A Summer Night Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCDECED FFGHIJGHKLKLJLI KMMJKJMKKCC NOJPJQJMQMRMRM SMSMJJCCCTTGGUULCLVV WWV XY ZA2A2CCJJZZZZ CCCCJJIn the deserted moon blanched street | A |
How lonely rings the echo of my feet | A |
Those windows which I gaze at frown | B |
Silent and white unopening down | B |
Repellent as the world but see | C |
A break between the housetops shows | D |
The moon and lost behind her fading dim | E |
Into the dewy dark obscurity | C |
Down at the far horizon's rim | E |
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose | D |
- | |
And to my mind the thought | F |
Is on a sudden brought | F |
Of a past night and a far different scene | G |
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep | H |
As clearly as at noon | I |
The spring tide's brimming flow | J |
Heaved dazzlingly between | G |
Houses with long wide sweep | H |
Girdled the glistening bay | K |
Behind through the soft air | L |
The blue haze cradled mountains spread away | K |
That night was far more fair | L |
But the same restless pacings to and fro | J |
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there | L |
And the same bright calm moon | I |
- | |
And the calm moonlight seems to say | K |
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast | M |
Which neither deadens into rest | M |
Nor ever feels the fiery glow | J |
That whirls the spirit from itself away | K |
But fluctuates to and fro | J |
Never by passion quite possessed | M |
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway | K |
And I I know not if to pray | K |
Still to be what I am or yield and be | C |
Like all the other men I see | C |
- | |
For most men in a brazen prison live | N |
Where in the sun's hot eye | O |
With heads bent o'er their toil they languidly | J |
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give | P |
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall | J |
And as year after year | Q |
Fresh products of their barren labor fall | J |
From their tired hands and rest | M |
Never yet comes more near | Q |
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast | M |
And while they try to stem | R |
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest | M |
Death in their prison reaches them | R |
Unfreed having seen nothing still unblest | M |
- | |
And the rest a few | S |
Escape their prison and depart | M |
On the wide ocean of life anew | S |
There the freed prisoner where'er his heart | M |
Listeth will sail | J |
Nor doth he know how there prevail | J |
Despotic on that sea | C |
Trade winds which cross it from eternity | C |
Awhile he holds some false way undebarred | C |
By thwarting signs and braves | T |
The freshening wind and blackening waves | T |
And then the tempest strikes him and between | G |
The lightning bursts is seen | G |
Only a driving wreck | U |
And the pale master on his spar strewn deck | U |
With anguished face and flying hair | L |
Grasping the rudder hard | C |
Still bent to make some port he knows not where | L |
Still standing for some false impossible shore | V |
And sterner comes the roar | V |
Of sea and wind and through the deepening gloom | W |
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom | W |
And he too disappears and comes no more | V |
- | |
Is there no life but these alone | X |
Madman or slave must man be one | Y |
- | |
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain | Z |
Clearness divine | A2 |
Ye heavens whose pure dark regions have no sign | A2 |
Of languor though so calm and though so great | C |
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate | C |
Who though so noble share in the world's toil | J |
And though so tasked keep free from dust and soil | J |
I will not say that your mild deeps retain | Z |
A tinge it may be of their silent pain | Z |
Who have longed deeply once and longed in vain | Z |
But I will rather say that you remain | Z |
- | |
A world above man's head to let him see | C |
How boundless might his soul's horizons be | C |
How vast yet of what clear transparency | C |
How it were good to live there and breathe free | C |
How fair a lot to fill | J |
Is left to each man still | J |
Matthew Arnold
(1)
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