De Rerum Virtute Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDEFGHIJ A KLMNDOPQORSJTUVRJRWW A XYZA2RB2R C2 D2E2F2KG2H2I2RJ2RRJR K2R G2 L2E2G2JRM2RKN2A2UJVO 2G2A2P2Q2| I | A |
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| Here is the skull of a man a man s thoughts and emotions | B |
| Have moved under the thin bone vault like clouds | C |
| Under the blue one love and desire and pain | D |
| Thunderclouds of wrath and white gales of fear | E |
| Have hung inside here and sometimes the curious desire of knowing | F |
| Values and purpose and the causes of things | G |
| Has coasted like a little observer air plane over the images | H |
| That filled this mind it never discovered much | I |
| And now all s empty a bone bubble a blown out eggshell | J |
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| - | |
| II | A |
| - | |
| That s what it s like for the egg too has a mind | K |
| Doing what our able chemists will never do | L |
| Building the body of a hatchling choosing among the proteins | M |
| These for the young wing muscles these for the great | N |
| Crystalline eyes these for the flighty nerves and brain | D |
| Choosing and forming a limited but superhuman intelligence | O |
| Prophetic of the future and aware of the past | P |
| The hawk s egg will make a hawk and the serpent s | Q |
| A gliding serpent but each with a little difference | O |
| From its ancestors and slowly if it works the race | R |
| Forms a new race that also is a part of the plan | S |
| Within the egg I believe the first living cell | J |
| Had echoes of the future in it and felt | T |
| Direction and the great animals the deep green forest | U |
| And whale s track sea I believe this globed earth | V |
| Not all by chance and fortune brings forth her broods | R |
| But feels and chooses And the Galaxy the firewheel | J |
| On which we are pinned the whirlwind of stars in which our sun is one dust grain one electron this giant atom of the universe | R |
| Is not blind force but fulfils its life and intends its courses All things are full of God | W |
| Winter and summer day and night war and peace are God | W |
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| - | |
| III | A |
| - | |
| Thus the thing stands the labor and the games go on | X |
| What for What for Am I a God that I should know | Y |
| Men live in peace and happiness men live in horror | Z |
| And die howling Do you think the blithe sun | A2 |
| Is ignorant that black waste and beggarly blindness trail him like hounds | R |
| And will have him at last He will be strangled | B2 |
| Among his dead satellites remembering magnificence | R |
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| - | |
| IV | C2 |
| - | |
| I stand on the cliff at Sovranes creek mouth | D2 |
| Westward beyond the raging water and the bent shoulder of the world | E2 |
| The bitter futile war in Korea proceeds like an idiot | F2 |
| Prophesying It is too hot in mind | K |
| For anyone except God perhaps to see beauty in it Indeed it is hard to see beauty | G2 |
| In any of the acts of man but that means the acts of a sick microbe | H2 |
| On a satellite of a dust grain twirled in a whirlwind | I2 |
| In the world of stars | R |
| Something perhaps may come of him in any event | J2 |
| He can t last long Well I am short of patience | R |
| Since my wife died and this era of spite and hate filled half worlds | R |
| Gets to the bone I believe that man too is beautiful | J |
| But it is hard to see and wrapped up in falsehoods Michael Angelo and the Greek sculptors | R |
| How they flattered the race Homer and Shakespeare | K2 |
| How they flattered the race | R |
| - | |
| - | |
| V | G2 |
| - | |
| One light is left us the beauty of things not men | L2 |
| The immense beauty of the world not the human world | E2 |
| Look and without imagination desire nor dream directly | G2 |
| At the mountains and sea Are they not beautiful | J |
| These plunging promontories and flame shaped peaks | R |
| Stopping the sombre stupendous glory the storm fed ocean Look at the Lobos Rocks off the shore | M2 |
| With foam flying at their flanks and the long sea lions | R |
| Couching on them Look at the gulls on the cliff wind | K |
| And the soaring hawk under the cloud stream | N2 |
| But in the sage brush desert all one sun stricken | A2 |
| Color of dust or in the reeking tropical rain forest | U |
| Or in the intolerant north and high thrones of ice is the earth not beautiful | J |
| Nor the great skies over the earth | V |
| The beauty of things means virtue and value in them | O2 |
| It is in the beholder s eye not the world Certainly | G2 |
| It is the human mind s translation of the transhuman | A2 |
| Intrinsic glory It means that the world is sound | P2 |
| Whatever the sick microbe does But he too is part of it | Q2 |
Robinson Jeffers
(1)
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