By The Seaside : The Fire Of Driftwood Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GHIH JKJL MNMN OPOP QRQS TKTL UVUV MKML WIWIWe sat within the farm house old | A |
Whose windows looking o'er the bay | B |
Gave to the sea breeze damp and cold | A |
An easy entrance night and day | B |
- | |
Not far away we saw the port | C |
The strange old fashioned silent town | D |
The lighthouse the dismantled fort | C |
The wooden houses quaint and brown | D |
- | |
We sat and talked until the night | E |
Descending filled the little room | F |
Our faces faded from the sight | E |
Our voices only broke the gloom | F |
- | |
We spake of many a vanished scene | G |
Of what we once had thought and said | H |
Of what had been and might have been | I |
And who was changed and who was dead | H |
- | |
And all that fills the hearts of friends | J |
When first they feel with secret pain | K |
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends | J |
And never can be one again | L |
- | |
The first slight swerving of the heart | M |
That words are powerless to express | N |
And leave it still unsaid in part | M |
Or say it in too great excess | N |
- | |
The very tones in which we spake | O |
Had something strange I could but mark | P |
The leaves of memory seemed to make | O |
A mournful rustling in the dark | P |
- | |
Oft died the words upon our lips | Q |
As suddenly from out the fire | R |
Built of the wreck of stranded ships | Q |
The flames would leap and then expire | S |
- | |
And as their splendor flashed and failed | T |
We thought of wrecks upon the main | K |
Of ships dismasted that were hailed | T |
And sent no answer back again | L |
- | |
The windows rattling in their frames | U |
The ocean roaring up the beach | V |
The gusty blast the bickering flames | U |
All mingled vaguely in our speech | V |
- | |
Until they made themselves a part | M |
Of fancies floating through the brain | K |
The long lost ventures of the heart | M |
That send no answers back again | L |
- | |
O flames that glowed O hearts that yearned | W |
They were indeed too much akin | I |
The drift wood fire without that burned | W |
The thoughts that burned and glowed within | I |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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