Heard On The Mountain Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCDBBBBDBBB DDBBBBEEFGHHIIBB BB HHHHDD JJBBDD GGGGGKKDDDDD DDDDDDGGDDGG KKDD DDBBKKHHBBDDFrom Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne' | A |
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Have you sometimes calm silent let your tread aspirant rise | B |
Up to the mountain's summit in the presence of the skies | B |
Was't on the borders of the South or on the Bretagne coast | C |
And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed | D |
And there leaned o'er the wave and o'er the immeasurableness | B |
Calm silent have you harkened what it says Lo what it says | B |
One day at least whereon my thought enlicens ed to muse | B |
Had drooped its wing above the beach ed margent of the ooze | B |
And plunging from the mountain height into the immensity | D |
Beheld upon one side the land on the other side the sea | B |
I harkened comprehended never as from those abysses | B |
No never issued from a mouth nor moved an ear such voice as this is | B |
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A sound it was at outset vast immeasurable confused | D |
Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused | D |
Full of magnificent accords suave murmurs sweet as is | B |
The evensong and mighty as the shock of panoplies | B |
When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips | B |
And pants in furious breathings from the clarions' brazen lips | B |
Unutterable the harmony unsearchable its deep | E |
Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep | E |
And through the vasty heavens which by its surges are washed young | F |
Its infinite volutions roll enlarging as they throng | G |
Even to the profound arcane whose ultimate chasms sombre | H |
Its shattered flood englut with time with space and form and number | H |
Like to another atmosphere with thin o'erflowing robe | I |
The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe | I |
And the world swathed about with this investuring symphony | B |
Even as it trepidates in the air so trepidates in the harmony | B |
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And pensive I attended the ethereal lutany | B |
Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea | B |
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Soon I distinguished yet as tone which veils confuse and smother | H |
Amid this voice two voices one commingled with the other | H |
Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire | H |
Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire | H |
And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound | D |
As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound | D |
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The one was of the waters a be radiant hymnal speech | J |
That was the voice o' the surges as they parleyed each with each | J |
The other which arose from our abode terranean | B |
Was sorrowful and that alack the murmur was of man | B |
And in this mighty quire whose chantings day and night resound | D |
Every wave had its utterance and every man his sound | D |
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Now the magnificent Ocean as I said unbannering | G |
A voice of joy a voice of peace did never stint to sing | G |
Most like in Sion's temples to a psaltery psaltering | G |
And to creation's beauty reared the great lauds of his song | G |
Upon the gale upon the squall his clamour borne along | G |
Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell | K |
And every one among his waves that God alone can quell | K |
When the other of its song made end into the singing pressed | D |
Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest | D |
At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed | D |
And I t'ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad | D |
Under his golden mane methought that I saw pass the hand of God | D |
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Meanwhile and side by side with that august fan faronnade | D |
The other voice like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed | D |
Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat | D |
Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote | D |
Grinded and tears and shriekings the anathema the lewd taunt | D |
Refusal of viaticum refusal of the font | D |
And clamour and malediction and dread blasphemy among | G |
That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue | G |
Went by as who beholdeth when the valleys thick t'ward night | D |
The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass blackening flight on flight | D |
What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping | G |
Alas the sound was earth's and man's for earth and man were weeping | G |
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Brothers of these two voices strange most unimaginably | K |
Unceasingly regenerated dying unceasingly | K |
Harken ed of the Eternal throughout His Eternity | D |
The one voice uttereth NATURE and the other voice HUMANITY | D |
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Then I alit in reverie for my ministering sprite | D |
Alack had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight | D |
Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn | B |
And long I rested dreaming contemplating turn by turn | B |
Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water's roll | K |
And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul | K |
And I made question of me to what issues are we here | H |
Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear | H |
What doth the soul to be or live if better worth it is | B |
And why the Lord Who only reads within that book of His | B |
In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined | D |
The vintage chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind | D |
Francis Thompson
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