Insomnia Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AA BCBCDDEFFE GHGHIIJKKJ LALAJJMBBM JNJNCCOBBP QJQJRRSLLS TUTUJJJVVJ WAWAJJLLLXL YLZLJJLA2A2L B2C2B2C2 JNJJN A2QA2QLLA2A2A2 FVFVKKC2JJC2 A2JA2JD2D2JQQJ LLLLA2A2A2A2A2A2 C2E2C2E2JJLVVL CJCJVVJLLJ QLQLJJLA2A2L F2A2F2A2A2A2C2C2Sleepless himself to give to others sleep | A |
He giveth His beloved sleep | A |
- | |
I HEARD the sounding of the midnight hour | B |
The others one by one had left the room | C |
In calm assurance that the gracious power | B |
Of Sleep's fine alchemy would bless the gloom | C |
Transmuting all its leaden weight to gold | D |
To treasures of rich virtues manifold | D |
New strength new health new life | E |
Just weary enough to nestle softly sweetly | F |
Into divine unconsciousness completely | F |
Delivered from the world of toil and care and strife | E |
- | |
Just weary enough to feel assured of rest | G |
Of Sleep's divine oblivion and repose | H |
Renewing heart and brain for richer zest | G |
Of waking life when golden morning glows | H |
As young and pure and glad as if the first | I |
That ever on the void of darkness burst | I |
With ravishing warmth and light | J |
On dewy grass and flowers and blithe birds singing | K |
And shining waters all enraptured springing | K |
Fragrance and shine and song out of the womb of night | J |
- | |
But I with infinite weariness outworn | L |
Haggard with endless nights unblessed by sleep | A |
Ravaged by thoughts unutterably forlorn | L |
Plunged in despairs unfathomably deep | A |
Went cold and pale and trembling with affright | J |
Into the desert vastitude of Night | J |
Arid and wild and black | M |
Foreboding no oasis of sweet slumber | B |
Counting beforehand all the countless number | B |
Of sands that are its minutes on my desolate track | M |
- | |
And so I went the last to my drear bed | J |
Aghast as one who should go down to lie | N |
Among the blissfully unconscious dead | J |
Assured that as the endless years flowed by | N |
Over the dreadful silence and deep gloom | C |
And dense oppression of the stifling tomb | C |
He only of them all | O |
Nerveless and impotent to madness never | B |
Could hope oblivion's perfect trance for ever | B |
An agony of life eternal in death's pall | P |
- | |
But that would be for ever without cure | Q |
And yet the agony be not more great | J |
Supreme fatigue and pain while they endure | Q |
Into Eternity their time translate | J |
Be it of hours and days or countless years | R |
And boundless aeons it alike appears | R |
To the crushed victim's soul | S |
Utter despair foresees no termination | L |
But feels itself of infinite duration | L |
The smallest fragment instant comprehends the whole | S |
- | |
The absolute of torture as of bliss | T |
Is timeless each transcending time and space | U |
The one an infinite obscure abyss | T |
The other an eternal Heaven of grace | U |
Keeping a little lamp of glimmering light | J |
Companion through the horror of the night | J |
I laid me down aghast | J |
As he of all who pass death's quiet portal | V |
Malignantly reserved alone immortal | V |
In consciousness of bale that must for ever last | J |
- | |
I laid me down and closed my heavy eyes | W |
As if sleep's mockery might win true sleep | A |
And grew aware with awe but not surprise | W |
Blindly aware through all the silence deep | A |
Of some dark Presence watching by my bed | J |
The awful image of a nameless dread | J |
But I lay still fordone | L |
And felt its Shadow on me dark and solemn | L |
And steadfast as a monumental column | L |
And thought drear thoughts of Doom and heard the bells chime | X |
One | L |
- | |
And then I raised my weary eyes and saw | Y |
By some slant moonlight on the ceiling thrown | L |
And faint lamp gleam that Image of my awe | Z |
Still as a pillar of basaltic stone | L |
But all enveloped in a sombre shroud | J |
Except the wan face drooping heavy browed | J |
With sad eyes fixed on mine | L |
Sad weary yearning eyes but fixed remorseless | A2 |
Upon my eyes yet wearier that were forceless | A2 |
To bear the cruel pressure cruel unmalign | L |
- | |
Wherefore I asked for what I knew too well | B2 |
ominous midnight Presence What art Thou | C2 |
Whereto in tones that sounded like a knell | B2 |
'I am the Second Hour appointed now | C2 |
To watch beside thy slumberless unrest ' | - |
Then I Thus both unlike alike unblest | J |
For I should sleep you fly | N |
Are not those wings beneath thy mantle moulded | J |
Hour unfold those wings so straitly folded | J |
And urge thy natural flight beneath the moonlit sky | N |
- | |
'My wings shall open when your eyes shall close | A2 |
In real slumber from this waking drear | Q |
Your wild unrest is my enforced repose | A2 |
Ere I move hence you must not know me here | Q |
Could not your wings fan slumber through my brain | L |
Soothing away its weariness and pain | L |
'Your Sleep must stir my wings | A2 |
Sleep and I bear you gently on my pinions | A2 |
Athwart my span of hollow night's dominions | A2 |
Whence hour on hour shall bear to morning's golden springs ' | - |
- | |
That which I ask of you you ask of me | F |
weary Hour thus standing sentinel | V |
Against your nature as I feel and see | F |
Against my own your form immovable | V |
Could I bring Sleep to set you on the wing | K |
What other thing so gladly would I bring | K |
Truly the Poet saith | C2 |
If that is best whose absence we deplore most | J |
Whose presence in our longings is the foremost | J |
What blessings equal Sleep save only love and death | C2 |
- | |
I let my lids fall sick of thought and sense | A2 |
But felt that Shadow heavy on my heart | J |
And saw the night before me an immense | A2 |
Black waste of ridge walls hour by hour apart | J |
Dividing deep ravines from ridge to ridge | D2 |
Sleep's flying hour was an aerial bridge | D2 |
But I whose hours stood fast | J |
Must climb down painfully each steep side hither | Q |
And climb more painfully each steep side thither | Q |
And so make one hour's span for years of travail last | J |
- | |
Thus I went down into that first ravine | L |
Wearily slowly blindly and alone | L |
Staggering stumbling sinking depths unseen | L |
Shaken and bruised and gashed by stub and stone | L |
And at the bottom paven with slipperiness | A2 |
A torrent brook rushed headlong with such stress | A2 |
Against my feeble limbs | A2 |
Such fury of wave and foam and icy bleakness | A2 |
Buffeting insupportably my weakness | A2 |
That when I would recall dazed memory swirls and swims | A2 |
- | |
How I got through I know not faint as death | C2 |
And then I had to climb the awful scarp | E2 |
Creeping with many a pause for panting breath | C2 |
Clinging to tangled root and rock jut sharp | E2 |
Perspiring with faint chills instead of heat | J |
Trembling and bleeding hands and knees and feet | J |
Falling to rise anew | L |
Until with lamentable toil and travel | V |
Upon the ridge of and sand and gravel | V |
I lay supine half dead and heard the bells chime Two | L |
- | |
And knew a change of Watchers in the room | C |
Without a stir or sound beside my bed | J |
Only the tingling silence of the gloom | C |
The muffled pulsing of the night's deep dread | J |
And felt an Image mightier to appal | V |
And looked the moonlight on the bed foot wall | V |
And corniced ceiling white | J |
Was slanting now and in the midst stood solemn | L |
And hopeless as a black sepulchral column | L |
A steadfast shrouded Form the Third Hour of the night | J |
- | |
The fixed regard implacably austere | Q |
Yet none the less ineffably forlorn | L |
Something transcending all my former fear | Q |
Came jarring through my shattered frame outworn | L |
I knew that crushing rock could not be stirred | J |
I had no heart to say a single word | J |
But closed my eyes again | L |
And set me shuddering to the task stupendous | A2 |
Of climbing down and up that gulf tremendous | A2 |
Unto the next hour ridge beyond hope's farthest ken | L |
- | |
Men sigh and plain and wail how life is brief | F2 |
Ah yes our bright eternities of bliss | A2 |
Are transient rare minute beyond belief | F2 |
Mere star dust meteors in Time's Night abyss | A2 |
Ah no our black eternities intense | A2 |
Of bale are lasting dominant immense | A2 |
As Time which is their breath | C2 |
The | C2 |
James Thomson
(1)
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