The Revolution Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCBCCCDD A ECCECCEFCGFG A ECHIJCEHIFJEKKFFCFLF EFFCLCCCCCCCCCCC J MNMOEECCPQERQREEQQCR CCCQECCEQEEEEJ J JEESJESTSCUTUCCQCQCQ QQCCQCJCVVQQCCCQJCQJ WQWXQTCTYQTC J ZYZQA2QA2JCEJCEC J CYJTCTJ J CQCB2B2QTC2CTFC2CFTT T Q CECQCI | A |
- | |
Not yet had History's Aetna smoked the skies | B |
And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained | C |
While overhead in ordered set and rise | B |
Her kingly crowns immutably defiled | C |
Effulgent on funereal piled | C |
Across the vacant heavens and distrained | C |
Her body mutely even as earth to bear | D |
Despoiled the tomb of hope her mouth of air | D |
- | |
II | A |
- | |
Through marching scores of winters racked she lay | E |
Beneath a hoar frost's brilliant crust | C |
Whereon the jewelled flies that drained | C |
Her breasts disported in a glistering spray | E |
She the land's fount of fruits enclosed with dust | C |
By good and evil angels fed sustained | C |
In part to curse in part to pray | E |
Sucking the dubious rumours till men saw | F |
The throbs of her charged heart before the Just | C |
So worn the harrowed surface had become | G |
And still they deemed the dance above was Law | F |
Amort all passion in a rebel dumb | G |
- | |
III | A |
- | |
Then on the unanticipated day | E |
Earth heaved and rose a veinous mound | C |
To roar of the underfloods and off it sprang | H |
Ravishing as red wine in woman's form | I |
A splendid Maenad she of the delirious laugh | J |
Her body twisted flames with the smoke cap crowned | C |
She of the Bacchic foot the challenger to the fray | E |
Bewitchment for the embrace who sang who sang | H |
Intoxication to her swarm | I |
Revolved them hair voice feet in her carmagnole | F |
As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff | J |
Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay | E |
O ripeness of the time O Retribution sure | K |
If but our vital lamp illume us to endure | K |
And like a glad releasing of her soul | F |
Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue | F |
Her bridegroom in descent to her and they joined | C |
In the face of men they joined attest it true | F |
The million witnesses that she | L |
For ages lying beside the mole | F |
Was on the unanticipated miracle day | E |
Upraised to midway heaven and as to her goal | F |
Enfolded ere the Immaculate knew | F |
What Lucifer of the Mint had coined | C |
His bride's adulterate currency | L |
Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate | C |
She worthy she unworthy that one day his mate | C |
His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed | C |
Read backward on the hoar frost's brilliant crust | C |
Beneath it read | C |
Athirst to kiss athirst to slay she stood | C |
A radiance fringed with grim affright | C |
For them that hungered she was nourishing food | C |
For those who sparkled Night | C |
Read in her heart and how before the Just | C |
Her doings her misdoings plead | C |
- | |
IV | J |
- | |
Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke | M |
To husband a resurgent France | N |
From whom with her dethroning stroke | M |
Dishonour passed the dalliance | O |
That is occasion's yea or nay | E |
In issues for the soul to pay | E |
Discarded and the cleft 'twixt deed and word | C |
The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird | C |
Wherein we see old Darkness peer | P |
Cold Dissolution beck she had flung hence | Q |
And hence the talons and the beak of prey | E |
Hence all the lures to silken swine | R |
Thronging the troughs of indolence | Q |
With every sleek convolvement serpentine | R |
The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer | E |
And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay | E |
He clasped in this revived uprisen France | Q |
A valorous dame of countenance | Q |
The lightning's upon cloud unlit as yet | C |
On brows and lips the lurid shine | R |
Of seas in the night wind's whirl unstirred | C |
Her pouch of the centuries' injuries compressed | C |
The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard | C |
Earth's animate full flower she looked intense | Q |
For worship wholly given him fair | E |
Adoring or desiring in her bright jet | C |
Earth's crystal spring to sky Earth's warrior Best | C |
To win Heaven's Pure up that midway | E |
We vision for new ground where sense | Q |
And spirit are one for the further flight breast bare | E |
Bare limbed nor graceless gleamed her disarray | E |
In scorn of the seductive insincere | E |
But martially nude for hot Bellona's play | E |
And amorous of the loftiest in her view | J |
- | |
V | J |
- | |
She sprang from dust to drink of earth's cool dew | J |
The breath of swaying grasses share | E |
Mankind embrace their weaklings rear | E |
At wrestle with the tyrannic strong | S |
Her forehead clear to her mate virgin anew | J |
As immortals may be in the mortal sphere | E |
Read through her launching heart who had lain long | S |
With Earth and heard till it became her own | T |
Our good Great Mother's eve and matin song | S |
The humming burden of Earth's toil to feed | C |
Her creatures all her task to speed their growth | U |
Her aim to lead them up her pathways shown | T |
Between the Pains and Pleasures warned of both | U |
Of either aided on their hard ascent | C |
Now when she looked with love's benign delight | C |
After great ecstasy along the plains | Q |
What foulest impregnation of her sight | C |
Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops | Q |
Of human sketches quaver figures bent | C |
As were they winter sedges broken hoops | Q |
Dry udder vineless poles worm eaten posts | Q |
With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains | Q |
Recked she that some perverting devil had limned | C |
Earth's proudest to spout scorn of the Maker's hand | C |
Who could a day behold these deathly hosts | Q |
And see decked graced and delicately trimmed | C |
A ribanded and gemmed elected few | J |
Sanctioned of milk and honey starve the land | C |
Like melody in flesh its pleasant game | V |
Olympianwise perform cloak but the shame | V |
Beautiful statures hideous | Q |
By Christian contrast pranked with golden chains | Q |
And flexile where is manhood straight | C |
Mortuaries where warm should beat | C |
The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet | C |
Who dared in cantique impious | Q |
Proclaim the Just to whom was due | J |
Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state | C |
For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains | Q |
On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew | J |
Surely a devil's land when that meant death for each | W |
Fresh from the breast of Earth not thus | Q |
With all the body's life to plump the leech | W |
Is Nature's way she knew The abominable scene | X |
Spat at the skies and through her veins | Q |
To cloud celestially sown | T |
Ran venom of what nourishment | C |
Her dark sustainer subterrene | T |
Supplied her stretched supine on the rack | Y |
Alive in the shrewd nerves the seething brains | Q |
Under derisive revels prone | T |
As one clamped fast with the interminable senseless blent | C |
- | |
VI | J |
- | |
Now was her face white waves in the tempest's sharp flame blink | Z |
Her skies shot black | Y |
Now was it visioned infamy to drink | Z |
Of earth's cool dew and through the vines | Q |
Frolic in pearly laughter with her young | A2 |
Watching the healthful natural happy signs | Q |
Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung | A2 |
After their sly shy ventures from the leaf | J |
And promised bunches Now it seemed | C |
The world was one malarious mire | E |
Crying for purification chief | J |
This land of France It seemed | C |
A duteous desire | E |
To drink of life's hot flood and the crimson streamed | C |
- | |
VII | J |
- | |
She drank what makes man demon at the draught | C |
Her skies lowered black | Y |
Her lover flew | J |
There swept a shudder over men | T |
Her heavenly lover fled her and she laughed | C |
For laughter was her spirit's weapon then | T |
The Infernal rose uncalled he with his crew | J |
- | |
VIII | J |
- | |
As mighty thews burst manacles she went mad | C |
Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits | Q |
Such enemies of her next drawn breath she had | C |
To tread her down in her live grave beneath | B2 |
Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath | B2 |
They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits | Q |
Without they girdled her made nest within | T |
There ramped the lion here entrailed the snake | C2 |
They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood | C |
Believing it in the mother's mind at strain | T |
In the mother's fears and in young Liberty's wail | F |
Alarmed for her encompassed children's sake | C2 |
The sole sure way to save her priceless bud | C |
Wherewith when power had gifted her to prevail | F |
Vengeance appeared as logically akin | T |
Insanely rational they she rationally insane | T |
And in compute of sin was hers the appealing sin | T |
- | |
IX | Q |
- | |
Amid the plash of scarlet mud | C |
Stained at the mouth drunk with our common air | E |
Not lack of love was her defect | C |
The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France | Q |
Breat | C |
George Meredith
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Revolution poem by George Meredith
Best Poems of George Meredith