Queen Mab: Part Ix. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHFIA JJKJLEJMJNJ OPQJPRSGTUVUEJW XYUVZJA2B2C2D2VVVJJY E2VV B2F2OVBJBJG2E2GBFH2J I2J2JV K2VJC2JJVXBJVL2M2XVL V VVGN2VJO2P2O2Q2 JR2BVC2C2B2XJJU JVJO2S2T2U2V2JBU2JGJ JV VW2I2JV2XN2O YVAU2D2JJV JJMVX2Y2UM2C2JZ2VLGJ S2JDJ2A3S2V2O2JC2 VB3JO2C3YS2GJYVC2VJ'O happy Earth reality of Heaven | A |
To which those restless souls that ceaselessly | B |
Throng through the human universe aspire | C |
Thou consummation of all mortal hope | D |
Thou glorious prize of blindly working will | E |
Whose rays diffused throughout all space and time | F |
Verge to one point and blend forever there | G |
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling place | H |
Where care and sorrow impotence and crime | F |
Languor disease and ignorance dare not come | I |
O happy Earth reality of Heaven | A |
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'Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams | J |
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness | J |
Haunting the human heart have there entwined | K |
Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss | J |
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more | L |
Thou art the end of all desire and will | E |
The product of all action and the souls | J |
That by the paths of an aspiring change | M |
Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace | J |
There rest from the eternity of toil | N |
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness | J |
- | |
'Even Time the conqueror fled thee in his fear | O |
That hoary giant who in lonely pride | P |
So long had ruled the world that nations fell | Q |
Beneath his silent footstep Pyramids | J |
That for millenniums had withstood the tide | P |
Of human things his storm breath drove in sand | R |
Across that desert where their stones survived | S |
The name of him whose pride had heaped them there | G |
Yon monarch in his solitary pomp | T |
Was but the mushroom of a summer day | U |
That his light wing d footstep pressed to dust | V |
Time was the king of earth all things gave way | U |
Before him but the fixed and virtuous will | E |
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense | J |
That mocked his fury and prepared his fall | W |
- | |
'Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love | X |
Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene | Y |
Till from its native heaven they rolled away | U |
First crime triumphant o'er all hope careered | V |
Unblushing undisguising bold and strong | Z |
Whilst falsehood tricked in virtue's attributes | J |
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe | A2 |
Till done by her own venomous sting to death | B2 |
She left the moral world without a law | C2 |
No longer fettering passion's fearless wing | D2 |
Nor searing reason with the brand of God | V |
Then steadily the happy ferment worked | V |
Reason was free and wild though passion went | V |
Through tangled glens and wood embosomed meads | J |
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers | J |
Yet like the bee returning to her queen | Y |
She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow | E2 |
Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child | V |
No longer trembling at the broken rod | V |
- | |
'Mild was the slow necessity of death | B2 |
The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp | F2 |
Without a groan almost without a fear | O |
Calm as a voyager to some distant land | V |
And full of wonder full of hope as he | B |
The deadly germs of languor and disease | J |
Died in the human frame and purity | B |
Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers | J |
How vigorous then the athletic form of age | G2 |
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow | E2 |
Where neither avarice cunning pride or care | G |
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity | B |
On all the mingling lineaments of time | F |
How lovely the intrepid front of youth | H2 |
Which meek eyed courage decked with freshest grace | J |
Courage of soul that dreaded not a name | I2 |
And elevated will that journeyed on | J2 |
Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness | J |
With virtue love and pleasure hand in hand | V |
- | |
'Then that sweet bondage which is freedom's self | K2 |
And rivets with sensation's softest tie | V |
The kindred sympathies of human souls | J |
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law | C2 |
Those delicate and timid impulses | J |
In Nature's primal modesty arose | J |
And with undoubting confidence disclosed | V |
The growing longings of its dawning love | X |
Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity | B |
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous | J |
Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost | V |
No longer prostitution's venomed bane | L2 |
Poisoned the springs of happiness and life | M2 |
Woman and man in confidence and love | X |
Equal and free and pure together trod | V |
The mountain paths of virtue which no more | L |
Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet | V |
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'Then where through distant ages long in pride | V |
The palace of the monarch slave had mocked | V |
Famine's faint groan and penury's silent tear | G |
A heap of crumbling ruins stood and threw | N2 |
Year after year their stones upon the field | V |
Wakening a lonely echo and the leaves | J |
Of the old thorn that on the topmost tower | O2 |
Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur shook | P2 |
In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower | O2 |
And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear | Q2 |
- | |
'Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles | J |
The melancholy winds a death dirge sung | R2 |
It were a sight of awfulness to see | B |
The works of faith and slavery so vast | V |
So sumptuous yet so perishing withal | C2 |
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall | C2 |
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death | B2 |
To day the breathing marble glows above | X |
To decorate its memory and tongues | J |
Are busy of its life to morrow worms | J |
In silence and in darkness seize their prey | U |
- | |
'Within the massy prison's mouldering courts | J |
Fearless and free the ruddy children played | V |
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows | J |
With the green ivy and the red wall flower | O2 |
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom | S2 |
The ponderous chains and gratings of strong iron | T2 |
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone | U2 |
That mingled slowly with their native earth | V2 |
There the broad beam of day which feebly once | J |
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity | B |
With a pale and sickly glare then freely shone | U2 |
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness | J |
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair | G |
Pealed through the echoing vaults but soothing notes | J |
Of ivy fingered winds and gladsome birds | J |
And merriment were resonant around | V |
- | |
'These ruins soon left not a wreck behind | V |
Their elements wide scattered o'er the globe | W2 |
To happier shapes were moulded and became | I2 |
Ministrant to all blissful impulses | J |
Thus human things were perfected and earth | V2 |
Even as a child beneath its mother's love | X |
Was strengthened in all excellence and grew | N2 |
Fairer and nobler with each passing year | O |
- | |
'Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene | Y |
Closes in steadfast darkness and the past | V |
Fades from our charm d sight My task is done | A |
Thy lore is learned Earth's wonders are thine own | U2 |
With all the fear and all the hope they bring | D2 |
My spells are passed the present now recurs | J |
Ah me a pathless wilderness remains | J |
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand | V |
- | |
'Yet human Spirit bravely hold thy course | J |
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue | J |
The gradual paths of an aspiring change | M |
For birth and life and death and that strange state | V |
Before the naked soul has found its home | X2 |
All tend to perfect happiness and urge | Y2 |
The restless wheels of being on their way | U |
Whose flashing spokes instinct with infinite life | M2 |
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal | C2 |
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense | J |
Of outward shows whose unexperienced shape | Z2 |
New modes of passion to its frame may lend | V |
Life is its state of action and the store | L |
Of all events is aggregated there | G |
That variegate the eternal universe | J |
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom | S2 |
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies | J |
And happy regions of eternal hope | D |
Therefore O Spirit fearlessly bear on | J2 |
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk | A3 |
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom | S2 |
Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth | V2 |
To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower | O2 |
That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens | J |
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile | C2 |
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'Fear not then Spirit death's disrobing hand | V |
So welcome when the tyrant is awake | B3 |
So welcome when the bigot's hell torch burns | J |
'T is but the voyage of a darksome hour | O2 |
The transient gulf dream of a startling sleep | C3 |
Death is no foe to virtue earth has seen | Y |
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom | S2 |
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there | G |
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss | J |
Are there not hopes within thee which this scene | Y |
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed | V |
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still | C2 |
When to the moonlight walk by Henry led | V |
Sweetly and s | J |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1)
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