The Story Of A Soul Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF FGFG HIHI FJFJ AKAK LMNOOPOP FE FE COCO OQOQ OFOF AOAO FFFF ARAR STST SUOU AVOV FBO B| Who can say Thus far no farther to the tide of his own nature | A |
| Who can mould the spirit's fashion to the counsel of his will | B |
| Square his being by enactment shape his soul to legislature | A |
| Be himself his law of living his own art of good and ill | B |
| - | |
| Who can sway the rhythm of breathing Who can time his own heart beating | C |
| Fix the pitch of all soul music and imprison it in bars | D |
| Who can pledge the immaterial affinities from meeting | C |
| Who can make him his own orbit unrelated to the stars | D |
| - | |
| I had marked my path before me not in flowery lane or by way | E |
| Unbeguiled of all bird singing by no voice of waters won | F |
| And across life's silent glacier I had cut a clear cold highway | E |
| Little recking of the avalanche or all dissolving sun | F |
| - | |
| I had said unto my soul Be thou the lord of thine own Reason | F |
| Get thee face to face and heart to heart with everlasting Truth | G |
| Thou art heir of all her beauty if thou dare the lofty treason | F |
| To clasp her and to kiss her with the valiant lips of youth | G |
| - | |
| Not in outer courts of worship not by darkly curtained portal | H |
| But within her inmost chamber in the glory of her shrine | I |
| Shalt thou seek her and commune with her a mortal made immortal | H |
| By the breathing of her presence by her fervid hand in thine | I |
| - | |
| With no garment clinging vassalage unawed of all tradition | F |
| Alone alone of mortals shalt thou gaze upon her face | J |
| And the years shall pass unheeded in the wonder of the vision | F |
| And her attributes unfolding make thee free of time and space | J |
| - | |
| So I left the dewy levels and with upward pointing finger | A |
| Marked my goal among the snowy peaks o'er pleasure and o'er pain | K |
| And the shining arms of Aphrodit beckoning me to linger | A |
| By her side amid her rosy bowers were stretched for me in vain | K |
| - | |
| And I heard the world pass by me with a far off dreamy cadence | L |
| Of an alien music uninformed with meaning to mine ears | M |
| And all sweet melodious laughter in the voice of men and maidens | N |
| Came with distance saddened undertone a mockery of tears | O |
| Till alike the throb of pleasure and alike the great o'erflowings | O |
| Of the springs of sorrow seemed to be forgotten things of yore | P |
| Till the world passed from beneath me and the rumour of its goings | O |
| Far diffused into the silent ethers reached my soul no more | P |
| - | |
| And the bodiless and shadowless mute ghosts of contemplation | F |
| Charmed from spells of bookish lore were my companions on my way | E |
| - | |
| And their flake light footfalls cheered me to a dreamy exaltation | F |
| Where the soul sat with the godheads unassailable as they | E |
| - | |
| I had lost the glow of Nature and the pride of clearer seeing | C |
| Was to me for all elation for the sunset and the flowers | O |
| For the beauty and the music and the savour of all being | C |
| For the starry thrills of midnight for the joy of morning hours | O |
| - | |
| Down the slopes I left behind me fled the creeds of many races | O |
| Fled the gnomes of superstition fled rebuking fiends of fear | Q |
| And I smiled as I beheld them from the calm of my high places | O |
| Cast integument and substance melt in mist and disappear | Q |
| - | |
| So I held my way unwavering in dismal mountainpasses | O |
| Though a voice within my soul was loud In vain and all in vain | F |
| And I heard the unassuaging streams far down in deep crevasses | O |
| And I stumbled snowblind 'mid the boulders of the long moraine | F |
| - | |
| Still I said I will not falter nor revisit earth for ever | A |
| Who have breathed the breath of deity and lived Olympian hours | O |
| When the summer smote the glacier and the ice became a river | A |
| And I found me in the valley clinging wildly to the flowers | O |
| - | |
| Clinging wildly clinging fondly in a mad repentant fashion | F |
| To the blossoms long forsaken to the graces long foregone | F |
| Paying lavishly in tears and sighs the long arrears of passion | F |
| And re wedded to the joy of earth by one fair thing thereon | F |
| - | |
| Fools and blind are we who think to soar beyond the reach of Nature | A |
| Fools and blind who think to bid the tide of feeling from its flood | R |
| Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature | A |
| Or compel the summer fervours from the solstice of the blood | R |
| - | |
| Not as gods Not yet Our roots are in the earth that heaves beneath me | S |
| With her rhythm we move and tremble with her starry dance we whirl | T |
| Lo she laughs when I would fly to where her arms shall not enwreath me | S |
| Draws me back with cords of golden hair o'erthrows me with a girl | T |
| - | |
| What was I to deem it duty thus to sunder Truth and Beauty | S |
| Thus to die among the living and to live among the dead | U |
| Ah the hands of Truth are boonless and the lips of Truth are tuneless | O |
| When we sever her from Love and throne her coldly overhead | U |
| - | |
| Now I know her drawing nearer in a fairer light and dearer | A |
| Than in wastes of icy solitude or page of weary tome | V |
| In the gleam of golden tresses in the eye that smiles and blesses | O |
| In the glowing hand that presses Love's approved conviction home | V |
| - | |
| Truth is sphered in sweet communion Truth is life and love in union | F |
| Hand in hand from spiritual founts we catch the circling thrill | B |
| We are not compact of reasons There are changes in our seasons | O |
| - | |
| And the crescent orb of youth has many phases to fulfil | B |
James Brunton Stephens
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