Margaret Of Cortona Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFFGHIFCJKLMJ NNONNHNNNNNPFFFQJF FDNRNRNFLFHSFHDNTPUQ NDNN NFVFWPCNNXFFYZFA2B2F NHC2F D2E2FNFCNNHWNNFFFLFF FFNHNF2FFNNNFHZNFFFG 2NFHNFFFWNFC2FQH2HDN FDF CI2DNNN FNFNFDFFHI2 J2NSFPHFNFNCPC2N FN CF2 DFra Paolo since they say the end is near | A |
And you of all men have the gentlest eyes | B |
Most like our father Francis since you know | C |
How I have toiled and prayed and scourged and striven | D |
Mothered the orphan waked beside the sick | E |
Gone empty that mine enemy might eat | F |
Given bread for stones in famine years and channelled | F |
With vigilant knees the pavement of this cell | G |
Till I constrained the Christ upon the wall | H |
To bend His thorn crowned Head in mute forgiveness | I |
Three times He bowed it but the whole stands writ | F |
Sealed with the Bishop's signet as you know | C |
Once for each person of the Blessed Three | J |
A miracle that the whole town attests | K |
The very babes thrust forward for my blessing | L |
And either parish plotting for my bones | M |
Since this you know sit near and bear with me | J |
- | |
I have lain here these many empty days | N |
I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys | N |
So close that not a fear should force the door | O |
But still between the blessed syllables | N |
That taper up like blazing angel heads | N |
Praise over praise to the Unutterable | H |
Strange questions clutch me thrusting fiery arms | N |
As though athwart the close meshed litanies | N |
My dead should pluck at me from hell with eyes | N |
Alive in their obliterated faces | N |
I have tried the saints' names and our blessed Mother's | N |
Fra Paolo I have tried them o'er and o'er | P |
And like a blade bent backward at first thrust | F |
They yield and fail me and the questions stay | F |
And so I thought into some human heart | F |
Pure and yet foot worn with the tread of sin | Q |
If only I might creep for sanctuary | J |
It might be that those eyes would let me rest | F |
- | |
Fra Paolo listen How should I forget | F |
The day I saw him first You know the one | D |
I had been laughing in the market place | N |
With others like me I the youngest there | R |
Jostling about a pack of mountebanks | N |
Like flies on carrion I the youngest there | R |
Till darkness fell and while the other girls | N |
Turned this way that way as perdition beckoned | F |
I wondering what the night would bring half hoping | L |
If not this once a child's sleep in my garret | F |
At least enough to buy that two pronged coral | H |
The others covet 'gainst the evil eye | S |
Since after all one sees that I'm the youngest | F |
So muttering my litany to hell | H |
The only prayer I knew that was not Latin | D |
Felt on my arm a touch as kind as yours | N |
And heard a voice as kind as yours say Come | T |
I turned and went and from that day I never | P |
Looked on the face of any other man | U |
So much is known so much effaced the sin | Q |
Cast like a plague struck body to the sea | N |
Deep deep into the unfathomable pardon | D |
The Head bowed thrice as the whole town attests | N |
What more then To what purpose Bear with me | N |
- | |
It seems that he a stranger in the place | N |
First noted me that afternoon and wondered | F |
How grew so white a bud in such black slime | V |
And why not mine the hand to pluck it out | F |
Why so Christ deals with souls you cry what then | W |
Not so Not so When Christ the heavenly gardener | P |
Plucks flowers for Paradise do I not know | C |
He snaps the stem above the root and presses | N |
The ransomed soul between two convent walls | N |
A lifeless blossom in the Book of Life | X |
But when my lover gathered me he lifted | F |
Stem root and all ay and the clinging mud | F |
And set me on his sill to spread and bloom | Y |
After the common way take sun and rain | Z |
And make a patch of brightness for the street | F |
Though raised above rough fingers so you make | A2 |
A weed a flower and others passing think | B2 |
Next ditch I cross I'll lift a root from it | F |
And dress my window and the blessing spreads | N |
Well so I grew with every root and tendril | H |
Grappling the secret anchorage of his love | C2 |
And so we loved each other till he died | F |
- | |
Ah that black night he left me that dead dawn | D2 |
I found him lying in the woods alive | E2 |
To gasp my name out and his life blood with it | F |
As though the murderer's knife had probed for me | N |
In his hacked breast and found me in each wound | F |
Well it was there Christ came to me you know | C |
And led me home just as that other led me | N |
Just as that other Father bear with me | N |
My lover's death they tell me saved my soul | H |
And I have lived to be a light to men | W |
And gather sinners to the knees of grace | N |
All this you say the Bishop's signet covers | N |
But stay Suppose my lover had not died | F |
At last my question Father help me face it | F |
I say Suppose my lover had not died | F |
Think you I ever would have left him living | L |
Even to be Christ's blessed Margaret | F |
We lived in sin Why to the sin I died to | F |
That other was as Paradise when God | F |
Walks there at eventide the air pure gold | F |
And angels treading all the grass to flowers | N |
He was my Christ he led me out of hell | H |
He died to save me so your casuists say | N |
Could Christ do more Your Christ out pity mine | F2 |
Why yours but let the sinner bathe His feet | F |
Mine raised her to the level of his heart | F |
And then Christ's way is saving as man's way | N |
Is squandering and the devil take the shards | N |
But this man kept for sacramental use | N |
The cup that once had slaked a passing thirst | F |
This man declared The same clay serves to model | H |
A devil or a saint the scribe may stain | Z |
The same fair parchment with obscenities | N |
Or gild with benedictions nay he cried | F |
Because a satyr feasted in this wood | F |
And fouled the grasses with carousing foot | F |
Shall not a hermit build his chapel here | G2 |
And cleanse the echoes with his litanies | N |
The sodden grasses spring again why not | F |
The trampled soul Is man less merciful | H |
Than nature good more fugitive than grass | N |
And so if after all he had not died | F |
And suddenly that door should know his hand | F |
And with that voice as kind as yours he said | F |
Come Margaret forth into the sun again | W |
Back to the life we fashioned with our hands | N |
Out of old sins and follies fragments scorned | F |
Of more ambitious builders yet by Love | C2 |
The patient architect so shaped and fitted | F |
That not a crevice let the winter in | Q |
Think you my bones would not arise and walk | H2 |
This bruised body as once the bruised soul | H |
Turn from the wonders of the seventh heaven | D |
As from the antics of the market place | N |
If this could be as I so oft have dreamed | F |
I who have known both loves divine and human | D |
Think you I would not leave this Christ for that | F |
- | |
I rave you say You start from me Fra Paolo | C |
Go then your going leaves me not alone | I2 |
I marvel rather that I feared the question | D |
Since now I name it it draws near to me | N |
With such dear reassurance in its eyes | N |
And takes your place beside me | N |
- | |
Nay I tell you | F |
Fra Paolo I have cried on all the saints | N |
If this be devil's prompting let them drown it | F |
In Alleluias Yet not one replies | N |
And for the Christ there is He silent too | F |
Your Christ Poor father you that have but one | D |
And that one silent how I pity you | F |
He will not answer Will not help you cast | F |
The devil out But hangs there on the wall | H |
Blind wood and bone | I2 |
- | |
How if I call on Him | J2 |
I whom He talks with as the town attests | N |
If ever prayer hath ravished me so high | S |
That its wings failed and dropped me in Thy breast | F |
Christ I adjure Thee By that naked hour | P |
Of innermost commixture when my soul | H |
Contained Thee as the paten holds the host | F |
Judge Thou alone between this priest and me | N |
Nay rather Lord between my past and present | F |
Thy Margaret and that other's whose she is | N |
By right of salvage and whose call should follow | C |
Thine Silent still Or his who stooped to her | P |
And drew her to Thee by the bands of love | C2 |
Not Thine Then his | N |
- | |
Ah Christ the thorn crowned Head | F |
Bends bends again down on your knees | N |
- | |
Fra Paolo | C |
If his then Thine | F2 |
- | |
Kneel priest for this is heaven | D |
Edith Wharton
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
<< Life Poem
Mona Lisa Poem>>
Write your comment about Margaret Of Cortona poem by Edith Wharton
Best Poems of Edith Wharton