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