To R. F. B. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB CC DD EE FF GG HEE II JJ EE EKE LL MM NNWe are the Choice of the Will God when He gave the word | A |
That called us into line set in our hand a sword | B |
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Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw | C |
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law | C |
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East and west and north wherever the battle grew | D |
As men to a feast we fared the work of the Will to do | D |
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Bent upon vast beginnings bidding anarchy cease | E |
Had we hacked it to the Pit we had left it a place of peace | E |
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Marching building sailing pillar of cloud or fire | F |
Sons of the Will we fought the fight of the Will our sire | F |
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Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark | G |
Stark was ever the sea but our ships were yet more stark | G |
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We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very | H |
thrones | E |
The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones | E |
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Till now the name of names England the name of might | I |
Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night | I |
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And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound | J |
Like the voice of the sun in song the great globe round and round | J |
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And the shadow of her flag when it shouts to the mother breeze | E |
Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas | E |
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And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers | E |
And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and | K |
showers | E |
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Who says that we shall pass or the fame of us fade and die | L |
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky | L |
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For the sire lives in his sons and they pay their father's debt | M |
And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set | M |
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And the Lion in his whelps his whelps that none shall brave | N |
Is but less strong than Time and the great all whelming Grave | N |
William Ernest Henley
(1)
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