Sand Of The Desert In An Hour-glass Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDED BFBG HBHB IJKL MNON BBBB BFBF BPBP BBBB QRQR SQRQ| A handful of red sand from the hot clime | A |
| Of Arab deserts brought | B |
| Within this glass becomes the spy of Time | A |
| The minister of Thought | B |
| - | |
| How many weary centuries has it been | C |
| About those deserts blown | D |
| How many strange vicissitudes has seen | E |
| How many histories known | D |
| - | |
| Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite | B |
| Trampled and passed it o'er | F |
| When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight | B |
| His favorite son they bore | G |
| - | |
| Perhaps the feet of Moses burnt and bare | H |
| Crushed it beneath their tread | B |
| Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air | H |
| Scattered it as they sped | B |
| - | |
| Or Mary with the Christ of Nazareth | I |
| Held close in her caress | J |
| Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith | K |
| Illumed the wilderness | L |
| - | |
| Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms | M |
| Pacing the Dead Sea beach | N |
| And singing slow their old Armenian psalms | O |
| In half articulate speech | N |
| - | |
| Or caravans that from Bassora's gate | B |
| With westward steps depart | B |
| Or Mecca's pilgrims confident of Fate | B |
| And resolute in heart | B |
| - | |
| These have passed over it or may have passed | B |
| Now in this crystal tower | F |
| Imprisoned by some curious hand at last | B |
| It counts the passing hour | F |
| - | |
| And as I gaze these narrow walls expand | B |
| Before my dreamy eye | P |
| Stretches the desert with its shifting sand | B |
| Its unimpeded sky | P |
| - | |
| And borne aloft by the sustaining blast | B |
| This little golden thread | B |
| Dilates into a column high and vast | B |
| A form of fear and dread | B |
| - | |
| And onward and across the setting sun | Q |
| Across the boundless plain | R |
| The column and its broader shadow run | Q |
| Till thought pursues in vain | R |
| - | |
| The vision vanishes These walls again | S |
| Shut out the lurid sun | Q |
| Shut out the hot immeasurable plain | R |
| The half hour's sand is run | Q |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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