The Birds Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: A BBCCDD EFGGHH IIJJJJKK LLMMNNJJOOPPQQRR SSTTMMJJJJUUJJSSJJEE MMVVPP SSWXBBIIYYZZQQA2A2TT B2B2SSZZPP

To Edmund GosseA
-
Within mankind's duration so they sayB
Khephren and Ninus lived but yesterdayB
Asia had no name till man was oldC
And long had learned the use of iron and goldC
And ons had passed when the first corn was plantedD
Since first the use of syllables was grantedD
-
Men were on earth while climates slowly swungE
Fanning wide zones to heat and cold and longF
Subsidence turned great continents to seaG
And seas dried up dried up interminablyG
Age after age enormous seas were driedH
Amid wastes of land And the last monsters diedH
-
Earth wore another face O since that primeI
Man with how many works has sprinkled timeI
Hammering hewing digging tunnels roadsJ
Building ships temples multiform abodesJ
How for his body's appetites his toilsJ
Have conquered all earth's products all her soilsJ
And in what thousand thousand shapes of artK
He has tried to find a language for his heartK
-
Never at rest never content or tiredL
Insatiate wanderer marvellously firedL
Most grandly piling and piling into the airM
Stones that will topple or arch he knows not whereM
And yet did I this spring think it more strangeN
More grand more full of awe than all that changeN
And lovely and sweet and touching unto tearsJ
That through man's chronicled and unchronicled yearsJ
And even into that unguessable beyondO
The water hen has nested by a pondO
Weaving dry flags into a beaten floorP
The one sure product of her only loreP
Low on a ledge above the shadowed waterQ
Then when she heard no men as nature taught herQ
Flashing around with busy scarlet billR
She built that nest her nest and builds it stillR
-
O let your strong imagination turnS
The great wheel backward until Troy unburnS
And then unbuild and seven Troys belowT
Rise out of death and dwindle and outflowT
Till all have passed and none has yet been thereM
Back ever back Our birds still crossed the airM
Beyond our myriad changing generationsJ
Still built unchanged their known inhabitationsJ
A million years before Atlantis wasJ
Our lark sprang from some hollow in the grassJ
Some old soft hoof print in a tussock's shadeU
And the wood pigeon's smooth snow white eggs were laidU
High amid green pines' sunset coloured shaftsJ
And rooks their villages of twiggy raftsJ
Set on the tops of elms where elms grew thenS
And still the thumbling tit and perky wrenS
Popped through the tiny doors of cosy ballsJ
And the blackbird lined with moss his high built wallsJ
A round mud cottage held the thrush's youngE
And straws from the untidy sparrow's hungE
And skimming forktailed in the evening airM
When man first was were not the martins thereM
Did not those birds some human shelter craveV
And stow beneath the cornice of his caveV
Their dry tight cups of clay And from each doorP
Peeped on a morning wiseheads three or fourP
-
Yes daw and owl curlew and crested hernS
Kingfisher mallard water rail and ternS
Chaffinch and greenfinch wagtail stonechat ruffW
Whitethroat and robin fly catcher and choughX
Missel thrush magpie sparrow hawk and jayB
Built those far ages gone in this year's wayB
And the first man who walked the cliffs of RameI
As I this year looked down and saw the sameI
Blotches of rusty red on ledge and cleftY
With grey green spots on them while right and leftY
A dizzying tangle of gulls were floating and flyingZ
Wheeling and crossing and darting crying and cryingZ
Circling and crying over and over and overQ
Crying with swoop and hover and fall and recoverQ
And below on a rock against the grey sea frettedA2
Pipe necked and stationary and silhouettedA2
Cormorants stood in a wise black equal rowT
Above the nests and long blue eggs we knowT
-
O delicate chain over all the ages stretchedB2
O dumb tradition from what far darkness fetchedB2
Each little architect with its one designS
Perpetual fixed and right in stuff and lineS
Each little ministrant who knows one thingZ
One learn d rite to celebrate the springZ
Whatever alters else on sea or shoreP
These are unchanging man must still exploreP

John Collings Squire, Sir



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