Waking Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCABC AADDBC EEFCBC EGGHHI ABCJJI KLKMFM NIDDAB EDOPFE| Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep | A |
| With all those heavy waves flowing over me | B |
| And I unconscious of the rolling night | C |
| Until slowly from deep to lesser deep | A |
| Risen I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me | B |
| But only air and light | C |
| - | |
| It was a sleep | A |
| So dark and so bewilderingly deep | A |
| That only death's were deeper or completer | D |
| And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter | D |
| Awake the strangeness still hung over me | B |
| As I with far strayed senses stared at the light | C |
| - | |
| I and who was I | E |
| Saw oh with what unaccustomed eye | E |
| The room was strange and everything was strange | F |
| Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight | C |
| And yet familiar as the light swept over me | B |
| And I rose from the night | C |
| - | |
| Strange yet stranger I | E |
| And as one climbs from water up to land | G |
| Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand | G |
| So I for yesterdays whereon to climb | H |
| To this remote and new struck isle of time | H |
| But I found not myself nor yesterday | I |
| - | |
| Until slowly from deep to lesser deep | A |
| Risen I felt the seas no longer over me | B |
| But only air and light | C |
| Yes like one clutching at a ring I heard | J |
| The household noises as they stirred | J |
| And holding fast I wondered What were they | I |
| - | |
| I felt a strange hand lying at my side | K |
| Limp and cool I touched it and knew it mine | L |
| A murmur and I remembered how the wind died | K |
| In the near aspens Then | M |
| Strange things were no more strange | F |
| I travelled among common thoughts again | M |
| - | |
| And felt the new forged links of that strong chain | N |
| That binds me to myself and this to day | I |
| To yesterday I heard it rattling near | D |
| With a no more astonished ear | D |
| And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep | A |
| No more the long night rolled its great seas over me | B |
| - | |
| O too anxious I | E |
| For in this press of things familiar | D |
| I have lost all that clung | O |
| Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness | P |
| Nothing now is strange | F |
| Except the man that woke and then was I | E |
John Freeman
(1)
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About Waking
Waking is a poem by John Freeman. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
Write your comment about Waking poem by John Freeman
Katherine Novak: Are you the Freeman who taught Imaginative Writing, fall 1967, U of Ark., Fayetteville? You were my instructor. We were both in Jim Whitehead's poetry workshop spring 1968--I, as as an undergrad. You wrote droll phrases on my handouts, We snickered; Jim shot the baleful look. I like your poem.
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