The Gorse Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGHGHIJIJ KLKLMNONPQPQRSRSTE TEURUR VWVWXYXYZFZFA2TA2TXR XRIn dream again within the clean cold hell | A |
Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped | B |
And closing in the blank walls of his cell | A |
Crushed stifling on him when the bracken snapped | B |
Caught in his clutching fingers and he lay | C |
Awake upon his back among the fern | D |
With free eyes travelling the wide blue day | C |
Unhindered unremembering while a burn | D |
Tinkled and gurgled somewhere out of sight | E |
Unheard of him till suddenly aware | F |
Of its cold music shivering in the light | E |
He raised himself and with far ranging stare | F |
Looked all about him and with dazed eyes wide | G |
Saw still as in a numb unreal dream | H |
Black figures scouring a far hill side | G |
With now and then a sunlit rifle's gleam | H |
And knew the hunt was hot upon his track | I |
Yet hardly seemed to mind somehow just then | J |
But kept on wondering why they looked so black | I |
On that hot hillside all those little men | J |
Who scurried round like beetles twelve all told | K |
He counted them twice over and began | L |
A third time reckoning them but could not hold | K |
His starved wits to the business while they ran | L |
So brokenly and always stuck at 'five' | M |
And 'One two three four five ' a dozen times | N |
He muttered 'Can you catch a fish alive ' | O |
Sang mocking echoes of old nursery rhymes | N |
Through the strained tingling hollow of his head | P |
And now almost remembering he was stirred | Q |
To pity them and wondered if they'd fed | P |
Since he had or if ever since they'd heard | Q |
Two nights ago the sudden signal gun | R |
That raised alarm of his escape they too | S |
Had fasted in the wilderness and run | R |
With nothing but the thirsty wind to chew | S |
And nothing in their bellies but a fill | T |
Of cold peat water till their heads were light | E |
- | |
The crackling of a rifle on the hill | T |
Rang in his ears and stung to headlong flight | E |
He started to his feet and through the brake | U |
He plunged in panic heedless of the sun | R |
That burned his cropped head to a red hot ache | U |
Still racked with crackling echoes of the gun | R |
- | |
Then suddenly the sun enkindled fire | V |
Of gorse upon the moor top caught his eye | W |
And that gold glow held all his heart's desire | V |
As like a witless flame bewildered fly | W |
He blundered towards the league wide yellow blaze | X |
And tumbled headlong on the spikes of bloom | Y |
And rising bruised and bleeding and adaze | X |
Struggled through clutching spines the dense sweet fume | Y |
Of nutty acrid scent like poison stealing | Z |
Through his hot blood the bristling yellow glare | F |
Spiking his eyes with fire till he went reeling | Z |
Stifled and blinded on and did not care | F |
Though he were taken wandering round and round | A2 |
'Jerusalem the Golden' quavering shrill | T |
Changing his tune to 'Tommy Tiddler's Ground' | A2 |
Till just a lost child on that dazzling hill | T |
Bewildered in a glittering golden maze | X |
Of stinging scented fire he dropped quite done | R |
A shrivelling wisp within a world ablaze | X |
Beneath a blinding sky one blaze of sun | R |
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
(1)
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