He Heard Her Sing Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEECCFFGG CCHHCCCCCCIIJJKKHHDD HHCCLL MMHHCCHHNNOOPPQQHH RRSSTTUUKKEEVV HHWWNNTTLLXXYZ CCCCCCSSCCHHQQCCA2A2 NNB2B2C2C2 D2D2HHE2E2HHF2F2DDHH G2G2IIDDDDSSH2H2IIDD NNPPI2I2HH HHHH ZYDDGGPPJ2J2NNK2K2HH C2C2CCL2L2IICCM2M2HH L2L2IIPP HHHHWe were now in the midmost Maytime in the full green flood of the Spring | A |
When the air is sweet all the daytime with the blossoms and birds that sing | A |
When the air is rich all the night and richest of all in its noon | B |
When the nightingales pant the delight and keen stress of their love to the moon | B |
When the almond and apple and pear spread wavering wavelets of snow | C |
In the light of the soft warm air far flushed with a delicate glow | C |
When the towering chestnuts uphold their masses of spires red or white | D |
And the pendulous tresses of gold of the slim laburnum burn bright | D |
And the lilac guardeth the bowers with the gleam of a lifted spear | E |
And the scent of the hawthorn flowers breathes all the new life of the year | E |
And the linden's tender pink bud by the green of the leaf is o'errun | C |
And the bronze beech shines like blood in the light of the morning sun | C |
And the leaf buds seem spangling some network of gossamer flung on the elm | F |
And the hedges are filling their fretwork with every sweet green of Spring's realm | F |
And the flowers are everywhere budding and blowing about our feet | G |
The green of the meadows star studding and the bright green blades of the wheat | G |
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An evening and night of song For first when I left the town | C |
And took the lane that is long and came out on the breeze swept down | C |
The sunset heavens were all ringing wide over the golden gorse | H |
With the skylarks' rapturous singing a revel of larks in full force | H |
A revel of larks in the raptures surpassing all raptures of Man | C |
Who ponders the blessings he captures and finds in each blessing some ban | C |
And then I went on down the dale in the light of the afterglow | C |
In that strange light green and pale and serene and pathetic and slow | C |
In its fading round to the north while the light of the unseen moon | C |
From the east comes brightening forth an ever increasing boon | C |
And there in the cottage my Alice through the hours so short and so long | I |
Kept filed to the brim love's chalice with the wine of music and song | I |
And first with colossal Beethoven the gentlest spirit sublime | J |
Of the harmonies interwoven Eternity woven with Time | J |
Of the melodies slowly and slowly dissolving away through the soul | K |
While it dissolves with them wholly and our being is lost in the Whole | K |
As gentle as Dante the Poet for only the lulls of the stress | H |
Of the mightiest spirits can know it this ineffable gentleness | H |
And then with the delicate tender fantastic dreamer of night | D |
Whose splendour is starlike splendour and his light a mystic moonlight | D |
Nocturn on nocturn dreaming while the mind floats far in the haze | H |
And the dusk and the shadow and gleaming of a realm that has no days | H |
And then she sang ballads olden ballads of love and of woe | C |
Love all burningly golden grief with heart's blood in its flow | C |
Those ballads of Scotland that thrill you keen from the heart to the heart | L |
Till their pathos is seeming to kill you with an exquisite bliss in the smart | L |
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And then we went out of the valley and over the spur of the hill | M |
And down by a woodland alley where the sprinkled moonlight lay still | M |
For the breeze in the boughs was still and the breeze was still in the sprays | H |
And the leaves had scarcely a thrill in the stream of the silver rays | H |
But looked as if drawn on the sky or etched with a graver keen | C |
Sharp shadows thrown from on high deep out of the azure serene | C |
And a certain copse we knew where never in May time fails | H |
While the night distils sweet dew the song of the nightingales | H |
And there together we heard the lyrical drama of love | N |
Of the wonderful passionate bird which swelleth the heart so above | N |
All other thought of this life all other care of this earth | O |
Be it of pleasure or strife be it of sorrow or mirth | O |
Saving the one intense imperious passion supreme | P |
Kindling the soul and the sense making the world but a dream | P |
The dream of an aching delight and a yearning afar and afar | Q |
While the music thrills all the void night to the loftiest pulsating star | Q |
Love love only for ever love with its torture and bliss | H |
All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one kiss | H |
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And when I had bidden farewell to my Love at the cottage door | R |
For a night and a day farewell for a night and a day and no more | R |
I went down to the shining strand of our own belov d bay | S |
To the shore of soft white sand caressed by the pure white spray | S |
In the arms of the hills serene clothed from the base to the crest | T |
With garments of manifold green curving to east and to west | T |
And high in the pale blue south where the clouds were white as wool | U |
Over the little bay mouth the moon shone near the full | U |
And I walked by the waves' soft moan for my heart was beyond control | K |
And I needed to be alone with the night and my love and my soul | K |
And I could not think of sleep in the moonlight broad and clear | E |
For a music solemn and deep filled all my spirit's sphere | E |
A music interwoven of all that night I had heard | V |
From the music of mighty Beethoven to the song of the little brown bird | V |
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And thus as I paced the shore beneath the azure abyss | H |
And my soul thrilled more and more with a yearning and sadness of bliss | H |
A voice came over the water from over the eastern cape | W |
Like the voice of some ocean daughter wailing a lover's escape | W |
A voice so plaintive and distant as faint as a wounded dove | N |
Whose wings are scarcely resistant to the air beneath and above | N |
Wavering panting urging from the farthest east to the west | T |
Over some wild sea surging in the hope forlorn of its nest | T |
A voice that quivered and trembled with falls of a broken heart | L |
And then like that dove reassembled its forces to play out its part | L |
Till it came to a fall that was dying the end of an infinite grief | X |
A sobbing and throbbing and sighing that death was a welcome relief | X |
And so there was silence once more and the moonlight looked sad as a pall | Y |
And I stood entranced on the shore and marvelled what next would befall | Z |
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And thus all expectant abiding I waited not long for soon | C |
A boat came gliding and gliding out in the light of the moon | C |
Gliding with muffled oars slowly a thin dark line | C |
Round from the shadowing shores into the silver shine | C |
Of the clear moon westering now and still drew on and on | C |
While the water before its prow breaking and glistering shone | C |
Slowly in silence strange and the rower rowed till it lay | S |
Afloat within easy range deep in the curve of the bay | S |
And besides the rower were two a Woman who sat in the stern | C |
And Her by her fame I knew one of those fames that burn | C |
Startling and kindling the world one whose likeness we everywhere see | H |
And a man reclining half curled with an indolent grace at her knee | H |
The Signor lord of her choice and he lightly touched a guitar | Q |
A guitar for that glorious voice Illumine the sun with a star | Q |
She sat superb and erect stately all happy serene | C |
Her right hand toying unchecked with the hair of that page of a Queen | C |
With her head and her throat and her bust like the bust and the throat and the head | A2 |
Of Her who has long been dust of Her who shall never be dead | A2 |
Preserved by the potent art made trebly potent by love | N |
While the transient ages depart from under the heavens above | N |
Preserved in the colour and line on the canvas fulgently flung | B2 |
By Him the Artist divine who triumphed and vanished so young | B2 |
Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to be envied in life | C2 |
Than thy lot O FORNARINA whom RAPHAEL's heart took to wife | C2 |
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There was silence yet for a time save the tinkling capricious and quaint | D2 |
Then She lifted her voice sublime no longer tender and faint | D2 |
Pathetic and tremulous no but firm as a column it rose | H |
Rising solemn and slow with a full rich swell to the close | H |
Firm as a marble column soaring with noble pride | E2 |
In a triumph of rapture solemn to some Hero deified | E2 |
In a rapture of exultation made calm by its stress intense | H |
In a triumph of consecration and a jubilation immense | H |
And the Voice flowed on and on and ever it swelled as it poured | F2 |
Till the stars that throbbed as they shone seemed throbbing with it in accord | F2 |
Till the moon herself in my dream still Empress of all the night | D |
Was only that voice supreme translated into pure light | D |
And I lost all sense of the earth though I still had sense of the sea | H |
And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree like the Norse World Tree | H |
And its branches filled all the sky and the deep sea watered its root | G2 |
And the clouds were its leaves on high and the stars were its silver fruit | G2 |
Yet the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song | I |
Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling resistlessly strong | I |
And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might | D |
And was strained by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night | D |
And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft was a column of light | D |
More high than the loftiest mountain ascend the abyss of the night | D |
And its spray filled all the sky and the clouds were the clouds of its spray | S |
Which glittered in star points on high and filled with pure silver the bay | S |
And ever in rising and falling it sang as it rose and it fell | H2 |
And the heavens with their pure azure walling all pulsed with the pulse of its swell | H2 |
For the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song | I |
Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling ineffably strong | I |
And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might | D |
And was strained by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night | D |
And the fountain in swelling and soaring and filling beneath and above | N |
Grew flushed with red fire in outpouring transmuting great power into love | N |
Great power with a greater love flushing immense and intense and supreme | P |
As if all the World's heart blood outgushing ensanguined the trance of my dream | P |
And the waves of its blood seemed to dash on the shore of the sky to the cope | I2 |
With the stress of the fire of a passion and yearning of limitless scope | I2 |
Vast fire of a passion and yearning keen torture of rapture intense | H |
A most unendurable burning consuming the soul with the sense | H |
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Love love only for ever love with its torture of bliss | H |
All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one kiss | H |
Love and ever love wholly love in all time and all space | H |
Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burning embrace | H |
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And at length when that Voice sank mute and silence fell over all | Z |
Save the tinkling thin of that lute the deep heavens rushed down like a pall | Y |
The stars and the moon for a time with all their splendours of light | D |
Were quenched with that Voice sublime and great darkness filled the night | D |
When I felt again the scent of the night flowers rich and sweet | G |
As ere my senses went and knew where I stood on my feet | G |
And saw the yet bright bay and the moon gone low in my dream | P |
The boat had passed away with Her the Singer supreme | P |
She was gone the marvellous Singer whose wonderful world wide fame | J2 |
Could never possibly bring her a tithe of her just acclaim | J2 |
And I wandered all night in a trance of rapture and yearning and love | N |
And saw the dim grey expanse flush far with the dawning above | N |
And I passed that copse in the night but the nightingales all were dumb | K2 |
From their passionate aching delight and perhaps whoever should come | K2 |
On the morrow would find I have read under its bush or its tree | H |
Some poor little brown bird dead dead of its melody | H |
Slain by the agitation by the stress and the strain of the strife | C2 |
And the pang of the vain emulation in the music yet dearer than life | C2 |
And I heard the skylarks singing high in the morning sun | C |
All the sunrise heavens ringing as the sunset heavens had done | C |
And ever I dreamed and pondered while over the fragrant soil | L2 |
My happy footsteps wandered before I resumed my toil | L2 |
Truly my darling my Alice truly the whole night long | I |
Have I filled to the brim love's chalice with the wine of music and song | I |
I have passed and repassed your door from the singing until the dawn | C |
A dozen times and more and ever the curtains drawn | C |
And now that the morn is breaking out of the stillness deep | M2 |
Sweet as my visions of waking be all your visions of sleep | M2 |
Could you but wake O my dearest a moment and give one glance | H |
Just a furtive peep the merest to learn the day's advance | H |
For I must away up the dale and over the hill to my toil | L2 |
And the night's rich dreams grow pale in the working day's turmoil | L2 |
But tonight O my darling my Alice till night it will not be long | I |
We will fill to the brim love's chalice with the wine of music and song | I |
And never the memory fails of what I have learnt in my dream | P |
From the song of the nightingales and the song of the Singer supreme | P |
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Love love only for ever love with its torture of bliss | H |
All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one kiss | H |
Love love ever and wholly love in all time and all space | H |
Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burning embrace | H |
James Thomson - (bysshe Vanolis)
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