Beechwood Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: ABBAACCDEEECEECE FGHHFIJJHKKEJJJEJEEJ EE JEJELEFJEEJEMMJJBBJJ JJMFMJFJFFFEENNJOFFF JFFFONFFEE JJPPPJJ QQJJRSRSTETEII JEEJUUJJOJJOVVNNNJJJ JWWNNNEE KEEKXEXXJTTXJ YYJJFFFJJFMFZZJEJE JJFFJA2FJB2EB2EB2EEJ EJEJC2JFFC2JNPPO OAOAEJJED2E2E2D2EUEJ JUJJEFFE

Hear me O beeches YouA
That have with ageless anguish slowly risenB
From earth's still secret prisonB
Into the ampler prison of aery blueA
Your voice I hear flowing the valleys throughA
After the wind that tramples from the westC
After the wind your boughs in new unrestC
Shake and your voice one voice uniting voicesD
A thousand or a thousand thousand flowsE
Like the wind's moody glad when he rejoicesE
In swift succeeding and diminishing blowsE
And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breastC
Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan like noisesE
Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leavesE
Until he restC
And silent too your easied bosom heavesE
-
That high and noble wind is rootless norF
From stable earth sucks nurture but roams onG
Childless as fatherless wild unconfinedH
So that men say As homeless as the windH
Rising and falling and rising evermoreF
With years like ticks ons as centuries goneI
Only within impalpable ether boundJ
And blindly with the green globe spinning roundJ
He noble windH
Most ancient creature of imprisoned TimeK
From high to low may fall and low to high may climbK
Andean peak to deep caved southern seaE
With lifted hand and voice of gathered soundJ
And echoes in his tossing quiver boundJ
And loosed from height into immensityJ
Yet of his freedom tires remaining freeE
Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloudJ
Uplifting skiey archipelagian islesE
Sunnier than ocean's blue seas and white islesE
Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowedJ
Still of his freedom tiring yet still freeE
Homelessly roaming between sky earth and seaE
-
But you O beeches even as men have rootJ
Deep in apparent and substantial thingsE
Earth sun air water and the chemic fruitJ
Wise Time of these has made What laughing SpringsE
Your branches sprinkle young leaf shadows o'erL
That wanting the leaf shadows were no SpringsE
Of seasonable sweet and freshness norF
If Summer of your murmur gathered notJ
Increase of music as your leaves grow denseE
Might even kine and birds and general noise of wingsE
Of summer make full Summer but the hotJ
Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the senseE
Nor Autumn's waste were dear if your gold snowM
Of leaves whirled not upon the gold belowM
Nor Winter's snow were loveliness completeJ
Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feetJ
To hills how many has your tossed green givenB
Likeness of an inverted cloudy heavenB
How many English hills enlarge their prideJ
Of shape and solitudeJ
By beechwoods darkening the steepest sideJ
I know a Mount let there my longing broodJ
Again as oft my eyes a Mount I knowM
Where beeches stand arrested in the throeF
Of that last onslaught when the gods swept lowM
Against the gods inhabiting the woodJ
Gods into trees did pass and disappearF
Then closing body and huge members heavedJ
With energy and agony and fearF
See how the thighs were strained how tortured hereF
See limb from limb sprung pain too sore to bearF
Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyesE
Have worn since oh with what desperate surpriseE
These arms uplifted still were raised in vainN
Against alien triumph and the inward painN
Unlock your arms and be no more distressedJ
Let the wind glide over you easily againO
It is a dream you fight a memoryF
Of battle lost And how should dreaming beF
Still a renewed agonyF
But O when that wind comes up out of the westJ
New winged with Autumn from the distant seaF
And springs upon you how should not dreaming beF
A remembered and renewing agonyF
Then are your breasts O unleaved beeches againO
Torn and your thighs and arms with the old strainN
Stretched past endurance and your groans I hearF
Low bent beneath the hoofs by that fierce charioteerF
Driven clashing over till even dreaming isE
Less of a present agony than thisE
-
Fall gentler sleep upon you now while softJ
Airs circle swallow like from hedge to croftJ
Below your lowest naked rooted troopP
Let evening slowly droopP
Into the middle of your boughs and stoopP
Quiet breathing down to your scarce quivering sideJ
And rest there satisfiedJ
-
Yet sleep herself may wakeQ
And through your heavy unlit dome O Mount of beeches shakeQ
Then shall your massy columns yieldJ
Again the company all day concealedJ
Is it their shapes that sweepR
Serene within the ambit of the MoonS
Sentinel'd by shades slow marching with moss footed hours that creepR
From dusk of night to dusk of day slow marching yet too soonS
Approaching morn Are these their graveT
Remembering ghostsE
Already your full foliaged branches waveT
And the thin failing hostsE
Into your secrecies are swift withdrawnI
Before the certain footsteps of the dawnI
-
But you O beeches even as men have rootJ
Deep in apparent and substantial thingsE
Birds on your branches leap and shake their wingsE
Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hootJ
From the unfathomed fountains of your gloomU
Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloomU
Levelled from the low opposing hill and foldJ
Your inmost conclave with a burning goldJ
Than those night ghosts awhile more solid menO
Pass within your sharp shade that makes an arctic nightJ
Of common lightJ
And pause swift measuring tree by tree and thenO
Paint their vivid markV
Ciphering fatality on each unwrinkled barkV
Across the sunken stainN
That every season's gathered streaming rainN
Has deepened to a darker grainN
You of this fatal sign unconscious liftJ
Your branches still each tree her lofty tentJ
Still light and twilight driftJ
Between and lie in wan pools silver sprentJ
But comes a day a step a voice and nowW
The repeated stroke the noosed and tethered boughW
The sundered trunk upon the enormous wainN
Bound kinglike with chain over chainN
New wounded and exposed with each old stainN
And here small pools of doubtful light are lakesE
Shadowless and no more that rude bough music wakesE
-
So on men too the indifferent woodman TimeK
Servant of unseen Master nearing setsE
His unread symbol or who reads forgetsE
And suns and seasons fall and climbK
Leaves fall snows fall Spring flutters after SpringX
A generation a generation begetsE
But comes a day though dearly the tough roots clingX
To common earth branches with branches singX
And that obscure sign's read or swift misreadJ
By the indifferent woodman or his slaveT
Disease night wandered from a fever dripping caveT
No chain's then needed for no fearful kingX
But light earth fall on foot and hand and headJ
-
Now thick as stars leaves shake within the domeY
Of faintly glinting dusking monochromeY
And stars thick hung as leaves shake unseen in the roundJ
Of darkening blue the heavenly branches wave without a soundJ
Only betrayed by fine vibration of thin airF
Gleam now the nearer stars and ghosts of farther stars that bareF
Trembling and gradual brightness everywhereF
When leaves fall wildly and your beechen dome is thinnedJ
Showered glittering down under the sudden windJ
And when you crowded stars are shaken from your treeF
In time's late season stripped and each bough nakedlyM
Rocks in those gleamless shallows of infinityF
When star fall follows leaf fall will long Winter pass awayZ
And new stars as new leaves dance through their hasty MayZ
But as a leaf falls so falls weightless thoughtJ
Eddying and with a myriad dead leaves liesE
Bewildered or in a little air awhile is caughtJ
Idly then drops and diesE
-
Look at the stars the stars But in this woodJ
All I can understand is understoodJ
Gentler than stars your beeches speak I hearF
Syllables more simple and intimately clearF
To earth taught sense than the heaven singing wordJ
Of that intemperate wisdom which the skyA2
Shakes down upon each unregarding centuryF
There lying like snow unstirredJ
Unmelting on the loftiest peakB2
Above our human and green valley waysE
Lowlier and friendlier your beechen branches speakB2
To men of mortal daysE
With hearts too fond too weakB2
For solitude or converse with that starry raceE
Their shaken lightsE
Their lonely splendours and uncomprehendedJ
Dream distance and long circlings 'mid the heightsE
And deeps remotely neighboured and attendedJ
By spheres that spill their fire through these estranging nightsE
Ah were they less dismaying or less splendidJ
But as one deaf and mute sees the lips shapeC2
And quiver as men talk or marks the throatJ
Of rising song that he can never hearF
Though in the singer's eyes her joy may dimly peerF
And song and word his hopeless sense escapeC2
Sweet common word and lifted heavenly noteJ
So beneath that bright rainN
While stars rise soar and stoopP
Dazzled and dismayed I look and droopP
And blinded look againO
-
Return return O beeches sing you thenO
I like a tree wave all my thoughts with youA
As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs whenO
First in the windy east the dawn looks throughA
Night's soon dissolving barsE
Return return But I have never strayedJ
Hush thoughts that for a moment playedJ
In that enchanted forest of the starsE
Where the mind grows numbD2
Return returnE2
Back thoughts from heights that freeze and deeps that burnE2
Where sight fails and song's dumbD2
And as after long absence a child standsE
In each familiar roomU
And with fond handsE
Touches the table casement bedJ
Anon each sleeping half forgotten toyJ
So I to your sharp light and friendly gloomU
Returning with first pale leaves round me shedJ
Recover the old joyJ
Since here the long acquainted hill path liesE
Steeps I have clambered up and spaces whereF
The Mount opens her bosom to the airF
And all around gigantic beeches riseE

John Freeman



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