The Sibyls Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Rending the waters of a night unknown	A
The ship with tireless pulses bore me	B
On the shadowy deck musing late and lone	A
Over waste ocean	C
The rustling of the cordage in the dewy wind	D
And the sound of idle surges	E
Falling prolonged and for ever again upthrown	C
Drowsed me I slept I dreamed	F
	-
Out of the seas that streamed	F
In ghostly turbulence moving and glimmering about me	B
I saw the rising of vast and visionary forms	G
	-
Like clouds like continents of cloud they rose	H
August as the shape of storms	G
In the silence before the thunder or of mountains	I
Alone in a sky of sunken light they rose	H
Slowly with shrouded grandeur	J
Of queenly bosom and shoulder and afar	K
Their countenances were lifted although veiled	L
Although heavy as with thought and with silence	M
In the heights where dimly gathered	N
Star upon solitary star	K
	-
And it seemed to me as I dreamed	F
That these were the forms of the Sibyls of old	O
Prophetesses whose eyes were aflame with interior fire	P
Who passionately prophesied and none comprehended	Q
In the womb of whose thought was quickened the world's desire	P
Who saw and because they saw chastised	R
With voices terribly chanting on the wind	D
The folly of the faithlessness of men	C
	-
But not as they haunted then	C
In cavernous and wild places	E
Each inaccessibly sequestered	N
And sought with furtive steps	S
Through wizard leaves of whispering laurel feared	T
Now to me they appeared	T
But rather like Queens of fabulous dominion	C
Like Queens voices of a voiceless people	U
Queens of old time with aweing faces	E
With burdened brows but with proud eyes	V
Assembled in solemn parley to shape	W
Futurity and the nations' glory and doom	X
They were met in the night together	P
	-
And lo beneath them	Y
The immeasurable circle of the gloom	X
Phantasmally disclosed	Z
In apparition all the coasts of the world	A2
Veined with rivers afar to the frozen mountains	I
And I saw the shadow of maniac Death	B2
Like a reveller there stagger glutted and gloating	C2
I saw murdered cities	D2
That raised like a stiffened arm	E2
One blackened tower to heaven I saw	F2
Processions of the homeless crawling into the distances	E
And sullen leagues of interminable battle	U
And peoples arming afar the very earth	G2
The very bowels of the earth infected	H2
With the rages and the agonies of men	C
For a moment the vision gleamed and then was gone	C
Gloom rushed down like rain	C
But out of the midst of the darkness	I2
My flesh was aware of a sound	J2
The peopled sound of moving millions	I
And the voices of human pain	C
	-
I lifted my gaze to the Sibyls	I
The Sibyls of the Continents where they rose	I
Looking one on another	P
Ancestral Asia mother of musing mind	D
Was there and over against her	P
Towered in the gates of the West a shape	W
Of youth gigantic troubled and vigilant	K2
Patient with eager dumbness in dark eyes	I
Africa rose and ardent out of the South	L2
The youngest of those great sisters and proud	M2
With fame upon her for mantle and regal browed	M2
The stature of Europe old	O
It seemed they listened to the murmur	P
Of the anguished lands beneath them	Y
In sombre reverberation rising and upward rolled	O
Everywhere battle and arming for battle	U
Famine and torture odour of burning and blood	H2
Doubt hatred terror	P
Rage and lamenting	C2
	-
I heard sweet Pity crying between the earth and sky	N2
But who had leisure for her call or who hearkened to her cry	N2
	-
Not with our vision and not with our horizon	C
The gaze of the Sibyls was filled	O2
Their trouble was trouble beyond the shaping of our fear	P2
Their hope full sailed upon oceans beyond our ken	C
Their thoughts were the thoughts that build	O2
Towers for the dawn unseen	C
	-
But nearer than ever before	Q2
They drew to each other sister to shrouded sister	P
Queen to superb Queen	C
What counsel took they together or what word	N
Of power and of parturition	C
Passed their lips What saw they	R2
Conferring among the stars	I
My blood tingled and I heard	N
Syllables O too vast	S2
For capacity of my ears yet within me	B
In the innermost bones and caves of my being	C2
I felt a voice like the voice of a sea	B
And the sound of it seemed to be crying Endure	T2
Humble yourselves O dreamers of dreams	I
In whose bosom is peril fiercer than fire or beast	U2
Humble yourselves O desolaters of your own dreams	I
Then arise and remember	P
Though now you cry in astonishment and anguish	V2
What have we done to the beauty of the world	A2
That ruins about us in ashes and blood '	-
Remember the Spirit that moulded and made you	W2
In the beauty of the body	B
Shaped as the splendour of speech to thought	X2
The Spirit that wills with one desire	P
With infinite else unsatisfied desire	P
Peace not made by conquerors and armies	I
Peace born in the soul that asks not shelter or a pillow	Y2
The peace of truth unshaken amid the thunder	P
Unaffrighted by fury of shrivelling fire	P
And neither time nor tempest	Z2
Neither slumber nor calamity	B
Neither rending of the flesh nor breaking of the heart	A3
Shall stay you from that desire ''	-
	-
That sound floated like a cloud in heaven	C
Lingering and like an answer	P
Came the sound of the rushing of spirits triumphant	K2
Of young men dying for a cause	I
	-
I lifted my eyes in wonder	P
And silence filled me	B
And with the silence I was aware	B3
Of a breath moving in the glimmer of the air	B3
The stars had vanished but again	C
I beheld those Sibyls august	Z2
Over stilled ocean	C
And on their faces the dawn	C
Even as I looked they lifted up their heads	I
They lifted their heads like eagles	I
That slowly shake and widen their wondrous wings	I
They arose and vanished like the stars	I
The light of the changed world the world new born	C
Brimmed over the silence of the seas	I
But even in the rising of its beam	C3
I remembered the light in their eyes	I

Robert Laurence Binyon

The Sibyls Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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