Burning Bush Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJ EEEEAA KKEELLMMEENNMMOPQQEE EEMMKKRRSRMMEERREETT UVRREERRKKWWEEEEVVRR KK EE KKEEMM WWMMKK EEMMEE MMKKTT MMSKEE MMMMAA KKKKXXFrom babyhood I have known the beauty of earth | A |
I learnt it I think in the strange months before birth | A |
I learnt it passing and passing by each moon | B |
From the harvest month into my natal June | B |
My mother the dear the lovely I hardly knew | C |
Bearing me must have walked and wandered through | C |
Stubble of silver or gold as moon or sun | D |
Lit earth in the days when my body was begun | D |
And then October with leaves splendid and blown | E |
She watched with my little body a little grown | E |
And winter fell and into our being passed | F |
Firm frost and icy rivers and the blast | F |
Of winds that on the iron clods of plough | G |
Beat with an unseen charging Then the bough | G |
Of spring came green and her glad body stirred | H |
With a son's wombed leaping and she heard | H |
Songs of the air and woods and waterways | I |
And with them singing the coming of my days | I |
And nesting time drew on to summer flowers | J |
And me unborn she taught through patient hours | J |
Then on that first June day with spices blown | E |
Of roses over clover crops unmown | E |
And grey wind lifted leaves and blossom of bean | E |
She gave her dear white beauty to the keen | E |
Anguish of women and brought my body to birth | A |
Already skilled in the sculptures of the earth | A |
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Then in the days when her breasts nourished me | K |
Daily she walked that happy girl to see | K |
How summer prospered to bring the harvest on | E |
And how the gardens and how the orchards shone | E |
With scarlet and blue and yellow flowers and fruit | L |
And hear with equal love the lonely flute | L |
Of legendary satyrs in the wood | M |
Or the still voice of Christ in bachelorhood | M |
And she would come I know to me her son | E |
With lovely secret gossip of journeys done | E |
In fields where some day my own feet should go | N |
It was not gossip in words that I could not know | N |
Mere ease and pleasure for her mother wit | M |
But such as I could feel the joy of it | M |
Beating about my baby blood and sense | O |
Maternal tending of intelligence | P |
In the unwhispered rites of bosom and lip | Q |
Divinings worded in bodily fellowship | Q |
And every shape and colour and scent she knew | E |
Were intimations winding folding through | E |
My infancies of flesh and thought each one | E |
To find its unblemished record and copy done | E |
In little moods drawn from the suckling breast | M |
That now in manhood when I find the nest | M |
Of the chaffinch moulded in the elder tree | K |
And looking on that lichen cup can see | K |
The images of eternity and space | R |
Lavished upon a small bird's dwelling place | R |
Or when from some blue passage of the sky | S |
I know that also colour can prophesy | R |
Or ghosted on the brushing tides of wheat | M |
The gossip of a Galilean street | M |
So many Sabbaths gone I hear again | E |
And his hands plucking that immortal grain | E |
Or when by spectral ancestries I pass | R |
Again to Eden as the orchard grass | R |
Gives out the scent of mellow apples blown | E |
From windy boughs all these I know were known | E |
By that dear mother when the boy to come | T |
Was the zeal and gospel of her martyrdom | T |
- | |
Then came the time when I could walk with her | U |
We pilgrims of the fields with everywhere | V |
Strange leaves and spreading of earth and hedgerow themes | R |
And mossy walls and bubbling of the streams | R |
And the way of clouds and the full moon to wane | E |
The bird song in the lilacs after rain | E |
And month by month the coming of the flowers | R |
for me to learn in speech as had been ours | R |
Knowledge unspoken while she fashioned me | K |
And then she died and I went on to be | K |
Through lonely boyhood her disciple still | W |
A wanderer by many a Berkshire hill | W |
By water meadows of the Oxford plain | E |
By the thick oaks of Avon with the strain | E |
Of an old yeoman wisdom dreaming on | E |
New beauty ever following beauty gone | E |
Until I knew my earth and her raiment fair | V |
In every difference of the seasons' wear | V |
Long years her scholar with learning of her ways | R |
To slip unleasht all singing into praise | R |
Should learning yet by some enchantment be | K |
Bidden to passion's better husbandry | K |
- | |
And the enchanted bidding fell And you | E |
O Love it was that spelt the earth anew | E |
- | |
O Love you silent wayfarer | K |
How many years all unaware | K |
By blackthorn hedge and spinney green | E |
With larch I wandered while unseen | E |
You in my shadow walked nor made | M |
Even a whisper in the shade | M |
- | |
O Love on many an evening hill | W |
I watched the day go down the still | W |
Dark woods the far great rivers wind | M |
Thin threads of light And I was blind | M |
Or seeing knew not for you were | K |
Beside me still yet hidden there | K |
- | |
O Love as year by year went on | E |
And budding primroses were gone | E |
And berries fell and still the bright | M |
Crocuses came in the night | M |
You left me to my task alone | E |
O Love so near me and unknown | E |
- | |
O Love though she who bore me set | M |
Earth's love for ever on me yet | M |
Some word withheld still troubled me | K |
Some presence that I could not see | K |
Till you dear alien should come | T |
And doctrine be no longer dumb | T |
- | |
O Love one April night I heard | M |
The doctrine's everlasting word | M |
And you beneath that starry sky | S |
Unknown were with me suddenly | K |
Yet there was no new meeting then | E |
But some old marriage come again | E |
- | |
O Love and now is earth my friend | M |
Telling me all until the end | M |
When I shall in the earth be laid | M |
With all my maps and fancies made | M |
And you Love were the secret earth | A |
Of my blind following from birth | A |
- | |
O Love you happy wayfarer | K |
Be still my fond interpreter | K |
Of all the glory that can be | K |
As once on starlit Winchelsea | K |
Finding upon my pilgrim way | X |
A burning bush for every day | X |
John Drinkwater
(1)
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