The Wood Giant Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCB DEFE GHII IIII JBK LMIM NIOI GPQP ICIC RISI TMIM UMVM WIBI OBMB IMIM XIXI YIIIFrom Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome | A |
From Mad to Saco river | B |
For patriarchs of the primal wood | C |
We sought with vain endeavor | B |
- | |
And then we said 'The giants old | D |
Are lost beyond retrieval | E |
This pygmy growth the axe has spared | F |
Is not the wood primeval | E |
- | |
'Look where we will o'er vale and hill | G |
How idle are our searches | H |
For broad girthed maples wide limbed oaks | I |
Centennial pines and birches | I |
- | |
'Their tortured limbs the axe and saw | I |
Have changed to beams and trestles | I |
They rest in walls they float on seas | I |
They rot in sunken vessels | I |
- | |
'This shorn and wasted mountain land | J |
Of underbrush and boulder | B |
Who thinks to see its full grown tree | K |
Must live a century older ' | - |
- | |
At last to us a woodland path | L |
To open sunset leading | M |
Revealed the Anakim of pines | I |
Our wildest wish exceeding | M |
- | |
Alone the level sun before | N |
Below the lake's green islands | I |
Beyond in misty distance dim | O |
The rugged Northern Highlands | I |
- | |
Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill | G |
Of time and change defiant | P |
How dwarfed the common woodland seemed | Q |
Before the old time giant | P |
- | |
What marvel that in simpler days | I |
Of the world's early childhood | C |
Men crowned with garlands gifts and praise | I |
Such monarchs of the wild wood | C |
- | |
That Tyrian maids with flower and song | R |
Danced through the hill grove's spaces | I |
And hoary bearded Druids found | S |
In woods their holy places | I |
- | |
With somewhat of that Pagan awe | T |
With Christian reverence blending | M |
We saw our pine tree's mighty arms | I |
Above our heads extending | M |
- | |
We heard his needles' mystic rune | U |
Now rising and now dying | M |
As erst Dodona's priestess heard | V |
The oak leaves prophesying | M |
- | |
Was it the half unconscious moan | W |
Of one apart and mateless | I |
The weariness of unshared power | B |
The loneliness of greatness | I |
- | |
O dawns and sunsets lend to him | O |
Your beauty and your wonder | B |
Blithe sparrow sing thy summer song | M |
His solemn shadow under | B |
- | |
Play lightly on his slender keys | I |
O wind of summer waking | M |
For hills like these the sound of seas | I |
On far off beaches breaking | M |
- | |
And let the eagle and the crow | X |
Find shelter in his branches | I |
When winds shake down his winter snow | X |
In silver avalanches | I |
- | |
The brave are braver for their cheer | Y |
The strongest need assurance | I |
The sigh of longing makes not less | I |
The lesson of endurance | I |
John Greenleaf Whittier
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