How The Mead-slave Was Set Free Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBAB CDDCD EFFEF GHHGH IJJIJ JKKJK LMNLN JOOJO PQQPQ JRRJR STTSTNay move not Sit just as you are | A |
Under the carved wings of the chair | B |
The hearth glow sifting through your hair | B |
Turns every dim pearl to a star | A |
Dawn drowned in floods of brightening air | B |
- | |
I have been thinking of that night | C |
When all the wide hall burst to blaze | D |
With spears caught up thrust fifty ways | D |
To find my throat while I lay white | C |
And sick with joy to think the days | D |
- | |
I dragged out in your hateful North | E |
A slave constrained at banquet's need | F |
To fill the black bull's horns with mead | F |
For drunken sea thieves were henceforth | E |
Cast from me as a poison weed | F |
- | |
While Death thrust roses in my hands | G |
But you who knew the flowers he had | H |
Were no such roses ripe and glad | H |
As nod in my far southern lands | G |
But pallid things to make men sad | H |
- | |
Put back the spears with one calm hand | I |
Raised on your knee my wondering head | J |
Wiped off the trickling drops of red | J |
From my torn forehead with a strand | I |
Of your bright loosened hair and said | J |
- | |
Sea rovers would you kill a skald | J |
This boy has hearkened Odin sing | K |
Unto the clang and winnowing | K |
Of raven's wings His heart is thralled | J |
To music as to some strong king | K |
- | |
And this great thraldom works disdain | L |
Of lesser serving Once release | M |
These bonds he bears and he may please | N |
To give you guerdon sweet as rain | L |
To sailors calmed in thirsty seas | N |
- | |
Then having soothed their rage to rest | J |
You led me to old Skagi's throne | O |
Where yellow gold rims in the stone | O |
And in my arms against my breast | J |
Thrust his great harp of walrus bone | O |
- | |
How they came crowding tunes on tunes | P |
How good it was to touch the strings | Q |
And feel them thrill like happy things | Q |
That flutter from the gray cocoons | P |
On hedge rows in your gradual springs | Q |
- | |
All grew a blur before my sight | J |
As when the stealthy white fog slips | R |
At noonday on the staggering ships | R |
I saw one single spot of light | J |
Your white face with its eager lips | R |
- | |
And so I sang to that O thou | S |
Who liftedst me from out my shame | T |
Wert thou content when Skagi came | T |
Put his own chaplet on my brow | S |
And bent and kissed his own harp frame | T |
William Vaughn Moody
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about How The Mead-slave Was Set Free poem by William Vaughn Moody
Best Poems of William Vaughn Moody