Koya San Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBCA DEEFGHEGHE AAEAAE IJKAEAIEIA EEEEEE JAJLDEMEMD ENONEO NAKEEPEQPQ EENEENKEJNAEAEAA RSTSRT EEAUAEEAEEHigh on the mountain shrouded in vast trees | A |
The stillness had the chastity of frost | B |
I trod the fallen pallors of the moon | C |
The path was paven stone I was not lost | B |
But followed whither it should lead me soon | C |
Into the mountain's midmost secrecies | A |
- | |
Wandering into the mind sweet luminous warm | D |
Remembrances of the body | E |
Smell of the woods in the irradiated noonday | E |
Flushes of foliage | F |
The ridged horizon opening far and blue | G |
Came with a breathing of colour and then sank | H |
Remote as flames gleam in a dark pane glassed | E |
Earth had rolled onward into regions new | G |
And all the darkness at my senses drank | H |
Aware now subtly as of a frontier passed | E |
- | |
On either side the trees unending rose | A |
No shadowy sound stirred amid all their plumes | A |
Each seemed a separate and a soaring night | E |
Black canopies of cold uncounted tombs | A |
Pilgrims had here fallen on their repose | A |
Graven with names their tablets gleamed upright | E |
- | |
And softly as the fallen lightness of a willow leaf | I |
On the liquid stealing | J |
Of water unrippled profound my spirit was stolen | K |
By the crystal silence | A |
And with me it seemed invisible others went | E |
Spirits unhistoried of such dim surmise | A |
As in the dark the tremble of a leaf | I |
With them I went and Night was eloquent | E |
Of things that are not in the day's belief | I |
And made me of those things like a blind man wise | A |
- | |
Obscurity at last relented round | E |
A glimmering space the inmost Shrine appeared | E |
Before it motionless as any tree | E |
Praying a pilgrim stood There was a sound | E |
Of water in the distance hardly heard | E |
But most that living man astonished me | E |
- | |
Many stone lanterns made a clustered shining | J |
As if in a wondrous | A |
Cavern of lost and intricate shadows enclosing | J |
The light's clear vigil | L |
But the air behind that solitary form | D |
Was trembling like a veil of trembling light | E |
Where from an urn rose endless incense fume | M |
That left a ghostly fragrance on the night | E |
It seemed a spirit sighing to resume | M |
The touch of what was breathing human warm | D |
- | |
Bare headed sandalled still that pilgrim prayed | E |
Unconscious of all else but his heart's prayer | N |
Out of his breast a broken murmur deep | O |
Came with his frosted breathing on the air | N |
Before the shrine in its tree guarded shade | E |
Where that great Saint continued in his sleep | O |
- | |
It seemed that from Time's beginning he had stood there | N |
In a hushed vastness | A |
Solitary erect amid the unimagined motion | K |
Of worlds unnumbered | E |
Absorbed secure in his small star of light | E |
And now that ceaseless fugitive frail smoke | P |
Appeared to me like shadowy souls in flight | E |
Woven together into a veil of breath | Q |
That wavered as their little life awoke | P |
And passed for ever into birth or death | Q |
- | |
What prayer was his that mingled with the mist | E |
Of the forgotten sighings of the dead | E |
I knew not yet in him I seemed to share | N |
Longings that still were patient to persist | E |
Through Time and Death from lips that once were red | E |
In that one image all my kind stood there | N |
Lover of the body lover of the divine sun | K |
Of earth's replenished | E |
Fullness and change and savour of life rejoicing | J |
Careless of all care | N |
Me now the Silence for its vessel chose | A |
And filled from wells unsounded by the mind | E |
No other need I had and could not less | A |
Than to be wholly to this spell resigned | E |
And dark communion with the spirit that knows | A |
Vigil and frost and solitariness | A |
- | |
Fragments we are and none has seen the whole | R |
Only some moment wins us to restore | S |
The touch of infinite companionship | T |
I that had journeyed from so far a shore | S |
Found at the world's end the same pilgrim soul | R |
And the old sorrow no flight can outstrip | T |
- | |
Now in the midst of the irradiated noonday | E |
Suddenly absent | E |
While in my ear is the sound of familiar voices | A |
Light talk and laughter | U |
My thought has in an instant flown the seas | A |
A great remoteness occupies my heart | E |
And there arises on my inward sight | E |
The shadowy apparition of vast trees | A |
A pathway opens I am stolen apart | E |
And I ascend a mountain in the night | E |
Robert Laurence Binyon
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