Aforetime Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Dear exile from the hurrying crowd	A
At work I muse to you aloud	A
Thought on my anvil softens glows	B
And I forget our art has foes	B
For life the mother of beauty seems	C
A joyous sleep with waking dreams	C
Then the toy armoury of the brain	D
Opining judging looks as vain	D
As trowels silver gilt for use	E
Of mayors and kings who have to lay	F
Foundation stones in hope they may	F
Be honoured for walls others build	G
I in amicable muse	H
With fathomless wonder only filled	G
Whisper over to your ear	I
Listening two hundred odd miles north	J
And give thought chase that were you here	I
Our talk would never run to earth	K
	-
Man can answer no momentous question	L
Whence comes his spirit Has it lived before	M
Reason fails hot springs of feeling spout	N
Their snowy columns high in the dim land	O
Of his surmise violent divine decisions	P
That often rule him and at times he views	H
Portraits of places he has never been to	Q
Yet more minute and vivid than remembrance	R
Of boyhood homes sail between sleep and waking	S
Like some mirage refuting all experience	R
With topsy turvy ships	T
That steals by in dead calms through tropic haze	U
And many a man in his climacteric years	V
Thoughts and remembered words have roused from sleep	W
With knowledge that he lacked on lying down	X
And I lapped in a trance of reverie doubt	N
Some spore of episodes	Y
Anterior far beyond this body's birth	K
Dispersed like puffs of dust impalpable	F
Wind carried round this globe for centuries	Z
May breathed with common air yet swim the blood	A2
And striking root in this or that brain raise	U
Imaginations unaccountable	F
One such seems half implied in all I am	B2
And many times re pondered shapes like this	C2
	-
A child myself I watched a woman loll	F
Like to a clot of seaweed thrown ashore	M
Heavy and limp as cloth soaked in black dye	D2
She glooms the noontide dazzle where a bay	F
Bites into vineyarded flats close fenced by hills	E2
Over whose tops lap forests of cork and fir	F2
And reach in places half down their rough slopes	G2
Lower some few cleared fields square on the thickets	H2
Of junipers and longer thorns than furze	H2
So clumped that they are trackless even for goats	H2
I know two things about that woman first	I2
She is a slave and I am free and next	J2
As mothers need their sons' love she needs mine	K2
Longings to utter fond compassionate sounds	H2
Stir through me checked by knowing wiser folk	L2
Reprobate such indulgence Ill at ease	H2
Mute yet her captive I thrust brown toes through	Q
Loose sand no daily large tides overwhelm	M2
To cake and roll it firm and smooth and clean	N2
As the Atlantic remakes shores you know	O2
But there like trailing skirts long flaws of wind	P2
Obliterate the prints feet during calms	H2
Track over and over its always lonely stretch	Q2
Till some will have it ghosts must rove at night	R2
For folk by day are rare yet a still week	S2
Leaves hardly ten yards anywhere uncrossed	R2
Tempest spreads all revirginate like snow	O2
Half burying dead wood snapped off from tossed trees	H2
Since right along the foreshore out of reach	T2
Of furious driven waves three hundred pines	H2
Straggle the marches between sand and soil	F
Like maps of stone walled fields their branching roots	H2
Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there	U2
Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift	R2
The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring	S
That woman's gaze toils worn from remote years	H2
Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon	V2
Beyond the farthest isle whose filmy shape	W2
Floats faint on the sea line	K2
I scooping grains up with the frail half shell	F
Pale green and white lined of sea urchin knew	Q
What her eyes sought as often children know	O2
Of grief or sin they could not name or think of	X2
Yet sooth or shrink from so I saw and longed	R2
To heal her tender wound and yet said naught	R2
The energy of bygone joy and pain	D
Had left her listless figure charged with magic	Y2
That caught and held my idleness near hers	H2
Resentful of her power my spirit chafed	R2
Against its own deep pity as though it were	F2
Raised ghost and she the witch had bid it haunt me	Z2
What's more I knew this slave by rights should glean	N2
And faggot drift wood not lounge there and waste	R2
My father's food dreaming his time away	F
For then as now the common minded rich	A3
Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means	H2
For every waste of life At length I spoke	L2
Insulting both my inarticulate soul	F
And her with acted anger 'Lazy wretch	A3
Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea	Z2
As though you waited for a homing ship	B3
My father might with reason spend his hours	H2
Scanning the far horizon for his Swan	C3
Whose outward lading was full half a vintage	D3
Is now months overdue ' She turned on me	Z2
Her languor knit and through its homespun wrap	E3
Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will	F
While those great caves of night her eyes faced mine	K2
Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs	H2
At last she spoke as one who must be heeded	R2
Truly I am not clear	F3
Whether her meaning was conveyed in words	H2
She mingled accents of an eastern tongue	G3
With deformed phrases of our native Latin	L
Or whether thought from her gaze poured through mine	K2
The gravity of recollected life	H3
Was hers condensed and like a vision flashed	R2
Suddenly on the guilty mind a whole	F
Compact no longer a mere tedious string	S
Of moments negligible each so small	F
As they were lived but stark like a slain man	I3
Who would alive have been ourself with twice	H2
The skill the knowledge the vitality	Z2
Actually ours Yea as a tree may view	Q
With fingerless boughs and lorn pole impotent	R2
An elephant gorged upon its leaves depart	R2
Men often have reviewed an unwieldy past	R2
That like a feasted Mammoth leisured and slow	O2
Turned its back on their warped bones Even thus	H2
Momentous with reproach her grave regard	R2
Made me feel mean cashiered of rank and right	R2
My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed	R2
And all their fidgety quicksilver grew stiff	J3
Novel and fevering hallucinations	H2
Invaded my attention So daylight	R2
When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house	H2
As then the dreams and terrors of the night	R2
Decamp so from my mind were driven	L
All its own thoughts and feelings Close she leant	R2
Propped on a swarthy arm while the other helped	R2
With eloquent gesture potent as wizard wand	R2
Veil the world off as with an airy web	K3
Or flowing tent a gleam with pictured folds	H2
These tauten and distend one sea of wheat	R2
Islanded with black cities borders now	L3
The voluminous blue pavilion of day	F
There under to the nearest of those towns	H2
This woman younger by ten years made haste	R2
While at her side ran a small boy of six	H2
They neared the walls half a huge double gate	R2
Lay prostrate though the other by stone hinges	H2
Hung to its flanking tower The path they followed	R2
Threaded an old paved road whose flags were edged	R2
With dry grass and dry weeds even cactuses	H2
Had pushed the stones up or found root in muck heaps	H2
The path struck up the slope of the fallen door	M
Basalt like midnight o'er which dusty feet	R2
Had greyed a passage for it rested on	C3
Some d bris fallen from the left hand tower	F2
And from its upper edge rude blocks like steps	H2
Led down into the straight main street that ran	I3
Past eyeless buildings mined as it were from coal	F
And earthquake raised to light Palaces and	R2
Roofless wide flighted colonnaded temples	H2
The uncemented walls piled plumb with blocks	H2
Squared polished fitted with daemonic patience	H2
Each gaping threshold high again as need be	Z2
Waited a nine foot lord to enter hall	F
Where the least draughty corner sheltered now	L3
Half tented hut or improvised small home	M3
For Arab brown light footed and proud necked	R2
As was this woman with the compelling voice	H2
Their present hutched and hived within that past	R2
As bees in the parchment chest of Samson's lion	L
And all seem conscious that their life was sweet	R2
Like mice who clean their faces after meals	H2
And have such grace of movement when unscared	R2
As	H2

Thomas Sturge Moore

Aforetime Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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