The Comrade Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKDDDLDMNOD PQDR RSTD U VW XYDZMDA2X B2C2C2C2C2ZD2E2F2BG2 C2H2I2 J2DRDC2YK2DL2M2D N2O2DDD YP2DDDDP2DQ2P2R2DDWILD winged thing O brought I know not whence | A |
To beat your life out in my life's low cage | B |
You strange familiar nearer than my flesh | C |
Yet distant as a star that were at first | D |
A child with me a child yet elfin far | E |
And visibly of some unearthly breed | F |
Mirthfullest mate of all my mortal games | G |
Yet shedding on them some evasive gleam | H |
Of Latmian loneliness O seven then | I |
Expert to lift the latch of our low door | J |
And profit by the hours when dusked about | K |
By human misintelligence our first | D |
Weak fledgling flights were safeliest essayed | D |
Divine accomplice of those perilous sweet | D |
Low moth flights of the unadventured soul | L |
Above the world's dim garden now we sit | D |
After what stretch of years what stretch of wings | M |
In the same cage together still as near | N |
And still as strange | O |
Only I know at last | D |
That we are fellows till the last night falls | P |
And that I shall not miss your comrade hands | Q |
Till they have closed my lids and by them set | D |
A taper that who knows may yet shine through | R |
- | |
Sister my comrade I have ached for you | R |
Sometimes to see you curb your pace to mine | S |
And bow your Maenad crest to the dull forms | T |
Of human usage I have loosed your hand | D |
And whispered 'Go Since I am tethered here ' | - |
And you have turned and breathing for reply | U |
'I too am pinioned as you too are free ' | - |
Have caught me to such undreamed distances | V |
As the last planets see when they look forth | W |
- | |
To the sentinel pacings of the outmost stars | X |
Nor these alone | Y |
Comrade my sister were your gifts More oft | D |
Has your impalpable wing brush bared for me | Z |
The heart of wonder in familiar things | M |
Unroofed dull rooms and hung above my head | D |
The cloudy glimpses of a vernal moon | A2 |
Or all the autumn heaven ripe with stars | X |
- | |
And you have made a secret pact with Sleep | B2 |
And when she comes not or her feet delay | C2 |
Toiled in low meadows of gray asphodel | C2 |
Under a pale sky where no shadows fall | C2 |
Then hooded like her to my side you steal | C2 |
And the night grows like a great rumouring sea | Z |
And you a boat and I your passenger | D2 |
And the tide lifts us with an indrawn breath | E2 |
Out out upon the murmurs and the scents | F2 |
Through spray of splintered star beams or white rage | B |
Of desperate moon drawn waters on and on | G2 |
To some blue ocean immarcescible | C2 |
That ever like a slow swung mirror rocks | H2 |
The balanced breasts of sea birds motionless | I2 |
- | |
Yet other nights my sister you have been | J2 |
The storm and I the leaf that fled on it | D |
Terrifically down voids that never knew | R |
The pity of creation or have felt | D |
The immitigable anguish of a soul | C2 |
Left last in a long ruined world alone | Y |
And then your touch has drawn me back to earth | K2 |
As in the night upon an unknown road | D |
A scent of lilac breathing from the hedge | L2 |
Bespeaks the hidden farm the bedded cows | M2 |
And safety and the sense of human kind | D |
- | |
And I have climbed with you by hidden ways | N2 |
To meet the dews of morning and have seen | O2 |
The shy gods like retreating shadows fade | D |
Or on the thymy reaches have surprised | D |
Old Chiron sleeping and have waked him not | D |
- | |
Yet farther have I fared with you and known | Y |
Love and his sacred tremors and the rites | P2 |
Of his most inward temple and beyond | D |
His temple lights have seen the long gray waste | D |
Where lonely thoughts like creatures of the night | D |
Listen and wander where a city stood | D |
And creeping down by waterless defiles | P2 |
Under an iron midnight have I kept | D |
My vigil in the waste till dawn began | Q2 |
To move among the ruins and I saw | P2 |
A sapling rooted in a fissured plinth | R2 |
And a wren's nest in the thunder threatening hand | D |
Of some old god of granite in the dust | D |
Edith Wharton
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