Realities Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDDEEBFBFGGHDIIHEJ EJKLMMNNOOGPAPAQRQSS RTUTVVWGAWA| To the etchings of Norman Lindsay | A |
| Now the statues lean over each to each and sing | B |
| Gravely in warm plaster turning the hedges are dark | C |
| The trees come suddenly to flower with moonlight | D |
| The water gardens to glassy fire and the night the night | D |
| Breaks in a rain of stars O now the statues wake | E |
| Poise on their leaden stems and dive into the lake | E |
| And the old Gardener who has grown old with raking | B |
| Bends by his flickering candle and hears the noise | F |
| And is nodding his head at a music of copper shaking | B |
| And Mercury whispering to some little graven Boys | F |
| And Venus with Venus is walking in a misty grove | G |
| Their mouths breathless with great lies of Jove | G |
| And the green silver moon flows quivering down their sides | H |
| Till each is lined in light | D |
| 'And this Brass Tower ' she said | I |
| But a stone Faun clawed to the branches overhead | I |
| Could hold his breath no longer downward slides | H |
| And crashes in a storm of leaves O look the lake | E |
| O the great dolphins from the fountain rim | J |
| And the rusty Tritons and O the branches break | E |
| A flute of ivory shines it is Apollo come to swim | J |
| Then the skies open with a light from no moon or star | K |
| The dark terraces tremble melt in a shower of petals | L |
| Flowers turn to faces faces like small gold panes | M |
| Are bodied with a mist of limbs no dark remains | M |
| Nor silence but there is laughter like bells in air | N |
| A rushing wind of music torches dancers everywhere | N |
| And lovers no farther It is not night nor day | O |
| The world's tissue has utterly crumbled away | O |
| Time is a crusty pond and that old Mirror Life | G |
| Has broken and the ghosts of flesh are stirred | P |
| With a new blood the fluid of eternity | A |
| And mouths that have never spoken ears that have never heard | P |
| Eyes that have never seen speak now and hear and see | A |
| And I who have climbed in these unrooted boughs | Q |
| Behind the world find substance there and flesh | R |
| Thoughts more infrangible than windy vows | Q |
| Love that's more bodily and kisses longer | S |
| And Cythera lovelier and the girls of moonlight stronger | S |
| Than all earth's ladies webbed in their bony mesh | R |
| The statues dance and the old Gardener is asleep | T |
| And golden bodies tread the paths O happy shapes | U |
| O shining ones Could I for ever keep | T |
| Within your radiance made absolute at last | V |
| No more amongst earth's phantoms to be cast | V |
| No more in the shadowy race of the world exist | W |
| But born into reality remember Life | G |
| As men see ghosts at midnight so with me | A |
| Might all those aery textures the world's mist | W |
| Melt into Beauty's actuality | A |
Kenneth Slessor
(1)
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