The Land Of Illusion Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCA A DEED A FGGF HIIH JKKJ LMML II NOPN Q Q RR S IIII TIIU V V W W XX II YY IZZI IA2A2ISo we had come at last my soul and I | A |
Into that land of shadowy plain and peak | B |
On which the dawn seemed ever about to break | C |
On which the day seemed ever about to die | A |
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II | A |
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Long had we sought fulfillment of our dreams | D |
The everlasting wells of Joy and Youth | E |
Long had we sought the snow white flow'r of Truth | E |
That blooms eternal by eternal streams | D |
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III | A |
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And fonder still we hoped to find the sweet | F |
Immortal presence Love the bird Delight | G |
Beside her and eyed with sidereal night | G |
Faith like a lion fawning at her feet | F |
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IV | - |
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But scorched and barren in its arid well | H |
We found our dreams' forgotten fountain head | I |
And by black bitter waters crushed and dead | I |
Among wild weeds Truth's trampled asphodel | H |
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V | - |
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And side by side with pallid Doubt and Pain | J |
Not Love but Grief did meet us there afar | K |
We saw her like a melancholy star | K |
Or pensive moon move towards us o'er the plain | J |
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VI | - |
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Sweet was her face as song that sings of home | L |
And filled our hearts with vague suggestive spells | M |
Of pathos as sad ocean fills its shells | M |
With sympathetic moanings of its foam | L |
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VII | - |
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She raised one hand and pointed silently | - |
Then passed her eyes gaunt with a thirst unslaked | I |
Were worlds of woe where tears in torrents ached | I |
Yet never fell And like a winter sea | - |
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VIII | - |
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Whose caverned crags are haunts of wreck and wrath | N |
That house the condor pinions of the storm | O |
My soul replied and weeping arm in arm | P |
To'ards those dim hills by that appointed path | N |
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IX | - |
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We turned and went Arrived we did discern | Q |
How Beauty beckoned white 'mid miles of flowers | - |
Through which behold the amaranthine Hours | - |
Like maidens went each holding up an urn | Q |
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X | - |
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Wherein it seemed drained from long chalices | - |
Of those slim flow'rs they bore mysterious wine | R |
A poppied vintage full of sleep divine | R |
And pale forgetting of all miseries | - |
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XI | - |
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Then to my soul I said 'No longer weep | S |
Come let us drink for hateful is the sky | - |
And earth is full of care and life's a lie | - |
So let us drink yea let us drink and sleep ' | - |
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XII | - |
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Then from their brimming urns we drank sweet must | I |
While all around us rose crowned faces laughed | I |
Into our eyes but hardly had we quaffed | I |
When one by one these crumbled into dust | I |
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XIII | - |
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And league on league the eminence of blooms | - |
That flashed and billowed like a summer sea | - |
Rolled out a waste of thorns and tombs where bee | - |
And butterfly and bird hung dead in looms | - |
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XIV | - |
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Of worm and spider And through tomb and brier | T |
A thin wind parched with thirsty dust and sand | I |
Went wailing as if mourning some lost land | I |
Of perished empire Babylon or Tyre | U |
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XV | - |
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Long long with blistered feet we wandered in | V |
That land of ruins through whose sky of brass | - |
Hate's Harpy shrieked and in whose iron grass | - |
The Hydra hissed of undestroyable Sin | V |
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XVI | - |
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And there at last behold the House of Doom | W |
Red as if Hell had glared it into life | - |
Blood red and howling with incessant strife | - |
With burning battlements towered in the gloom | W |
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XVII | - |
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And throned within sat Darkness Who might gaze | - |
Upon that form that threatening presence there | X |
Crowned with the flickering corpse lights of Despair | X |
And yet escape sans madness and amaze | - |
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XVIII | - |
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And we had hoped to find among these hills | - |
The House of Beauty Curst yea thrice accurst | I |
The hope that lures one on from last to first | I |
With vain illusions that no time fulfills | - |
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XIX | - |
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Why will we struggle to attain and strive | - |
When all we gain is but an empty dream | Y |
Better unto my thinking doth it seem | Y |
To end it all and let who will survive | - |
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XX | - |
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To find at last all beauty is but dust | I |
That love and sorrow are the very same | Z |
That joy is only suffering's sweeter name | Z |
And sense is but the synonym of lust | I |
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XXI | - |
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Far better yea to me it seems to die | I |
To set glad lips against the lips of Death | A2 |
The only thing God gives that comforteth | A2 |
The only thing we do not find a lie | I |
Madison Julius Cawein
(1)
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