The Knight Of St. John Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAC DEDF GHIH JKJK LLLH MNMN LOLO LPLP QKQK RLRL STST DUDU VOVO LJL WXY ZA2ZA2 JDJD TCTBEre down yon blue Carpathian hills | A |
The sun shall sink again | B |
Farewell to life and all its ills | A |
Farewell to cell and chain | C |
- | |
These prison shades are dark and cold | D |
But darker far than they | E |
The shadow of a sorrow old | D |
Is on my heart alway | F |
- | |
For since the day when Warkworth wood | G |
Closed o'er my steed and I | H |
An alien from my name and blood | I |
A weed cast out to die | H |
- | |
When looking back in sunset light | J |
I saw her turret gleam | K |
And from its casement far and white | J |
Her sign of farewell stream | K |
- | |
Like one who from some desert shore | L |
Doth home's green isles descry | L |
And vainly longing gazes o'er | L |
The waste of wave and sky | H |
- | |
So from the desert of my fate | M |
I gaze across the past | N |
Forever on life's dial plate | M |
The shade is backward cast | N |
- | |
I've wandered wide from shore to shore | L |
I've knelt at many a shrine | O |
And bowed me to the rocky floor | L |
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine | O |
- | |
And by the Holy Sepulchre | L |
I've pledged my knightly sword | P |
To Christ His blessed Church and her | L |
The Mother of our Lord | P |
- | |
Oh vain the vow and vain the strife | Q |
How vain do all things seem | K |
My soul is in the past and life | Q |
To day is but a dream | K |
- | |
In vain the penance strange and long | R |
And hard for flesh to bear | L |
The prayer the fasting and the thong | R |
And sackcloth shirt of hair | L |
- | |
The eyes of memory will not sleep | S |
Its ears are open still | T |
And vigils with the past they keep | S |
Against my feeble will | T |
- | |
And still the loves and joys of old | D |
Do evermore uprise | U |
I see the flow of locks of gold | D |
The shine of loving eyes | U |
- | |
Ah me upon another's breast | V |
Those golden locks recline | O |
I see upon another rest | V |
The glance that once was mine | O |
- | |
'O faithless priest O perjured knight ' | - |
I hear the Master cry | L |
'Shut out the vision from thy sight | J |
Let Earth and Nature die | L |
- | |
'The Church of God is now thy spouse | W |
And thou the bridegroom art | X |
Then let the burden of thy vows | Y |
Crush down thy human heart ' | - |
- | |
In vain This heart its grief must know | Z |
Till life itself hath ceased | A2 |
And falls beneath the self same blow | Z |
The lover and the priest | A2 |
- | |
O pitying Mother souls of light | J |
And saints and martyrs old | D |
Pray for a weak and sinful knight | J |
A suffering man uphold | D |
- | |
Then let the Paynim work his will | T |
And death unbind my chain | C |
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill | T |
The sun shall fall again | B |
John Greenleaf Whittier
(1)
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