The Unforgiven Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABBAB CDEDDED FGFGGFG AHAHHAH FIFIJFI AKAKKAK LMLMMLM KNKNNKN| When he who is the unforgiven | A |
| Beheld her first he found her fair | B |
| No promise ever dreamt in heaven | A |
| Could then have lured him anywhere | B |
| That would have been away from there | B |
| And all his wits had lightly striven | A |
| Foiled with her voice and eyes and hair | B |
| - | |
| There's nothing in the saints and sages | C |
| To meet the shafts her glances had | D |
| Or such as hers have had for ages | E |
| To blind a man till he be glad | D |
| And humble him till he be mad | D |
| The story would have many pages | E |
| And would be neither good nor bad | D |
| - | |
| And having followed you would find him | F |
| Where properly the play begins | G |
| But look for no red light behind him | F |
| No fumes of many colored sins | G |
| Fanned high by screaming violins | G |
| God knows what good it was to blind him | F |
| Or whether man or woman wins | G |
| - | |
| And by the same eternal token | A |
| Who knows just how it will all end | H |
| This drama of hard words unspoken | A |
| This fireside farce without a friend | H |
| Or enemy to comprehend | H |
| What augurs when two lives are broken | A |
| And fear finds nothing left to mend | H |
| - | |
| He stares in vain for what awaits him | F |
| And sees in Love a coin to toss | I |
| He smiles and her cold hush berates him | F |
| Beneath his hard half of the cross | I |
| They wonder why it ever was | J |
| And she the unforgiving hates him | F |
| More for her lack than for her loss | I |
| - | |
| He feeds with pride his indecision | A |
| And shrinks from what will not occur | K |
| Bequeathing with infirm derision | A |
| His ashes to the days that were | K |
| Before she made him prisoner | K |
| And labors to retrieve the vision | A |
| That he must once have had of her | K |
| - | |
| He waits and there awaits an ending | L |
| And he knows neither what nor when | M |
| But no magicians are attending | L |
| To make him see as he saw then | M |
| And he will never find again | M |
| The face that once had been the rending | L |
| Of all his purpose among men | M |
| - | |
| He blames her not nor does he chide her | K |
| And she has nothing new to say | N |
| If he were Bluebeard he could hide her | K |
| But that's not written in the play | N |
| And there will be no change to day | N |
| Although to the serene outsider | K |
| There still would seem to be a way | N |
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Unforgiven poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Best Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson