Sadness Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCEE FGHGII JKFKLL MNOPQQ RQQQPP SQSQSS TUVUQQ| A | |
| Dear ghosts dear presences O my dear parents | B |
| Why were you so sad on porches whispering | C |
| What great melancholies were loosed among our swings | D |
| As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering | C |
| And marks each small change in the atmosphere | E |
| So was it then to overhear and to fear | E |
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| But all things then were oracle and secret | F |
| Remember the night when lost returning we turned back | G |
| Confused and our headlights singled out the fox | H |
| Our thoughts went with it then turning and turning back | G |
| With the same terror into the deep thicket | I |
| Beside the highway at home in the dark thicket | I |
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| I say the wood within is the dark wood | J |
| Or wound no torn shirt can entirely bandage | K |
| But the sad hand returns to it in secret | F |
| Repeatedly encouraging the bandage | K |
| To speak of that other world we might have borne | L |
| The lost world buried before it could be born | L |
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| Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets | M |
| Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine | N |
| Just as an evil August night comes down | O |
| All umber but for one smudge of dusky carmine | P |
| It is the sky of a peculiar sadness | Q |
| The other side perhaps of some rare gladness | Q |
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| What is it to be happy after all Think | R |
| Of the first small joys Think of how our parents | Q |
| Would whistle as they packed for the long summers | Q |
| Or busy about the usual tasks of parents | Q |
| Smile down at us suddenly for some secret reason | P |
| Or simply smile not needing any reason | P |
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| But even in the summers we remember | S |
| The forest had its eyes the sea its voices | Q |
| And there were roads no map would ever master | S |
| Lost roads and moonless nights and ancient voices | Q |
| And night crept down with an awful slowness toward the water | S |
| And there were lanterns once doubled in the water | S |
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| Sadness has its own beauty of course Toward dusk | T |
| Let us say the river darkens and look bruised | U |
| And we stand looking out at it through rain | V |
| It is as if life itself were somehow bruised | U |
| And tender at this hour and a few tears commence | Q |
| Not that they are but that they feel immense | Q |
Donald Justice
(1)
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