The Source Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCCDDEFFDDGHIIJBEEK LMEENNEOPBEEDDQQRBST| There in the fringe of trees between | A |
| the upper field and the edge of the one | B |
| below it that runs above the valley | C |
| one time I heard in the early | C |
| days of summer the clear ringing | D |
| six notes that I knew were the opening | D |
| of the Fingal's Cave Overture | E |
| I heard them again and again that year | F |
| and the next summer and the year | F |
| afterward those six descending | D |
| notes the same for all the changing | D |
| in my own life since the last time | G |
| I had heard them fall past me from | H |
| the bright air in the morning of a bird | I |
| and I believed that what I had heard | I |
| would always be there if I came again | J |
| to be overtaken by that season | B |
| in that place after the winter | E |
| and I would wonder again whether | E |
| Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere | K |
| far to the north that many years ago | L |
| looking up from his youth to listen to | M |
| those six notes of an ancestor | E |
| spilling over from a presence neither | E |
| water nor human that led to the cave | N |
| in his mind the fluted cliffs and the wave | N |
| going out and the falling water | E |
| he thought those notes could be the music for | O |
| Mendelssohn is gone and Fingal is gone | P |
| all but his name for a cave and for one | B |
| piece of music and the black capped warbler | E |
| as we called that bird that I remember | E |
| singing there those notes descending | D |
| from the age of the ice dripping | D |
| I have not heard again this year can it | Q |
| be gone then will I not hear it | Q |
| from now on will the overture begin | R |
| for a time and all those who listen | B |
| feel that falling in them but as always | S |
| without knowing what they recognize | T |
William Stanley Merwin
(2)
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