Mont Blanc Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDBBADAEEC AFFAAAGHIAGIAJFJFAAG AKALAAALKAMMAHAMN OEEHOHJHAJAHAAAAPAAA HHAQHAAQRHRHSSH AHAAAJKJTHKHHHTAJAAE HEAAHHHAAOAHAAHUAUHE EAN NAVAWNAWVXAAAXHHHHLines written in the Vale of Chamouni | A |
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The everlasting universe of things | B |
Flows through the mind and rolls its rapid waves | C |
Now dark now glittering now reflecting gloom | D |
Now lending splendor where from secret springs | B |
The source of human thought its tribute brings | B |
Of waters with a sound but half its own | A |
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume | D |
In the wild woods amon the mountains lone | A |
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever | E |
Where woods and winds contend and a vast river | E |
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves | C |
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Thus thou Ravine of Arve dark deep Ravine | A |
Thou many colored many voiced vale | F |
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail | F |
Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams awful scene | A |
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down | A |
From the ice gulfs that gird his secret throne | A |
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame | G |
Of lightning through the tempest thou dost lie | H |
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging | I |
Children of elder time in whose devotion | A |
The chainless winds still come and ever came | G |
To drink their odors and their mighty swinging | I |
To hear an old and solemn harmony | A |
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep | J |
Of the ethereal waterfall whose veil | F |
Robes some unsculptured image the strange sleep | J |
Which when the voices of the desert fail | F |
Wraps all in its own deep eternity | A |
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion | A |
A loud lone sound no other sound can tame | G |
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion | A |
Thou art the path of that unresting sound | K |
Dizzy Ravine and when I gaze on thee | A |
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange | L |
To muse on my own separate fantasy | A |
My own my human mind which passively | A |
Now renders and receives fast influencings | A |
Holding an unremitting interchange | L |
With the clear universe of things around | K |
One legion of wild thoughts whose wandering wings | A |
Now float above thy darkness and now rest | M |
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest | M |
In the still cave of the witch Poesy | A |
Seeking among the shadows that pass by | H |
Ghosts of all things that are some shade of thee | A |
Some phantom some faint image till the breast | M |
From which they fled recalls them thou art there | N |
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Some say that gleams of a remoter world | O |
Visit the soul in sleep that death is slumber | E |
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber | E |
Of those who wake and live I look on high | H |
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled | O |
The veil of life and death or do I lie | H |
In dream and does the mightier world of sleep | J |
Spread far and round and inaccessibly | H |
Its circles For the very spirit fails | A |
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep | J |
That vanishes amon the viewless gales | A |
Far far above piercing the infinite sky | H |
Mont Blanc appears still snowy and serene | A |
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms | A |
Pile around it ice and rock broad vales between | A |
Of frozen floods unfathomable deeps | A |
Blue as the overhanging heaven that spread | P |
And wind among the accumulated steeps | A |
A desert peopled by the storms alone | A |
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone | A |
And the wolf tracks her there how hideously | H |
Its shapes are heaped around rude bare and high | H |
Ghastly and scarred and riven Is this the scene | A |
Where the old Earthquake demon taught her young | Q |
Ruin Were these their toys or did a sea | H |
Of fire envelop once this silent snow | A |
None can reply all seems eternal now | A |
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue | Q |
Which teaches awful doubt or faith so mild | R |
So solemn so serene that man may be | H |
But for such faith with nature reconciled | R |
Thou hast a voice great Mountain to repeal | H |
Large codes of fraud and woe not understood | S |
By all but which the wise and great and good | S |
Interpret or make felt or deeply feel | H |
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The fields the lakes the forests and the streams | A |
Ocean and all the living things that dwell | H |
Within the daedal earth lightning and rain | A |
Earthquake and fiery flood and hurricane | A |
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams | A |
Visit the hidden buds or dreamless sleep | J |
Holds every future leaf and flower the bound | K |
With which from that detested trance they leap | J |
The works and ways of man their death and birth | T |
And that of him and all that his may be | H |
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound | K |
Are born and die revolve subside and swell | H |
Power dwells apart in its tranquility | H |
Remote serene and inaccessible | H |
And this the naked countenance of earth | T |
On which I gaze even these primeval mountains | A |
Teach the adverting mind The glaciers creep | J |
Like snakes that watch their prey from their far fountains | A |
Slow rolling on there many a precipice | A |
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power | E |
Have piled dome pyramid and pinnacle | H |
A city of death distinct with many a tower | E |
And wall impregnable of beaming ice | A |
Yet not a city but a flood of ruin | A |
Is there that from the boundaries of the sky | H |
Rolls its perpetual stream vast pines are strewing | H |
Its destined path or in the mangled soil | H |
Branchless and shattered stand the rocks drawn down | A |
From yon remotest waste have overthrown | A |
The limits of the dead and living world | O |
Never to be reclaimed The dwelling place | A |
Of insects beasts and birds becomes its spoil | H |
Their food and their retreat for ever gone | A |
So much of life and joy is lost The race | A |
Of man flies far in dread his work and dwelling | H |
Vanish like smoke before the tempest's stream | U |
And their place is not known Below vast caves | A |
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam | U |
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling | H |
Meet in the vale and one majestic River | E |
The breath and blood of distant lands for ever | E |
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves | A |
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air | N |
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Mont Blanc yet gleams on high the power is there | N |
The still and solemn power of many sights | A |
And many sounds and much of life and death | V |
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights | A |
In the lone glare of day the snows descend | W |
Upon that mountain none beholds them there | N |
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun | A |
Or the star beams dart through them Winds contend | W |
Silently there and heap the snow with breath | V |
Rapid and strong but silently Its home | X |
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes | A |
Keeps innocently and like vapor broods | A |
Over the snow The secret Strength of things | A |
Which governs thought and to the infinite dome | X |
Of Heaven is as a law inhabits thee | H |
And what were thou and earth and stars and sea | H |
If to the human mind's imaginings | H |
Silence and solitude were vacancy | H |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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