Ode To The Setting Sun Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDDEECDCCFDGDCHH DDHHIDIDHHH IJIIJHDDDKKHDLLDIMNI OODPPD DDDDLLDQDDQQQDDDHHD QDDQDDIIHIIRHRQSDHHD DHHDDDDDDDDDDD QSALLADIDIDDDDTTDDDD DMDMDDDDUVUVCCRIIRWW DDDD IMILDVDVCCDDOODDOODD DDXMMX DDLDDDLDDCCCIICLLYCY CCCCCDD| Alpha and Omega sadness and mirth | A |
| The springing music and its wasting breath | B |
| The fairest things in life are Death and Birth | A |
| And of these two the fairer thing is Death | B |
| Mystical twins of Time inseparable | C |
| The younger hath the holier array | D |
| And hath the awfuller sway | D |
| It is the falling star that trails the light | E |
| It is the breaking wave that hath the might | E |
| The passing shower that rainbows maniple | C |
| Is it not so O thou down stricken Day | D |
| That draw'st thy splendours round thee in thy fall | C |
| High was thine Eastern pomp inaugural | C |
| But thou dost set in statelier pageantry | F |
| Lauded with tumults of a firmament | D |
| Thy visible music blasts make deaf the sky | G |
| Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident | D |
| Thou dost thy dying so triumphally | C |
| I SEE the crimson blaring of thy shawms | H |
| Why do those lucent palms | H |
| Strew thy feet's failing thicklier than their might | D |
| Who dost but hood thy glorious eyes with night | D |
| And vex the heels of all the yesterdays | H |
| Lo this loud lackeying praise | H |
| Will stay behind to greet the usurping moon | I |
| When they have cloud barred over thee the West | D |
| Oh shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon | I |
| The earth not paeans thee nor serves thy hest | D |
| Be godded not by Heaven avert thy face | H |
| And leave to blank disgrace | H |
| The oblivious world unsceptre thee of state and place | H |
| - | |
| Ha but bethink thee what thou gazedst on | I |
| Ere yet the snake Decay had venomed tooth | J |
| The name thou bar'st in those vast seasons gone | I |
| Candid Hyperion | I |
| Clad in the light of thine immortal youth | J |
| Ere Dionysus bled thy vines | H |
| Or Artemis drave her clamours through the wood | D |
| Thou saw'st how once against Olympus' height | D |
| The brawny Titans stood | D |
| And shook the gods' world 'bout their ears and how | K |
| Enceladus whom Etna cumbers now | K |
| Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines | H |
| The river unrecked that did its broken flood | D |
| Spurt on his back before the mountainous shock | L |
| The rank ed gods dislock | L |
| Scared to their skies wide o'er rout trampled night | D |
| Flew spurned the pebbled stars those splendours then | I |
| Had tempested on earth star upon star | M |
| Mounded in ruin if a longer war | N |
| Had quaked Olympus and cold fearing men | I |
| Then did the ample marge | O |
| And circuit of thy targe | O |
| Sullenly redden all the vaward fight | D |
| Above the blusterous clash | P |
| Wheeled thy swung falchion's flash | P |
| And hewed their forces into splintered flight | D |
| - | |
| Yet ere Olympus thou wast and a god | D |
| Though we deny thy nod | D |
| We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity | D |
| What know we elder than thee | D |
| When thou didst bursting from the great void's husk | L |
| Leap like a lion on the throat o' the dusk | L |
| When the angels rose chapleted | D |
| Sang each to other | Q |
| The vaulted blaze overhead | D |
| Of their vast pinions spread | D |
| Hailing thee brother | Q |
| How chaos rolled back from the wonder | Q |
| And the First Morn knelt down to thy visage of thunder | Q |
| Thou didst draw to thy side | D |
| Thy young Auroral bride | D |
| And lift her veil of night and mystery | D |
| Tellus with baby hands | H |
| Shook off her swaddling bands | H |
| And from the unswath ed vapours laughed to thee | D |
| - | |
| Thou twi form deity nurse at once and sire | Q |
| Thou genitor that all things nourishest | D |
| The earth was suckled at thy shining breast | D |
| And in her veins is quick thy milky fire | Q |
| Who scarfed her with the morning and who set | D |
| Upon her brow the day fall's carcanet | D |
| Who queened her front with the enrondured moon | I |
| Who dug night's jewels from their vaulty mine | I |
| To dower her past an eastern wizard's dreams | H |
| When hovering on him through his haschish swoon | I |
| All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line | I |
| Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame | R |
| Whereof a moiety in the Paolis' seams | H |
| Statelily builded their Venetian name | R |
| Thou hast enwoof ed her | Q |
| An empress of the air | S |
| And all her births are propertied by thee | D |
| Her teeming centuries | H |
| Drew being from thine eyes | H |
| Thou fatt'st the marrow of all quality | D |
| - | |
| Who lit the furnace of the mammoth's heart | D |
| Who shagged him like Pilatus' ribb ed flanks | H |
| Who raised the columned ranks | H |
| Of that old pre diluvian forestry | D |
| Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea | D |
| When the ancient heavens did in rains depart | D |
| While the high danc ed whirls | D |
| Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drench ed curls | D |
| Thou rear'dst the enormous brood | D |
| Who hast with life imbued | D |
| The lion maned in tawny majesty | D |
| The tiger velvet barred | D |
| The stealthy stepping pard | D |
| And the lithe panther's flexuous symmetry | D |
| - | |
| How came the entomb ed tree a light bearer | Q |
| Though sunk in lightless lair | S |
| Friend of the forgers of earth | A |
| Mate of the earthquake and thunders volcanic | L |
| Clasped in the arms of the forces Titanic | L |
| Which rock like a cradle the girth | A |
| Of the ether hung world | D |
| Swart son of the swarthy mine | I |
| When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds | D |
| How is his countenance half divine | I |
| Like thee in thy sanguine weeds | D |
| Thou gavest him his light | D |
| Though sepultured in night | D |
| Beneath the dead bones of a perished world | D |
| Over his prostrate form | T |
| Though cold and heat and storm | T |
| The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled | D |
| Who made the splendid rose | D |
| Saturate with purple glows | D |
| Cupped to the marge with beauty a perfume press | D |
| Whence the wind vintages | D |
| Gushes of warm ed fragrance richer far | M |
| Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats | D |
| Lo in yon gale which waves her green cymar | M |
| With dusky cheeks burnt red | D |
| She sways her heavy head | D |
| Drunk with the must of her own odorousness | D |
| While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats | D |
| Maze and vibrate and tease the noontide hush | U |
| Who girt dissolv ed lightnings in the grape | V |
| Summered the opal with an Irised flush | U |
| Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape | V |
| And huest the daffodilly | C |
| Yet who hast snowed the lily | C |
| And her frail sister whom the waters name | R |
| Dost vestal vesture 'mid the blaze of June | I |
| Cold as the new sprung girlhood of the moon | I |
| Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame | R |
| Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam | W |
| O'er all delight and dream | W |
| Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance | D |
| And like a jocund maid | D |
| In garland flowers arrayed | D |
| Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance | D |
| - | |
| And now O shaken from thine antique throne | I |
| And sunken from thy coerule empery | M |
| Now that the red glare of thy fall is blown | I |
| In smoke and flame about the windy sky | L |
| Where are the wailing voices that should meet | D |
| From hill stream grove and all of mortal shape | V |
| Who tread thy gifts in vineyards as stray feet | D |
| Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape | V |
| Where is the threne o' the sea | C |
| And why not dirges thee | C |
| The wind that sings to himself as he makes stride | D |
| Lonely and terrible on the Andean height | D |
| Where is the Naiad 'mid her sworded sedge | O |
| The Nymph wan glimmering by her wan fount's verge | O |
| The Dryad at timid gaze by the wood side | D |
| The Oread jutting light | D |
| On one up strain ed sole from the rock ledge | O |
| The Nereid tip toe on the scud o' the surge | O |
| With whistling tresses dank athwart her face | D |
| And all her figure poised in lithe Circean grace | D |
| Why withers their lament | D |
| Their tresses tear besprent | D |
| Have they sighed hence with trailing garment gem | X |
| O sweet O sad O fair | M |
| I catch your flying hair | M |
| Draw your eyes down to me and dream on them | X |
| - | |
| A space and they fleet from me Must ye fade | D |
| O old essential candours ye who made | D |
| The earth a living and a radiant thing | L |
| And leave her corpse in our strained cheated arms | D |
| Lo ever thus when Song with chorded charms | D |
| Draws from dull death his lost Eurydice | D |
| Lo ever thus even at consummating | L |
| Even in the swooning minute that claims her his | D |
| Even as he trembles to the impassioned kiss | D |
| Of reincarnate Beauty his control | C |
| Clasps the cold body and foregoes the soul | C |
| Whatso looks lovelily | C |
| Is but the rainbow on life's weeping rain | I |
| Why have we longings of immortal pain | I |
| And all we long for mortal Woe is me | C |
| And all our chants but chaplet some decay | L |
| As mine this vanishing nay vanished Day | L |
| The low sky line dusks to a leaden hue | Y |
| No rift disturbs the heavy shade and chill | C |
| Save one where the charred firmament lets through | Y |
| The scorching dazzle of Heaven 'gainst which the hill | C |
| Out flattened sombrely | C |
| Stands black as life against eternity | C |
| Against eternity | C |
| A rifting light in me | C |
| Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind | D |
| O bless ed Sun thy st | D |
Francis Thompson
(1)
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About Ode To The Setting Sun
Ode To The Setting Sun is a poem by Francis Thompson. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
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