Nature, For Nature's Sake Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBAC BDBEFF GHGHII AAAAJJ IGIGKF IIIIII IKIKBB ILILII JAJAAA IMIMN OMOMPP KQKQRR SISITT UFUFII IAIAVV IIIISW BJBXX AYAZII IFIKI OA2OA2II SB2WB2BB AAAAKK QJQJAA ABABIJ LJLJAA BABAKK IGIGI| White as white butterflies that each one dons | A |
| Her face their wide white wings to shade withal | B |
| Many moon daisies throng the water spring | C |
| While couched in rising barley titlarks call | B |
| And bees alit upon their martagons | A |
| Do hang a murmuring a murmuring | C |
| - | |
| They chide it may be alien tribes that flew | B |
| And rifled their best blossom counted on | D |
| And dreamed on in the hive ere dangerous dew | B |
| That clogs bee wings had dried but when outshone | E |
| Long shafts of gold made all for them of power | F |
| To charm it away those thieves had sucked the flower | F |
| - | |
| Now must they go a murmuring they go | G |
| And little thrushes twitter in the nest | H |
| The world is made for them and even so | G |
| The clouds are they have seen no stars the breast | H |
| Of their soft mother hid them all the night | I |
| Till her mate came to her in red dawn light | I |
| - | |
| Eggs scribbled over with strange writing signs | A |
| Prophecies and their meaning for you see | A |
| The yolk within is life 'neath yonder bines | A |
| Lie among sedges on a hawthorn tree | A |
| The slender lord and master perched hard by | J |
| Scolds at all comers if they step too nigh | J |
| - | |
| And our small river makes encompassment | I |
| Of half the mead and holm yon lime trees grow | G |
| All heeling over to it diligent | I |
| To cast green doubles of themselves below | G |
| But shafts of sunshine reach its shallow floor | K |
| And warm the yellow sand it ripples o'er | F |
| - | |
| Ripples and ripples to a pool it made | I |
| Turning The cows are there one creamy white | I |
| She should be painted with no touch of shade | I |
| If any list to limn her she the light | I |
| Above about her treads out circles wide | I |
| And sparkling water flashes from her side | I |
| - | |
| The clouds have all retired to so great height | I |
| As earth could have no dealing with them more | K |
| As they were lost for all her drawing and might | I |
| And must be left behind but down the shore | K |
| Lie lovelier clouds in ranks of lace work frail | B |
| Wild parsley with a myriad florets pale | B |
| - | |
| Another milky way more intricate | I |
| And multitudinous with every star | L |
| Perfect Long changeful sunbeams undulate | I |
| Amid the stems where sparklike creatures are | L |
| That hover and hum for gladness then the last | I |
| Tree rears her graceful head the shade is passed | I |
| - | |
| And idle fish in warm wellbeing lie | J |
| Each with his shadow under while at ease | A |
| As clouds that keep their shape the darting fry | J |
| Turn and are gone in company o'er these | A |
| Strangers to them strangers to us from holes | A |
| Scooped in the bank peer out shy water voles | A |
| - | |
| Here take for life and fly with innocent feet | I |
| The brown eyed fawns from moving shadows clear | M |
| There down the lane with multitudinous bleat | I |
| Plaining on shepherd lads a flock draws near | M |
| A mild lamenting fills the morning air | N |
| 'Why to yon upland fold must we needs fare ' | - |
| - | |
| These might be fabulous creatures every one | O |
| And this their world might be some other sphere | M |
| We had but heard of for all said or done | O |
| To know of them of what this many a year | M |
| They may have thought of man or of his sway | P |
| Or even if they have a God and pray | P |
| - | |
| The sweetest river bank can never more | K |
| Home to its source tempt back the lapsed stream | Q |
| Nor memory reach the ante natal shore | K |
| Nor one awake behold a sleeper's dream | Q |
| Not easier 't were that unbridged chasm to walk | R |
| And share the strange lore of their wordless talk | R |
| - | |
| Like to a poet voice remote from ken | S |
| That unregarded sings and undesired | I |
| Like to a star unnamed by lips of men | S |
| That faints at dawn in saffron light retired | I |
| Like to an echo in some desert deep | T |
| From age to age unwakened from its sleep | T |
| - | |
| So falls unmarked that other world's great song | U |
| And lapsing wastes without interpreter | F |
| Slave world not man's to raise yet man's to wrong | U |
| He cannot to a loftier place prefer | F |
| But he can all its earlier rights forgot | I |
| Reign reckless if its nations rue their lot | I |
| - | |
| If they can sin or feel life's wear and fret | I |
| An men had loved them better it may be | A |
| We had discovered But who e'er did yet | I |
| After the sage saints in their clemency | A |
| Ponder in hope they had a heaven to win | V |
| Or make a prayer with a dove's name therein | V |
| - | |
| As grave Augustine pleading in his day | I |
| 'Have pity Lord upon the unfledged bird | I |
| Lest such as pass do trample it in the way | I |
| Not marking or not minding give the word | I |
| O bid an angel in the nest again | S |
| To place it lest the mother's love be vain | W |
| - | |
| And let it live Lord God till it can fly ' | - |
| This man dwelt yearning fain to guess to spell | B |
| The parable all work of God Most High | J |
| Took to his man's heart Surely this was well | B |
| To love is more than to be loved by leave | X |
| Of Heaven to give is more than to receive | X |
| - | |
| He made it so that said it As for us | A |
| Strange is their case toward us for they give | Y |
| And we receive Made martyrs ever thus | A |
| In deed but not in will for us they live | Z |
| For us they die we quench their little day | I |
| Remaining blameless and they pass away | I |
| - | |
| The world is better served than it is ruled | I |
| And not alone of them for ever | F |
| Ruleth the man the woman serveth fooled | I |
| Full oft of love not knowing his yoke is sore | K |
| Life's greatest Son nought from life's measure swerved | I |
| He was among us 'as a man that served ' | - |
| - | |
| Have they another life and was it won | O |
| In the sore travail of another death | A2 |
| Which loosed the manacles from our race undone | O |
| And plucked the pang from dying If this breath | A2 |
| Be not their all reproach no more debarred | I |
| 'O unkind lords you made our bondage hard' | I |
| - | |
| May be their plaint when we shall meet again | S |
| And make our peace with them the sea of life | B2 |
| Find flowing full nor ought or lost or vain | W |
| Shall the vague hint whereof all thought is rife | B2 |
| The sweet pathetic guess indeed come true | B |
| And things restored reach that great residue | B |
| - | |
| Shall we behold fair flights of phantom doves | A |
| Shall furred creatures couch in moly flowers | A |
| Swan souls the rivers oar with their world loves | A |
| In difference welcome as these souls of ours | A |
| Yet soul of man from soul of man far more | K |
| May differ even as thought did heretofore | K |
| - | |
| That ranged and varied on th' undying gleam | Q |
| From a pure breath of God aspiring high | J |
| Serving and reigning to the tender dream | Q |
| The winged Psyche and her butterfly | J |
| From thrones and powers to fresh from death alarms | A |
| Child spirits entering in an angel's arms | A |
| - | |
| Why must we think begun in paradise | A |
| That their long line cut off with severance fell | B |
| Shall end in nothingness the sacrifice | A |
| Of their long service in a passing knell | B |
| Could man be wholly blest if not to say | I |
| 'Forgive' nor make amends for ever and aye | J |
| - | |
| Waste waste on earth and waste of God afar | L |
| Celestial flotsam blazing spars on high | J |
| Drifts in the meteor month from some wrecked star | L |
| Strew oft th' unwrinkled ocean of the sky | J |
| And pass no more accounted of than be | A |
| Long dulses limp that stripe a mundane sea | A |
| - | |
| The sun his kingdom fills with light but all | B |
| Save where it strikes some planet and her moons | A |
| Across cold chartless gulfs ordained to fall | B |
| Void antres reckoneth no man's nights or noons | A |
| But feeling forth as for some outmost shore | K |
| Faints in the blank of doom and is no more | K |
| - | |
| God scattereth His abundance as forgot | I |
| And what then doth he gather If we know | G |
| 'Tis that One told us it was life 'For not | I |
| A sparrow ' quoth he uttering long ago | G |
| The strangest words that e'er took earthly sound | I |
| 'Without your Father falleth to the ground ' | - |
Jean Ingelow
(1)
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