On A Friend Recently Dead Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: A BBCDEEFGHHIJFFKKKLMN N A OOEEPPMMQQGGRRSSS A QQTTUVWWWXXXYYTTTZZE EA2A2B2B2EEC2C2MMD2D 2EEE2E2 Q F2F2EEFGDCQQAAVVO Q OMMG2GH2FI2I2J2K2L2J 2L2K2M2K2M2N2N2OO2P2 QP2QQ2EWWEQ2 A R2R2D2D2QS2S2PPBBT2U 2FT2GU2AQV2QV2Q GFW2W2ZZEEV2V2EQQ

IA
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The stream goes fastB
When this that is the present is the pastB
'Twill be as all the other pasts have beenC
A failing hill a daily dimming sceneD
A far strange port with foreign life astirE
The ship has left behind the voyagerE
Will never return to no nor see againF
Though with a heart full of longing he may strainG
Back to project himself and once more countH
The boats the whitened walls that climbed the mountH
Mark the cathedral's roof the gathered spiresI
The vanes the windows red with sunset's firesJ
The gap of the market place and watch againF
The coloured groups of women and the menF
Lounging at ease along the low stone wallK
That fringed the harbour and there beyond it allK
High pastures morning and evening scattered with smallK
Specks that were grazing sheep It is all goneL
It is all blurred that once so brightly shoneM
He cannot now with the old clearness seeN
The rust upon one ringbolt of the quayN
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IIA
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And yesterday is dead and you are deadO
Your duplicate that hovered in my headO
Thins like blown wreathing smoke your features growE
To interrupted outlines and all will goE
Unless I fight dispersal with my willP
So I shall do it but too conscious stillP
That when we walked together had I knownM
How soon your journey was to end aloneM
I should not now that you have gone from viewQ
Be gathering derelict odds and ends of youQ
But in the intense lucidity of painG
Your likeness would have burnt into my brainG
I did not know lovable and uniqueR
As volatile as a bubble and as weakR
You sat with me and my eyes registeredS
This thing and that and sluggishly I heardS
Your voice remembering here and there a wordS
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IIIA
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So in my mind there's not much left of youQ
And that disintegrates but while a fewQ
Patches of memory's mirror still are brightT
Nor your reflected image there has quiteT
Faded and slipped away it will be wellU
To search for each surviving syllableV
Of voice and body and soul And some I'll findW
Right to my hand and some tangled and blindW
Among the obscure weeds that fill the mindW
A pauseX
I plunge my thought's hooked resolute clawsX
Deep in the turbid past Like drowned things in the jawsX
Of grappling irons your features to the vergeY
Of conscious knowledge one by one emergeY
Can I not make these scattered things uniteT
I knit my brows and clench my eyelids tightT
And focus to a point Streams of dark pinkish lightT
Convolve and now spasmodically there flitZ
Clear pictures of you as you used to sitZ
The way you crossed your legs stretched in your chairE
Elbow at rest and tumbler in the airE
Jesting on books and politics and worseA2
And still good company when most perverseA2
Capricious friendB2
Here in this room not long before the endB2
Here in this very room six months agoE
You poised your foot and joked and chuckled soE
Beyond the window shook the ash tree boughC2
You saw books pictures as I see them nowC2
The sofa then was blue the telephoneM
Listened upon the desk and softly shoneM
Even as now the fire irons in the grateD2
And the little brass pendulum swung a seal of fateD2
Stamping the minutes and the curtains on window and doorE
Just moved in the air and on the dark boards of the floorE
These same discreetly coloured rugs were lyingE2
And then you never had a thought of dyingE2
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IVQ
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You are not here and all the things in the roomF2
Watch me alone in the gradual growing gloomF2
The you that thought and felt are I know not whereE
The you that sat and drank in that arm chairE
Will never sit there againF
For months you have lainG
Under a graveyard's greenD
In some place abroad where I've never beenC
Perhaps there is a stone over youQ
Or only the wood and the earth and the grass cover youQ
But it doesn't much matter for dead and decayed you lieA
Like a million million others who felt they would never dieA
Like Alexander and Helen the beautifulV
And the last collier hanged for murdering his trullV
All done with and buried in an equal bedO
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VQ
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Yes you are dead like all the other deadO
You are not here but I am here aloneM
And evening falls fusing tree water and stoneM
Into a violet cloth and the frail ash tree hissesG2
With a soft sharpness like a fall of mounded grainG
And a steamer softly puffing along the river passesH2
Drawing a file of barges and silence falls againF
And a bell tones and the evening darkens and in sparse rankI2
The greenish lights well out along the other bankI2
I have no force left now the sights and sounds impingeJ2
Upon me unresisted like raindrops on the mouldK2
And striving not against my melancholy moodL2
Limp as a door that hangs upon one failing hingeJ2
Limp with slack marrowless arms and thighs I sit and broodL2
On death and death and death And quiet thin and coldK2
Following of this one friend the hopeless helpless ghostM2
The weak appealing wraiths of notable men of oldK2
Who died pass through the air and then host after hostM2
Innumerable overwhelming without formN2
Rolling across the sky in awful silent stormN2
The myriads of the undifferentiated deadO
Whom none recorded or of whom the record fadedO2
O spectacle appallingly sublimeP2
I see the universe one long disastrous strifeQ
And in the staggering abysses of backward and forward timeP2
Death chasing hard upon the heels of creating lifeQ
And I I see myself as one of a heap of stonesQ2
Wetted a moment to life as the flying wave goes overE
Onward and never returning leaving no mark behindW
There's nothing to hope for Blank cessation numbs my mindW
And I feel my heart thumping gloomy against its coverE
My heavy belly hanging from my bonesQ2
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VIA
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Below in the dark streetR2
There is a tap of feetR2
I rise and angrily meditateD2
How often I have let of lateD2
This thought of death come over meQ
How often I will sit and backward traceS2
The deathly history of the human raceS2
The ripples of men who chattered and were stillP
Known and unknown older and older untilP
Before man's birth I fall shivering and aghastB
Through a hole in the bottom of the remotest pastB
Till painfully my spirit throwsT2
Her giddiness off and then as soonU2
As I recover and try to think againF
Life seems like death and all my body growsT2
Icily cold and all my brainG
Cold as the jagged craters of the moonU2
And I wonder is it not strange that IA
Who thus have heard eternity's black laughQ
And felt its freezing breathV2
Should sometimes shut it out from memoryQ
So as to play quite prettily with deathV2
And turn an easy epitaphQ
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I can hear a voice whispering in my brainG
Why this is the old futility againF
Criminal day by dayW2
Your own life is ebbing swiftly awayW2
And what have you done with itZ
Except to become a maudlin hypocriteZ
Yes I know I knowE
One should not think of death or the dead overmuch but one's mind's made soE
That at certain times the roads of thought all lead to deathV2
And false reasoning clouds one's soul as a window with breathV2
Is clouded in winter's airE
And all the faith one may haveQ
Lies useless and dead as a body in the graveQ

John Collings Squire, Sir



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