A Memorial Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCCBDEDEDFGGBHBH FFEIIEJJJBBJ BBBBEEDFBBAAKFKFBLBB BLMMBNEOBE BBPPQQEEBBBBRSSEREEE FFAEAATAETUU ABABBBAAAAAAEEEEEVEW EBEBE XEXEEEAEAEABABEUEEUE BBBBBBBBAAYWYEEBBEEW WAAAAATCCZAAEEBBEA2A A2A BCCBBBB2B2A2AA2AAAEA A2AEA2EEA2EA2 BBC2C2UBBUEEBD2BD2AB BA BA2BAA2ABBWBBWBBBWWF T | A |
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The cord broke and the tent | B |
Slipped and the silken roof | C |
Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof | C |
Of the deliberate firmament | B |
Yet cared we not how should we care | D |
Knowing that labourless now he breathes | E |
A golden paradisal air | D |
Where with more certain craft he wreathes | E |
Bright braids of words more wise and fair | D |
Than ever his earthly fabrics were | F |
That his unwavering eyes made fresh | G |
Purged and regarbed in fadeless flesh | G |
What he then darkly guessed behold | B |
And watch with an abiding joy | H |
The eternal mysteries unfold | B |
Which do his now transfigured songs evermore employ | H |
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Brother yet great thy power | F |
Thou stood'st as on a tower | F |
Small 'neath the stars yet high above the fields | E |
In thy alembic song | I |
Imagination strong | I |
Distilled what essences the quest to mortals yields | E |
This thy reward well won | J |
For every morning's sun | J |
Found thy heart's firm allegiance still unshaken | J |
No temporal ache or smart | B |
Drave Beauty from thy heart | B |
And by thy mighty mistress never wast forsaken | J |
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Yes for though stringent was the test | B |
When that thy trial was bitterest | B |
Steadfast thou did'st remain unshod | B |
The harrows of Pain thy feet once trod | B |
Humiliate as thy sad song tells | E |
Before the vault's white sentinels | E |
Friendless and faint thou sojourned'st there | D |
A bowed brave timid wanderer | F |
A lonely nomad of the spirit | B |
Who did a triple curse inherit | B |
Hunger regret and memory | A |
Yet never did they vanquish thee | A |
When nighest broken most alone | K |
Thy unassuag d thoughts could clamber | F |
To beauty on her ageless throne | K |
Thou wert as one in torture chamber | F |
Who sees the blue through an open casement | B |
And hammers his soul to endure the time | L |
Of his corporeal abasement | B |
Nor writhed'st at thine or others' fault | B |
But with grim tenderness did salt | B |
Thy cicatrices with a rhyme | L |
Not the most sable flame of gloom | M |
Could penetrate thy inmost room | M |
But through the walls thy spirit sucked | B |
Into that cloistral hermitage | N |
Stray lovely things moonbeams and snows | E |
The far sky shed into thy cage | O |
And from the very gutter plucked | B |
A lost and mired campestral rose | E |
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Ended that purgatorial period | B |
Filled was thy wallet and thy feet were shod | B |
The leaden weights were moved the rack withdrawn | P |
Thou didst traverse the dewy fields of dawn | P |
Watch sunsets blazoning over upland turf | Q |
Pull poppies from the frontiers of the surf | Q |
Dwelled'st with love and human eyes | E |
Vigilant calm and wise | E |
But still as when thy bark did ride | B |
Derelict on the city's tide | B |
As then for penury now for pride | B |
Thy bodily senses were denied | B |
Though they cried out and would not sleep | R |
Ascetic thou didst armour them | S |
Lest acid pleasure should eat thine art's pure gem | S |
Hourly the tempter's ambuscades | E |
But thou didst guard the gates and keep | R |
Thy senses' hungry colonnades | E |
Accessible but to Beauty's ministers | E |
Unlit by any ruby flame but hers | E |
Immuring so thy spirit eager | F |
Within a body frail and meagre | F |
Far from the meads of earthly milk and honey | A |
Yet franchised of more wondrous territories | E |
Like those poor Bedouin of Arabia the Stony | A |
Who roam spare fed and hollow eyed but free | A |
By day to wander and by night to camp | T |
In vast serenity | A |
Compassed by God's great silent glories | E |
The sun's gold splendour and the moon's white lamp | T |
Folded and safe from harm | U |
Beneath the mighty sky's protecting arm | U |
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Ha but the Titan's ardour | A |
Wherewith thou scour'dst the vast | B |
To spoil the starry larder | A |
Of fruits of heavenly taste | B |
Urania's fiercest servant | B |
With thirst as furnace fervent | B |
And serene burning brow | A |
Worthy of thy great lineage thou | A |
Drankest without a shudder | A |
In proud humility | A |
Milk from that vast prim val udder | A |
That swells for such as thee | A |
Milk from the fountains of the Universe | E |
That cowards deem infected with a curse | E |
That flushes him who drinks | E |
Nor shrinks | E |
The exalted anguish of diurnal draughts | E |
To a clear vision more intolerable | V |
In its blissful pain than love's most ardent shafts | E |
Of the seats where she doth dwell | W |
She whom thou didst confess | E |
Enticed | B |
Thee hot to her throne to press | E |
For the greater glory of Christ | B |
To uplift the curtains of her closed eyes | E |
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Not all was for thy learning | X |
Nor any mortal's else | E |
Only for thy discerning | X |
Sporadic syllables | E |
Of those supernal glances | E |
Coffer of which her marble countenance is | E |
Yet vain was not the adventure | A |
Reluctant though the prize | E |
Thou gainedst a debenture | A |
On the fringe of Beauty's eyes | E |
Such fragmentary trophy | A |
As some cross tunic'd knight | B |
From Saladin or Sophy | A |
May have won in sword's despite | B |
Not the dear polar shrines | E |
Held captive by the Paynim | U |
But still as fruit of wars | E |
Some stone from Sion's lines | E |
Some relic that might sain him | U |
Of life's uncounted scars | E |
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Self dedicated anchorite | B |
Never disdainful of the dust | B |
But conscious of the overcoming night | B |
That must engulph the blooms and berries of lust | B |
And unforgetful of the enveloping day beyond | B |
Though a sweet show was spread for thy delight | B |
Resolved not to be so fond | B |
As in ephemeral gauds caparisoned | B |
To station feet upon a world of vapour | A |
Soft as a dream and fleeting as a taper | A |
Thou thoughtest nevertheless that thou shouldst occupy | Y |
Thyself as it seemed to thee most worthily | W |
Until the rapid hour when thou shouldst die | Y |
So in a world of seemings | E |
Of shadows and of dreamings | E |
Busied thyself to fashion and record | B |
Unto the greater glory of thy Lord | B |
For thy proud lady Beauty His | E |
Most excellent and humble handmaid is | E |
Says one thy service was too ceremonial | W |
Thy vestments irised overmuch thy ritual | W |
Too elaborate and thy rubric too obscure | A |
Therefore thy gift of chant and orison | A |
Beneath the perfect service men have done | A |
O but thy notes were pure | A |
And in a day like this we now endure | A |
No fault it was in thee to set thy camp | T |
Remote aloof aloof | C |
In a far fastness proof | C |
'Gainst the mephitic odours of the swamp | Z |
Which being so no gain | A |
'Twere to explain | A |
An exquisiteness too meticulous | E |
Let us but say it pleased thee thus | E |
Dowered with imagination heavy fruited | B |
To raise a column garlanded and fluted | B |
For Him thy heavenly abacus | E |
This was thine offering thou didst make | A2 |
In founded hope that He | A |
The craftsman's best would take | A2 |
Well knowing its unobscure sincerity | A |
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The cord broke and the tent | B |
Slipped and the silken roof | C |
Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof | C |
Of the deliberate firmament | B |
We still in this terrene abode | B |
Forlorn must tread the difficult road | B |
And all meek thanks and all belief | B2 |
Hardly suffice to rampart grief | B2 |
For gone is Beauty's votary apostolic | A2 |
And are her temples now delivered over | A |
To blindworms and libidinous goats that frolic | A2 |
In places hallowed by that celestial lover | A |
Save only two or three | A |
With undivided minds like thee | A |
None now remains that girds | E |
The peregrinal loin | A |
None reverent of Beauty's holy tongue | A2 |
But counterfeiters of her imaged coin | A |
Iconoclasts breakers of carven words | E |
Seekers of worthless treasure in the dung | A2 |
Mock mages and cacophonous charlatans | E |
And pismire artisans | E |
Labouring to make | A2 |
Such mirrored replicas of Nature's face | E |
As might the surface of a stagnant lake | A2 |
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Yet we should anger not | B |
Nor let that be forgot | B |
The testament of stateliest worth | C2 |
He left us when he fled the earth | C2 |
The mausoleum made of rhyme | U |
Fair in its unfrequented field | B |
Which shall invulnerably shield | B |
His memory to the end of Time | U |
The house with curtain flaming halls | E |
And roof of gold and jewelled walls | E |
For which the fisher sank his net | B |
Into the deepest pools of speech | D2 |
Scooping rich conchs and ribbons wet | B |
That a less venturous could not reach | D2 |
The hunter tracked the metaphor | A |
On many a foamy silver coast | B |
A hundred leagues beyond the most | B |
Fabulous Tellurian shore | A |
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Magnificent he was and mild | B |
Glad to be still and glad to speak | A2 |
Daring yet delicate as a child | B |
Faithful compassionate and holy | A |
And being human strong and weak | A2 |
And full of hope and melancholy | A |
No more than we able to shed | B |
Man's nature he inherited | B |
Neither sin's garrison to kill | W |
Yet at the last with constancy so great | B |
As the world's vanities to abnegate | B |
Sternly to will the sacrifice of will | W |
Upon the altars of the Uncreate | B |
So that he lived before he died | B |
As one who hourly to himself denied | B |
All joys save those that cannot pall | W |
Who having nothing yet had all | W |
John Collings Squire, Sir
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