Beechwood Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBAACCDEEECEECE FGHHFIJJHKKEJJJEJEEJ EE JEJELEFJEEJEMMJJBBJJ JJMFMJFJFFFEENNJOFFF JFFFONFFEE JJPPPJJ QQJJRSRSTETEII JEEJUUJJOJJOVVNNNJJJ JWWNNNEE KEEKXEXXJTTXJ YYJJFFFJJFMFZZJEJE JJFFJA2FJB2EB2EB2EEJ EJEJC2JFFC2JNPPO OAOAEJJED2E2E2D2EUEJ JUJJEFFEHear me O beeches You | A |
That have with ageless anguish slowly risen | B |
From earth's still secret prison | B |
Into the ampler prison of aery blue | A |
Your voice I hear flowing the valleys through | A |
After the wind that tramples from the west | C |
After the wind your boughs in new unrest | C |
Shake and your voice one voice uniting voices | D |
A thousand or a thousand thousand flows | E |
Like the wind's moody glad when he rejoices | E |
In swift succeeding and diminishing blows | E |
And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breast | C |
Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan like noises | E |
Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leaves | E |
Until he rest | C |
And silent too your easied bosom heaves | E |
- | |
That high and noble wind is rootless nor | F |
From stable earth sucks nurture but roams on | G |
Childless as fatherless wild unconfined | H |
So that men say As homeless as the wind | H |
Rising and falling and rising evermore | F |
With years like ticks ons as centuries gone | I |
Only within impalpable ether bound | J |
And blindly with the green globe spinning round | J |
He noble wind | H |
Most ancient creature of imprisoned Time | K |
From high to low may fall and low to high may climb | K |
Andean peak to deep caved southern sea | E |
With lifted hand and voice of gathered sound | J |
And echoes in his tossing quiver bound | J |
And loosed from height into immensity | J |
Yet of his freedom tires remaining free | E |
Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloud | J |
Uplifting skiey archipelagian isles | E |
Sunnier than ocean's blue seas and white isles | E |
Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowed | J |
Still of his freedom tiring yet still free | E |
Homelessly roaming between sky earth and sea | E |
- | |
But you O beeches even as men have root | J |
Deep in apparent and substantial things | E |
Earth sun air water and the chemic fruit | J |
Wise Time of these has made What laughing Springs | E |
Your branches sprinkle young leaf shadows o'er | L |
That wanting the leaf shadows were no Springs | E |
Of seasonable sweet and freshness nor | F |
If Summer of your murmur gathered not | J |
Increase of music as your leaves grow dense | E |
Might even kine and birds and general noise of wings | E |
Of summer make full Summer but the hot | J |
Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the sense | E |
Nor Autumn's waste were dear if your gold snow | M |
Of leaves whirled not upon the gold below | M |
Nor Winter's snow were loveliness complete | J |
Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feet | J |
To hills how many has your tossed green given | B |
Likeness of an inverted cloudy heaven | B |
How many English hills enlarge their pride | J |
Of shape and solitude | J |
By beechwoods darkening the steepest side | J |
I know a Mount let there my longing brood | J |
Again as oft my eyes a Mount I know | M |
Where beeches stand arrested in the throe | F |
Of that last onslaught when the gods swept low | M |
Against the gods inhabiting the wood | J |
Gods into trees did pass and disappear | F |
Then closing body and huge members heaved | J |
With energy and agony and fear | F |
See how the thighs were strained how tortured here | F |
See limb from limb sprung pain too sore to bear | F |
Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes | E |
Have worn since oh with what desperate surprise | E |
These arms uplifted still were raised in vain | N |
Against alien triumph and the inward pain | N |
Unlock your arms and be no more distressed | J |
Let the wind glide over you easily again | O |
It is a dream you fight a memory | F |
Of battle lost And how should dreaming be | F |
Still a renewed agony | F |
But O when that wind comes up out of the west | J |
New winged with Autumn from the distant sea | F |
And springs upon you how should not dreaming be | F |
A remembered and renewing agony | F |
Then are your breasts O unleaved beeches again | O |
Torn and your thighs and arms with the old strain | N |
Stretched past endurance and your groans I hear | F |
Low bent beneath the hoofs by that fierce charioteer | F |
Driven clashing over till even dreaming is | E |
Less of a present agony than this | E |
- | |
Fall gentler sleep upon you now while soft | J |
Airs circle swallow like from hedge to croft | J |
Below your lowest naked rooted troop | P |
Let evening slowly droop | P |
Into the middle of your boughs and stoop | P |
Quiet breathing down to your scarce quivering side | J |
And rest there satisfied | J |
- | |
Yet sleep herself may wake | Q |
And through your heavy unlit dome O Mount of beeches shake | Q |
Then shall your massy columns yield | J |
Again the company all day concealed | J |
Is it their shapes that sweep | R |
Serene within the ambit of the Moon | S |
Sentinel'd by shades slow marching with moss footed hours that creep | R |
From dusk of night to dusk of day slow marching yet too soon | S |
Approaching morn Are these their grave | T |
Remembering ghosts | E |
Already your full foliaged branches wave | T |
And the thin failing hosts | E |
Into your secrecies are swift withdrawn | I |
Before the certain footsteps of the dawn | I |
- | |
But you O beeches even as men have root | J |
Deep in apparent and substantial things | E |
Birds on your branches leap and shake their wings | E |
Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hoot | J |
From the unfathomed fountains of your gloom | U |
Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloom | U |
Levelled from the low opposing hill and fold | J |
Your inmost conclave with a burning gold | J |
Than those night ghosts awhile more solid men | O |
Pass within your sharp shade that makes an arctic night | J |
Of common light | J |
And pause swift measuring tree by tree and then | O |
Paint their vivid mark | V |
Ciphering fatality on each unwrinkled bark | V |
Across the sunken stain | N |
That every season's gathered streaming rain | N |
Has deepened to a darker grain | N |
You of this fatal sign unconscious lift | J |
Your branches still each tree her lofty tent | J |
Still light and twilight drift | J |
Between and lie in wan pools silver sprent | J |
But comes a day a step a voice and now | W |
The repeated stroke the noosed and tethered bough | W |
The sundered trunk upon the enormous wain | N |
Bound kinglike with chain over chain | N |
New wounded and exposed with each old stain | N |
And here small pools of doubtful light are lakes | E |
Shadowless and no more that rude bough music wakes | E |
- | |
So on men too the indifferent woodman Time | K |
Servant of unseen Master nearing sets | E |
His unread symbol or who reads forgets | E |
And suns and seasons fall and climb | K |
Leaves fall snows fall Spring flutters after Spring | X |
A generation a generation begets | E |
But comes a day though dearly the tough roots cling | X |
To common earth branches with branches sing | X |
And that obscure sign's read or swift misread | J |
By the indifferent woodman or his slave | T |
Disease night wandered from a fever dripping cave | T |
No chain's then needed for no fearful king | X |
But light earth fall on foot and hand and head | J |
- | |
Now thick as stars leaves shake within the dome | Y |
Of faintly glinting dusking monochrome | Y |
And stars thick hung as leaves shake unseen in the round | J |
Of darkening blue the heavenly branches wave without a sound | J |
Only betrayed by fine vibration of thin air | F |
Gleam now the nearer stars and ghosts of farther stars that bare | F |
Trembling and gradual brightness everywhere | F |
When leaves fall wildly and your beechen dome is thinned | J |
Showered glittering down under the sudden wind | J |
And when you crowded stars are shaken from your tree | F |
In time's late season stripped and each bough nakedly | M |
Rocks in those gleamless shallows of infinity | F |
When star fall follows leaf fall will long Winter pass away | Z |
And new stars as new leaves dance through their hasty May | Z |
But as a leaf falls so falls weightless thought | J |
Eddying and with a myriad dead leaves lies | E |
Bewildered or in a little air awhile is caught | J |
Idly then drops and dies | E |
- | |
Look at the stars the stars But in this wood | J |
All I can understand is understood | J |
Gentler than stars your beeches speak I hear | F |
Syllables more simple and intimately clear | F |
To earth taught sense than the heaven singing word | J |
Of that intemperate wisdom which the sky | A2 |
Shakes down upon each unregarding century | F |
There lying like snow unstirred | J |
Unmelting on the loftiest peak | B2 |
Above our human and green valley ways | E |
Lowlier and friendlier your beechen branches speak | B2 |
To men of mortal days | E |
With hearts too fond too weak | B2 |
For solitude or converse with that starry race | E |
Their shaken lights | E |
Their lonely splendours and uncomprehended | J |
Dream distance and long circlings 'mid the heights | E |
And deeps remotely neighboured and attended | J |
By spheres that spill their fire through these estranging nights | E |
Ah were they less dismaying or less splendid | J |
But as one deaf and mute sees the lips shape | C2 |
And quiver as men talk or marks the throat | J |
Of rising song that he can never hear | F |
Though in the singer's eyes her joy may dimly peer | F |
And song and word his hopeless sense escape | C2 |
Sweet common word and lifted heavenly note | J |
So beneath that bright rain | N |
While stars rise soar and stoop | P |
Dazzled and dismayed I look and droop | P |
And blinded look again | O |
- | |
Return return O beeches sing you then | O |
I like a tree wave all my thoughts with you | A |
As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs when | O |
First in the windy east the dawn looks through | A |
Night's soon dissolving bars | E |
Return return But I have never strayed | J |
Hush thoughts that for a moment played | J |
In that enchanted forest of the stars | E |
Where the mind grows numb | D2 |
Return return | E2 |
Back thoughts from heights that freeze and deeps that burn | E2 |
Where sight fails and song's dumb | D2 |
And as after long absence a child stands | E |
In each familiar room | U |
And with fond hands | E |
Touches the table casement bed | J |
Anon each sleeping half forgotten toy | J |
So I to your sharp light and friendly gloom | U |
Returning with first pale leaves round me shed | J |
Recover the old joy | J |
Since here the long acquainted hill path lies | E |
Steeps I have clambered up and spaces where | F |
The Mount opens her bosom to the air | F |
And all around gigantic beeches rise | E |
John Frederick Freeman
(1)
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