Worth Forest Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCDEEFFGGHHIIJJKK LLKKMMNNAA KKKBKKOOPPKKQROOSSTJ UUBBEEKKAAQVWWKKXXYY KKIIOOYYKKYYBBOOYYZA 2WWYYKKYY BBYYYYK B2B2KKYYXXC2D2KKBBE2 E2OOF2ZG2G2YYH2KOOI2 I2KK BBJ2J2AAOOK2PYYOOI2I 2WWOOL2M2OOKKY YYOOBBE2E2YYYYN2| Come Prudence you have done enough to day | A |
| The worst is over and some hours of play | A |
| We both have earned even more than rest from toil | B |
| Our minds need laughter as a spent lamp oil | B |
| And after their long fast a recompense | C |
| How sweet the evening is with its fresh scents | D |
| Of briar and fern distilled by the warm wind | E |
| How green a robe the rain has left behind | E |
| How the birds laugh What say you to a walk | F |
| Over the hill and our long promised talk | F |
| About the rights and wrongs of infancy | G |
| Our patients are asleep dear angels she | G |
| Holding the boy in her ecstatic arms | H |
| As mothers do and free from past alarms | H |
| The child grown calm If we an hour or two | I |
| Venture to leave them 'tis but our hope's due | I |
| My tongue is all agog to try its speed | J |
| To a new listener like a long stalled steed | J |
| Loosed in a meadow and the Forest lies | K |
| At hand the theme of its best flatteries | K |
| See Prudence here your hat where it was thrown | L |
| The night you found me in the house alone | L |
| With my worst fear and these two helpless things | K |
| Please God that worst has folded its black wings | K |
| And we may let our thoughts on pleasure run | M |
| Some moments in the light of this good sun | M |
| They sleep in Heaven's guard Our watch to night | N |
| Will be the braver for a transient sight | N |
| The only one perhaps more fair than they | A |
| Of Nature dressed for her June holiday | A |
| - | |
| This is the watershed between the Thames | K |
| And the South coast On either hand the streams | K |
| Run to the great Thames valley and the sea | K |
| The Downs which should oppose them servilely | B |
| Giving them passage Who would think these Downs | K |
| Which look like mountains when the sea mist crowns | K |
| Their tops in autumn were so poor a chain | O |
| Yet they divide no pathways for the rain | O |
| Nor store up waters in this pluvious age | P |
| More than the pasteboard barriers of a stage | P |
| The crest lies here From us the Medway flows | K |
| To drain the Weald of Kent and hence the Ouse | K |
| Starts for the Channel at Newhaven Both | Q |
| These streams run eastward bearing North and South | R |
| But to the West the Adur and the Arun | O |
| Rising together like twin rills of Sharon | O |
| Go forth diversely this through Shoreham gap | S |
| And that by Arundel to Ocean's lap | S |
| All are our rivers by our Forest bred | T |
| And one besides which with more reverend heed | J |
| We need to speak for her desert is great | U |
| Beyond the actual wealth of her estate | U |
| For Spenser sang of her the River Mole | B |
| And Milton knew her name though he poor soul | B |
| Had never seen her as I think being blind | E |
| And so miscalled her sullen Others find | E |
| Her special merit to consist in this | K |
| A maiden coyness and her shy device | K |
| Of mole like burrowing And in truth her way | A |
| Is hollowed out and hidden from the day | A |
| Under deep banks and the dark overgrowth | Q |
| Of knotted alder roots and stumps uncouth | V |
| From source to mouth and once at Mickleham | W |
| She fairly digs her grave in deed and name | W |
| And disappears There is an early trace | K |
| Of this propensity to devious ways | K |
| Shown by the little tributary brook | X |
| Which bounds our fields for lately it forsook | X |
| Its natural course to burrow out a road | Y |
| Under an ash tree in its neighbourhood | Y |
| But whether this a special virtue is | K |
| Or like some virtues but a special vice | K |
| We need not argue This at least is true | I |
| That in the Mole are trout and many too | I |
| As I have often proved with rod and line | O |
| From boyhood up blest days of pins and twine | O |
| How many an afternoon have our hushed feet | Y |
| Crept through the alders where the waters meet | Y |
| Mary's and mine and our eyes viewed the pools | K |
| Where the trout lay poor unsuspecting fools | K |
| And our hands framed their doom while overhead | Y |
| His orchestra of birds the backbird led | Y |
| In those lost days no angler of them all | B |
| Could boast our cunning with the bait let fall | B |
| Close to their snouts from some deceiving coigne | O |
| Or mark more notches when we stopped to join | O |
| Our fishes head to tail and lay them out | Y |
| Upon the grass and count our yards of trout | Y |
| 'Twas best in June with the brook growing clear | Z |
| After a shower as now In dark weather | A2 |
| It was less certain angling for the stream | W |
| Was truly sullen'' then so deep and dim | W |
| 'Tis thus in mountain lakes as some relate | Y |
| Where the fish need the sun to see the bait | Y |
| The fly takes nothing in these tangled brooks | K |
| But grief to fishermen and loss of hooks | K |
| And all our angling was of godless sort | Y |
| With living worm and yet we loved the sport | Y |
| - | |
| But wait This path will lead us to the gill | B |
| Where you shall see the Mole in her first rill | B |
| Ere yet she leaves the Forest and her bed | Y |
| Is still of iron stone which stains her red | Y |
| Yet keeps her pure and lends a pleasant taste | Y |
| To her young waters as they bubble past | Y |
| You hear her lapping round the barren flanks | K |
| Of these old heaps we call the Cinder banks '' | - |
| Where our forefathers forged their iron ore | B2 |
| When Paul's was building Now the rabbits bore | B2 |
| In the still nights beneath these ancient heaps | K |
| A very honeycomb See where she peeps | K |
| The infant river You could hardly wet | Y |
| Your ankles in her midmost eddy yet | Y |
| She has a pretty cunning in her look | X |
| Mixed with alarm as in her secret nook | X |
| We find her out half fugitive half brave | C2 |
| A look that all the Forest creatures have | D2 |
| Let us away Perhaps her guilelessness | K |
| Is troubled at a guilty human face | K |
| Mine Prudence not your own I know a dell | B |
| Knee deep in fern hard by the very cell | B |
| For an elf hermit Here stag mosses grow | E2 |
| Thick as a coverlet and fox gloves blow | E2 |
| Purple and white and the wild columbine | O |
| And here in May there springs that thing divine | O |
| The lily of the valley only here | F2 |
| Found in the Forest blossoming year on year | Z |
| A place o'ershadowed by a low crowned oak | G2 |
| The enchanted princess never had been woke | G2 |
| If she had gone to sleep in such a spot | Y |
| In spite of fortune Why a corpse forgot | Y |
| Might lie with eyes appealing to the sky | H2 |
| Unburied here for half a century | K |
| And this the woodcocks as I take it knew | O |
| Who stayed to breed here all the summer through | O |
| When other birds were gone I flushed a pair | I2 |
| On the longest day last year the nest was there | I2 |
| And found some egg shells chipped among the moss | K |
| The sight is rarer now than once it was | K |
| - | |
| There We have gathered breath and climbed the hill | B |
| And now can view the landscape more at will | B |
| This is the Pilgrim road a well known track | J2 |
| When folk did all their travelling on horseback | J2 |
| Now long deserted yet a right of way | A |
| And marked on all our maps with due display | A |
| Beneath this yew tree which perhaps has seen | O |
| Our fathers riding to St Thomas' shrine | O |
| For this was once the way of pilgrimage | K2 |
| From the south west for all who would engage | P |
| Their vows at Canterbury we will sit | Y |
| As doubtless they too sat and rest a bit | Y |
| I love this solitude of birch and fern | O |
| These quags and mosses and I love the stern | O |
| Black yew trees and the hoary pastures bare | I2 |
| Or tufted with long growths of withered hair | I2 |
| And rank marsh grass I love the bell heath's bloom | W |
| And the wild wealth which passionate Earth's womb | W |
| Throws in the Forest's lap to clothe unseen | O |
| Its ancient barrenness with youth and green | O |
| I love the Forest 'tis but this one strip | L2 |
| Along the watershed that still dares keep | M2 |
| Its title to such name Yet once wide grown | O |
| A mighty woodland stretched from Down to Down | O |
| The last stronghold and desperate standing place | K |
| Of that indigenous Britannic race | K |
| Which fell before the English It was called | Y |
| By Rome Anderida '' in Saxon Weald '' | - |
| Time and decay and Man's relentless mood | Y |
| Have long made havock of the lower wood | Y |
| With axe and plough and now of all the plain | O |
| These breadths of higher ground alone remain | O |
| In token of its presence Who shall tell | B |
| How long in these lost wilds of brake and fell | B |
| Or in the tangled groves of oak below | E2 |
| Gathering his sacred leaf the mistletoe | E2 |
| Some Druid priest forgotten and in need | Y |
| May here have kept his rite and owned his creed | Y |
| After the rest For hardly yet less rude | Y |
| Here later dwelt that patron of our wood | Y |
| The | N2 |
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
About Worth Forest
Worth Forest is a poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
Write your comment about Worth Forest poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Best Poems of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
