The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCDDEFEF GHIHEEEEEEEEE JJKLEEEEMMNNONPGPGJJ QRIRRISTRTTUTU GVTVKWTW TTTTTTTTVTKTXEREUYEY EEEXZZBBVA2VRTBTREKE TEEEEEEETEKETKB2TC2C 2T D2D2E2EEE2E2BB TTTTVVEEREE UEUF2F2E2E2TETE TBTET ETVEV TTETEAs evening falls | A |
The walls grow luminous and warm the walls | A |
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving | B |
Moving like music secret and rich and warm | C |
How shall we live to night where shall we turn | D |
To what new light or darkness yearn | D |
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us | E |
And one by one in myriads we descend | F |
By lamplit flowered walls long balustrades | E |
Through half lit halls which reach no end | F |
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Take my arm then you or you or you | G |
And let us walk abroad on the solid air | H |
Look how the organist's head in silhouette | I |
Leans to the lamplit music's orange square | H |
The dim globed lamps illumine rows of faces | E |
Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyes | E |
They have hurried down from a myriad secret places | E |
From windy chambers next to the skies | E |
The music comes upon us it shakes the darkness | E |
It shakes the darkness in our minds | E |
And brilliant figures suddenly fill the darkness | E |
Down the white shaft of light they run through darkness | E |
And in our hearts a dazzling dream unwinds | E |
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Take my hand then walk with me | J |
By the slow soundless crashings of a sea | J |
Down miles on miles of glistening mirrorlike sand mdash | K |
Take my hand | L |
And walk with me once more by crumbling walls | E |
Up mouldering stairs where grey stemmed ivy clings | E |
To hear forgotten bells as evening falls | E |
Rippling above us invisibly their slowly widening rings | E |
Did you once love me Did you bear a name | M |
Did you once stand before me without shame | M |
Take my hand your face is one I know | N |
I loved you long ago | N |
You are like music long forgotten suddenly come to mind | O |
You are like spring returned through snow | N |
Once I know I walked with you in starlight | P |
And many nights I slept and dreamed of you | G |
Come let us climb once more these stairs of starlight | P |
This midnight stream of cloud flung blue | G |
Music murmurs beneath us like a sea | J |
And faints to a ghostly whisper Come with me | J |
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Are you still doubtful of me mdash hesitant still | Q |
Fearful perhaps that I may yet remember | R |
What you would gladly if you could forget | I |
You were unfaithful once you met your lover | R |
Still in your heart you bear that red eyed ember | R |
And I was silent mdash you remember my silence yet | I |
You knew as well as I I could not kill him | S |
Nor touch him with hot hands nor yet with hate | T |
No and it was not you I saw with anger | R |
Instead I rose and beat at steel walled fate | T |
Cried till I lay exhausted sick unfriended | T |
That life so seeming sure and love so certain | U |
Should loose such tricks be so abruptly ended | T |
Ring down so suddenly an unlooked for curtain | U |
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How could I find it in my heart to hurt you | G |
You whom this love could hurt much more than I | V |
No you were pitiful and I gave you pity | T |
And only hated you when I saw you cry | V |
We were two dupes if I could give forgiveness mdash | K |
Had I the right mdash I should forgive you now | W |
We were two dupes Come let us walk in starlight | T |
And feed our griefs we do not break but bow | W |
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Take my hand then come with me | T |
By the white shadowy crashings of a sea | T |
Look how the long volutes of foam unfold | T |
To spread their mottled shimmer along the sand | T |
Take my hand | T |
Do not remember how these depths are cold | T |
Nor how when you are dead | T |
Green leagues of sea will glimmer above your head | T |
You lean your face upon your hands and cry | V |
The blown sand whispers about your feet | T |
Terrible seems it now to die mdash | K |
Terrible now with life so incomplete | T |
To turn away from the balconies and the music | X |
The sunlit afternoons | E |
To hear behind you there a far off laughter | R |
Lost in a stirring of sand among dry dunes | E |
Die not sadly you whom life has beaten | U |
Lift your face up laughing die like a queen | Y |
Take cold flowers of foam in your warm white fingers | E |
Death's but a change of sky from blue to green | Y |
- | |
As evening falls | E |
The walls grow luminous and warm the walls | E |
Tremble and glow the music breathes upon us | E |
The rayed white shaft plays over our heads like magic | X |
And to and fro we move and lean and change | Z |
You in a world grown strange | Z |
Laugh at a darkness clench your hands despairing | B |
Smash your glass on a floor no longer caring | B |
Sink suddenly down and cry | V |
You hear the applause that greets your latest rival | A2 |
You are forgotten your rival mdash who knows mdash is I | V |
I laugh in the warm bright light of answering laughter | R |
I am inspired and young and though I see | T |
You sitting alone there dark with shut eyes crying | B |
I bask in the light and in your hate of me | T |
Failure well the time comes soon or later | R |
The night must come and I'll be one who clings | E |
Desperately to hold the applause one instant mdash | K |
To keep some youngster waiting in the wings | E |
- | |
The music changes tone a room is darkened | T |
Someone is moving the crack of white light widens | E |
And all is dark again till suddenly falls | E |
A wandering disk of light on floor and walls | E |
Winks out returns again climbs and descends | E |
Gleams on a clock a glass shrinks back to darkness | E |
And then at last in the chaos of that place | E |
Dazzles like frozen fire on your clear face | E |
Well I have found you We have met at last | T |
Now you shall not escape me in your eyes | E |
I see the horrible huddlings of your past mdash | K |
All you remember blackens utters cries | E |
Reaches far hands and faint I hold the light | T |
Close to your cheek watch the pained pupils shrink mdash | K |
Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely think | B2 |
Now all the hatreds of my life have met | T |
To hold high carnival we do not speak | C2 |
My fingers find the well loved throat they seek | C2 |
And press and fling you down and then forget | T |
- | |
Who plays for me What sudden drums keep time | D2 |
To the ecstatic rhythm of my crime | D2 |
What flute shrills out as moonlight strikes the floor | E2 |
What violin so faintly cries | E |
Seeing how strangely in the moon he lies | E |
The room grows dark once more | E2 |
The crack of white light narrows around the door | E2 |
And all is silent except a slow complaining | B |
Of flutes and violins like music waning | B |
- | |
Take my hand then walk with me | T |
By the slow soundless crashings of a sea | T |
Look how white these shells are on this sand | T |
Take my hand | T |
And watch the waves run inward from the sky | V |
Line upon foaming line to plunge and die | V |
The music that bound our lives is lost behind us | E |
Paltry it seems here in this wind swung place | E |
Motionless under the sky's vast vault of azure | R |
We stand in a terror of beauty face to face | E |
The dry grass creaks in the wind the blown sand whispers | E |
- | |
The soft sand seethes on the dunes the clear grains glisten | U |
Once they were rock a chaos of golden boulders | E |
Now they are blown by the wind we stand and listen | U |
To the sliding of grain upon timeless grain | F2 |
And feel our lives go past like a whisper of pain | F2 |
Have I not seen you have we not met before | E2 |
Here on this sun and sea wrecked shore | E2 |
You shade your sea gray eyes with a sunlit hand | T |
And peer at me far sea gulls in your eyes | E |
Flash in the sun go down I hear slow sand | T |
And shrink to nothing beneath blue brilliant skies | E |
- | |
- | |
- | |
The music ends The screen grows dark We hurry | T |
To go our devious secret ways forgetting | B |
Those many lives We loved we laughed we killed | T |
We danced in fire we drowned in a whirl of sea waves | E |
The flutes are stilled and a thousand dreams are stilled | T |
- | |
Whose body have I found beside dark waters | E |
The cold white body garlanded with sea weed | T |
Staring with wide eyes at the sky | V |
I bent my head above it and cried in silence | E |
Only the things I dreamed of heard my cry | V |
- | |
Once I loved and she I loved was darkened | T |
Again I loved and love itself was darkened | T |
Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days | E |
The screen at last grows dark the flutes are silent | T |
The doors of night are closed We go our ways | E |
Conrad Potter Aiken
(1)
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