A Sign-seeker Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBA CBBC DEFD GGGG HBBH GIIG BBBB JKKJ LBBL BGGB CBBC GGGG| I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry | A |
| The day tides many shaped and hued | B |
| I see the nightfall shades subtrude | B |
| And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by | A |
| - | |
| I view the evening bonfires of the sun | C |
| On hills where morning rains have hissed | B |
| The eyeless countenance of the mist | B |
| Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done | C |
| - | |
| I have seen the lightning blade the leaping star | D |
| The caldrons of the sea in storm | E |
| Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm | F |
| And trodden where abysmal fires and snowcones are | D |
| - | |
| I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse | G |
| The coming of eccentric orbs | G |
| To mete the dust the sky absorbs | G |
| To weigh the sun and fix the hour each planet dips | G |
| - | |
| I witness fellow earth men surge and strive | H |
| Assemblies meet and throb and part | B |
| Death's soothing finger sorrow's smart | B |
| All the vast various moils that mean a world alive | H |
| - | |
| But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense | G |
| Those sights of which old prophets tell | I |
| Those signs the general word so well | I |
| Vouchsafed to their unheed denied my watchings tense | G |
| - | |
| In graveyard green behind his monument | B |
| To glimpse a phantom parent friend | B |
| Wearing his smile and Not the end | B |
| Outbreathing softly that were blest enlightenment | B |
| - | |
| Or if a dead Love's lips whom dreams reveal | J |
| When midnight imps of King Decay | K |
| Delve sly to solve me back to clay | K |
| Should leave some print to prove her spirit kisses real | J |
| - | |
| Or when Earth's Frail lie bleeding of her Strong | L |
| If some Recorder as in Writ | B |
| Near to the weary scene should flit | B |
| And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong | L |
| - | |
| There are who rapt to heights of tranc d trust | B |
| These tokens claim to feel and see | G |
| Read radiant hints of times to be | G |
| Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust | B |
| - | |
| Such scope is granted not my powers indign | C |
| I have lain in dead men's beds have walked | B |
| The tombs of those with whom I'd talked | B |
| Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign | C |
| - | |
| And panted for response But none replies | G |
| No warnings loom nor whisperings | G |
| To open out my limitings | G |
| And Nescience mutely muses When a man falls he lies | G |
Thomas Hardy
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Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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