Sailing Ships Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDEFFGG HHIIJKLLMMNNOO PPQQCCRROOOO CCOOSSNNOSOOCCOOO TTUUOOOCVWPPOOCCLying on Downs above the wrinkling bay | A |
I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day | A |
The candid day wind shaven brindled turf | B |
Tall cliffs and long sea line of marbled surf | B |
From Cornish Lizard to the Kentish Nore | C |
Lipping the bulwarks of the English shore | C |
While many a lovely ship below sailed by | D |
On unknown errand kempt and leisurely | E |
And after each oh after each my heart | F |
Fled forth as watching from the Downs apart | F |
I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide | G |
That might befall their beauty and their pride | G |
- | |
Shared first with them the bless d void repose | H |
Of oily days at sea when only rose | H |
The porpoise's slow wheel to break the sheen | I |
Of satin water indolently green | I |
When for'ard the crew caps tilted over eyes | J |
Lay heaped on deck slept mumbled smoked threw dice | K |
The sleepy summer days the summer nights | L |
The coast pricked out with rings of harbour lights | L |
The motionless nights the vaulted nights of June | M |
When high in the cordage drifts the entangled moon | M |
And blocks go knocking and the sheets go slapping | N |
And lazy swells against the sides come lapping | N |
And summer mornings off red Devon rocks | O |
Faint inland bells at dawn and crowing cocks | O |
- | |
Shared swifter days when headlands into ken | P |
Trod grandly threatened and were lost again | P |
Old fangs along the battlemented coast | Q |
And followed still my ship when winds were most | Q |
Night purified and lying steeply over | C |
She fled the wind as flees a girl her lover | C |
Quickened by that pursuit for which she fretted | R |
Her temper by the contest proved and whetted | R |
Wild stars swept overhead her lofty spars | O |
Reared to a ragged heaven sown with stars | O |
As leaping out from narrow English ease | O |
She faced the roll of long Atlantic seas | O |
- | |
Her captain then was I I was her crew | C |
The mind that laid her course the wake she drew | C |
The waves that rose against her bows the gales | O |
Nay I was more I was her very sails | O |
Rounded before the wind her eager keel | S |
Her straining mast heads her responsive wheel | S |
Her pennon stiffened like a swallow's wing | N |
Yes I was all her slope and speed and swing | N |
Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea | O |
She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly | S |
Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars | O |
On desert's verge below the sunset bars | O |
Or passed the girdle of the planet where | C |
The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear | C |
And strayed cool Northerner beneath strange skies | O |
Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries | O |
Down that long coast and saw Magellan's Clouds arise | O |
- | |
And some that beat up Channel homeward bound | T |
I watched and wondered what they might have found | T |
What alien ports enriched their teeming hold | U |
With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold | U |
And thought how London clerks with paper clips | O |
Had filed the bills of lading of those ships | O |
Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea | O |
But wrote down jettison and barratry | C |
Perils Adventures and the Act of God | V |
Having no vision of such wrath flung broad | W |
Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen | P |
The classic dangers of sea faring men | P |
And wrote 'Restraint of Princes ' and 'the Acts | O |
Of the King's Enemies ' as vacant facts | O |
Blind to the ambushed seas the encircling roar | C |
Of angry nations foaming into war | C |
Victoria Mary Sackville-west
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