The Butterfly Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDB DEED FDDF GHHG FIIF A JKKJ DLLD ADDA DKKD A DMMD NDDN OPPO DQQD RSSR DKKD HFFH F STTU DVBD TWWT DXXDI | A |
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O wonderful and wing d flower | B |
That hoverest in the garden close | C |
Finding in mazes of the rose | D |
The rapture of a summer hour | B |
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O symbol of Impermanence | D |
Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue | E |
A word that in her song is sung | E |
Appealing to the inner sense | D |
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Of that high mystic harmony | F |
All lovely things are notes and words | D |
The growth of flowers the flight of birds | D |
The figured Signs the foam wrought sea | F |
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The whitening gold of sudden dawn | G |
The sunset's garnet afterglow | H |
The cumulus the noonlit snow | H |
The moon in irised clouds withdrawn | G |
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Lacking who knows a cloud a tree | F |
A streamlet's purl the ocean's roar | I |
From Nature's multidinous store | I |
Imperfect were the melody | F |
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II | A |
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O Beauty why so sad my heart | J |
Why stirs in me a nameless pain | K |
Which seems like some remembered strain | K |
As on this product of thine art | J |
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Enraptured marvelling I gaze | D |
And note how airily 'tis wrought | L |
A wing d dream a bodied thought | L |
The spirit of the summer days | D |
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Thy Beauty opes O butterfly | A |
The doors of being with subtle sense | D |
Of Beauty's frail impermanence | D |
And grief of knowing it must die | A |
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Again I seem to know the tears | D |
Of other lives the woe and pain | K |
Of days that died resurgent wane | K |
The moons of countless bygone years | D |
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III | A |
- | |
On other worlds on other stars | D |
To us but tiny motes of light | M |
Or lost in distances of night | M |
Beyond our system's farthest bars | D |
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A priest to Beauty's service sworn | N |
I sought and served her all my days | D |
With music and with hymns of praise | D |
In star fall and the suns of morn | N |
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With thrilling heart her gaze I knew | O |
In other moons her bosom gleamed | P |
And all the golden planet seemed | P |
To shadow forth her shape and hue | O |
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I grieved to watch the summers pass | D |
With sun led pageantries of bloom | Q |
And sad aphelions assume | Q |
Their realm with crisping leaves and grass | D |
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Mine was the grief of change and death | R |
Of fair things gone beyond recall | S |
The paling light of dawns and all | S |
The flowers' vanished hues and breath | R |
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IV | - |
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From out the web of former lives | D |
The ancient never broken chain | K |
Of love and sorrow loss and gain | K |
One certain truth my heart derives | D |
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Though Beauty passes this I know | H |
From change and death this verity | F |
Her spirit lives eternally | F |
'Tis but her forms that come and go | H |
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V | F |
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Lo I am Beauty's constant thrall | S |
Must ever on her voice await | T |
And follow through the maze of Fate | T |
Her luring strange and mystical | U |
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Obedient to her summonings | D |
Forever must my heart aspire | V |
And seek on wings of lyric fire | B |
To penetrate the heart of things | D |
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Wherein she sits augustly throned | T |
In loveliness that renders dumb | W |
The Essence and the final Sum | W |
With peril and with wonder zoned | T |
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What though I fail my duller sense | D |
Baffled as by a wall of stone | X |
The high desire the search alone | X |
Are their own prize and recompense | D |
Clark Ashton Smith
(1)
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