Scotland 1941 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDCEDE FGFGHIJKIKHLML JGDGDNLMOPPOQQN| We were a tribe a family a people | A |
| Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field | B |
| And all may read the folio of our fable | A |
| Peruse the sword the sceptre and the shield | B |
| A simple sky roofed in that rustic day | C |
| The busy corn fields and the haunted holms | D |
| The green road winding up the ferny brae | C |
| But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms | D |
| And bundled all the harvesters away | C |
| Hoodicrow Peden in the blighted corn | E |
| Hacked with his rusty beak the starving haulms | D |
| Out of that desolation we were born | E |
| - | |
| Courage beyond the point and obdurate pride | F |
| Made us a nation robbed us of a nation | G |
| Defiance absolute and myriad eyed | F |
| That could not pluck the palm plucked our damnation | G |
| We with such courage and the bitter wit | H |
| To fell the ancient oak of loyalty | I |
| And strip the peopled hill and altar bare | J |
| And crush the poet with an iron text | K |
| How could we read our souls and learn to be | I |
| Here a dull drove of faces harsh and vexed | K |
| We watch our cities burning in their pit | H |
| To salve our souls grinding dull lucre out | L |
| We fanatics of the frustrate and the half | M |
| Who once set Purgatory Hill in doubt | L |
| - | |
| Now smoke and dearth and money everywhere | J |
| Mean heirlooms of each fainter generation | G |
| And mummied housegods in their musty niches | D |
| Burns and Scott sham bards of a sham nation | G |
| And spiritual defeat wrapped warm in riches | D |
| No pride but pride of pelf Long since the young | N |
| Fought in great bloody battles to carve out | L |
| This towering pulpit of the Golden Calf | M |
| Montrose Mackail Argyle perverse and brave | O |
| Twisted the stream unhooped the ancestral hill | P |
| Never had Dee or Don or Yarrow or Till | P |
| Huddled such thriftless honour in a grave | O |
| Such wasted bravery idle as a song | Q |
| Such hard won ill might prove Time's verdict wrong | Q |
| And melt to pity the annalist's iron tongue | N |
Edwin Muir
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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