Saturn Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNKKNOKK N KKNPNNQRNBKS AENTKKNUQKKVKNK NKWXKLKKTTNYQKKN UKNZA2NKQNNNKB2C2NT NKLKNNB2KND2E2F2NB2N KKN NTTKKGRKG2H2RNNI2KTK K NKKKB2NKH2KN KQTKQJ2QW GNNKKK2KKL2NNKKPTKH2 QNKQNNKNTM2QNNKKKKEJ 2KNK N2J2NI2NNNNNNO2J2 KNJ2NKKP2PKPTNNQ2NNC 2I2QEKTNNTNR2N N2NI2NNNS2T2Q KJ2KNKNNVNTNNU2I2V2Q NB2V KR2KJ2NNQW2NKNow were the Titans gathered round their king | A |
In a waste region slipping toward the verge | B |
Of drear extremities that clasp the world | C |
A land half moulded by the hasty gods | D |
Grotesque misfeatured blackly gnarled with stone | E |
And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars | F |
Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep | G |
Conterminate of Chaos Here they stood | H |
Old Saturn midmost like a central peak | I |
Among the lesser mounts that guard its base | J |
Defeat that gloamed within each countenance | K |
Like the first tinge of death upon a sun | L |
Gathering like some dusk vapor found them cold | M |
Heavy of limb and halting as with weight | N |
Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments | K |
A wind cried round them like a trumpet voice | K |
Of phantom hosts hurried importunate | N |
And intermittent with a tightening fear | O |
Far off the sunset sprang and the hard clouds | K |
Molten among the peaks seemd furnaces | K |
In which to make the fetters of the world | N |
- | |
Seared by the lightning of the younger gods | K |
They saw beyond the grim and crouching hills | K |
Those levins thrust like spears into the heart | N |
Of swollen clouds or cleaving the dark sky | P |
Like swords colossal Then as the Titans watched | N |
The night rose like a black enormous mist | N |
Around them wherein naught was visible | Q |
Save the sharp levin leaping in the north | R |
And no sound came except of seas remote | N |
That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge | B |
Of all the world fed with the crumbling coasts | K |
Of Matter | S |
- | |
Till the moon discovering | A |
that harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone | E |
Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld | N |
Lit with illusory fire each Titan's form | T |
They sate in silence mute as stranded orbs | K |
The wrack of Time upcast on ruinous coasts | K |
And in the slow withdrawal of the tide | N |
Unvexed awhile Small solace could they take | U |
From that wan radiance glistering frostily | Q |
Upon the desert seized in iron silence | K |
Like a false triumph over contestless Fates | K |
Or a mirage of life in wastes of death | V |
Yet were they moved to speak and Saturn's voice | K |
Seeming the soul of that tremendous land | N |
Set free in sound startled the haughty stars | K |
- | |
'O Titans gods sustainers of the world | N |
Is this the end Must Earth go down to Chaos | K |
Lacking our strength beneath the unpractised sway | W |
Of godlings vain precipitate with youth | X |
Who think unrecking of disastrous chance | K |
To bind their will as reins upon the sun | L |
Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens | K |
Must we behold with eyes of impotence | K |
That universal wrack even though it whelm | T |
These our usurpers in impartial doom | T |
Beneath the shards and fragments of the world | N |
Were it not preferable to return | Y |
And meeting them in fight unswervable | Q |
Drag down the earth ourselves and these our foes | K |
One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos | K |
Why should we stay and live the tragedy | N |
Of power that survives its use ' | - |
- | |
Now spake | U |
Enceladus when that the echoings | K |
Of Saturn's voice had fled remote and seemed | N |
Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star | Z |
'Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward gulf | A2 |
Like to a stone a curious child might cast | N |
To test the fall of some dark precipice | K |
Patience and caution should we take as mail | Q |
Not rashness for a weapon too keen sword | N |
That cuts the strain d knot of destiny | N |
Never to be tied again Were it not best | N |
To watch the slow procedure of the days | K |
That we may grasp a time more opportune | B2 |
When desperation is not all our strength | C2 |
Nor the foe newly filled with victory | N |
Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm | T |
For thee not for the gods of nothingness ' | - |
- | |
He ceased and after him no lesser god | N |
Gave voice upon the shaken silences | K |
None venturing to risk comparison | L |
Inevitable then of eloquence | K |
With his but like the ambiguity | N |
Of signal stars and lesser overcast | N |
And merged in one confusion by the moon | B2 |
Silence possessed that throng till Saturn rose | K |
Around his form the light intensified | N |
And strengthened with addition wild and strange | D2 |
Investing him as with a ghostly robe | E2 |
And gathering like a crown about his brow | F2 |
His sword whereon the shadows lay like rust | N |
He took and dipping it within the moon | B2 |
Made clean its length of blade and from it cast | N |
Swift flickerings at the stars And then his voice | K |
Came like a torrent and from out his eyes | K |
Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound | N |
- | |
And his resurgent power in glance and word | N |
Poured through the Titans' souls and was become | T |
The fountains of their own and at his flame | T |
Their fires relumined twice rebellious rose | K |
Leaping against the stronghold of the stars | K |
And now they came where sleep | G |
Where red upon the forefront of the north | R |
Arcturus was a beacon to the winds | K |
And with the flickering winds that lightly struck | G2 |
The desert dust then sprang again in air | H2 |
They passed athwart the foreland of the north | R |
Against their march they saw the shrunken waste | N |
A rivelled region like a world grown old | N |
Whose sterile breast knew not the lips of life | I2 |
In all its epoch or a world that was | K |
The nurse of infant Death ere he became | T |
Too large too strong for its restraining arms | K |
And towered athwart the suns | K |
- | |
And there they crossed | N |
Metallic slopes that rang like monstrous shields | K |
Under their tread and dully clanging plains | K |
Like body mail of greater vaster gods | K |
Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon | B2 |
They heard the eldritch laughters of the wind | N |
Seeming the mirth of doom and 'neath their gaze | K |
Gaunt valleys deepened like an old despair | H2 |
Yet strode they on through the moon's fantasies | K |
Bold with resolve across a land like doubt | N |
- | |
And now they passed among huge mountain bulks | K |
Themselves like ambulant mountains moving slow | Q |
'Mid fettered brethren adding weight and gloom | T |
To that mute conclave great against the stars | K |
Emerging thence the Titans marched where still | Q |
Their own portentous shadows went before | J2 |
Like night that fled but shrunk not dusking all | Q |
That desert way | W |
- | |
And now they came where steep | G |
The sleep of weary victory had seized | N |
The younger gods as captives borne beyond | N |
All flight of mounting battle ecstasies | K |
In that deep triumph of forgetfulness | K |
Upon that sleep the striding Titans broke | K2 |
Vague and immense at first like forming dreams | K |
To those disturb d gods in mist of drowse | K |
Purblind and doubtful yet though soon they knew | L2 |
Their erst defeated foes and rising stood | N |
In silent ranks expectant that appeared | N |
To move with shaking of astonished fires | K |
That bristled forth deployed like awful plumes | K |
Between the brightening desert and the sky | P |
Then sudden as the waking from a dream | T |
The battle sprang where striving deities | K |
Moved brightly through the whirled and stricken air | H2 |
Sweeping it to a froth of fire and all | Q |
That ancient deep established desert rocked | N |
Shaken as by an onset of the gulfs | K |
Of gathered and impatient Chaos while | Q |
Above the place where central battle burned | N |
The moon and stars drew back in dazzlement | N |
Paling to more secluded distances | K |
Lo where the moon's uncertain light had wrought | N |
Disordered shadows and chimeras dim | T |
Hiding the hideous desert with mirage | M2 |
Or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of hell | Q |
Mightier confusion chaos absolute | N |
Was grown the one thing sure in sky or world | N |
Typhonian maelstrorns caught in fiery storms | K |
Torn by the sweep of Olympian weaponries | K |
Crescented blades that met with rounds of shields | K |
Grappling of shapes seen through the riven blaze | K |
An instant then once more obscure and known | E |
Only by giant heavings of that war | J2 |
Of furious gods and rous d elements | K |
Theses round one swollen center hung ensphered | N |
Upon the blasted sand and molten rocks | K |
- | |
So huge that chaos complicate within | N2 |
With movements of gigantic legionry | J2 |
Where Jove and Saturn thunder crested led | N |
In onset never stayed so strong the strife | I2 |
Of differing impulse that decision found | N |
No foothold till that first confusion should | N |
In ordered conflict re arrange and stand | N |
With its true forces known This seemed remote | N |
With that wide struggle pending terribly | N |
As if the spectrumed wings of Time had made | N |
A truce with white Eternity and both | O2 |
Stood watching from afar | J2 |
- | |
Through drifts of haze | K |
The broadening moon made ominous with red | N |
Glared from the westering night And now that war | J2 |
Built for itself far up a cope of cloud | N |
And drew it down far off upon all sides | K |
Impervious to the moon and sworded stars | K |
And by their own wild light the gods fought on | P2 |
'Neath that stupendous concave like a sky | P |
Filled and illumined with glare of shattered suns | K |
And cast by their own light upon that sky | P |
The gods' own shadows moved like shapen gloom | T |
Phantasmagoric changed and amplified | N |
A shifting frieze that flickered dreadfully | N |
In spectral battle indecisive Then | Q2 |
Swift as it had begun the contest turned | N |
And on the heaving Titans' massive front | N |
It seemed that all the motion and the strength | C2 |
Self thwarting and confounded of that strife | I2 |
Was flung in centered impact terrible | Q |
with rush of all that fire tempestuous blown | E |
As if before some wind of further space | K |
Striking the earth Lo all the Titans' flame | T |
Bent back upon themselves and they were hurled | N |
In vaster disarray with vanguard piled | N |
On rear and center Saturn could not stem | T |
The loosened torrents of long pent defeat | N |
He with his hosts was but as drift thereon | R2 |
Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world | N |
- | |
Hurling like slanted rain the violet levin | N2 |
Fell over that flight of Titans and behind | N |
In striding menace all victorious Jove | I2 |
Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders crowned | N |
And footed with the winds In that defeat | N |
With Jove's pursuit deepened and manifold | N |
Few found escape unscathed and some went down | S2 |
Like senile suns that grapple with the dark | T2 |
And reel in flame tremendous and are still | Q |
- | |
Ebbing the battle left those elder gods | K |
Thrown back on iron shores of their despair | J2 |
A darker and a vaster Tartarus | K |
The victor gods their storms and thunders spent | N |
Went dwindling northward like embattled clouds | K |
And where the lingering haze of light dissolved | N |
The pallor of the dawn began to spread | N |
On darkness purple like the pain of death | V |
Ringed with that desolation Saturn stood | N |
Mute and the Titans answered unto him | T |
With brother silence Motionless they appeared | N |
Some peristyle of topless columns great | N |
Alone enduring of a fallen fane | U2 |
In wastes of an immenser world whence Life | I2 |
And Faith have vanished whose enshadowed orb | V2 |
Verges oblivionward And Twilight slow | Q |
Crept round those lofty shapes august and seemed | N |
Such as might be the ghostly muffed noon | B2 |
Of mightier suns that totter down to death | V |
- | |
Then turned they passing from that dismal place | K |
Blasted anew with battle ere the dawn | R2 |
Striding in flame athwart stupendous chasms | K |
And wasteful plains should overtake them there | J2 |
Bowed with too heavy a burden of defeat | N |
Slowly they turned and passed upon the west | N |
Where like a weariness immovable | Q |
In menace huge the plain its monstrous bulk | W2 |
The peaks its hydra heads the whole world crouched | N |
Against their march with the diminished stars | K |
Clark Ashton Smith
(1)
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