The Broken Circle Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD AEAE FGFG HIH JKJK LMLM NONO PQP RKRK AMAM FSFS TUTU| I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain | A |
| The waste that careless Nature owns | B |
| Lone tenants of her bleak domain | A |
| Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones | B |
| - | |
| Upheaved in many a billowy mound | C |
| The sea like naked turf arose | D |
| Where wandering flocks went nibbling round | C |
| The mingled graves of friends and foes | D |
| - | |
| The Briton Roman Saxon Dane | A |
| This windy desert roamed in turn | E |
| Unmoved these mighty blocks remain | A |
| Whose story none that lives may learn | E |
| - | |
| Erect half buried slant or prone | F |
| These awful listeners blind and dumb | G |
| Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown | F |
| As wave on wave they go and come | G |
| - | |
| 'Who are you giants whence and why ' | - |
| I stand and ask in blank amaze | H |
| My soul accepts their mute reply | I |
| 'A mystery as are you that gaze | H |
| - | |
| 'A silent Orpheus wrought the charm | J |
| From riven rocks their spoils to bring | K |
| A nameless Titan lent his arm | J |
| To range us in our magic ring | K |
| - | |
| 'But Time with still and stealthy stride | L |
| That climbs and treads and levels all | M |
| That bids the loosening keystone slide | L |
| And topples down the crumbling wall | M |
| - | |
| 'Time that unbuilds the quarried past | N |
| Leans on these wrecks that press the sod | O |
| They slant they stoop they fall at last | N |
| And strew the turf their priests have trod | O |
| - | |
| 'No more our altar's wreath of smoke | P |
| Floats up with morning's fragrant dew | Q |
| The fires are dead the ring is broke | P |
| Where stood the many stand the few ' | - |
| - | |
| My thoughts had wandered far away | R |
| Borne off on Memory's outspread wing | K |
| To where in deepening twilight lay | R |
| The wrecks of friendship's broken ring | K |
| - | |
| Ah me of all our goodly train | A |
| How few will find our banquet hall | M |
| Yet why with coward lips complain | A |
| That this must lean and that must fall | M |
| - | |
| Cold is the Druid's altar stone | F |
| Its vanished flame no more returns | S |
| But ours no chilling damp has known | F |
| Unchanged unchanging still it burns | S |
| - | |
| So let our broken circle stand | T |
| A wreck a remnant yet the same | U |
| While one last loving faithful hand | T |
| Still lives to feed its altar flame | U |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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