Questions Of Travel Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEEFGBHEF IGFFEJKFFHLMLEMNO FFFHHFPEQRFSFFTHE FFEUFEVEWEFEE XIFN FFIThere are too many waterfalls here the crowded streams | A |
hurry too rapidly down to the sea | B |
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops | C |
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow motion | D |
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes | E |
For if those streaks those mile long shiny tearstains | E |
aren't waterfalls yet | F |
in a quick age or so as ages go here | G |
they probably will be | B |
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling travelling | H |
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships | E |
slime hung and barnacled | F |
- | |
Think of the long trip home | I |
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here | G |
Where should we be today | F |
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play | F |
in this strangest of theatres | E |
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life | J |
in our bodies we are determined to rush | K |
to see the sun the other way around | F |
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world | F |
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework | H |
inexplicable and impenetrable | L |
at any view | M |
instantly seen and always always delightful | L |
Oh must we dream our dreams | E |
and have them too | M |
And have we room | N |
for one more folded sunset still quite warm | O |
- | |
But surely it would have been a pity | F |
not to have seen the trees along this road | F |
really exaggerated in their beauty | F |
not to have seen them gesturing | H |
like noble pantomimists robed in pink | H |
Not to have had to stop for gas and heard | F |
the sad two noted wooden tune | P |
of disparate wooden clogs | E |
carelessly clacking over | Q |
a grease stained filling station floor | R |
In another country the clogs would all be tested | F |
Each pair there would have identical pitch | S |
A pity not to have heard | F |
the other less primitive music of the fat brown bird | F |
who sings above the broken gasoline pump | T |
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque | H |
three towers five silver crosses | E |
- | |
Yes a pity not to have pondered | F |
blurr'dly and inconclusively | F |
on what connection can exist for centuries | E |
between the crudest wooden footwear | U |
and careful and finicky | F |
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages | E |
Never to have studied history in | V |
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages | E |
And never to have had to listen to rain | W |
so much like politicians' speeches | E |
two hours of unrelenting oratory | F |
and then a sudden golden silence | E |
in which the traveller takes a notebook writes | E |
- | |
'Is it lack of imagination that makes us come | X |
to imagined places not just stay at home | I |
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right | F |
about just sitting quietly in one's room | N |
- | |
Continent city country society | F |
the choice is never wide and never free | F |
And here or there No Should we have stayed at home | I |
wherever that may be ' | - |
Elizabeth Bishop
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Questions Of Travel poem by Elizabeth Bishop
Best Poems of Elizabeth Bishop