The Last Giustianini Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABACDE FGFGHH IJIJKK LMLMNL OPQPR RGRGBB STSUV BWBWXX OYZYVV XKXKA2B2 C2VC2VD2D2 E2OE2OD| O WIFE wife wife As if the sacred name | A |
| Could weary one with saying Once again | B |
| Laying against my brow your lips' soft flame | A |
| Join with me Sweetest in love's new refrain | C |
| Since the whole music of my late found life | D |
| Is that we call each other 'husband wife ' | E |
| - | |
| And yet stand back and let your cloth of gold | F |
| Straighten its sumptuous lines from waist to knee | G |
| And flowing firmly outward fold on fold | F |
| Invest your slim young form with majesty | G |
| As when in those calm bridal robes arrayed | H |
| You stood beside me and I was afraid | H |
| - | |
| I was afraid O sweetness whiteness youth | I |
| Best gift of God I feared you I indeed | J |
| For whom all womanhood has been forsooth | I |
| Summed up in the sole Virgin of the Creed | J |
| I thought that day our Lady's self stood there | K |
| And bound herself to me with vow and prayer | K |
| - | |
| Ah yes that day I sat remember well | L |
| Half crook'd above a missal and laid in | M |
| The gold leaf slowly silence in my cell | L |
| The picture Satan tempting Christ to sin | M |
| Upon the mount's blue pointed pinnacle | N |
| The world outspread beneath as fair as hell | L |
| - | |
| When suddenly they summoned me I stood | O |
| Abashed before the Abbot who reclined | P |
| Full bellied in his chair beneath the rood | Q |
| And roseate with having lately dined | P |
| And then I standing there abashed he said | R |
| 'The house of Giustiniani all lie dead ' | - |
| - | |
| It scarcely seemed to touch me I had led | R |
| A grated life so long that oversea | G |
| My kinsmen in their knighthood should lie dead | R |
| Nor that this sudden death should set me free | G |
| Me the last Giustiniani well what then | B |
| A monk The Giustiniani had been men | B |
| - | |
| So when the Abbot said 'The state decrees | S |
| That you the latest scion of the house | T |
| Which died in vain for Venice overseas | S |
| Should be exempted from your sacred vows | U |
| And straightway when you leave this cloistered place | V |
| Take wife and add new honors to the race ' | - |
| - | |
| I hardly heard him would have crept again | B |
| To the warped missal but he snatched a sword | W |
| And girded me and all the heart of men | B |
| Rushed through me as he laughed and hailed me lord | W |
| And with my hand upon the hilt I cried | X |
| 'Viva San Marco ' like my kin who died | X |
| - | |
| But straightway when a new made knight I stood | O |
| Beneath the bridal arch and saw you come | Y |
| A certain monkish warping of the blood | Z |
| Ran up and struck the man's heart in me dumb | Y |
| I breathed an Ave to our Lady's grace | V |
| And did not dare to look upon your face | V |
| - | |
| And when we swept the waters side by side | X |
| With timbrelled gladness clashing on the air | K |
| I trembled at your image in the tide | X |
| And warded off the devil with a prayer | K |
| Still seeming in a golden dream to move | A2 |
| Through fiendish labyrinths of forbidden love | B2 |
| - | |
| But when they left us and we stood alone | C2 |
| I the last Giustiniani face to face | V |
| With your unvisioned beauty made my own | C2 |
| In this the last strange bridal of our race | V |
| And looking up at last to meet your eyes | D2 |
| Saw in their depths the star of love arise | D2 |
| - | |
| Ah then the monk's garb shrivelled from my heart | E2 |
| And left me man to face your womanhood | O |
| Without a prayer to keep our lips apart | E2 |
| I turned about and kissed you where you stood | O |
| And gathering all the gladness of my life | D |
| Into a new found word I called you 'wife ' | - |
Edith Wharton
(1)
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