The Station-master Of Lone Prairie Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD AEAE FGFG HIII AJJJ IKIK LMLM JFJF NOOO JJJJ JPJP FJFJ JOJO IOIO| An empty bench a sky of grayest etching | A |
| A bare bleak shed in blackest silhouette | B |
| Twelve years of platform and before them stretching | A |
| Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet | B |
| - | |
| North south east west the same dull gray persistence | C |
| The tattered vapors of a vanished train | D |
| The narrowing rails that meet to pierce the distance | C |
| Or break the columns of the far off rain | D |
| - | |
| Naught but myself nor form nor figure breaking | A |
| The long hushed level and stark shining waste | E |
| Nothing that moves to fill the vision aching | A |
| When the last shadow fled in sullen haste | E |
| - | |
| Nothing beyond Ah yes From out the station | F |
| A stiff gaunt figure thrown against the sky | G |
| Beckoning me with some wooden salutation | F |
| Caught from his signals as the train flashed by | G |
| - | |
| Yielding me place beside him with dumb gesture | H |
| Born of that reticence of sky and air | I |
| We sit apart yet wrapped in that one vesture | I |
| Of silence sadness and unspoken care | I |
| - | |
| Each following his own thought around us darkening | A |
| The rain washed boundaries and stretching track | J |
| Each following those dim parallels and hearkening | J |
| For long lost voices that will not come back | J |
| - | |
| Until unasked I knew not why or wherefore | I |
| He yielded bit by bit his dreary past | K |
| Like gathered clouds that seemed to thicken there for | I |
| Some dull down dropping of their care at last | K |
| - | |
| Long had he lived there As a boy had started | L |
| From the stacked corn the Indian's painted face | M |
| Heard the wolves' howl the wearying waste that parted | L |
| His father's hut from the last camping place | M |
| - | |
| Nature had mocked him thrice had claimed the reaping | J |
| With scythe of fire of lands she once had sown | F |
| Sent the tornado round his hearthstone heaping | J |
| Rafters dead faces that were like his own | F |
| - | |
| Then came the War Time When its shadow beckoned | N |
| He had walked dumbly where the flag had led | O |
| Through swamp and fen unknown unpraised unreckoned | O |
| To famine fever and a prison bed | O |
| - | |
| Till the storm passed and the slow tide returning | J |
| Cast him a wreck beneath his native sky | J |
| Here at his watch gave him the chance of earning | J |
| Scant means to live who won the right to die | J |
| - | |
| All this I heard or seemed to hear half blending | J |
| With the low murmur of the coming breeze | P |
| The call of some lost bird and the unending | J |
| And tireless sobbing of those grassy seas | P |
| - | |
| Until at last the spell of desolation | F |
| Broke with a trembling star and far off cry | J |
| The coming train I glanced around the station | F |
| All was as empty as the upper sky | J |
| - | |
| Naught but myself nor form nor figure waking | J |
| The long hushed level and stark shining waste | O |
| Naught but myself that cry and the dull shaking | J |
| Of wheel and axle stopped in breathless haste | O |
| - | |
| Now then look sharp Eh what The Station Master | I |
| Thar's none We stopped here of our own accord | O |
| The man got killed in that down train disaster | I |
| This time last evening Right there All aboard | O |
Bret Harte (francis)
(1)
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About The Station-master Of Lone Prairie
The Station-master Of Lone Prairie is a poem by Bret Harte (francis). This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
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