The Star-splitter Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGCHCIJKDDLMCL LFDLNOPQLDLJRLLSFLLS TUVWXYZDLLA2B2C2D2E2 LF2LG2LYLH2LG2F I2J2K2FLLLL2 LDM2N2O2LLWMLOP2NLOO Q2RFLR2 LLS2LR2You know Orien always comes up sideways | A |
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains | B |
And rising on his hands he looks in on me | C |
Busy outdoors by lantern light with something | D |
I should have done by daylight and indeed | E |
After the ground is frozen I should have done | F |
Before it froze and a gust flings a handful | G |
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney | C |
To make fun of my way of doing things | H |
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me | C |
Has a man I should like to ask no rights | I |
These forces are obliged to pay respect to | J |
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk | K |
Of heavenly stars with hugger mugger farming | D |
Till having failed at hugger mugger farming | D |
He burned his house down for the fire insurance | L |
And spent the proceeds on a telescope | M |
To satisfy a life long curiosity | C |
About our place among the infinities | L |
- | |
What do you want with one of those blame things | L |
I asked him well beforehand Don't you get one | F |
Don't call it blamed there isn't anything | D |
More blameless in the sense of being less | L |
A weapon in our human fight he said | N |
I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it | O |
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground | P |
And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move | Q |
Few farms changed hands so rather than spend years | L |
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling | D |
He burned his house down for the fire insurance | L |
And bought the telescope with what it came to | J |
He had been heard to say by several | R |
The best thing that we're put here for's to see | L |
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's | L |
A telescope Someone in every town | S |
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one | F |
In Littleton it may as well be me | L |
After such loose talk it was no surprise | L |
When he did what he did and burned his house down | S |
Mean laughter went about the town that day | T |
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on | U |
And he could wait we'd see to him to morrow | V |
But the first thing next morning we reflected | W |
If one by one we counted people out | X |
For the least sin it wouldn't take us long | Y |
To get so we had no one left to live with | Z |
For to be social is to be forgiving | D |
Our thief the one who does our stealing from us | L |
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers | L |
But what we miss we go to him and ask for | A2 |
He promptly gives it back that is if still | B2 |
Uneaten unworn out or undisposed of | C2 |
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad | D2 |
About his telescope Beyond the age | E2 |
Of being given one's gift for Christmas | L |
He had to take the best way he knew how | F2 |
To find himself in one Well all we said was | L |
He took a strange thing to be roguish over | G2 |
Some sympathy was wasted on the house | L |
A good old timer dating back along | Y |
But a house isn't sentient the house | L |
Didn't feel anything And if it did | H2 |
Why not regard it as a sacrifice | L |
And an old fashioned sacrifice by fire | G2 |
Instead of a new fashioned one at auction | F |
- | |
Out of a house and so out of a farm | I2 |
At one stroke of a match Brad had to turn | J2 |
To earn a living on the Concord railroad | K2 |
As under ticket agent at a station | F |
Where his job when he wasn't selling tickets | L |
Was setting out up track and down not plants | L |
As on a farm but planets evening stars | L |
That varied in their hue from red to green | L2 |
- | |
He got a good glass for six hundred dollars | L |
His new job gave him leisure for star gazing | D |
Often he bid me come and have a look | M2 |
Up the brass barrel velvet black inside | N2 |
At a star quaking in the other end | O2 |
I recollect a night of broken clouds | L |
And underfoot snow melted down to ice | L |
And melting further in the wind to mud | W |
Bradford and I had out the telescope | M |
We spread our two legs as it spread its three | L |
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it | O |
And standing at our leisure till the day broke | P2 |
Said some of the best things we ever said | N |
That telescope was christened the Star splitter | L |
Because it didn't do a thing but split | O |
A star in two or three the way you split | O |
A globule of quicksilver in your hand | Q2 |
With one stroke of your finger in the middle | R |
It's a star splitter if there ever was one | F |
And ought to do some good if splitting stars | L |
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood | R2 |
- | |
We've looked and looked but after all where are we | L |
Do we know any better where we are | L |
And how it stands between the night to night | S2 |
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney | L |
How different from the way it ever stood | R2 |
Robert Lee Frost
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