The Lily Of Malud Poem Rhyme Scheme

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The lily of Malud is born in secret mud	A
It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine	B
Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen	B
And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen	B
	-
It blooms once a year in summer moonlight	C
In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight	C
It blooms once a year and dies in a night	C
And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light	C
And when that night has come black small breasted maids	D
With ecstatic terror dumb steal fawn like through the shades	D
To watch hour by hour the unfolding of the flower	E
	-
When the world is full of night and the moon reigns alone	F
And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown	F
When each hut is a mound half blue silver and half black	G
And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back	G
When the winds are out of hearing and the tree tops never shake	H
When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake	H
'Neath a moon paven sky all the village is asleep	I
And the babes that nightly cry dream deep	I
From the doors the maidens creep	I
Tiptoe over dreaming curs soft so soft that not one stirs	J
And stand curved and a quiver like bathers by a river	E
Looking at the forest wall groups of slender naked girls	K
Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall	L
They have waked they knew not why at a summons from the night	C
They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light	C
Stepping over sleeping men who have moved and slept again	M
And they know not why they go to the forest but they know	N
As their moth feet pass to the shore of the grass	O
And the forest's dreadful brink that their tender spirits shrink	P
They would flee but cannot turn for their eyelids burn	Q
With frenzy and each maid ere she leaves the moonlit space	R
If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid	S
	-
Now like little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns	T
Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes	U
Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense	V
And they only sometimes see in a lone moon ray	W
A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half sunk	X
Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey	W
Or a drift of muddy leaves or a banded snake that heaves	Y
	-
And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate and soon	Z
It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon	Z
But they could not look above as with blind drawn feet they move	A2
Onwards on the scarce felt path with quick and desperate breath	B2
For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head	C2
Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape	D2
And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear	E2
A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore	F2
And when things swish or fall they shiver but dare not call	L
	-
O what is it leads the way that they do not stray	W
What unimagined arm keeps their bodies from harm	G2
What presence concealed lifts their little feet that yield	H2
Over dry ground and wet till their straining eyes are met	I2
With a thinning of the darkness	J2
And the foremost faintly cries in awed surprise	K2
And they one by one emerge from the gloom to the verge	L2
Of a small sunken vale full of moonlight pale	M2
And they hang along the bank clinging to the branches dank	N2
A shadowy festoon out of sight of the moon	Z
And they see in front of them rising from the mud	A
A single straight stem and a single pallid bud	A
In that little lake of light from the moon's calm height	C
	-
A stem a ghostly bud on the moon swept mud	A
That shimmers like a pond and over there beyond	O2
The guardian forest high menacing and strange	P2
Invades the empty sky with its wild black range	P2
	-
And they watch hour by hour that small lonely flower	E
In that deep forest place that hunter never found	Q2
	-
It shines without sound as a star in space	R
	-
And the silence all around that solitary place	R
Is like silence in a dream till a sudden flashing gleam	R2
Down their dark faces flies and their lips fall apart	S2
And their glimmering great eyes with excitement dart	S2
And their fingers clutching the branches they were touching	T2
Shake and arouse hissing leaves on the boughs	U2
	-
And they whisper aswoon Did it move in the moon	Z
O it moved as it grew	V2
It is moving opening with calm and gradual will	W2
And their bodies where they cling are shadowed and still	W2
And with marvel they mark that the mud now is dark	X2
For the unfolding flower like a goddess in her power	E
Challenges the moon with a light of her own	F
That lovelily grows as the petals unclose	U2
Wider more wide with an awful inward pride	Y2
Till the heart of it breaks and stilled is their breath	B2
For the radiance it makes is as wonderful as death	B2
	-
The morning's crimson stain tinges their ashen brows	U2
As they part the last boughs and slowly step again	M
On to the village grass and chill and languid pass	U2
Into the huts to sleep	I
Brief slumber yet so deep	I
That when they wake to day darkness and splendour seem	R2
Broken and far away a faint miraculous dream	R2
And when those maidens rise they are as they ever were	E
Save only for a rare shade of trouble in their eyes	U2
And the surly thick lipped men as they sit about their huts	U2
Making drums out of guts grunting gruffly now and then	M
Carving sticks of ivory stretching shields of wrinkled skin	Z2
Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony	A3
Chip and grunt and do not see	A3
But each mother silently	A3
Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut	B3
For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air	C3
A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowed	D3
With hollow shining eyes as the night fire dies	U2
And stare softly at the ember and try to remember	E
Something sorrowful and far something sweet and vaguely seen	B
Like an early evening star when the sky is pale green	B
A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour	E
Or a ghost like a flower or a flower like a queen	B
Something holy in the past that came and did not last	E3
	-
But she knows not what it was	U2

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Lily Of Malud Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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