Five Bells Poem Rhyme Scheme

Recent Interactions*

This poem was read 26 times,

This poem was added to the favorite list by 0 members,

This poem was voted by 1 members.

(* Interactions only in the last 7 days)

New Poems

Wonderful Women
by Umaru Kanneh Boima
Freedom To Scratch In Peace
by Olute Aete
Happy New Year
by Felix Menda
Human Beings
by Dana Graslie
Lust
by Wisdom Greatness
An Isolated Tree's Song
by Sayeed Abubakar
A Strange Boy
by Sayeed Abubakar
O Soil
by Sayeed Abubakar
No War, No War-monger
by Sayeed Abubakar
Night's Town
by Sayeed Abubakar

Popular Poets

1. Emily Dickinson(2414 poems)
2. Madison Julius Cawein(1231 poems)
3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox(1136 poems)
4. William Wordsworth(1016 poems)
5. Robert Burns(986 poems)
6. Edgar Albert Guest(945 poems)
7. Thomas Moore(849 poems)
8. Robert Service(831 poems)

he flood that does not flow	A
Between the double and the single bell	B
Of a ship's hour between a round of bells	C
From the dark warship riding there below	A
I have lived many lives and this one life	D
Of Joe long dead who lives between five bells	C
	-
Deep and dissolving verticals of light	E
Ferry the falls of moonshine down Five bells	C
Coldly rung out in a machine's voice Night and water	F
Pour to one rip of darkness the Harbour floats	G
In the air the Cross hangs upside down in water	F
	-
Why do I think of you dead man why thieve	D
These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought	H
Anchored in Time You have gone from earth	I
Gone even from the meaning of a name	J
Yet something's there yet something forms its lips	K
And hits and cries against the ports of space	L
Beating their sides to make its fury heard	M
	-
Are you shouting at me dead man squeezing your face	L
In agonies of speech on speechless panes	N
Cry louder beat the windows bawl your name	J
	-
But I hear nothing nothing only bells	C
Five bells the bumpkin calculus of Time	O
Your echoes die your voice is dowsed by Life	D
There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait	P
Nothing except the memory of some bones	Q
Long shoved away and sucked away in mud	R
And unimportant things you might have done	S
Or once I thought you did but you forgot	T
And all have now forgotten looks and words	U
And slops of beer your coat with buttons off	D
Your gaunt chin and pricked eye and raging tales	V
Of Irish kings and English perfidy	W
And dirtier perfidy of publicans	V
Groaning to God from Darlinghurst	W
Five bells	V
	-
Then I saw the road I heard the thunder	F
Tumble and felt the talons of the rain	X
The night we came to Moorebank in slab dark	Y
So dark you bore no body had no face	V
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air	Z
As now you'd cry if I could break the glass	V
A voice that spoke beside me in the bush	A2
Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind	W
Of Milton melons and the Rights of Man	B2
And blowing flutes and how Tahitian girls	V
Are brown and angry tongued and Sydney girls	V
Are white and angry tongued or so you'd found	W
But all I heard was words that didn't join	C2
So Milton became melons melons girls	V
And fifty mouths it seemed were out that night	W
And in each tree an Ear was bending down	D2
Or something that had just run gone behind the grass	V
When blank and bone white like a maniac's thought	W
The naphtha flash of lightning slit the sky	E2
Knifing the dark with deathly photographs	V
There's not so many with so poor a purse	V
Or fierce a need must fare by night like that	W
Five miles in darkness on a country track	F2
But when you do that's what you think	G2
Five bells	V
	-
In Melbourne your appetite had gone	H2
Your angers too they had been leeched away	I2
By the soft archery of summer rains	V
And the sponge paws of wetness the slow damp	J2
That stuck the leaves of living snailed the mind	W
And showed your bones that had been sharp with rage	K2
The sodden ectasies of rectitude	W
I thought of what you'd written in faint ink	G2
Your journal with the sawn off lock that stayed behind	W
With other things you left all without use	V
All without meaning now except a sign	L2
That someone had been living who now was dead	W
At Labassa Room x	V
On top of the tower because of this very dark	Y
And cold in winter Everything has been stowed	W
Into this room books all shapes	V
And colours dealt across the floor	M2
And over sills and on the laps of chairs	V
Guns photoes of many differant things	V
And differant curioes that I obtained	W
	-
In Sydney by the spent aquarium flare	Z
Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper	F
We argued about blowing up the world	W
But you were living backward so each night	W
You crept a moment closer to the breast	W
And they were living all of them those frames	V
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth	N2
And most your father the old man gone blind	W
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck	O2
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments	V
And tablets cut with dreams of piety	W
Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men	P2
Staked bone by bone in quiet astonishment	W
At cargoes they had never thought to bear	Z
These funeral cakes of sweet and sculptured stone	Q2
	-
Where have you gone The tide is over you	R2
The turn of midnight water's over you	R2
As Time is over you and mystery	W
And memory the flood that does not flow	A
You have no suburb like those easier dead	W
In private berths of dissolution laid	W
The tide goes over the waves ride over you	R2
And let their shadows down like shining hair	Z
But they are Water and the sea pinks bend	W
Like lilies in your teeth but they are Weed	W
And you are only part of an Idea	W
I felt the wet push its black thumb balls in	S2
The night you died I felt your eardrums crack	F2
And the short agony the longer dream	T2
The Nothing that was neither long nor short	W
But I was bound and could not go that way	I2
But I was blind and could not feel your hand	W
If I could find an answer could only find	W
Your meaning or could say why you were here	U2
Who now are gone what purpose gave you breath	V2
Or seized it back might I not hear your voice	V
	-
I looked out my window in the dark	Y
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light	W
That arched their mackerel backs and smacked the sand	W
In the moon's drench that straight enormous glaze	V
And ships far off asleep and Harbour buoys	V
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each	W2
And tried to hear your voice but all I heard	W
Was a boat's whistle and the scraping squeal	X2
Of seabirds' voices far away and bells	V
Five bells Five bells coldly ringing out	W
Five bells	V

Kenneth Slessor

Five Bells Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Write your comment about Five Bells poem by Kenneth Slessor

Recent Interactions*

New Poems

Popular Poets