A Last Confession Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST KUVSWJXYZSA2B2C2D2SE 2F2C2G2RH2VI2C2J2K2N XGRL2M2N2RO2P2Q2R2S2 T2U2V2W2SRX2Y2K2Z2A3 B3C3VD3W2J2E3U2BF3F2 G3H3GI3Y2J3SK3S2L3M3 G2SN3K2Y2O3K2I3K2F2S P3Q3N2WR3K2OS3K2T3U3 V3W3X3Y3Z3RRRA4A3E3R B4E3C4D4RE4F4G4A3L3H 4I4J4K4F2O2L4M4GI3RK 2N4O4BP4H2Q4R4VB3S4N Y2T4BU3F2S4U4V4GJ2W4 X4XC2Y4BC2Z4B3VWOur Lombard country girls along the coast | A |
Wear daggers in their garters for they know | B |
That they might hate another girl to death | C |
Or meet a German lover Such a knife | D |
I bought her with a hilt of horn and pearl | E |
Father you cannot know of all my thoughts | F |
That day in going to meet her that last day | G |
For the last time she said of all the love | H |
And all the hopeless hope that she might change | I |
And go back with me Ah and everywhere | J |
At places we both knew along the road | K |
Some fresh shape of herself as once she was | L |
Grew present at my side until it seemed | M |
So close they gathered round me they would all | N |
Be with me when I reached the spot at last | O |
To plead my cause with her against herself | P |
So changed O Father if you knew all this | Q |
You cannot know then you would know too Father | R |
And only then if God can pardon me | S |
What can be told I'll tell if you will hear | T |
I passed a village fair upon my road | K |
And thought being empty handed I would take | U |
Some little present such might prove I said | V |
Either a pledge between us or God help me | S |
A parting gift And there it was I bought | W |
The knife I spoke of such as women wear | J |
That day some three hours afterwards I found | X |
For certain it must be a parting gift | Y |
And standing silent now at last I looked | Z |
Into her scornful face and heard the sea | S |
Still trying hard to din into my ears | A2 |
Some speech it knew which still might change her heart | B2 |
If only it could make me understand | C2 |
One moment thus Another and her face | D2 |
Seemed further off than the last line of sea | S |
So that I thought if now she were to speak | E2 |
I could not hear her Then again I knew | F2 |
All as we stood together on the sand | C2 |
At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills | G2 |
Take it I said and held it out to her | R |
While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold | H2 |
Take it and keep it for my sake I said | V |
Her neck unbent not neither did her eyes | I2 |
Move nor her foot left beating of the sand | C2 |
Only she put it by from her and laughed | J2 |
Father you hear my speech and not her laugh | K2 |
But God heard that Will God remember all | N |
It was another laugh than the sweet sound | X |
Which rose from her sweet childish heart that day | G |
Eleven years before when first I found her | R |
Alone upon the hill side and her curls | L2 |
Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up | M2 |
Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers | N2 |
She might have served a painter to pourtray | R |
That heavenly child which in the latter days | O2 |
Shall walk between the lion and the lamb | P2 |
I had been for nights in hiding worn and sick | Q2 |
And hardly fed and so her words at first | R2 |
Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees | S2 |
And voices in the air that knew my name | T2 |
And I remember that I sat me down | U2 |
Upon the slope with her and thought the world | V2 |
Must be all over or had never been | W2 |
We seemed there so alone And soon she told me | S |
Her parents both were gone away from her | R |
I thought perhaps she meant that they had died | X2 |
But when I asked her this she looked again | Y2 |
Into my face and said that yestereve | K2 |
They kissed her long and wept and made her weep | Z2 |
And gave her all the bread they had with them | A3 |
And then had gone together up the hill | B3 |
Where we were sitting now and had walked on | C3 |
Into the great red light and so she said | V |
I have come up here too and when this evening | D3 |
They step out of the light as they stepped in | W2 |
I shall be here to kiss them And she laughed | J2 |
Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine | E3 |
And how the church steps throughout all the town | U2 |
When last I had been there a month ago | B |
Swarmed with starved folk and how the bread was weighed | F3 |
By Austrians armed and women that I knew | F2 |
For wives and mothers walked the public street | G3 |
Saying aloud that if their husbands feared | H3 |
To snatch the children's food themselves would stay | G |
Till they had earned it there So then this child | I3 |
Was piteous to me for all told me then | Y2 |
Her parents must have left her to God's chance | J3 |
To man's or to the Church's charity | S |
Because of the great famine rather than | K3 |
To watch her growing thin between their knees | S2 |
With that God took my mother's voice and spoke | L3 |
And sights and sounds came back and things long since | M3 |
And all my childhood found me on the hills | G2 |
And so I took her with me | S |
I was young | N3 |
Scarce man then Father but the cause which gave | K2 |
The wounds I die of now had brought me then | Y2 |
Some wounds already and I lived alone | O3 |
As any hiding hunted man must live | K2 |
It was no easy thing to keep a child | I3 |
In safety for herself it was not safe | K2 |
And doubled my own danger but I knew | F2 |
That God would help me | S |
Yet a little while | P3 |
Pardon me Father if I pause I think | Q3 |
I have been speaking to you of some matters | N2 |
There was no need to speak of have I not | W |
You do not know how clearly those things stood | R3 |
Within my mind which I have spoken of | K2 |
Nor how they strove for utterance Life all past | O |
Is like the sky when the sun sets in it | S3 |
Clearest where furthest off | K2 |
I told you how | T3 |
She scorned my parting gift and laughed And yet | U3 |
A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes | V3 |
I think they laugh in Heaven I know last night | W3 |
I dreamed I saw into the garden of God | X3 |
Where women walked whose painted images | Y3 |
I have seen with candles round them in the church | Z3 |
They bent this way and that one to another | R |
Playing and over the long golden hair | R |
Of each there floated like a ring of fire | R |
Which when she stooped stooped with her and when she rose | A4 |
Rose with her Then a breeze flew in among them | A3 |
As if a window had been opened in heaven | E3 |
For God to give His blessing from before | R |
This world of ours should set for in my dream | B4 |
I thought our world was setting and the sun | E3 |
Flared a spent taper and beneath that gust | C4 |
The rings of light quivered like forest leaves | D4 |
Then all the blessed maidens who were there | R |
Stood up together as it were a voice | E4 |
That called them and they threw their tresses back | F4 |
And smote their palms and all laughed up at once | G4 |
For the strong heavenly joy they had in them | A3 |
To hear God bless the world Wherewith I woke | L3 |
And looking round I saw as usual | H4 |
That she was standing there with her long locks | I4 |
Pressed to her side and her laugh ended theirs | J4 |
For always when I see her now she laughs | K4 |
And yet her childish laughter haunts me too | F2 |
The life of this dead terror as in days | O2 |
When she a child dwelt with me I must tell | L4 |
Something of those days yet before the end | M4 |
I brought her from the city one such day | G |
When she was still a merry loving child | I3 |
The earliest gift I mind my giving her | R |
A little image of a flying Love | K2 |
Made of our coloured glass ware in his hands | N4 |
A dart of gilded metal and a torch | O4 |
And him she kissed and me and fain would know | B |
Why were his poor eyes blindfold why the wings | P4 |
And why the arrow What I knew I told | H2 |
Of Venus and of Cupid strange old tales | Q4 |
And when she heard that he could rule the loves | R4 |
Of men and women still she shook her head | V |
And wondered and Nay nay she murmured still | B3 |
So strong and he a younger child than I | S4 |
And then she'd have me fix him on the wall | N |
Fronting her little bed and then again | Y2 |
She needs must fix him there herself because | T4 |
I gave him to her and she loved him so | B |
And he should make her love me better yet | U3 |
If women loved the more the more they grew | F2 |
But the fit place upon the wall was high | S4 |
For her and so I held her in my arms | U4 |
And each time that the heavy pruning hook | V4 |
I gave her for a hammer slipped away | G |
As it would often still she laughed and laughed | J2 |
And kissed and kissed me But amid her mirth | W4 |
Just as she hung the image on the nail | X4 |
It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground | X |
And as it fell she screamed for in her hand | C2 |
The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood | Y4 |
And so her laughter turned to tears and Oh | B |
I said the while I bandaged the small hand | C2 |
That I should be the first to make you bleed | Z4 |
Who love and love and love you kissing still | B3 |
The fingers till I got her safe to bed | V |
And still she sobbed not | W |
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1)
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