Tamar Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMN OPQPRSTUPVWTXYLSZA2B 2C2QPD2E2F2NVG2EGH2P VYI2QJ2K2CL2M2VE CN2CO2CCYYVP2VCV VQ2CCR2YG2S2T2E2VF2 H2U2PQVV2W2 CK2X2 VYNY2VCVCZ2G2YA3B3C3 I2D3H2E3PF3Z2CCB2G3Y EQPYH3HVCVQC2HQYI3VQ H ACHHCHJ3QQHQQPHK3CHH QCCHYHQYYCI | A |
A night the half moon was like a dancing girl | B |
No like a drunkard's last half dollar | C |
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill range | D |
Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea cliff | E |
When she stopped spurred when she trembled drove | F |
The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep | G |
They tasted blood the mare with four slim hooves | H |
On a foot of ground pivoted like a top | I |
Jumped from the crumble of sod went down caught slipped | J |
Then the quick frenzy finished stiffening herself | K |
Slid with her drunken rider down the ledges | L |
Shot from sheer rock and broke | M |
Her life out on the rounded tidal boulders | N |
- | |
The night you know accepted with no show of emotion the little | O |
accident grave Orion | P |
Moved northwest from the naked shore the moon moved to | Q |
meridian the slow pulse of the ocean | P |
Beat the slow tide came in across the slippery stones it drowned | R |
the dead mare's muzzle and sluggishly | S |
Felt for the rider Cauldwell s sleepy soul came back from the | T |
blind course curious to know | U |
What sea cold fingers tapped the walls of its deserted ruin | P |
Pain pain and faintness crushing | V |
Weights and a vain desire to vomit and soon again | W |
die icy fingers they had crept over the loose hand and lay in the | T |
hair now He rolled sidewise | X |
Against mountains of weight and for another half hour lay still | Y |
With a gush of liquid noises | L |
The wave covered him head and all his body | S |
Crawled without consciousness and like a creature with no bones | Z |
a seaworm lifted its face | A2 |
Above the sea wrack of a stone then a white twilight grew about | B2 |
the moon and above | C2 |
The ancient water the everlasting repetition of the dawn You | Q |
shipwrecked horseman | P |
So many and still so many and now for you the last But when it | D2 |
grew daylight | E2 |
He grew quite conscious broken ends of bone ground on each | F2 |
other among the working fibers | N |
While by half inches he was drawing himself out of the seawrack | V |
up to sandy granite | G2 |
Out of the tide's path Where the thin ledge tailed into flat cliff | E |
he fell asleep | G |
Far seaward | H2 |
The daylight moon hung like a slip of cloud against the horizon | P |
The tide was ebbing | V |
From the dead horse and the black belt of sea growth Cauldwell | Y |
seemed to have felt her crying beside him | I2 |
His mother who was dead He thought 'If I had a month or two | Q |
of life yet | J2 |
I would remember to be decent only it's now too late I'm finished | K2 |
mother mother | C |
I'm sorry ' After that he thought only of pain and raging thirst | L2 |
until the sundown | M2 |
Reddened the sea and hands were reaching for him and drawing | V |
him up the cliff | E |
- | |
His sister Tamar | C |
Nursed him in the big westward bedroom | N2 |
Of the old house on Point Lobos After fever | C |
A wonderful day of peace and pleasant weakness | O2 |
Brought home to his heart the beauty of things 'O Tamar | C |
I've thrown away years like rubbish Listen Tamar | C |
It would be better for me to be a cripple | Y |
Sit on the steps and watch the forest grow up the hill | Y |
Or a new speck of moss on some old rock | V |
That takes ten years agrowing than waste | P2 |
Shame and my spirit on Monterey rye whiskey | V |
And worse and worse I shan't be a cripple Tamar | C |
We'll walk along the blessed old gray sea | V |
And up in the hills and watch the spring come home ' | - |
- | |
Youth is a troublesome but a magical thing | V |
There is little more to say for it when you've said | Q2 |
Young bones knit easily he that fell in December | C |
Walked in the February fields His sister Tamar | C |
Was with him and his mind ran on her name | R2 |
But she was saying 'We laugh at poor Aunt Stella | Y |
With her spirit | G2 |
visitors Lee something told her truth | S2 |
Last August you were hunting deer you had been gone | T2 |
Ten days or twelve we heard her scream at night | E2 |
I went to the room she told me | V |
She'd seen you lying all bloody on the sea beach | F2 |
By a dead deer its blood dabbling the black weeds of the ebb ' | - |
'I was up Tassajara way ' he answered | H2 |
'Far from the sea ' 'We were glad when you rode home | U2 |
Safe with the two bucks on the packhorse But listen | P |
She said she watched the stars flying over you | Q |
In her vision Orion she said and made me look | V |
Out of her window southward where I saw | V2 |
The stars they call the Scorpion the red bead | W2 |
With the curling tail Then it will be in winter ' | - |
She whispered to me 'Orion is winter ' | - |
'Tamar Tamar | C |
Winter is over visions are over and vanished | K2 |
The fields are winking full of poppies | X2 |
In a week or two I'll fill your arms with shining irises ' | - |
- | |
The winter sun went under and all that night there came a roaring | V |
from the south Lee Cauldwell | Y |
Lay awake and heard the tough old house creak all her timbers | N |
he was miserably lonely and vacant | Y2 |
He'd put away the boyish jets of wickedness loves with dark | V |
eyes in Monterey back streets liquor | C |
And all its fellowship what was left to live for but the farmwork | V |
rain would come and hinder | C |
He heard the cypress trees that seemed to scream in the wind | Z2 |
and felt the ocean pounding granite | G2 |
His father and Tamar's the old man David Cauldwell lay in the | Y |
eastern chamber when the storm | A3 |
Wakened him from the heartless fugitive slumber of age he rose | B3 |
and made a light and lighted | C3 |
The lamp not cold yet night and day were nearly equal to him | I2 |
he had seen too many he dressed | D3 |
Slowly and opened his Bible In the neighboring rooms he heard | H2 |
on one side Stella Moreland | E3 |
His dead wife's sister quieting his own sister the idiot Jinny | P |
Cauldwell who laughed and chuckled | F3 |
Often for half the night long an old woman with a child's mind | Z2 |
and mostly sleepless in the other | C |
Chamber Tamar was moaning for it seemed that nightmare | C |
Within the house answered to storm without | B2 |
To Tamar it seemed that she was walking by the seaside | G3 |
With her dear brother who said 'Here's where I fell | Y |
A bad girl that I knew in Monterey pushed me over the cliff | E |
You can see blood still on the boulders ' Where he vanished to | Q |
She could not tell nor why she was crying 'Lee No | P |
No dearest brother dearest brother no ' But she cried vainly | Y |
Lee was not there to help her a wild white horse | H3 |
Came out of the wave and trampled her with his hooves | H |
The horror that she had dreaded through her dreaming | V |
With mystical foreknowledge When it wakened her | C |
She like her father heard old Jinny chuckling | V |
And Stella sighing and soothing her and the southwind | Q |
Raging around the gables of the house and through the forest of | C2 |
the cypresses | H |
'When it rains it will be quieter ' Tamar thought She slept | Q |
again all night not a drop fell | Y |
Old Cauldwell from his window saw the cloudy light seep up | I3 |
the sky from the overhanging | V |
Hilltops the dawn was dammed behind the hills but overflowed | Q |
at last and ran down on the sea | H |
- | |
II | A |
Lee Cauldwell rode across the roaring southwind to the winter | C |
pasture up in the hills | H |
A hundred times he wanted Tamar to show her some new beauty | H |
of canyon wildflowers water | C |
Dashing its ferns or oaktrees thrusting elbows at the wind blackoaks | H |
smoldering with foliage | J3 |
And the streaked beauty of white oak trunks and redwood | Q |
glens he rode up higher across the rainwind | Q |
And found his father's cattle in a quiet hollow among the hills | H |
their horns to the wind | Q |
Quietly grazing He returned another way from the headland | Q |
over Wildcat Canyon | P |
Saw the immense water possessing all the west and saw Point Lobos | H |
Gemmed in it and the barn roofs and the house roof | K3 |
Like ships' keels in the cypress tops and thought of Tamar | C |
Toward sundown he approached the house Will Andrews | H |
Was leaving it and young Cauldwell said 'Listen Bill Andrews | H |
We've had gay times together and ridden at night | Q |
I've quit it I don't want my old friends to visit my sister | C |
Better keep off the place ' 'I will ' said the other | C |
'When Tamar tells me to ' 'You think my bones | H |
Aren't mended yet better keep off ' Lee Cauldwell | Y |
Rode by to the stable wondering why his lips | H |
Twitched with such bitter anger Tamar wondered | Q |
Why he went upstairs without a word or smile | Y |
Of pleasure in her The old man David Cauldwell | Y |
When Lee had told him news of the her | C |
Robinson Jeffers
(1)
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