Youth In Memory Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAAABCBC DDEFGGEHFDIHIGGD JJKLLKMNONOPMQJMJPJR STSRJMRJJUUJ JJVVJJJJ JWWJXXYGYGGGGZZA2A2B 2B2GGJGC2GC2JJJJYBD2 D2E2F2GG2G2F2GH2JH2J GGGJJGG I2I2J2J2H2K2H2K2L2GG L2JM2JYM2YGGJJ YGJH2YH2JJJN2JN2C2O2 C2O2H2GH2GH2O2GP2GO2 P2JP2Q2Q2JP2H2H2YYJE 2JE2JJJJJGJGGGJA2A2R 2R2S2T2S2T2H2Days when the ball of our vision | A |
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun | A |
When the grasp on the bow was decision | A |
And arrow and hand and eye were one | A |
When the Pleasures like waves to a swimmer | B |
Came heaving for rapture ahead | C |
Invoke them they dwindle they glimmer | B |
As lights over mounds of the dead | C |
- | |
Behold the winged Olympus off the mead | D |
With thunder of wide pinions lightning speed | D |
Wafting the shepherd boy through ether clear | E |
To bear the golden nectar cup | F |
So flies desire at view of its delight | G |
When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight | G |
We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year | E |
The Spring time paint to prick us for our lost | H |
Mount but the fatal half way up | F |
Whereon shut eyes This is decreed | D |
For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend | I |
By passion for the arms' possession tossed | H |
It falls the way of sighs and hath their end | I |
A spark gone out to more sepulchral night | G |
Good if the arrowy eagle of the height | G |
Be then the little bird that hops to feed | D |
- | |
Lame falls the cry to kindle days | J |
Of radiant orb and daring gaze | J |
It does but clank our mortal chain | K |
For Earth reads through her felon old | L |
The many numbered of her fold | L |
Who forward tottering backward strain | K |
And would be thieves of treasure spent | M |
With their grey season soured | N |
She could write out their history in their thirst | O |
To have again the much devoured | N |
And be the bud at burst | O |
In honey fancy join the flow | P |
Where Youth swims on as once they went | M |
All choiric for spontaneous glee | Q |
Of active eager lungs and thews | J |
They now bared roots beside the river bent | M |
Whose privilege themselves to see | J |
Their place in yonder tideway know | P |
The current glass peruse | J |
The depths intently sound | R |
And sapped by each returning flood | S |
Accept for monitory nourishment | T |
Those worn roped features under crust of mud | S |
Reflected in the silvery smooth around | R |
Not less the branching and high singing tree | J |
A home of nests a landmark and a tent | M |
Until their hour for losing hold on ground | R |
Even such good harvest of the things that flee | J |
Earth offers her subjected and they choose | J |
Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink | U |
And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink | U |
So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse | J |
- | |
Who cheerfully the little bird becomes | J |
Without a fall and pipes for peck at crumbs | J |
May have her dolings to the lightest touch | V |
As where some cripple muses by his crutch | V |
Unwitting that the spirit in him sings | J |
'When I had legs then had I wings | J |
As good as any born of eggs | J |
To feed on all aerial things | J |
When I had legs ' | - |
And if not to embrace he sighs | J |
She gives him breath of Youth awhile | W |
Perspective of a breezy mile | W |
Companionable hedgeways lifting skies | J |
Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard | X |
Brooded or up to empyrean soared | X |
Enough to link him with a dotted line | Y |
But cravings for an eagle's flight | G |
To top white peaks and serve wild wine | Y |
Among the rosy undecayed | G |
Bring only flash of shade | G |
From her full throbbing breast of day in night | G |
By what they crave are they betrayed | G |
And cavernous is that young dragon's jaw | Z |
Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw | Z |
In time now coveted for teeth to flay | A2 |
Once more consume were Life recurrent May | A2 |
They to their moment of drawn breath | B2 |
Which is the life that makes the death | B2 |
The death that makes ethereal life would bind | G |
The death that breeds the spectre do they find | G |
Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets | J |
Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust | G |
By souls no longer dowered to climb | C2 |
Beneath their pack of dust | G |
Whom envy of a lustrous prime | C2 |
Eclipsed while yet invoked besets | J |
And dooms to sink and water sable flowers | J |
That never gladdened eye or loaded bee | J |
Strain we the arms for Memory's hours | J |
We are the seized Persephone | Y |
Responsive never to the soft desire | B |
For one prized tune is this our chord of life | D2 |
'Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife | D2 |
In wishes that for ecstasies aspire | E2 |
Yet have we glad companionship of Youth | F2 |
Elysian meadows for the mind | G |
Dare we to face deeds done and in our tomb | G2 |
Filled with the parti coloured bloom | G2 |
Of loved and hated grasp all human truth | F2 |
Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind | G |
To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through | H2 |
Whence comes a line of continuity | J |
That brings our middle station into view | H2 |
Between those poles a novel Earth we see | J |
In likeness of us made of banned and blest | G |
The sower's bed but not the reaper's rest | G |
An Earth alive with meanings wherein meet | G |
Buried and breathing and to be | J |
Then of the junction of the three | J |
Even as a heart in brain full sweet | G |
May sense of soul the sum of music beat | G |
- | |
Only the soul can walk the dusty track | I2 |
Where hangs our flowering under vapours black | I2 |
And bear to see how these pervade obscure | J2 |
Quench recollection of a spacious pure | J2 |
They take phantasmal forms divide convolve | H2 |
Hard at each other point and gape | K2 |
Horrible ghosts in agony dissolve | H2 |
To reappear with one they drape | K2 |
For criminal and Father shrieking name | L2 |
Who such distorted issue did beget | G |
Accept them them and him though hiss thy sweat | G |
Off brow on breast whose furnace flame | L2 |
Has eaten and old Self consumes | J |
Out of the purification will they leap | M2 |
Thee renovating while new light illumes | J |
The dusky web of evil known as pain | Y |
That heavily up healthward mounts the steep | M2 |
Our fleshly road to beacon fire of brain | Y |
Midway the tameless oceanic brute | G |
Below whose heave is topped with foam for fruit | G |
And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace | J |
On righteous warfare that asks not to cease | J |
- | |
Forth of such passage through black fire we win | Y |
Clear hearing of the simple lute | G |
Whereon and not on other Memory plays | J |
For them who can in quietness receive | H2 |
Her restorative airs a ditty thin | Y |
As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve | H2 |
Or wave at ebb the shallow catching rays | J |
On a transparent sheet where curves a glass | J |
To truer heavens than when the breaker neighs | J |
Loud at the plunge for bubbly wreck in roar | N2 |
Solidity and bulk and martial brass | J |
Once tyrants of the senses faintly score | N2 |
A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime | C2 |
While present in the spirit vital there | O2 |
Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time | C2 |
Eternal as the recurrent cloud as air | O2 |
Imperative refreshful as dawn dew | H2 |
Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled | G |
Historic of the soul and heats anew | H2 |
Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald | G |
True of the man and of mankind 'tis true | H2 |
Did we stout battle with the Shade Despair | O2 |
Our cowardice it blooms or haply warred | G |
Against the primal beast in us and flung | P2 |
Or cleaving mists of Sorrow left it starred | G |
Above self pity slain or it was Prayer | O2 |
First taken for Life's cleanser or the tongue | P2 |
Spake for the world against this heart or rings | J |
Old laughter from the founts of wisdom sprung | P2 |
Or clap of wing of joy that was a throb | Q2 |
From breast of Earth and did no creature rob | Q2 |
These quickening live But deepest at her springs | J |
Most filial is an eye to love her young | P2 |
And had we it to see with it alive | H2 |
Is our lost garden flower bird and hive | H2 |
Blood of her blood aim of her aim are then | Y |
The green robed and grey crested sons of men | Y |
She tributary to her aged restores | J |
The living in the dead she will inspire | E2 |
Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores | J |
Abhorring these as mire | E2 |
Uncertain steps in dimness gropes | J |
With mortal tremours pricking hopes | J |
And by the final Bacchic of the lusts | J |
Propelled the Bacchic of the spirit trusts | J |
A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants | J |
Not utterly misled though blindly led | G |
Led round fermenting eddies Faith she plants | J |
In her own firmness as our midway road | G |
Which rightly Youth has read though blindly read | G |
Her essence reading in her toothsome goad | G |
Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants | J |
But love we well the young her road midway | A2 |
The darknesses runs consecrated clay | A2 |
Despite our feeble hold on this green home | R2 |
And the vast outer strangeness void of dome | R2 |
Shall we be with them of them taught to feel | S2 |
Up to the moment of our prostrate fall | T2 |
The life they deem voluptuously real | S2 |
Is more than empty echo of a call | T2 |
Or shadow of a shade or swing of | H2 |
George Meredith
(1)
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