The Living Temple Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDD EEFFGGHH IIJJKKHH DDLLMMAA NNGGOOPP QQRRSSTT UUVVWWXX| NOT in the world of light alone | A |
| Where God has built his blazing throne | A |
| Nor yet alone in earth below | B |
| With belted seas that come and go | B |
| And endless isles of sunlit green | C |
| Is all thy Maker's glory seen | C |
| Look in upon thy wondrous frame | D |
| Eternal wisdom still the same | D |
| - | |
| The smooth soft air with pulse like waves | E |
| Flows murmuring through its hidden caves | E |
| Whose streams of brightening purple rush | F |
| Fired with a new and livelier blush | F |
| While all their burden of decay | G |
| The ebbing current steals away | G |
| And red with Nature's flame they start | H |
| From the warm fountains of the heart | H |
| - | |
| No rest that throbbing slave may ask | I |
| Forever quivering o'er his task | I |
| While far and wide a crimson jet | J |
| Leaps forth to fill the woven net | J |
| Which in unnumbered crossing tides | K |
| The flood of burning life divides | K |
| Then kindling each decaying part | H |
| Creeps back to find the throbbing heart | H |
| - | |
| But warmed with that unchanging flame | D |
| Behold the outward moving frame | D |
| Its living marbles jointed strong | L |
| With glistening band and silvery thong | L |
| And linked to reason's guiding reins | M |
| By myriad rings in trembling chains | M |
| Each graven with the threaded zone | A |
| Which claims it as the master's own | A |
| - | |
| See how yon beam of seeming white | N |
| Is braided out of seven hued light | N |
| Yet in those lucid globes no ray | G |
| By any chance shall break astray | G |
| Hark how the rolling surge of sound | O |
| Arches and spirals circling round | O |
| Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear | P |
| With music it is heaven to hear | P |
| - | |
| Then mark the cloven sphere that holds | Q |
| All thought in its mysterious folds | Q |
| That feels sensation's faintest thrill | R |
| And flashes forth the sovereign will | R |
| Think on the stormy world that dwells | S |
| Locked in its dim and clustering cells | S |
| The lightning gleams of power it sheds | T |
| Along its hollow glassy threads | T |
| - | |
| O Father grant thy love divine | U |
| To make these mystic temples thine | U |
| When wasting age and wearying strife | V |
| Have sapped the leaning walls of life | V |
| When darkness gathers over all | W |
| And the last tottering pillars fall | W |
| Take the poor dust thy mercy warms | X |
| And mould it into heavenly forms | X |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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