The Desert Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MBMB NONO NNNN CKCK KPKP KNKN NQNR KSKS TNUN VKVK WNWN KBKKUncircumscribed unmeasured vast | A |
Eternal as the Sea | B |
What lacks the tidal sea thou hast | A |
Profound stability | B |
- | |
Beneath the sun that burns and brands | C |
In hushed Noon's halting breath | D |
Calm as the Sphinx upon thy sands | C |
Thou art nay calm as death | D |
- | |
The desert foxes hide in holes | E |
The jackal seeks his lair | F |
The sombre rocks like reddening coals | E |
Glow lurid in the glare | F |
- | |
Only some vulture far away | G |
Bald headed harpy eyed | H |
Flaps down on lazy wing to prey | G |
On what has lately died | H |
- | |
No palm tree lifts a lonely shade | I |
No dove is on the wing | J |
It seems a land which Nature made | I |
Without a living thing | J |
- | |
Or wreckage of some older world | K |
Ere children grew or flowers | L |
When rocks and hissing stones were hurled | K |
In hot volcanic showers | L |
- | |
The solemn Blue bends over all | M |
Far as winged thought may flee | B |
Roll ridges of black mountain wall | M |
And flat sands like the sea | B |
- | |
No trace of footsteps to be seen | N |
No tent no smoking roof | O |
Nay even the vagrant Beeshareen | N |
Keeps warily aloof | O |
- | |
But yon mid tumbled hillocks prone | N |
Some human form I scan | N |
A human form indeed but stone | N |
A cold colossal Man | N |
- | |
How came he here mid piling sands | C |
Like some huge cliff enisled | K |
Osiris wise with folded hands | C |
Mute spirit of the Wild | K |
- | |
Ages ago the hands that hewed | K |
And in the living rock | P |
Carved this Colossus granite thewed | K |
And curled each crispy lock | P |
- | |
Ages ago have dropped to rest | K |
And left him passive prone | N |
Forgotten on earth's barren breast | K |
Half statue and half stone | N |
- | |
And Persia ruled and Palestine | N |
And o'er her violet seas | Q |
Arose with marble gods divine | N |
The grace of god like Greece | R |
- | |
And Rome the Mistress of the World | K |
Amid her diadem | S |
Of Eastern Empires set impearled | K |
The Scarab's mystic gem | S |
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Perchance he has been lying here | T |
Since first the world began | N |
Poor Titan of some earlier sphere | U |
Of prehistoric Man | N |
- | |
To whom we are as idle flies | V |
That fuss and buzz their day | K |
While still immutable he lies | V |
As long ago he lay | K |
- | |
Empurpled in the Afterglow | W |
Thou with the Sun alone | N |
Of all the stormy waste below | W |
Art King but king of stone | N |
- | |
Uncircumscribed unmeasured vast | K |
Eternal as the Sea | B |
The present here becomes the past | K |
For all futurity | K |
Mathilde Blind
(1)
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