What The Birds Said Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFGF HIHI JKJK LMLM NONO NPNP QRSR NTNT PNPN| The birds against the April wind | A |
| Flew northward singing as they flew | B |
| They sang The land we leave behind | A |
| Has swords for corn blades blood for dew | B |
| - | |
| O wild birds flying from the South | C |
| What saw and heard ye gazing down | D |
| We saw the mortar's upturned mouth | C |
| The sickened camp the blazing town | D |
| - | |
| Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps | E |
| We saw your march worn children die | F |
| In shrouds of moss in cypress swamps | G |
| We saw your dead uncoffined lie | F |
| - | |
| We heard the starving prisoner's sighs | H |
| And saw from line and trench your sons | I |
| Follow our flight with home sick eyes | H |
| Beyond the battery's smoking guns | I |
| - | |
| And heard and saw ye only wrong | J |
| And pain I cried O wing worn flocks | K |
| We heard they sang the freedman's song | J |
| The crash of Slavery's broken locks | K |
| - | |
| We saw from new uprising States | L |
| The treason nursing mischief spurned | M |
| As crowding Freedom's ample gates | L |
| The long estranged and lost returned | M |
| - | |
| O'er dusky faces seamed and old | N |
| And hands horn hard with unpaid toil | O |
| With hope in every rustling fold | N |
| We saw your star dropt flag uncoil | O |
| - | |
| And struggling up through sounds accursed | N |
| A grateful murmur clomb the air | P |
| A whisper scarcely heard at first | N |
| It filled the listening heavens with prayer | P |
| - | |
| And sweet and far as from a star | Q |
| Replied a voice which shall not cease | R |
| Till drowning all the noise of war | S |
| It sings the blessed song of peace | R |
| - | |
| So to me in a doubtful day | N |
| Of chill and slowly greening spring | T |
| Low stooping from the cloudy gray | N |
| The wild birds sang or seemed to sing | T |
| - | |
| They vanished in the misty air | P |
| The song went with them in their flight | N |
| But lo they left the sunset fair | P |
| And in the evening there was light | N |
John Greenleaf Whittier
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Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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