The Song Of The Camp-fire Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGHGHIJIJ BKBKLMAM NNN OOO PPP QQR SSS TTT DDD EEE UVV WWX YZYZEA2EA2 AB2AB2C2CC2C D2E2F2E2BABBBAHeed me feed me I am hungry I am red tongued with desire | A |
Boughs of balsam slabs of cedar gummy fagots of the pine | B |
Heap them on me let me hug them to my eager heart of fire | A |
Roaring soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign | B |
Bring me knots of sunny maple silver birch and tamarack | C |
Leaping sweeping I will lap them with my ardent wings of flame | D |
I will kindle them to glory I will beat the darkness back | C |
Streaming gleaming I will goad them to my glory and my fame | D |
Bring me gnarly limbs of live oak aid me in my frenzied fight | E |
Strips of iron wood scaly blue gum writhing redly in my hold | F |
With my lunge of lurid lances with my whips that flail the night | E |
They will burgeon into beauty they will foliate in gold | F |
Let me star the dim sierras stab with light the inland seas | G |
Roaming wind and roaring darkness seek no mercy at my hands | H |
I will mock the marly heavens lamp the purple prairies | G |
I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far unhouseled lands | H |
In the vast and vaulted pine gloom where the pillared forests frown | I |
By the sullen bestial rivers running where God only knows | J |
On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down | I |
In the death spell of the barrens in the shudder of the snows | J |
In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm leaf to the pine | B |
As a symbol of defiance lo the wilderness I span | K |
And my beacons burn exultant as an everlasting sign | B |
Of unending domination of the mastery of Man | K |
I the Life the fierce Uplifter I that weaned him from the mire | L |
I the angel and the devil I the tyrant and the slave | M |
I the Spirit of the Struggle I the mighty God of Fire | A |
I the Maker and Destroyer I the Giver and the Grave | M |
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II | - |
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Gather round me boy and grey beard frontiersman of every kind | N |
Few are you and far and lonely yet an army forms behind | N |
By your camp fires shall they know you ashes scattered to the wind | N |
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Peer into my heart of solace break your bannock at my blaze | O |
Smoking stretched in lazy shelter build your castles as you gaze | O |
Or it may be deep in dreaming think of dim unhappy days | O |
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Let my warmth and glow caress you for your trails are grim and hard | P |
Let my arms of comfort press you hunger hewn and battle scarred | P |
O my lovers how I bless you with your lives so madly marred | P |
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For you seek the silent spaces and their secret lore you glean | Q |
For you win the savage races and the brutish Wild you wean | Q |
And I gladden desert places where camp fire has never been | R |
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From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared | S |
And because you hold death lightly so by death shall you be spared | S |
As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared | S |
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On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe | T |
Up the cloud of Mount McKinley where the avalanche leaps through | T |
In the furnace of Death Valley when the mirage glimmers blue | T |
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Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim | D |
Now a flare of gummy pine knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim | D |
Now a gleam of sunny ceiba when the Cuban beaches dim | D |
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Always always God's Great Open lo I burn with keener light | E |
In the corridors of silence in the vestibules of night | E |
'Mid the ferns and grasses gleaming was there ever gem so bright | E |
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Not for weaklings not for women like my brother of the hearth | U |
Ring your songs of wrath around me I was made for manful mirth | V |
In the lusty gusty greatness on the bald spots of the earth | V |
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Men my masters men my lovers ye have fought and ye have bled | W |
Gather round my ruddy embers softly glowing is my bed | W |
By my heart of solace dreaming rest ye and be comforted | X |
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III | - |
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I am dying O my masters by my fitful flame ye sleep | Y |
My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn | Z |
Grey ashes choke and cloak me and above the pines there creep | Y |
The stealthy silver moccasins of morn | Z |
There comes a countless army it's the Legion of the Light | E |
It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world | A2 |
And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night | E |
Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled | A2 |
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Leap to life again my lovers ye must toil and never tire | A |
The day of daring doing brightens clear | B2 |
When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp fire | A |
Must only be a memory of cheer | B2 |
There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn | C2 |
There is glamour in the glad effluent sky | C |
Go and leave me I will dream of you and love you when you're gone | C2 |
I have served you O my masters let me die | C |
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A little heap of ashes grey and sodden by the rain | D2 |
Wind scattered blurred and blotted by the snow | E2 |
Let that be all to tell of me and glorious again | F2 |
Ye things of greening gladness leap and glow | E2 |
A black scar in the sunshine by the palm leaf or the pine | B |
Blind to the night and dead to all desire | A |
Yet oh of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign | B |
Yet oh of power and conquest what a destiny is mine | B |
A little heap of ashes Yea a miracle divine | B |
The foot print of a god all radiant Fire | A |
Robert Service
(1)
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