Letter To Maria Gisborne Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCDEEFFGGAA HHHHIIIJJKKKHHLLHHMM KKNNOOFFHHKKPPHHHQQR RSSKKTRHHUUIIVVWWXAH HYYHHHHRRPZKKXXAAA2A 2B2C2FFXAKKYYD2D2 XAHHE2F2HHHHKKAAG2G2 RRH2H2UUAAI2I2 WJ2AAK2K2L2 RRM2H2AAAADDHHAALLAA GGK2K2K2K2AAN2YH2H2H HK2K2HHAAHHKKHHAYTTF AThe spider spreads her webs whether she be | A |
In poet's tower cellar or barn or tree | A |
The silk worm in the dark green mulberry leaves | B |
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves | B |
So I a thing whom moralists call worm | C |
Sit spinning still round this decaying form | D |
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought | E |
No net of words in garish colours wrought | E |
To catch the idle buzzers of the day | F |
But a soft cell where when that fades away | F |
Memory may clothe in wings my living name | G |
And feed it with the asphodels of fame | G |
Which in those hearts which must remember me | A |
Grow making love an immortality | A |
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Whoever should behold me now I wist | H |
Would think I were a mighty mechanist | H |
Bent with sublime Archimedean art | H |
To breathe a soul into the iron heart | H |
Of some machine portentous or strange gin | I |
Which by the force of figured spells might win | I |
Its way over the sea and sport therein | I |
For round the walls are hung dread engines such | J |
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch | J |
Ixion or the Titan or the quick | K |
Wit of that man of God St Dominic | K |
To convince Atheist Turk or Heretic | K |
Or those in philanthropic council met | H |
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt | H |
They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation | L |
By giving a faint foretaste of damnation | L |
To Shakespeare Sidney Spenser and the rest | H |
Who made our land an island of the blest | H |
When lamp like Spain who now relumes her fire | M |
On Freedom's hearth grew dim with Empire | M |
With thumbscrews wheels with tooth and spike and jag | K |
Which fishers found under the utmost crag | K |
Of Cornwall and the storm encompassed isles | N |
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles | N |
Unless in treacherous wrath as on the morn | O |
When the exulting elements in scorn | O |
Satiated with destroyed destruction lay | F |
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey | F |
As panthers sleep and other strange and dread | H |
Magical forms the brick floor overspread | H |
Proteus transformed to metal did not make | K |
More figures or more strange nor did he take | K |
Such shapes of unintelligible brass | P |
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass | P |
Of tin and iron not to be understood | H |
And forms of unimaginable wood | H |
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood | H |
Great screws and cones and wheels and groov d blocks | Q |
The elements of what will stand the shocks | Q |
Of wave and wind and time Upon the table | R |
More knacks and quips there be than I am able | R |
To catalogize in this verse of mine | S |
A pretty bowl of wood not full of wine | S |
But quicksilver that dew which the gnomes drink | K |
When at their subterranean toil they swink | K |
Pledging the demons of the earthquake who | T |
Reply to them in lava cry halloo | R |
And call out to the cities o'er their head | H |
Roofs towers and shrines the dying and the dead | H |
Crash through the chinks of earth and then all quaff | U |
Another rouse and hold their sides and laugh | U |
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk within | I |
The walnut bowl it lies vein d and thin | I |
In colour like the wake of light that stains | V |
The Tuscan deep when from the moist moon rains | V |
The inmost shower of its white fire the breeze | W |
Is still blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas | W |
And in this bowl of quicksilver for I | X |
Yield to the impulse of an infancy | A |
Outlasting manhood I have made to float | H |
A rude idealism of a paper boat | H |
A hollow screw with cogs Henry will know | Y |
The thing I mean and laugh at me if so | Y |
He fears not I should do more mischief Next | H |
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed | H |
With steam boats frigates and machinery quaint | H |
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint | H |
Then comes a range of mathematical | R |
Instruments for plans nautical and statical | R |
A heap of rosin a queer broken glass | P |
With ink in it a china cup that was | Z |
What it will never be again I think | K |
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink | K |
The liquor doctors rail at and which I | X |
Will quaff in spite of them and when we die | X |
We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea | A |
And cry out 'Heads or tails ' where'er we be | A |
Near that a dusty paint box some odd hooks | A2 |
A half burnt match an ivory block three books | A2 |
Where conic sections spherics logarithms | B2 |
To great Laplace from Saunderson and Sims | C2 |
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray | F |
Of figures disentangle them who may | F |
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie | X |
And some odd volumes of old chemistry | A |
Near those a most inexplicable thing | K |
With lead in the middle I'm conjecturing | K |
How to make Henry understand but no | Y |
I'll leave as Spenser says with many mo | Y |
This secret in the pregnant womb of time | D2 |
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme | D2 |
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And here like some weird Archimage sit I | X |
Plotting dark spells and devilish enginery | A |
The self impelling steam wheels of the mind | H |
Which pump up oaths from clergymen and grind | H |
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews | E2 |
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse | F2 |
Ruffling the ocean of their self content | H |
I sit and smile or sigh as is my bent | H |
But not for them Libeccio rushes round | H |
With an inconstant and an idle sound | H |
I heed him more than them the thunder smoke | K |
Is gathering on the mountains like a cloak | K |
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare | A |
The ripe corn under the undulating air | A |
Undulates like an ocean and the vines | G2 |
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines | G2 |
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill | R |
The empty pauses of the blast the hill | R |
Looks hoary through the white electric rain | H2 |
And from the glens beyond in sullen strain | H2 |
The interrupted thunder howls above | U |
One chasm of Heaven smiles like the eye of Love | U |
On the unquiet world while such things are | A |
How could one worth your friendship heed the war | A |
Of worms the shriek of the world's carrion jays | I2 |
Their censure or their wonder or their praise | I2 |
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You are not here the quaint witch Memory sees | W |
In vacant chairs your absent images | J2 |
And points where once you sat and now should be | A |
But are not I demand if ever we | A |
Shall meet as then we met and she replies | K2 |
Veiling in awe her second sighted eyes | K2 |
'I know the past alone but summon home | L2 |
My sister Hope she speaks of all to come ' | - |
But I an old diviner who knew well | R |
Every false verse of that sweet oracle | R |
Turned to the sad enchantress once again | M2 |
And sought a respite from my gentle pain | H2 |
In citing every passage o'er and o'er | A |
Of our communion how on the sea shore | A |
We watched the ocean and the sky together | A |
Under the roof of blue Italian weather | A |
How I ran home through last year's thunder storm | D |
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm | D |
Upon my cheek and how we often made | H |
Feasts for each other where good will outweighed | H |
The frugal luxury of our country cheer | A |
As well it might were it less firm and clear | A |
Than ours must ever be and how we spun | L |
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun | L |
Of this familiar life which seems to be | A |
But is not or is but quaint mockery | A |
Of all we would believe and sadly blame | G |
The jarring and inexplicable frame | G |
Of this wrong world and then anatomize | K2 |
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes | K2 |
Were closed in distant years or widely guess | K2 |
The issue of the earth's great business | K2 |
When we shall be as we no longer are | A |
Like babbling gossips safe who hear the war | A |
Of winds and sigh but tremble not or how | N2 |
You listened to some interrupted flow | Y |
Of visionary rhyme in joy and pain | H2 |
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain | H2 |
With little skill perhaps or how we sought | H |
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought | H |
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years | K2 |
Staining their sacred waters with our tears | K2 |
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed | H |
Or how I wisest lady then endued | H |
The language of a land which now is free | A |
And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty | A |
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud | H |
And bursts the peopled prisons and cries aloud | H |
'My name is Legion ' that majestic tongue | K |
Which Calderon over the desert flung | K |
Of ages and of nations and which found | H |
An echo in our hearts and with the sound | H |
Startled oblivion thou wert then to me | A |
As is a nurse when inarticulately | Y |
A child would talk as its grown parents do | T |
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue | T |
If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way | F |
Huntsmen the innocent dee | A |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1)
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