The Old Pole Star Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBCD EFFEF GHGGH ICCIC JKLJK MNMMNBefore 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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