The Swallow Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAABCDCCD EBEEBFGHFIJKJLK MNMMNOPOOQRSRRS INIGNTNUUNVWVVW TXTUYZQZZQA2B2A2A2B2| THE gorse is yellow on the heath | A |
| The banks with speedwell flowers are gay | B |
| The oaks are budding and beneath | A |
| The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath | A |
| The silver wreath of May | B |
| The welcome guest of settled Spring | C |
| The Swallow too is come at last | D |
| Just at sun set when thrushes sing | C |
| I saw her dash with rapid wing | C |
| And hail'd her as she pass'd | D |
| - | |
| Come summer visitant attach | E |
| To my reed roof your nest of clay | B |
| And let my ear your music catch | E |
| Low twittering underneath the thatch | E |
| At the gray dawn of day | B |
| As fables tell an Indian Sage | F |
| The Hindostani woods among | G |
| Could in his desert hermitage | H |
| As if 'twere mark'd in written page | F |
| Translate the wild bird's song | I |
| I wish I did his power possess | J |
| That I might learn fleet bird from thee | K |
| What our vain systems only guess | J |
| And know from what wide wilderness | L |
| You came across the sea | K |
| - | |
| I would a little while restrain | M |
| Your rapid wing that I might hear | N |
| Whether on clouds that bring the rain | M |
| You sail'd above the western main | M |
| The wind your charioteer | N |
| In Afric does the sultry gale | O |
| Thro' spicy bower and palmy grove | P |
| Bear the repeated Cuckoo's tale | O |
| Dwells there a time the wandering Rail | O |
| Or the itinerant Dove | Q |
| Were you in Asia O relate | R |
| If there your fabled sister's woes | S |
| She seem'd in sorrow to narrate | R |
| Or sings she but to celebrate | R |
| Her nuptials with the rose | S |
| - | |
| I would enquire how journeying long | I |
| The vast and pathless ocean o'er | N |
| You ply again those pinions strong | I |
| And come to build anew among | G |
| The scenes you left before | N |
| But if as colder breezes blow | T |
| Prophetic of the waning year | N |
| You hide tho' none know when or how | U |
| In the cliff's excavated brow | U |
| And linger torpid here | N |
| Thus lost to life what favouring dream | V |
| Bids you to happier hours awake | W |
| And tells that dancing in the beam | V |
| The light gnat hovers o'er the stream | V |
| The May fly on the lake | W |
| - | |
| Or if by instinct taught to know | T |
| Approaching dearth of insect food | X |
| To isles and willowy aits you go | T |
| And crouding on the pliant bough | U |
| Sink in the dimpling flood | Y |
| How learn ye while the cold waves boom | Z |
| Your deep and ouzy couch above | Q |
| The time when flowers of promise bloom | Z |
| And call you from your transient tomb | Z |
| To light and life and love | Q |
| Alas how little can be known | A2 |
| Her sacred veil where Nature draws | B2 |
| Let baffled Science humbly own | A2 |
| Her mysteries understood alone | A2 |
| By Him who gives her laws | B2 |
Charlotte Smith
(1)
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