Seascape Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCEFGHIIC JCKLMNOPICQRISTUI SVITWTXIWYIICCOQ IITZA2B2IIB2IB2B2CC2 D2D2 ZIE2IZID2IZIF2Over that morn hung heaviness until | A |
Near sunless noon we heard the ship's bell beating | B |
A melancholy staccato on dead metal | C |
Saw the bare footed watch come running aft | D |
Felt far below the sudden telegraph jangle | C |
Its harsh metallic challenge thrice repeated | E |
'Stand to Half speed ahead Slow Stop her ' | F |
They stopped | G |
The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart | H |
She held she swayed a hulk a hollow carcass | I |
Of blistered iron that the grey green waveless | I |
Unruffled tropic waters slapped languidly | C |
- | |
And in that pause a sinister whisper ran | J |
Burial at Sea a Portuguese official | C |
Poor fever broken devil from Mozambique | K |
Came on half tight the doctor calls it heat stroke | L |
Why do they travel steerage It's the exchange | M |
So many million 'reis' to the pound | N |
What did he look like No one ever saw him | O |
Took to his bunk and drank and drank and died | P |
They're ready Silence | I |
We clustered to the rail | C |
Curious and half ashamed The well deck spread | Q |
A comfortable gulf of segregation | R |
Between ourselves and death 'Burial at sea' | I |
The master holds a black book at arm's length | S |
His droning voice comes for'ard 'This our brother | T |
We therefore commit his body to the deep | U |
To be turned into corruption' The bo's'n whispers | I |
Hoarsely behind his hand 'Now all together ' | - |
The hatch cover is tilted a mummy of sailcloth | S |
Well ballasted with iron shoots clear of the poop | V |
Falls like a diving gannet The green sea closes | I |
Its burnished skin the snaky swell smoothes over | T |
While he the man of the steerage goes down down | W |
Feet foremost sliding swiftly down the dim water | T |
Swift to escape | X |
Those plunging shapes with pale empurpled bellies | I |
That swirl and veer about him He goes down | W |
Unerringly as though he knew the way | Y |
Through green through gloom to absolute watery darkness | I |
Where no weed sways nor curious fin quivers | I |
To the sad sunless deeps where endlessly | C |
A downward drift of death spreads its wan mantle | C |
In the wave moulded valleys that shall enfold him | O |
Till the sea give up its dead | Q |
- | |
There shall he lie dispersed amid great riches | I |
Such gold such arrogance so many bold hearts | I |
All the sunken armadas pressed to powder | T |
By weight of incredible seas That mingled wrack | Z |
No livening sun shall visit till the crust | A2 |
Of earth be riven or this rolling planet | B2 |
Reel on its axis till the moon chained tides | I |
Unloosed deliver up that white Atlantis | I |
Whose naked peaks shall bleach above the slaked | B2 |
Thirst of Sahara fringed by weedy tangles | I |
Of Atlas's drown'd cedars frowning eastward | B2 |
To where the sands of India lie cold | B2 |
And heap'd Himalaya's a rib of coral | C |
Slowly uplifted grain on grain | C2 |
- | |
We dream | D2 |
Too long Another jangle of alarum | D2 |
Stabs at the engines 'Slow Half speed Full speed ' | - |
The great bearings rumble the screw churns frothing | Z |
Opaque water to downward swelling plumes | I |
Milky as wood smoke A shoal of flying fish | E2 |
Spurts out like animate spray The warm breeze wakens | I |
And we pass on forgetting | Z |
Toward the solemn horizon of bronzed cumulus | I |
That bounds our brooding sea gathering gloom | D2 |
That when night falls will dissipate in flaws | I |
Of watery lightning washing the hot sky | Z |
Cleansing all hearts of heat and restlessness | I |
Until with day another blue be born | F2 |
Francis Brett Young
(1)
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