The Tent On The Beach Poem Rhyme Scheme

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John Greenleaf Whittier

The Tent On The Beach Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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I would not sin in this half playful strain	A
Too light perhaps for serious years though born	B
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain	A
Against the pure ideal which has drawn	C
My feet to follow its far shining gleam	D
A simple plot is mine legends and runes	E
Of credulous days old fancies that have lain	A
Silent from boyhood taking voice again	F
Warmed into life once more even as the tunes	E
That frozen in the fabled hunting horn	B
Thawed into sound a winter fireside dream	D
Of dawns and sunsets by the summer sea	G
Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng	H
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery	G
Of which it is an emblem and the dear	I
Memory of one who might have tuned my song	H
To sweeter music by her delicate ear	J
	-
	-
When heats as of a tropic clime	D
Burned all our inland valleys through	K
Three friends the guests of summer time	D
Pitched their white tent where sea winds blew	K
Behind them marshes seamed and crossed	L
With narrow creeks and flower embossed	L
Stretched to the dark oak wood whose leafy arms	M
Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms	M
	-
At full of tide their bolder shore	N
Of sun bleached sand the waters beat	O
At ebb a smooth and glistening floor	N
They touched with light receding feet	O
Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain	A
Of sand hills southward stretched a plain	A
Of salt grass with a river winding down	P
Sail whitened and beyond the steeples of the town	P
	-
Whence sometimes when the wind was light	Q
And dull the thunder of the beach	R
They heard the bells of morn and night	Q
Swing miles away their silver speech	R
Above low scarp and turf grown wall	S
They saw the fort flag rise and fall	S
And the first star to signal twilight's hour	T
The lamp fire glimmer down from the tall light house tower	T
	-
They rested there escaped awhile	U
From cares that wear the life away	V
To eat the lotus of the Nile	U
And drink the poppies of Cathay	V
To fling their loads of custom down	P
Like drift weed on the sand slopes brown	P
And in the sea waves drown the restless pack	W
Of duties claims and needs that barked upon their track	W
	-
One with his beard scarce silvered bore	N
A ready credence in his looks	X
A lettered magnate lording o'er	T
An ever widening realm of books	X
In him brain currents near and far	Y
Converged as in a Leyden jar	Y
The old dead authors thronged him round about	Z
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out	Z
	-
He knew each living pundit well	A2
Could weigh the gifts of him or her	T
And well the market value tell	A2
Of poet and philosopher	T
But if he lost the scenes behind	B2
Somewhat of reverence vague and blind	B2
Finding the actors human at the best	C2
No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed	C2
	-
His boyhood fancies not outgrown	D2
He loved himself the singer's art	E2
Tenderly gently by his own	D2
He knew and judged an author's heart	E2
No Rhadamanthine brow of doom	D
Bowed the dazed pedant from his room	D
And bards whose name is legion if denied	F2
Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride	F2
	-
Pleasant it was to roam about	Z
The lettered world as he had done	G2
And see the lords of song without	Z
Their singing robes and garlands on	H2
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere	I
Taste rugged Elliott's home brewed beer	I
And with the ears of Rogers at fourscore	I
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more	I
	-
And one there was a dreamer born	B
Who with a mission to fulfil	A2
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn	I2
The crank of an opinion mill	A2
Making his rustic reed of song	H
A weapon in the war with wrong	H
Yoking his fancy to the breaking plough	J2
That beam deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow	I
	-
Too quiet seemed the man to ride	F2
The winged Hippogriff Reform	D
Was his a voice from side to side	F2
To pierce the tumult of the storm	D
A silent shy peace loving man	K2
He seemed no fiery partisan	G2
To hold his way against the public frown	P
The ban of Church and State the fierce mob's hounding down	P
	-
For while he wrought with strenuous will	A2
The work his hands had found to do	K
He heard the fitful music still	A2
Of winds that out of dream land blew	K
The din about him could not drown	P
What the strange voices whispered down	P
Along his task field weird processions swept	L2
The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped	L2
	-
The common air was thick with dreams	M2
He told them to the toiling crowd	N2
Such music as the woods and streams	M2
Sang in his ear he sang aloud	N2
In still shut bays on windy capes	O2
He heard the call of beckoning shapes	O2
And as the gray old shadows prompted him	D
To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim	D
	-
He rested now his weary hands	P2
And lightly moralized and laughed	Q2
As tracing on the shifting sands	P2
A burlesque of his paper craft	Q2
He saw the careless waves o'errun	P
His words as time before had done	P
Each day's tide water washing clean away	V
Like letters from the sand the work of yesterday	V
	-
And one whose Arab face was tanned	R2
By tropic sun and boreal frost	L
So travelled there was scarce a land	R2
Or people left him to exhaust	L
In idling mood had from him hurled	S2
The poor squeezed orange of the world	S2
And in the tent shade as beneath a palm	D
Smoked cross legged like a Turk in Oriental calm	D
	-
The very waves that washed the sand	R2
Below him he had seen before	I
Whitening the Scandinavian strand	R2
And sultry Mauritanian shore	I
From ice rimmed isles from summer seas	T2
Palm fringed they bore him messages	U2
He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again	P
And mule bells tinkling down the mountain paths of Spain	P
	-
His memory round the ransacked earth	V2
On Puck's long girdle slid at ease	T2
And instant to the valley's girth	V2
Of mountains spice isles of the seas	T2
Faith flowered in minster stones Art's guess	W2
At truth and beauty found access	W2
Yet loved the while that free cosmopolite	R2
Old friends old ways and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight	R2
	-
Untouched as yet by wealth and pride	R2
That virgin innocence of beach	R
No shingly monster hundred eyed	R2
Stared its gray sand birds out of reach	R
Unhoused save where at intervals	X2
The white tents showed their canvas walls	Y2
Where brief sojourners in the cool soft air	I
Forgot their inland heats hard toil and year long care	I
	-
Sometimes along the wheel deep sand	R2
A one horse wagon slowly crawled	R2
Deep laden with a youthful band	R2
Whose look some homestead old recalled	R2
Brother perchance and sisters twain	P
And one whose blue eyes told more plain	P
Than the free language of her rosy lip	Z2
Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship	Z2
	-
With cheeks of russet orchard tint	R2
The light laugh of their native rills	Y2
The perfume of their garden's mint	R2
The breezy freedom of the hills	Y2
They bore in unrestrained delight	R2
The motto of the Garter's knight	R2
Careless as if from every gazing thing	A3
Hid by their innocence as Gyges by his ring	A3
	-
The clanging sea fowl came and went	R2
The hunter's gun in the marshes rang	B3
At nightfall from a neighboring tent	R2
A flute voiced woman sweetly sang	B3
Loose haired barefooted hand in hand	R2
Young girls went tripping down the sand	R2
And youths and maidens sitting in the moon	P
Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon	P
	-
At times their fishing lines they plied	R2
With an old Triton at the oar	I
Salt as the sea wind tough and dried	R2
As a lean cusk from Labrador	I
Strange tales he told of wreck and storm	D
Had seen the sea snake's awful form	D
And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain	P
Speak him off shore and beg a passage to old Spain	P
	-
And there on breezy morns they saw	Y2
The fishing schooners outward run	P
Their low bent sails in tack and flaw	Y2
Turned white or dark to shade and sun	P
Sometimes in calms of closing day	R2
They watched the spectral mirage play	R2
Saw low far islands looming tall and nigh	C3
And ships with upturned keels sail like a sea the sky	C3
	-
Sometimes a cloud with thunder black	W
Stooped low upon the darkening main	P
Piercing the waves along i	C3