The Undying Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFGGHIJJKK LLMM AANNOOPPJJ QQRRRSSSSSTTSSSSAASS SSSSUU SSSSVVSSSSWWXYZZUUA2 A2SS DDB2B2C2C2SSSRRYYSSV VD2D2FFSSIn thin clear light unshadowed shapes go by | A |
Small on green fields beneath the hueless sky | A |
They do not stay for question do not hear | B |
Any old human speech their tongue and ear | B |
Seem only thought for when I spoke they stirred not | C |
And their bright minds conversing my ear heard not | C |
Until I slept or musing on a heap | D |
Of warm crisp fern lay between sense and sleep | D |
Drowsy still clinging to a strand of thought | E |
Spider like frail and all unconscious wrought | E |
For thinking of that unforgettable thing | F |
The war that spreads a loud and shaggy wing | F |
On things most peaceful simple happy and bright | G |
Until the spirit is blind though the eye is light | G |
Thinking of all that evil envy hate | H |
The cruelty most dark most desolate | I |
Thinking of the English dead How can you dead | J |
I muttered with your life and young joy shed | J |
How can you but in these new lands of life | K |
Relume the fiery passion of old strife | K |
Just anger mortal hate the natural scorn | L |
Of men true born for all things foully born | L |
For I had thought that not death's touch could still | M |
In man's clean spirit the hate of good for ill | M |
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But now to see their shapes go lightly by | A |
On those vast fields clear 'neath the hueless sky | A |
With not one furious gesture and when seen | N |
With but the broad dark hedgerow space between | N |
No eye's disdain no thin drawn face of grief | O |
But pondering calm or lightened look and brief | O |
Smile almost gay yet all seen in the air | P |
That driv'n mist makes unreal everywhere | P |
So strange I breathed How can you English dead | J |
Forget them for whose life your life was shed | J |
- | |
It was no voice that answered yet plain word | Q |
Less plain is than the unspoken that I heard | Q |
As I lay there on the dry heap of fern | R |
And watched them pass mix disappear and return | R |
And felt their mute speech into empty senses burn | R |
Earth's is the strife The Heavenly Powers that sent | S |
The gray globe spinning in the firmament | S |
The Heavenly Powers that soon or late will stay | S |
The spinning as a child that tires of play | S |
And globe by spent globe put forgot away | S |
In some vast airless hollow could they see | T |
Or seeing endure immortal misery | T |
Made out of mortal and undying hate | S |
Earth's perishing agonies perpetuate | S |
O spirits unhappy if from earth men brought | S |
The mind's disease the sickness of mad thought | S |
Sooner the Heavenly Powers would let them lie | A |
Eternally unrising 'neath a sky | A |
Arctic and lonely where death's starven wind | S |
Raged full delighted sooner would those kind | S |
Serenities man's generation cast | S |
Back into nothingness than heaven should waste | S |
With finite anguish infinitely prolonged | S |
Until the Eternal Spring were stained and wronged | S |
O even the Heavenly Powers at such a breath | U |
From mortal shores would fade and fade to death | U |
- | |
Was it a voice or but a thought I heard | S |
Mine or another's in my boughs that stirred | S |
Waking the leafy darkness of the mind | S |
Was it a voice or but a new roused wind | S |
That answered O I know I know I know | V |
The oldest rivers into the full sea flow | V |
And there are lost so everything is lost | S |
On midnight waves into oblivion tost | S |
Yet the high passion the pity the joy and pride | S |
The righteousness for which these men have died | S |
The courage the uncounted sacrifice | W |
The love and beauty all that's beyond all price | W |
That this the immortal heart of mortal man | X |
Should be O tell me what tell me again again | Y |
Petals lost on the river of the years | Z |
When April sweetness pauses fades and disappears | Z |
That this high Quarrel should be quenched in death | U |
As some vexed petty plaint unworthy breath | U |
That the blood and the tears should never rise | A2 |
Renewed accusing in grave judgment skies | A2 |
Tell me again O rather tell me not | S |
Lest that ill telling never be forgot | S |
- | |
And then I rose from that warm ferny heap | D |
And my thoughts climbed from the abyss of sleep | D |
No more in human guise did cloud shapes pass | B2 |
Nor sighed with sad intelligence the grass | B2 |
I saw the hueless sky break into blue | C2 |
And I remembered how that heaven I knew | C2 |
When a small child I gazed at the great height | S |
And thought of nothing but the blue and white | S |
Pools of sweet blue swimming in fields of light | S |
And as tired men from mine and stithy turn | R |
While still the midnight fires unslackened burn | R |
Flushing their road and so reach home and then | Y |
Dream of old childhood's days and dream again | Y |
So I forgot those inward fires and found | S |
Old happiness like dew lying all around | S |
Under the hedge I stood and far below | V |
Saw on the Worcester Plain the swift clouds flow | V |
Like ships on seas no greener than the Plain | D2 |
That shone between October sun and rain | D2 |
And thinking how time's plenteousness would bring | F |
Back and more bright the young delicious Spring | F |
Between wet brambles thrust my hand and tasted | S |
Ripe berries on neglected boughs that wasted | S |
John Frederick Freeman
(1)
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