The Chalk-pit Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDEFGHFBIJKLLFLMF LLNMONHFFPQRSFTUVWVX YCZA2B2C2D2RE2F2G2FH 2LI2J2K2F| Is this the road that climbs above and bends | A |
| Round what was once a chalk pit now it is | B |
| By accident an amphitheatre | C |
| Some ash trees standing ankle deep in briar | C |
| And bramble act the parts and neither speak | D |
| Nor stir ' 'But see they have fallen every one | E |
| And briar and bramble have grown over them ' | F |
| 'That is the place As usual no one is here | G |
| Hardly can I imagine the drop of the axe | H |
| And the smack that is like an echo sounding here ' | F |
| 'I do not understand ' 'Why what I mean is | B |
| That I have seen the place two or three times | I |
| At most and that its emptiness and silence | J |
| And stillness haunt me as if just before | K |
| It was not empty silent still but full | L |
| Of life of some kind perhaps tragical | L |
| Has anything unusual happened here ' | F |
| 'Not that I know of It is called the Dell | L |
| They have not dug chalk here for a century | M |
| That was the ash trees' age But I will ask ' | F |
| 'No Do not I prefer to make a tale | L |
| Or better leave it like the end of a play | L |
| Actors and audience and lights all gone | N |
| For so it looks now In my memory | M |
| Again and again I see it strangely dark | O |
| And vacant of a life but just withdrawn | N |
| We have not seen the woodman with the axe | H |
| Some ghost has left it now as we two came ' | F |
| 'And yet you doubted if this were the road ' | F |
| 'Well sometimes I have thought of it and failed | P |
| To place it No And I am not quite sure | Q |
| Even now this is it For another place | R |
| Real or painted may have combined with it | S |
| Or I myself a long way back in time ' | F |
| 'Why as to that I used to meet a man | T |
| I had forgotten searching for birds' nests | U |
| Along the road and in the chalk pit too | V |
| The wren's hole was an eye that looked at him | W |
| For recognition Every nest he knew | V |
| He got a stiff neck by looking this side or that | X |
| Spring after spring he told me with his laugh | Y |
| A sort of laugh He was a visitor | C |
| A man of forty smoked and strolled about | Z |
| At orts and crosses Pleasure and Pain had played | A2 |
| On his brown features I think both had lost | B2 |
| Mild and yet wild too You may know the kind | C2 |
| And once or twice a woman shared his walks | D2 |
| A girl of twenty with a brown boy's face | R |
| And hair brown as a thrush or as a nut | E2 |
| Thick eyebrows glinting eyes ' 'You have said enough | F2 |
| A pair free thought free love I know the breed | G2 |
| I shall not mix my fancies up with them ' | F |
| 'You please yourself I should prefer the truth | H2 |
| Or nothing Here in fact is nothing at all | L |
| Except a silent place that once rang loud | I2 |
| And trees and us imperfect friends we men | J2 |
| And trees since time began and nevertheless | K2 |
| Between us we still breed a mystery ' | F |
Edward Thomas
(1)
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