The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCB DEFGF DHIDI GJKCK LDAMA NCCGC CCDCD OGPQP ARSDT GCUAU| Wind blows Snow falls The great clock in its tower | A |
| Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour | A |
| At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly | B |
| The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones | C |
| We close our coats and hurry and search the sky | B |
| - | |
| We are like music each voice of it pursuing | D |
| A golden separate dream remote persistent | E |
| Climbing to fire receding to hoarse despair | F |
| What do you whisper brother What do you tell me | G |
| We pass each other are lost and do not care | F |
| - | |
| One mounts up to beauty serenely singing | D |
| Forgetful of the steps that cry behind him | H |
| One drifts slowly down from a waking dream | I |
| One foreseeing lingers forever unmoving | D |
| Upward and downward past him there we stream | I |
| - | |
| One has death in his eyes and walks more slowly | G |
| Death among jonquils told him a freezing secret | J |
| A cloud blows over his eyes he ponders earth | K |
| He sees in the world a forest of sunlit jonquils | C |
| A slow black poison huddles beneath that mirth | K |
| - | |
| Death from street to alley from door to window | L |
| Cries out his news mdash of unplumbed worlds approaching | D |
| Of a cloud of darkness soon to destroy the tower | A |
| But why comes death mdash he asks mdash in a world so perfect | M |
| Or why the minute's grey in the golden hour | A |
| - | |
| Music a sudden glissando sinister troubled | N |
| A drift of wind torn petals before him passes | C |
| Down jangled streets and dies | C |
| The bodies of old and young of maimed and lovely | G |
| Are slowly borne to earth with a dirge of cries | C |
| - | |
| Down cobbled streets they come down huddled stairways | C |
| Through silent halls through carven golden doorways | C |
| From freezing rooms as bare as rock | D |
| The curtains are closed across deserted windows | C |
| Earth streams out of the shovel the pebbles knock | D |
| - | |
| Mary whose hands rejoiced to move in sunlight | O |
| Silent Elaine grave Anne who sang so clearly | G |
| Fugitive Helen who loved and walked alone | P |
| Miriam too soon dead darkly remembered | Q |
| Childless Ruth who sorrowed but could not atone | P |
| - | |
| Jean whose laughter flashed over depths of terror | A |
| And Eloise who desired to love but dared not | R |
| Doris who turned alone to the dark and cried mdash | S |
| They are blown away like windflung chords of music | D |
| They drift away the sudden music has died | T |
| - | |
| And one with death in his eyes comes walking slowly | G |
| And sees the shadow of death in many faces | C |
| And thinks the world is strange | U |
| He desires immortal music and spring forever | A |
| And beauty that knows no change | U |
Conrad Potter Aiken
(1)
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