The Old Pole Star Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBCD EFFEF GHGGH ICCIC JKLJK MNMMN| Before the clepsydra had bound the days | A |
| Man tethered Change to his fixed star and said | B |
| The elder races that long since are dead | B |
| Marched by that light it swerves not from its base | C |
| Though all the worlds about it wax and fade | D |
| - | |
| When Egypt saw it fast in reeling spheres | E |
| Her Pyramids shaft centred on its ray | F |
| She reared and said Long as this star holds sway | F |
| In uninvaded ether shall the years | E |
| Revere my monuments and went her way | F |
| - | |
| The Pyramids abide but through the shaft | G |
| That held the polar pivot eye to eye | H |
| Look now blank nothingness As though Change laughed | G |
| At man's presumption and his puny craft | G |
| The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky | H |
| - | |
| Yet could the immemorial piles be swung | I |
| A skyey hair's breadth from their rooted base | C |
| Back to the central anchorage of space | C |
| Ah then again as when the race was young | I |
| Should they behold the beacon of the race | C |
| - | |
| Of old men said The Truth is there we rear | J |
| Our faith full centred on it It was known | K |
| Thus of the elders who foreran us here | L |
| Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere | J |
| And found it 'mid mutation fixed alone | K |
| - | |
| Change laughs again again the sky is cold | M |
| And down that fissure now no star beam glides | N |
| Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not old | M |
| Still at the central point of space behold | M |
| Another pole star for the Truth abides | N |
Edith Wharton
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About The Old Pole Star
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