The Road Menders Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBDAEFGGGCFD HIHHJKKLKKKHKLH KHKMHMKKHHNONOPKPKHH Q RQHKKRRHSRHTTHow solitary gleams the lamplit street | A |
Waiting the far off morn | B |
How softly from the unresting city blows | C |
The murmur borne | B |
Down this deserted way | D |
Dim loiterers pass home with stealthy feet | A |
Now only sudden at their interval | E |
The lofty chimes awaken and let fall | F |
Deep thrills of ordered sound | G |
Subsiding echoes gradually drowned | G |
In a great stillness that creeps up around | G |
And darkly grows | C |
Profounder over all | F |
Like a strong frost hushing a stormy day | D |
- | |
But who is this that by the brazier red | H |
Encamped in his rude hut | I |
With many a sack about his shoulder spread | H |
Watches with eyes unshut | H |
The burning brazier flushes his old face | J |
Illumining the old thoughts in his eyes | K |
Surely the Night doth to her secrecies | K |
Admit him and the watching stars attune | L |
To their high patience who so lightly seems | K |
To bear the weight of many thousand dreams | K |
Dark hosts around him sleeping numberless | K |
He surely hath unbuilt all walls of thought | H |
To reach an air wide wisdom past access | K |
Of us who labour in the noisy noon | L |
The noon that knows him not | H |
- | |
For lo at last the gloom slowly retreats | K |
And swiftly like an army comes the Day | H |
All bright and loud through the awakened streets | K |
Sending a cheerful hum | M |
And he has stolen away | H |
Now with the morning shining round them come | M |
Young men and strip their coats | K |
And loose the shirts about their throats | K |
And lightly up their ponderous hammers lift | H |
Each in his turn descending swift | H |
With triple strokes that answer and begin | N |
Duly and quiver in repeated change | O |
Marrying the eager echoes that weave in | N |
A music clear and strange | O |
But pausing soon each lays his hammer down | P |
And deeply breathing bares | K |
His chest stalwart and brown | P |
To the sunny airs | K |
Laughing one to another limber hand | H |
On limber hip flushed in a group they stand | H |
And now untired renew their ringing toil | Q |
- | |
The sun stands high and ever a fresh throng | R |
Comes murmuring but that eddying turmoil | Q |
Leaves many a loiterer prosperous or unfed | H |
On easy or unhappy ways | K |
At idle gaze | K |
Charmed in the sunshine and the rhythm enthralling | R |
As of unwearied Fates for ever young | R |
That on the anvil of necessity | H |
From measureless desire and quivering fear | S |
With musical sure lifting and downfalling | R |
Of arm and hammer driven perpetually | H |
Beat out in obscure span | T |
The fiery destiny of man | T |
Robert Laurence Binyon
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