An Epistle: (to N.a.) Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEFEFGG HHIIIJJKLKKLMMNNOOPI PIJJQQJJRSCC TTUUNNJJ VVWWJJW JJHHXXBBXYZYZXXTPTPJ J AASo into Cornwall you go down | A |
And leave me loitering here in town | A |
For me the ebb of London's wave | B |
Not ocean thunder in Cornish cave | B |
My friends save only one or two | C |
Gone to the glistening marge like you | C |
The opera season with blare and din | D |
Dying sublime in Lohengrin | D |
Houses darkened whose blinded panes | E |
All thoughts save of the dead preclude | F |
The parks a puddle of tropic rains | E |
Clubland a pensive solitude | F |
For me now you and yours are flown | G |
The fellowship of books alone | G |
- | |
For you the snaky wave upflung | H |
With writhing head and hissing tongue | H |
The weed whose tangled fibres tell | I |
Of some inviolate deep sea dell | I |
The faultless secret chambered shell | I |
Whose sound is an epitome | J |
Of all the utterance of the sea | J |
Great basking twinkling wastes of brine | K |
Far clouds of gulls that wheel and swerve | L |
In unanimity divine | K |
With undulation serpentine | K |
And wondrous consentaneous curve | L |
Flashing in sudden silver sheen | M |
Then melting on the sky line keen | M |
The world forgotten coves that seem | N |
Lapt in some magic old sea dream | N |
Where shivering off the milk white foam | O |
Lost airs wander seeking home | O |
And into clefts and caverns peep | P |
Fissures paven with powdered shell | I |
Recesses of primeval sleep | P |
Tranced with an immemorial spell | I |
The granite fangs eternally | J |
Rending the blanch'd lips of the sea | J |
The breaker clutching land then hurled | Q |
Back on its own tormented world | Q |
The mountainous upthunderings | J |
The glorious energy of things | J |
The power the joy the cosmic thrill | R |
Earth's ecstasy made visible | S |
World rapture old as Night and new | C |
As sunrise this all this for you | C |
- | |
So by Atlantic breezes fanned | T |
You roam the limits of the land | T |
And I in London's world abide | U |
Poor flotsam on the human tide | U |
Nay rather isled amid the stream | N |
Watching the flood and half in dream | N |
Guessing the sources whence it rose | J |
And musing to what Deep it flows | J |
- | |
For still the ancient riddles mar | V |
Our joy in man in leaf in star | V |
The Whence and Whither give no rest | W |
The Wherefore is a hopeless quest | W |
And the dull wight who never thinks | J |
Who chancing on the sleeping Sphinx | J |
Passes unchallenged fares the best | W |
- | |
But ill it suits this random verse | J |
The high enigmas to rehearse | J |
And touch with desultory tongue | H |
Secrets no man from Night hath wrung | H |
We ponder question doubt and pray | X |
The Deep to answer Yea or Nay | X |
And what does the engirdling wave | B |
The undivulging yield us save | B |
Aspersion of bewildering spray | X |
We do but dally on the beach | Y |
Writing our little thoughts full large | Z |
While Ocean with imperious speech | Y |
Derides us trifling by the marge | Z |
Nay we are children who all day | X |
Beside the unknown waters play | X |
And dig with small toy spade the sand | T |
Thinking our trenches wondrous deep | P |
Till twilight falls and hand in hand | T |
Nurse takes us home well tired to sleep | P |
Sleep and forget our toys and be | J |
Lulled by the great unsleeping sea | J |
- | |
Enough to Cornwall you go down | A |
And I tag rhymes in London town | A |
William Watson
(1)
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