The Black Birds Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDCBDEFGEGHFII JKJLMMNOBO PPQRPRQASTJUUSVWXWWX WXX A YZYA2ZA2IIB2SSB2SWSW SSWSWWWI | A |
- | |
Once only once I saw it clear | B |
That Eden every human heart has dreamed | C |
A hundred times but always far away | D |
Ah well do I remember how it seemed | C |
Through the still atmosphere | B |
Of that enchanted day | D |
To lie wide open to my weary feet | E |
A little land of love and joy and rest | F |
With meadows of soft green | G |
Rosy with cyclamen and sweet | E |
With delicate breath of violets unseen | G |
And tranquil 'mid the bloom | H |
As if it waited for a coming guest | F |
A little house of peace and joy and love | I |
Was nested like a snow white dove | I |
- | |
From the rough mountain where I stood | J |
Homesick for happiness | K |
Only a narrow valley and a darkling wood | J |
To cross and then the long distress | L |
Of solitude would be forever past | M |
I should be home at last | M |
But not too soon oh let me linger here | N |
And feed my eyes hungry with sorrow | O |
On all this loveliness so near | B |
And mine to morrow | O |
- | |
Then from the wood across the silvery blue | P |
A dark bird flew | P |
Silent with sable wings | Q |
Close in his wake another came | R |
Fragments of midnight floating through | P |
The sunset flame | R |
Another and another weaving rings | Q |
Of blackness on the primrose sky | A |
Another and another look a score | S |
A hundred yes a thousand rising heavily | T |
From that accursed dumb and ancient wood | J |
They boiled into the lucid air | U |
Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair | U |
And more and more and ever more | S |
The numberless ill omened brood | V |
Flapping their ragged plumes | W |
Possessed the landscape and the evening light | X |
With menaces and glooms | W |
Oh dark dark dark they hovered o'er the place | W |
Where once I saw the little house so white | X |
Amid the flowers covering every trace | W |
Of beauty from my troubled sight | X |
And suddenly it was night | X |
- | |
- | |
II | A |
- | |
At break of day I crossed the wooded vale | Y |
And while the morning made | Z |
A trembling light among the tree tops pale | Y |
I saw the sable birds on every limb | A2 |
Clinging together closely in the shade | Z |
And croaking placidly their surly hymn | A2 |
But oh the little land of peace and love | I |
That those night loving wings had poised above | I |
Where was it gone | B2 |
Lost lost forevermore | S |
Only a cottage dull and gray | S |
In the cold light of dawn | B2 |
With iron bars across the door | S |
Only a garden where the withering heads | W |
Of flowers presaging decay | S |
Hung over barren beds | W |
Only a desolate field that lay | S |
Untilled beneath the desolate day | S |
Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these | W |
So wondering I passed along my way | S |
With anger in my heart too deep for words | W |
Against that grove of evil sheltering trees | W |
And the black magic of the croaking birds | W |
Henry Van Dyke
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Black Birds poem by Henry Van Dyke
Best Poems of Henry Van Dyke