An Artist Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCD EFCGGHIJKLMHAAGNAOPO QGRASTULVES AWSXA SUSYZA2 GB2OC2KAD2E2F2 GG2H2UUAH2 GGI2GWJ2EF2K2 K2G GCAK2K2CGAThat sculptor we knew the passionate eyed son of a quarryman | A |
Who astonished Rome and Paris in his meteor youth and then | A |
was gone at his high tide of triumphs | B |
Without reason or good bye I have seen him again lately after | C |
twenty years but not in Europe | D |
- | |
In desert hills I rode a horse slack kneed with thirst Down a | E |
steep slope a dancing swarm | F |
Of yellow butterflies over a shining rock made me hope water | C |
We slid down to the place | G |
The spring was bitter but the horse drank I imagined wearings | G |
of an old path from that wet rock | H |
Ran down the canyon I followed soon they were lost I came | I |
to a stone valley in which it seemed | J |
No man nor his mount had ever ventured you wondered | K |
whether even a vulture'd ever spread sail there | L |
There were stones of strange form under a cleft in the far hill | M |
I tethered the horse to a rock | H |
And scrambled over A heap like a stone torrent a moraine | A |
But monstrously formed limbs of broken carving appeared in | A |
the rock fall enormous breasts defaced heads | G |
Of giants the eyes calm through the brute veils of fracture It | N |
was natural then to climb higher and go in | A |
Up the cleft gate The canyon was a sheer walled crack winding | O |
at the entrance but around its bend | P |
The walls grew dreadful with stone giants presences growing | O |
out of the rigid precipice that strove | Q |
In dream between stone and life intense to cast their chaos | G |
or to enter and return stone fleshed nerve stretched | R |
Great bodies ever more beautiful and more heavy with pain | A |
they seemed leading to some unbearable | S |
Consummation of the ecstasy but there troll among | T |
Titans the bearded master of the place accosted me | U |
In a cold anger a mallet in his hand filthy and ragged There | L |
was no kindness in that man's mind | V |
But after he had driven me down to the entrance he spoke a | E |
little | S |
- | |
The merciless sun had found the slot now | A |
To hide in and lit for the wick of that stone lamp bowl a sky | W |
almost I thought abominably beautiful | S |
While our lost artist we used to admire for now I knew him | X |
spoke of his passion | A |
- | |
He said 'Marble | S |
White marble is fit to model a snow mountain let man be | U |
modest Nor bronze I am bound to have my tool | S |
In my material no irrelevances I found this pit of dark gray | Y |
freestone fine grained and tough enough | Z |
To make sketches that under any weathering will last my lifetime | A2 |
- | |
The town is eight miles off I can fetch food and no one follows | G |
me home I have water and a cave | B2 |
Here and no possible lack of material I need therefore nothing | O |
As to companions I make them | C2 |
And models They are seldom wanted I know a Basque shepherd | K |
I sometimes use and a woman of the town | A |
What more Sympathy Praise I have never desired them and | D2 |
also I have never deserved them I will not show you | E2 |
More than the spalls you saw by accident | F2 |
- | |
What I see is the enormous | G |
beauty of things but what I attempt | G2 |
Is nothing to that I am helpless toward that | H2 |
It is only to form in stone the mould of some ideal humanity | U |
that might be worthy to be | U |
Under that lightning Animalcules that God if he were given | A |
to laughter might omit to laugh at | H2 |
Those children of my hands are tortured because they feel ' | - |
he said 'the storm of the outer magnificence | G |
They are giants in agony They have seen from my eyes | G |
The man destroying beauty of the dawns over their notch | I2 |
yonder and all the obliterating stars | G |
But in their eyes they have peace I have lived a little and I | W |
think | J2 |
Peace marrying pain alone can breed that excellence in the | E |
luckless race might make it decent | F2 |
To exist at all on the star lit stone breast | K2 |
- | |
I hope ' he said 'that | K2 |
when I grow old and the chisel drops | G |
I may crawl out on a ledge of the rock and die like a wolf ' | - |
- | |
These | G |
fragments are all I can remember | C |
These in the flare of the desert evening Having been driven | A |
so brutally forth I never returned | K2 |
Yet I respect him enough to keep his name and the place secret | K2 |
I hope that some other traveller | C |
May stumble on that ravine of Titans after their maker has | G |
died While he lives let him alone | A |
Robinson Jeffers
(1)
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