The Atavist Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDED FGFG HIJI KLKL MNMN GOGO PQPQ DDDD DD DD| What are you doing here Tom Thorne on the white top knot o' the world | A |
| Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen | B |
| Hugging a smudgy willow fire deep in a lynx robe curled | A |
| You that's a lord's own son Tom Thorne what does your madness mean | B |
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| Go home go home to your clubs Tom Thorne home to your evening dress | C |
| Home to your place of power and pride and the feast that waits for you | D |
| Why do you linger all alone in the splendid emptiness | E |
| Scouring the Land of the Little Sticks on the trail of the caribou | D |
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| Why did you fall off the Earth Tom Thorne out of our social ken | F |
| What did your deep damnation prove What was your dark despair | G |
| Oh with the width of a world between and years to the count of ten | F |
| If they cut out your heart to night Tom Thorne her name would be graven there | G |
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| And you fled afar for the thing called Peace and you thought you would find it here | H |
| In the purple tundras vastly spread and the mountains whitely piled | I |
| It's a weary quest and a dreary quest but I think that the end is near | J |
| For they say that the Lord has hidden it in the secret heart of the Wild | I |
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| And you know that heart as few men know and your eyes are fey and deep | K |
| With a something lost come welling back from the raw red dawn of life | L |
| With woe and pain have you greatly lain till out of abysmal sleep | K |
| The soul of the Stone Age leaps in you alert for the ancient strife | L |
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| And if you came to our feast again with its pomp and glee and glow | M |
| I think you would sit stone still Tom Thorne and see in a daze of dream | N |
| A mad sun goading to frenzied flame the glittering gems of the snow | M |
| And a monster musk ox bulking black against the blood red gleam | N |
| - | |
| I think you would see berg battling shores and stammer and halt and stare | G |
| With a sudden sense of the frozen void serene and vast and still | O |
| And the aching gleam and the hush of dream and the track of a great white bear | G |
| And the primal lust that surged in you as you sprang to make your kill | O |
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| I think you would hear the bull moose call and the glutted river roar | P |
| And spy the hosts of the caribou shadow the shining plain | Q |
| And feel the pulse of the Silences and stand elate once more | P |
| On the verge of the yawning vastitudes that call to you in vain | Q |
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| For I think you are one with the stars and the sun and the wind and the wave and the dew | D |
| And the peaks untrod that yearn to God and the valleys undefiled | D |
| Men soar with wings and they bridle kings but what is it all to you | D |
| Wise in the ways of the wilderness and strong with the strength of the Wild | D |
| - | |
| You have spent your life you have waged your strife where never we play a part | D |
| You have held the throne of the Great Unknown you have ruled a kingdom vast | D |
| - | |
| - | |
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| But to night there's a strange new trail for you and you go O weary heart | D |
| To the place and rest of the Great Unguessed at last Tom Thorne at last | D |
Robert William Service
(1)
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