Vae Victis Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABBCBCC DEDEEFEFF GHGHHIHII JKJKKLKLL MNMNNONOO LPLPPQRQQ STSUTVTVWBeside the placid sea that mirrored her | A |
With the old glory of dawn that cannot die | B |
The sleeping city began to moan and stir | A |
As one that fain from an ill dream would fly | B |
Yet more she feared the daylight bringing nigh | B |
Such dreams as know not sunrise soon or late | C |
Visions of honour lost and power gone by | B |
Of loyal valour betrayed by factious hate | C |
And craven sloth that shrank from the labour of forging fate | C |
- | |
They knew and knew not this bewildered crowd | D |
That up her streets in silence hurrying passed | E |
What manner of death should make their anguish loud | D |
What corpse across the funeral pyre be cast | E |
For none had spoken it only gathering fast | E |
As darkness gathers at noon in the sun's eclipse | F |
A shadow of doom enfolded them vague and vast | E |
And a cry was heard unfathered of earthly lips | F |
What of the ships O Carthage Carthage what of the ships | F |
- | |
They reached the wall and nowise strange it seemed | G |
To find the gates unguarded and open wide | H |
They climbed the shoulder and meet enough they deemed | G |
The black that shrouded the seaward rampart's side | H |
And veiled in drooping gloom the turrets' pride | H |
But this was nought for suddenly down the slope | I |
They saw the harbour and sense within them died | H |
Keel nor mast was there rudder nor rope | I |
It lay like a sea hawk's eyry spoiled of life and hope | I |
- | |
Beyond where dawn was a glittering carpet rolled | J |
From sky to shore on level and endless seas | K |
Hardly their eyes discerned in a dazzle of gold | J |
That here in fifties yonder in twos and threes | K |
The ships they sought like a swarm of drowning bees | K |
By a wanton gust on the pool of a mill dam hurled | L |
Floated forsaken of life giving tide and breeze | K |
Their oars broken their sails for ever furled | L |
For ever deserted the bulwarks that guarded the wealth of the world | L |
- | |
A moment yet with breathing quickly drawn | M |
And hands agrip the Carthaginian folk | N |
Stared in the bright untroubled face of dawn | M |
And strove with vehement heaped denial to choke | N |
Their sure surmise of fate's impending stroke | N |
Vainly for even now beneath their gaze | O |
A thousand delicate spires of distant smoke | N |
Reddened the disc of the sun with a stealthy haze | O |
And the smouldering grief of a nation burst with the kindling blaze | O |
- | |
O dying Carthage so their passion raved | L |
Would nought but these the conqueror's hate assuage | P |
If these be taken how may the land be saved | L |
Whose meat and drink was empire age by age | P |
And bitter memory cursed with idle rage | P |
The greed that coveted gold beyond renown | Q |
The feeble hearts that feared their heritage | R |
The hands that cast the sea kings' sceptre down | Q |
And left to alien brows their famed ancestral crown | Q |
- | |
The endless noon the endless evening through | S |
All other needs forgetting great or small | T |
They drank despair with thirst whose torment grew | S |
As the hours died beneath that stifling pall | U |
At last they saw the fires to blackness fall | T |
One after one and slowly turned them home | V |
A little longer yet their own to call | T |
A city enslaved and wear the bonds of Rome | V |
With weary hearts foreboding all the woe to come | W |
Henry Newbolt
(1)
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