The City Revisited Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDEFCGFHIJIHK LLMNLL LLOPQQIILRLPP LLRLSSTTBBLLLLLLUUV V| The grey gulls drift across the bay | A |
| Softly and still as flakes of snow | B |
| Against the thinning fog All day | A |
| I sat and watched them come and go | B |
| And now at last the sun was set | C |
| Filling the waves with colored fire | D |
| Till each seemed like a jewelled spire | E |
| Thrust up from some drowned city Soon | F |
| From peak and cliff and minaret | C |
| The city's lights began to wink | G |
| Each like a friendly word The moon | F |
| Began to broaden out her shield | H |
| Spurting with silver Straight before | I |
| The brown hills lay like quiet beasts | J |
| Stretched out beside a well loved door | I |
| And filling earth and sky and field | H |
| With the calm heaving of their breasts | K |
| - | |
| Nothing was gone nothing was changed | L |
| The smallest wave was unestranged | L |
| By all the long ache of the years | M |
| Since last I saw them blind with tears | N |
| Their welcome like the hills stood fast | L |
| And I I had come home at last | L |
| - | |
| So I laughed out with them aloud | L |
| To think that now the sun was broad | L |
| And climbing up the iron sky | O |
| Where the raw streets stretched sullenly | P |
| About another room I knew | Q |
| In a mean house and soon there too | Q |
| The smith would burst the flimsy door | I |
| And find me lying on the floor | I |
| Just where I fell the other night | L |
| After that breaking wave of pain | R |
| How they will storm and rage and fight | L |
| Servants and mistress one and all | P |
| No money for the funeral | P |
| - | |
| I broke my life there Let it stand | L |
| At that | L |
| The waters are a plain | R |
| Heaving and bright on either hand | L |
| A tremulous and lustral peace | S |
| Which shall endure though all things cease | S |
| Filling my heart as water fills | T |
| A cup There stand the quiet hills | T |
| So waiting for my wings to grow | B |
| I watch the gulls sail to and fro | B |
| Rising and falling soft and swift | L |
| Drifting along as bubbles drift | L |
| And though I see the face of God | L |
| Hereafter this day have I trod | L |
| Nearer to Him than I shall tread | L |
| Ever again The night is dead | L |
| And there's the dawn poured out like wine | U |
| Along the dim horizon line | U |
| And from the city comes the chimes | V |
| - | |
| We have our heaven on earth sometimes | V |
Stephen Vincent Benet
(1)
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