This Heart - A Woman's Dream Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH IIII CCJJ IIJJ JJIE EEJJ| At midnight in the room where he lay dead | A |
| Whom in his life I had never clearly read | A |
| I thought if I could peer into that citadel | B |
| His heart I should at last know full and well | B |
| - | |
| What hereto had been known to him alone | C |
| Despite our long sit out of years foreflown | C |
| And if I said I do this for his memory's sake | D |
| It would not wound him even if he could wake | D |
| - | |
| So I bent over him He seemed to smile | E |
| With a calm confidence the whole long while | E |
| That I withdrawing his heart held it and bit by bit | F |
| Perused the unguessed things found written on it | F |
| - | |
| It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere | G |
| With quaint vermiculations close and clear | G |
| His graving Had I known would I have risked the stroke | H |
| Its reading brought and my own heart nigh broke | H |
| - | |
| Yes there at last eyes opened did I see | I |
| His whole sincere symmetric history | I |
| There were his truth his simple singlemindedness | I |
| Strained maybe by time's storms but there no less | I |
| - | |
| There were the daily deeds from sun to sun | C |
| In blindness but good faith that he had done | C |
| There were regrets at instances wherein he swerved | J |
| As he conceived from cherishings I had deserved | J |
| - | |
| There were old hours all figured down as bliss | I |
| Those spent with me how little had I thought this | I |
| There those when at my absence whether he slept or waked | J |
| Though I knew not 'twas so his spirit ached | J |
| - | |
| There that when we were severed how day dulled | J |
| Till time joined us anew was chronicled | J |
| And arguments and battlings in defence of me | I |
| That heart recorded clearly and ruddily | E |
| - | |
| I put it back and left him as he lay | E |
| While pierced the morning pink and then the gray | E |
| Into each dreary room and corridor around | J |
| Where I shall wait but his step will not sound | J |
Thomas Hardy
(1)
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