The Book Of Annandale Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: A BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU SSVWGXFNNYNZA2B2C2D2 E2F2G2H2I2J2K2L2AM2S N2J2O2N2J2P2Q2Q2R2S2 DT2SSQ2M2 TU2YV2W2KX2EY2Z2A3B3 G2GR2 C3D3E3RF3G3GBR2H3I3J 3K3L3GD2FA2J3J2J2E3G GGR2GM3E3R2AQN3 O3P3Q3GJR3N3D2GO2S3K T3GKJ3GGU3GV3DGW3 X3Y3NZ3J3I2GGBE3A4B4 R2E3C4Y3R2D4GE3NP3GJ E4G QQF4WM2M2M2FG4V3H4V3 J2B2O2GJ3N3I4Z3E2GV3 V3QTGE2F2M2M2V3J4QK4 R2JL4JJ3 GM4N4TFR2GJ3N2N2O4RG G2 A P4GH2V3KE3NGO4C3G2Q4 R4T2B4QY3S4ND3QBJ2QT 4G2Q2QQQE4 FP3QQNQQQGT2GU4GB2U4 KJGGV4QQGW4Q2KGD2KYQ NX4KQQ2GQ2G2Y4DE3QQQ QQGG2MP3QQAGU2QQ2G QE3LLK4QY4Q2QKE3GGF3 J2GE3E2Q2F3QQZ4QJ2LG QE3 GQGGE3GE3R2QKE3QQQU4 KQQQE3F3U2E3QNMQE3QQ Q2QQ2 GLKQL3QKQE3AQQQQQ2NU 4GKQQQ2KQ QM2GM2QQE3Q2KQQGE3J2 J2GQKE3QE3QKQE3 QU4GQQGGE3GQT4GT2QGQ 2F NE3GGE3E3GQE2M2Q2QGG QGQGGE3QGFQQR2Q2T2E3 T2Q2NGQGGGGGQQQQGAGQ GGX4E3GX4Z4GS4GQX4 D2GQGX4Y4IX4QL3X4E3Q 2Z4QGGGGGGQ2GY4E3GQE 3E3G

I	A
	-
Partly to think more to be left alone	B
George Annandale said something to his friends	C
A word or two brusque but yet smoothed enough	D
To suit their funeral gaze and went upstairs	E
And there in the one room that he could call	F
His own he found a sort of meaningless	G
Annoyance in the mute familiar things	H
That filled it for the grate's monotonous gleam	I
Was not the gleam that he had known before	J
The books were not the books that used to be	K
The place was not the place There was a lack	L
Of something and the certitude of death	M
Itself as with a furtive questioning	N
Hovered and he could not yet understand	O
He knew that she was gone there was no need	P
Of any argued proof to tell him that	Q
For they had buried her that afternoon	R
Under the leaves and snow and still there was	S
A doubt a pitiless doubt a plunging doubt	T
That struck him and upstartled when it struck	U
The vision the old thought in him There was	S
A lack and one that wrenched him but it was	S
Not that not that There was a present sense	V
Of something indeterminably near	W
The soul clutch of a prescient emptiness	G
That would not be foreboding And if not	X
What then or was it anything at all	F
Yes it was something it was everything	N
But what was everything or anything	N
Tired of time bewildered he sat down	Y
But in his chair he kept on wondering	N
That he should feel so desolately strange	Z
And yet for all he knew that he had lost	A2
More of the world than most men ever win	B2
So curiously calm And he was left	C2
Unanswered and unsatisfied there came	D2
No clearer meaning to him than had come	E2
Before the old abstraction was the best	F2
That he could find the farthest he could go	G2
To that was no beginning and no end	H2
No end that he could reach So he must learn	I2
To live the surest and the largest life	J2
Attainable in him would he divine	K2
The meaning of the dream and of the words	L2
That he had written without knowing why	A
On sheets that he had bound up like a book	M2
And covered with red leather There it was	S
There in his desk the record he had made	N2
The spiritual plaything of his life	J2
There were the words no eyes had ever seen	O2
Save his there were the words that were not made	N2
For glory or for gold The pretty wife	J2
Whom he had loved and lost had not so much	P2
As heard of them They were not made for her	Q2
His love had been so much the life of her	Q2
And hers had been so much the life of him	R2
That any wayward phrasing on his part	S2
Would have had no moment Neither had lived enough	D
To know the book albeit one of them	T2
Had grown enough to write it There it was	S
However though he knew not why it was	S
There was the book but it was not for her	Q2
For she was dead And yet there was the book	M2
	-
Thus would his fancy circle out and out	T
And out and in again till he would make	U2
As if with a large freedom to crush down	Y
Those under thoughts He covered with his hands	V2
His tired eyes and waited he could hear	W2
Or partly feel and hear mechanically	K
The sound of talk with now and then the steps	X2
And skirts of some one scudding on the stairs	E
Forgetful of the nerveless funeral feet	Y2
That she had brought with her and more than once	Z2
There came to him a call as of a voice	A3
A voice of love returning but not hers	B3
Whose he knew not nor dreamed nor did he know	G2
Nor did he dream in his blurred loneliness	G
Of thought what all the rest might think of him	R2
	-
For it had come at last and she was gone	C3
With all the vanished women of old time	D3
And she was never coming back again	E3
Yes they had buried her that afternoon	R
Under the frozen leaves and the cold earth	F3
Under the leaves and snow The flickering week	G3
The sharp and certain day and the long drowse	G
Were over and the man was left alone	B
He knew the loss therefore it puzzled him	R2
That he should sit so long there as he did	H3
And bring the whole thing back the love the trust	I3
The pallor the poor face and the faint way	J3
She last had looked at him and yet not weep	K3
Or even choose to look about the room	L3
To see how sad it was and once or twice	G
He winked and pinched his eyes against the flame	D2
And hoped there might be tears But hope was all	F
And all to him was nothing he was lost	A2
And yet he was not lost he was astray	J3
Out of his life and in another life	J2
And in the stillness of this other life	J2
He wondered and he drowsed He wondered when	E3
It was and wondered if it ever was	G
On earth that he had known the other face	G
The searching face the eloquent strange face	G
That with a sightless beauty looked at him	R2
And with a speechless promise uttered words	G
That were not the world's words or any kind	M3
That he had known before What was it then	E3
What was it held him fascinated him	R2
Why should he not be human He could sigh	A
And he could even groan but what of that	Q
There was no grief left in him Was he glad	N3
	-
Yet how could he be glad or reconciled	O3
Or anything but wretched and undone	P3
How could he be so frigid and inert	Q3
So like a man with water in his veins	G
Where blood had been a little while before	J
How could he sit shut in there like a snail	R3
What ailed him What was on him Was he glad	N3
Over and over again the question came	D2
Unanswered and unchanged and there he was	G
But what in heaven's name did it all mean	O2
If he had lived as other men had lived	S3
If home had ever shown itself to be	K
The counterfeit that others had called home	T3
Then to this undivined resource of his	G
There were some key but now Philosophy	K
Yes he could reason in a kind of way	J3
That he was glad for Miriam's release	G
Much as he might be glad to see his friends	G
Laid out around him with their grave clothes on	U3
And this life done for them but something else	G
There was that foundered reason overwhelmed it	V3
And with a chilled intuitive rebuff	D
Beat back the self cajoling sophistries	G
That his half tutored thought would half project	W3
	-
What was it then Had he become transformed	X3
And hardened through long watches and long grief	Y3
Into a loveless feelingless dead thing	N
That brooded like a man breathed like a man	Z3
Did everything but ache And was a day	J3
To come some time when feeling should return	I2
Forever to drive off that other face	G
The lineless indistinguishable face	G
That once had thrilled itself between his own	B
And hers there on the pillow and again	E3
Between him and the coffin lid had flashed	A4
Like fate before it closed and at the last	B4
Had come as it should seem to stay with him	R2
Bidden or not He were a stranger then	E3
Foredrowsed awhile by some deceiving draught	C4
Of poppied anguish to the covert grief	Y3
And the stark loneliness that waited him	R2
And for the time were cursedly endowed	D4
With a dull trust that shammed indifference	G
To knowing there would be no touch again	E3
Of her small hand on his no silencing	N
Of her quick lips on his no feminine	P3
Completeness and love fragrance in the house	G
No sound of some one singing any more	J
No smoothing of slow fingers on his hair	E4
No shimmer of pink slippers on brown tiles	G
	-
But there was nothing nothing in all that	Q
He had not fooled himself so much as that	Q
He might be dreaming or he might be sick	F4
But not like that There was no place for fear	W
No reason for remorse There was the book	M2
That he had made though It might be the book	M2
Perhaps he might find something in the book	M2
But no there could be nothing there at all	F
He knew it word for word but what it meant	G4
He was not sure that he had written it	V3
For what it meant and he was not quite sure	H4
That he had written it more likely it	V3
Was all a paper ghost But the dead wife	J2
Was real he knew all that for he had been	B2
To see them bury her and he had seen	O2
The flowers and the snow and the stripped limbs	G
Of trees and he had heard the preacher pray	J3
And he was back again and he was glad	N3
Was he a brute No he was not a brute	I4
He was a man like any other man	Z3
He had loved and married his wife Miriam	E2
They had lived a little while in paradise	G
And she was gone and that was all of it	V3
	-
But no not all of it not all of it	V3
There was the book again something in that	Q
Pursued him overpowered him put out	T
The futile strength of all his whys and wheres	G
And left him unintelligibly numb	E2
Too numb to care for anything but rest	F2
It must have been a curious kind of book	M2
That he had made it it was a drowsy book	M2
At any rate The very thought of it	V3
Was like the taste of some impossible drink	J4
A taste that had no taste but for all that	Q
Had mixed with it a strange thought cordial	K4
So potent that it somehow killed in him	R2
The ultimate need of doubting any more	J
Of asking any more Did he but live	L4
The life that he must live there were no more	J
To seek The rest of it was on the way	J3
	-
Still there was nothing nothing in all this	G
Nothing that he cared now to reconcile	M4
With reason or with sorrow All he knew	N4
For certain was that he was tired out	T
His flesh was heavy and his blood beat small	F
Something supreme had been wrenched out of him	R2
As if to make vague room for something else	G
He had been through too much Yes he would stay	J3
There where he was and rest And there he stayed	N2
The daylight became twilight and he stayed	N2
The flame and the face faded and he slept	O4
And they had buried her that afternoon	R
Under the tight screwed lid of a long box	G
Under the earth under the leaves and snow	G2
	-
II	A
	-
Look where she would feed conscience how she might	P4
There was but one way now for Damaris	G
One straight way that was hers hers to defend	H2
At hand imperious But the nearness of it	V3
The flesh bewildering simplicity	K
And the plain strangeness of it thrilled again	E3
That wretched little quivering single string	N
Which yielded not but held her to the place	G
Where now for five triumphant years had slept	O4
The flameless dust of Argan He was gone	C3
The good man she had married long ago	G2
And she had lived and living she had learned	Q4
And surely there was nothing to regret	R4
Much happiness had been for each of them	T2
And they had been like lovers to the last	B4
And after that and long long after that	Q
Her tears had washed out more of widowed grief	Y3
Than smiles had ever told of other joy	S4
But could she looking back find anything	N
That should return to her in the new time	D3
And with relentless magic uncreate	Q
This temple of new love where she had thrown	B
Dead sorrow on the altar of new life	J2
Only one thing only one thread was left	Q
When she broke that when reason snapped it off	T4
And once for all baffled the grave let go	G2
The trivial hideous hold it had on her	Q2
Then she were free free to be what she would	Q
Free to be what she was And yet she stayed	Q
Leashed as it were and with a cobweb strand	Q
Close to a tombstone maybe to starve there	E4
	-
But why to starve And why stay there at all	F
Why not make one good leap and then be done	P3
Forever and at once with Argan's ghost	Q
And all such outworn churchyard servitude	Q
For it was Argan's ghost that held the string	N
And her sick fancy that held Argan's ghost	Q
Held it and pitied it She laughed almost	Q
There for the moment but her strained eyes filled	Q
With tears and she was angry for those tears	G
Angry at first then proud then sorry for them	T2
So she grew calm and after a vain chase	G
For thoughts more vain she questioned of herself	U4
What measure of primeval doubts and fears	G
Were still to be gone through that she might win	B2
Persuasion of her strength and of herself	U4
To be what she could see that she must be	K
No matter where the ghost was And the more	J
She lived the more she came to recognize	G
That something out of her thrilled ignorance	G
Was luminously proudly being born	V4
And thereby proving thought by forward thought	Q
The prowess of its image and she learned	Q
At length to look right on to the long days	G
Before her without fearing She could watch	W4
The coming course of them as if they were	Q2
No more than birds that slowly silently	K
And irretrievably should wing themselves	G
Uncounted out of sight And when he came	D2
Again she might be free she would be free	K
Else when he looked at her she must look down	Y
Defeated and malignly dispossessed	Q
Of what was hers to prove and in the proving	N
Wisely to consecrate And if the plague	X4
Of that perverse defeat should come to be	K
If at that sickening end she were to find	Q
Herself to be the same poor prisoner	Q2
That he had found at first then she must lose	G
All sight and sound of him she must abjure	Q2
All possible thought of him for he would go	G2
So far and for so long from her that love	Y4
Yes even a love like his exiled enough	D
Might for another's touch be born again	E3
Born to be lost and starved for and not found	Q
Or at the next the second wretchedest	Q
It might go mutely flickering down and out	Q
And on some incomplete and piteous day	Q
Some perilous day to come she might at last	Q
Learn with a noxious freedom what it is	G
To be at peace with ghosts Then were the blow	G2
Thrice deadlier than any kind of death	M
Could ever be to know that she had won	P3
The truth too late there were the dregs indeed	Q
Of wisdom and of love the final thrust	Q
Unmerciful and there where now did lie	A
So plain before her the straight radiance	G
Of what was her appointed way to take	U2
Were only the bleak ruts of an old road	Q
That stretched ahead and faded and lay far	Q2
Through deserts of unconscionable years	G
	-
But vampire thoughts like these confessed the doubt	Q
That love denied and once if never again	E3
They should be turned away They might come back	L
More craftily perchance they might come back	L
And with a spirit thirst insatiable	K4
Finish the strength of her but now today	Q
She would have none of them She knew that love	Y4
Was true that he was true that she was true	Q2
And should a death bed snare that she had made	Q
So long ago be stretched inexorably	K
Through all her life only to be unspun	E3
With her last breathing And were bats and threads	G
Accursedly devised with watered gules	G
To be Love's heraldry What were it worth	F3
To live and to find out that life were life	J2
But for an unrequited incubus	G
Of outlawed shame that would not be thrown down	E3
Till she had thrown down fear and overcome	E2
The woman that was yet so much of her	Q2
That she might yet go mad What were it worth	F3
To live to linger and to be condemned	Q
In her submission to a common thought	Q
That clogged itself and made of its first faith	Z4
Its last impediment What augured it	Q
Now in this quick beginning of new life	J2
To clutch the sunlight and be feeling back	L
Back with a scared fantastic fearfulness	G
To touch not knowing why the vexed up ghost	Q
Of what was gone	E3
	-
Yes there was Argan's face	G
Pallid and pinched and ruinously marked	Q
With big pathetic bones there were his eyes	G
Quiet and large fixed wistfully on hers	G
And there close pressed again within her own	E3
Quivered his cold thin fingers And ah yes	G
There were the words those dying words again	E3
And hers that answered when she promised him	R2
Promised him yes And had she known the truth
Of what she felt that he should ask her that	Q
And had she known the love that was to be	K
God knew that she could not have told him then	E3
But then she knew it not nor thought of it	Q
There was no need of it nor was there need	Q
Of any problematical support	Q
Whereto to cling while she convinced herself	U4
That love's intuitive utility	K
Inexorably merciful had proved	Q
That what was human was unpermanent	Q
And what was flesh was ashes She had told	Q
Him then that she would love no other man	E3
That there was not another man on earth	F3
Whom she could ever love or who could make	U2
So much as a love thought go through her brain	E3
And he had smiled And just before he died	Q
His lips had made as if to say something	N
Something that passed unwhispered with his breath	M
Out of her reach out of all quest of it	Q
And then could she have known enough to know	E3
The meaning of her grief the folly of it	Q
The faithlessness and the proud anguish of it	Q
There might be now no threads to punish her	Q2
No vampire thoughts to suck the coward blood	Q
The life the very soul of her	Q2
	-
Yes Yes	G
They might come back But why should they come back	L
Why was it she had suffered Why had she	K
Struggled and grown these years to demonstrate	Q
That close without those hovering clouds of gloom	L3
And through them here and there forever gleamed	Q
The Light itself the life the love the glory	K
Which was of its own radiance good proof
That all the rest was darkness and blind sight	Q
And who was she The woman she had known	E3
The woman she had petted and called I	A
The woman she had pitied and at last	Q
Commiserated for the most abject	Q
And persecuted of all womankind	Q
Could it be she that had sought out the way	Q
To measure and thereby to quench in her	Q2
The woman's fear the fear of her not fearing	N
A nervous little laugh that lost itself	U4
Like logic in a dream fluttered her thoughts	G
An instant there that ever she should ask
What she might then have told so easily	K
So easily that Annandale had frowned	Q
Had he been given wholly to be told	Q
The truth of what had never been before	Q2
So passionately so inevitably	K
Confessed	Q
	-
For she could see from where she sat	Q
The sheets that he had bound up like a book	M2
And covered with red leather and her eyes	G
Could see between the pages of the book	M2
Though her eyes like them were closed And she could read	Q
As well as if she had them in her hand	Q
What he had written on them long ago	E3
Six years ago when he was waiting for her	Q2
She might as well have said that she could see	K
The man himself as once he would have looked	Q
Had she been there to watch him while he wrote	Q
Those words and all for her For her whose face	G
Had flashed itself prophetic and unseen	E3
But not unspirited between the life	J2
That would have been without her and the life	J2
That he had gathered up like frozen roots	G
Out of a grave clod lying at his feet	Q
Unconsciously and as unconsciously	K
Transplanted and revived He did not know	E3
The kind of life that he had found nor did	Q
He doubt not knowing it but well he knew	E3
That it was life new life and that the old	Q
Might then with unimprisoned wings go free	K
Onward and all along to its own light	Q
Through the appointed shadow	E3
	-
While she gazed	Q
Upon it there she felt within herself	U4
The growing of a newer consciousness	G
The pride of something fairer than her first	Q
Outclamoring of interdicted thought	Q
Had ever quite foretold and all at once	G
There quivered and requivered through her flesh
Like music like the sound of an old song
Triumphant love remembered murmurings	G
Of what for passion's innocence had been	E3
Too mightily too perilously hers	G
Ever to be reclaimed and realized	Q
Until today Today she could throw off	T4
The burden that had held her down so long
And she could stand upright and she could see	G
The way to take with eyes that had in them	T2
No gleam but of the spirit Day or night	Q
No matter she could see what was to see	G
All that had been till now shut out from her	Q2
The service the fulfillment and the truth
And thus the cruel wiseness of it all	F
	-
So Damaris more like than anything	N
To one long prisoned in a twilight cave
With hovering bats for all companionship
And after time set free to fight the sun	E3
Laughed out so glad she was to recognize	G
The test of what had been through all her folly	G
The courage of her conscience for she knew	E3
Now on a late flushed autumn afternoon	E3
That else had been too bodeful of dead things	G
To be endured with aught but the same old	Q
Inert self contradicted martyrdom	E2
Which she had known so long that she could look	M2
Right forward through the years nor any more	Q2
Shrink with a cringing prescience to behold	Q
The glitter of dead summer on the grass	G
Or the brown glimmered crimson of still trees	G
Across the intervale where flashed along
Black silvered the cold river She had found	Q
As if by some transcendent freakishness	G
Of reason the glad life that she had sought	Q
Where naught but obvious clouds could ever be	G
Clouds to put out the sunlight from her eyes	G
And to put out the love light from her soul
But they were gone now they were all gone	E3
And with a whimsied pathos like the mist	Q
Of grief that clings to new found happiness	G
Hard wrought she might have pity for the small	F
Defeated quest of them that brushed her sight	Q
Like flying lint lint that had once been thread	Q
Yes like an anodyne the voice of him	R2
There were the words that he had made for her	Q2
For her alone The more she thought of them	T2
The more she lived them and the more she knew	E3
The life grip and the pulse of warm strength in them	T2
They were the first and last of words to her	Q2
And there was in them a far questioning	N
That had for long been variously at work
Divinely and elusively at work
With her and with the grace that had been hers	G
They were eternal words and they diffused	Q
A flame of meaning that men's lexicons	G
Had never kindled they were choral words	G
That harmonized with love's enduring chords	G
Like wisdom with release triumphant words	G
That rang like elemental orisons	G
Through ages out of ages words that fed	Q
Love's hunger in the spirit words that smote	Q
Thrilled words that echoed and barbed words that clung
And every one of them was like a friend	Q
Whose obstinate fidelity well tried	Q
Had found at last and irresistibly	G
The way to her close conscience and thereby	A
Revealed the unsubstantial Nemesis	G
That she had clutched and shuddered at so long
And every one of them was like a real
And ringing voice clear toned and absolute	Q
But of a love subdued authority	G
That uttered thrice the plain significance	G
Of what had else been generously vague	X4
And indolently true It may have been	E3
The triumph and the magic of the soul
Unspeakably revealed that finally	G
Had reconciled the grim probationing	X4
Of wisdom with unalterable faith	Z4
But she could feel not knowing what it was	G
For the sheer freedom of it a new joy	S4
That humanized the latent wizardry	G
Of his prophetic voice and put for it	Q
The man within the music	X4
	-
So it came	D2
To pass like many a long compelled emprise	G
That with its first accomplishment almost	Q
Annihilates its own severity	G
That she could find whenever she might look	X4
The certified achievement of a love	Y4
That had endured self guarded and supreme	I
To the glad end of all that wavering	X4
And she could see that now the flickering world	Q
Of autumn was awake with sudden bloom	L3
New born perforce of a slow bourgeoning	X4
And she had found what more than half had been	E3
The grave deluded flesh bewildered fear	Q2
Which men and women struggle to call faith	Z4
To be the paid progression to an end	Q
Whereat she knew the foresight and the strength
To glorify the gift of what was hers	G
To vindicate the truth of what she was	G
And had it come to her so suddenly	G
There was a pity and a weariness	G
In asking that and a great needlessness	G
For now there were no wretched quivering strings	G
That held her to the churchyard any more	Q2
There were no thoughts that flapped themselves like bats	G
Around her any more The shield of love	Y4
Was clean and she had paid enough to learn	E3
How it had always been so And the truth
Like silence after some far victory	G
Had come to her and she had found it out	Q
As if it were a vision a thing born	E3
So suddenly just as a flower is born	E3
Or as a world is born so suddenly	G

Edwin Arlington Robinson

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1. Emily Dickinson(2414 poems)
2. Madison Julius Cawein(1231 poems)
3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox(1136 poems)
4. William Wordsworth(1016 poems)
5. Robert Burns(986 poems)
6. Edgar Albert Guest(945 poems)
7. Thomas Moore(849 poems)
8. Robert Service(831 poems)