships change that omen TreesJ
-
Yea Mother Bush in your deep dreams abideO
Cupids alert for man and maid unbornD
Apprentice Pucks amid your saplings hideO
And wistful gorges wait a Roland hornD
Wallet of Sigurd shall this swag replaceJ
And centaurs curvet where those brumbies raceJ
That drover's tale of love shall greaten dulyA
Through magic prisms of a myriad yearsJ
Till bums Isolde to Tristram's fervour newlyA
Or Launcelot to golden Guinevere'sJ
-
The miner cradling washdirt by the creekP
Or pulled through darkness dripping to the platO
The navvy boring tunnels through the peakP
The farmer grubbing box trees on the flatO
The hawker camping by the roadside springQ
The hodman on the giddy scaffoldingQ
Moths that around the fashion windows flutterG
The racecourse spider and the betting flyR
The children romping by the city gutterG
While baby crows to every passer byR
-
From these rough blocks strewn o'er our ancient streamS
Sculptors shall chisel brownie fairy faunD
Any myrmidons of some Homeric dreamS
From Melbourne mob and Sydney push be drawnD
The humdrum lives that now we tire of thenD
Romance shall be and 'we heroic menD
Treading the vestibule of Golden AgesJ
The Isthmus of the Land of Heart's DesireG
For lo the Sybil's final volume's pagesJ
Ope with our Advent close when we expireT
-
Forgetful Change in one 'antiquity'O
Boreal gleams shall drown and southern glowsJ
Out of some singing woman's heart break pleaA
Australia's dawn shall flush with Sappho's roseJ
Strong Shirlow's hand shall trace Mantegna's lineD
And Soma foam from Victor Daley's wineD
Scholars to be our prehistoric dramaU
From Esson's 'Woman Tamer' shall restoreF
Or find in Gilbert's 'Lotus Stream and Lama'U
An Austral Nile and Buddhas we adoreF
-
The sunlit Satyrs follow Hugh McCraeV
Quinn spans the ocean with a Celtic fordO
And Williamson the Pan pipe learns to playV
From magpie songs our schoolboy ears ignoredO
A sweeter woe no keen of Erin gaveW
Than Kendall sings o'er Araluen's graveW
Tasmanian Wordsworth to his chapel ridingQ
The Burning Bush and Ardath mead shall passJ
Or from the sea coast of Bohemia glidingQ
On craft of dream behold a shepherd lassJ
-
Jessie Mackay on Southern Highlands seesJ
The elves deploy in kem and gallowglassJ
Our Gilbert Murray writes 'Euripides'J
Pirani merges in PythagorasJ
Marsyas plunges into Lethe flayedO
From Rhadamanthine Stephens' steady bladeO
While Benvenuto Morton drunk with singingQ
Sees salamanders in a bush fire's bedO
And Spencer sails from Alcheringa bringingQ
Intaglios totems and Books of the DeadO
-
On Southern fiords shall Brady's Long Snakes hissJ
Heavy with brides he wins to Viking trothX
O'Reilly's Sydney shall be SybarisJ
While Melbourne's Muses sup their Spartan brothY
Murdoch Zenobia's counsellor in timeU
Redacts from Burke his book on The SublimeU
By Way was Homer into Greek translatedO
And Shakespeare's self is Sophocles so plainD
They know the kerb whereon the Furies waitedO
Outside the Mermaid Inn in Brogan's LaneD
-
Vane shall divide with Vern Eureka's fameU
Tillett and Mann are Tyler then and CadeO
Dowie's entwines with Cagliostro's nameU
And in Tarpeia's lo those fair forms fadeO
Who drug the poor for social bread and wineD
And lift the furtive latch to CatilineD
There where the Longmore featured Gracchi hurryA
And Greek browed Higinbotham walks anonD
The 'wealthy lower orders' leap the MurrayA
Before the stockwhip cracks of Jardine DonD
-
Cleons in 'Windsor dress at SyracuseJ
Their thin plebeians' promised meal delayV
And Archibald begets Australia's MuseJ
Upon an undine red of Chowder BayV
Paterson's swan draws Amphitrite's carZ
And Sidon learns from Young what purples areZ
Rose Scott refutes dogmatic Cyril gailyA
Hypatia turns the anti suffrage flankA2
And Herod's daughter sools her 'morning daily'A
On John the Baptist by the Yarra BankA2
-
Yon regal bustard fading hence ere longB2
Shall seem the guide we followed to the GrailA
This lyre bird on his dancing mound of songB2
Our mystagogue of some Bacchantic valeA
Where feathered Pan guffaws 'Evoe ' aboveC2
And Maenad curlews shriek their midnight loveC2
That trailing flight of distant swans is bearingQ
Sarpedon's soul to its eternal joyD2
This ibis from the very Nile despairingQ
Memnon our own would warn from fatal TroyD2
-
Primeval gnomes distilled the golden bribesJ
That have impregnated your musing waste with menD
But shall the spell of your pathetic tribesJ
Curl round in time our fairer limbs againD
Through that long tunnel of your gloom I seeA
Gardens of a metropolis to beA
Out of the depths the mountain ash is soaringQ
To embryon gods of what unsounded spaceJ
Out of the heights what influence is pouringQ
Thin desolation on your haunted faceJ
-
Many there are who see no higher lotO
For all your writhing centuries of toilA
Than that the avaricious plough should blotO
Their wilding burgeon and the red brand spoilA
Your cyclopean garniture to sowJ
The cheap parterres of Europe on your woeE2
They weave all sorceries but yours and borrowE2
The tinkling spells of alien winds and seasJ
To drown the chord of purifying sorrowE2
Bom ere the world that pulses through your treesJ
-
For save when we in not o'er subtle moodO
Hear magpies warbling soft November inD
Or hand in hand with Love a dreaming woodO
Or bouldered crest of crisper April winD
Your harps unblurred by glozing strings intoneD
The dirges that behind Creation moanD
'Where riding reinless billows new lives dash onD
The souring beach of yesterday's decayV
Where Love's chord leaps from mandrake shrieks of passionD
And groping gods mould man from quivering clayV
-
Is Nature deaf and blind and dumb A cruseJ
Unfilled of wine Clay for an unbreathed soulA
Alien to man till his desires transfuseJ
Their flames through wind and water leaf and boleA
And each crude fane elaborately fitO
With oracles that echo all his witO
The living wilds of Greece saw death returningQ
When Pan that men had made fell from his throneD
Till through her sap our very blood is churningQ
The Bush her lonely alien woe shall moanD
Or is she reticent but to be kindO
Whispers she not beneath her mask of clodsJ
'Who asks he shall receive who seeks shall findO
Who knocks shall open every door of God's '-
Dumb Faith's blind Hope's eternal consort sheA
Gravid with all that is on earth to beA
Corn wine and oil in hungry granite hidingQ
All Beauty under sober wings of clayV
All life beneath her dead heart long abidingQ
Yea all the gods her sons and she obeyV
-
What sin's wan expiation strewed your VastO
With mounded pillage of what conquering fireG
Slumbering throes of what prodigious PastO
Exhale thesJ

Bernard O'dowd



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