The Prophet Speaks Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABA BCB CDD DED FGF GGG GBG BDB DHD HHH HIH A| City forbanned by seer and god and devil | A |
| In glory less than Tyre or fabled Ys | B |
| But more than they in mere surpassing evil | A |
| - | |
| Yea black Atlantis fallen beneath dim seas | B |
| For sinful lore and rites to demons done | C |
| Bore not the weight of such iniquities | B |
| - | |
| Your altars with a primal foulness run | C |
| Where the worm hears the thousand throated hymn | D |
| And all the sunsets write your malison | D |
| - | |
| And all the stars unrolled from heaven's rim | D |
| Declare the doom which I alone may read | E |
| In moving ciphers numberless and dim | D |
| - | |
| O city consecrate to crime and greed | F |
| O scorner of the Muses' messenger | G |
| Within your heart the hidden maggots breed | F |
| - | |
| Against your piers the nether seas confer | G |
| Against your towers the typhons in their slumber | G |
| In sealed abysms darkly mutter and stir | G |
| - | |
| They dream the day when earth shall disencumber | G |
| Her bosom of your sprawled and beetling piles | B |
| When tides that bore your vessels without number | G |
| - | |
| Shall turn your hills to foam enshrouded isles | B |
| And ebbing leave but slime and desolation | D |
| Ruin and rust through all your riven miles | B |
| - | |
| On you shall fall a starker devastation | D |
| Than came upon Tuloom and Tarshish old | H |
| In you shall dwell the last abomination | D |
| - | |
| The dust of all your mansions and the mould | H |
| Shall move in changing mounds and clouds disparted | H |
| About the wingless air the footless wold | H |
| - | |
| The sea withdrawn from littorals desert hearted | H |
| Shall leave you to the silence of the sky | I |
| A place fordone forlorn unnamed uncharted | H |
| - | |
| Where naught molests the sluggish crotali | A |
Clark Ashton Smith
(1)
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