The Man Who Saw Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEDFGHIDJKDILMNOP QRDDSTLEUAVAWXYZA2B2 C2DD2E2F2G2DDB2H2I2N XA2J2K2DA2AL2M2DDD FN2LO2P2UQ2DAR2S2ADT 2DQDDRAU2M2L2DT2PV2G AW2X2Y2Z2DDDA3K2DB3C 3DT2D3The master weavers at the enchanted loom | A |
Of Legend weaving long ago those tales | B |
Through which there wanders the grey thread of truth | C |
Lost in the gorgeous arras of romance | D |
Tell how King Vortigern resolved to build | E |
A Tower of Safety 'mid the solitudes | D |
That are the hem of the great druid robe | F |
Of Snowdon Mount of Eagles So each day | G |
The builders laboured marrying stone to stone | H |
But ever in the night an adversary | I |
Invisible as malevolent cancelled those | D |
Cold nuptials and with impish wanton rage | J |
Shattered the walls And thither from beyond | K |
That congress of grave mountains met like seers | D |
And bards august though in a rivalry | I |
Of silence rather than of song from where | L |
The vales are not so tranced with awe nor yet | M |
So far below the hill tops as to feel | N |
Aching estrangement fortune one day brought | O |
A youth whoso very brow was a command | P |
His name of Merlin had not clambered then | Q |
To fearsome greatness like a dusty star | R |
Yet ev'n thus early his subduing eyes | D |
Seemed to have known all things in life but tears | D |
And standing where wrecked hopes bestrewed the ground | S |
He said to them whose toil was shards and dust | T |
'Search underneath your tower's foundations there | L |
Are the Unbuilders busy while you build | E |
The Undoers are there ' And every man obeyed | U |
And digging deep they found a hollow abysm | A |
Where waters gnawed the ribs of the Earth and sapped | V |
Her sinews till her frame tottered infirm | A |
'Where also monsters heaved their tumid bulk | W |
In ancient ambush and with tremors vast | X |
Palsied those ramparts as they yearned to rise ' | Y |
Blind dragon shapes of blindest darkness born | Z |
That save in darkness could not live an hour | A2 |
And touched by Light made their dull moan and died | B2 |
- | |
Such is the tale which one who chronicled | C2 |
Old shadowy wars in sanctuaries of peace | D |
Found amid crumbled pomps the hushed domain | D2 |
Of mildew and the empire of the moth | E2 |
Nigh on eight hundred years ago And now | F2 |
Out of that land where Snowdon night by night | G2 |
Receives the confidences of lonesome stars | D |
And where Carnarvon's ruthless battlements | D |
Magnificently oppress the daunted tide | B2 |
There comes no fabled Merlin son of mist | H2 |
And brother to the twilight but a man | I2 |
Who in a time terrifically real | N |
Is real as the time formed for the time ' | - |
Not much beholden to the munificent Past | X |
In mind or spirit but frankly of this hour | A2 |
No faggot of perfections angel or saint | J2 |
Created faultless and intolerable | K2 |
No meeting place of all the heavenlinesses | D |
But eminently a man to stir and spur | A2 |
Men to afflict them with benign alarm | A |
Harass their sluggish and uneager blood | L2 |
Till like himself they are hungry for the goal | M2 |
A man with something of the cragginess | D |
Of his own mountains something of the force | D |
That goads to their loud leap the mountain streams | D |
- | |
And he too comes to bid the builders probe | F |
Deep underneath the Tower of Safety lest | N2 |
A pit lie cavernous and covert there | L |
A long baulked ravening emptiness a grave | O2 |
That famishes for its expected food | P2 |
Nay in his hands he takes the delver's spade | U |
Lays bare the hollow o'er which to build at all | Q2 |
Were to build woe and ruin and 'stablishes | D |
A mightier tower bastioned so broad and firm | A |
In life in manhood and in womanhood | R2 |
Founded upon so massy a human rock | S2 |
And with such living bulwarks against them | A |
Who first poured death from where the lark strews bliss | D |
That when at last ours shall be Triumph though | T2 |
Triumph perhaps too weary to rejoice | D |
Save with a mournful jubilation when | Q |
Hate shall reel back from these embattled walls | D |
And having spent so long its hurtling bolts | D |
With such' poor thrift shall stand before the star | R |
Bankrupt of thunder then indeed shall Time | A |
Add yet another name to those the world | U2 |
Salutes with an obeisance of the soul | M2 |
The name of him the man of Celtic blood | L2 |
Whom Powers Unknown in a divine caprice | D |
Chose and did make their instrument wherewith | T2 |
To save the Saxon the man all eye and hand | P |
The man who saw and grasped and gripped and held | V2 |
Then shall each morrow with its yesterday | G |
Vie in the honour of nobly honouring him | A |
Who found us blindfold by the slippery verge | W2 |
Of fathomless perdition and haled us back | X2 |
And poets shall dawn in pearl and gold of speech | Y2 |
Crowning his deed with not less homage here | Z2 |
On English ground than yonder whence he rose | D |
Yonder where crash the cataracts through the chasms | D |
And unto the dark tempests the dark hills | D |
Offer their stubborn sides all gered but keep | A3 |
A heart invincible and impregnable | K2 |
While with long arm and piercing spear the sea | D |
Thrusts far into the valleys that of old | B3 |
Heard the twin raptures of the harp and sword | C3 |
The heroic strife and the heroic strings | D |
Amid the battling torrents and beneath | T2 |
The happier peaks that without strife prevail | D3 |
William Watson
(1)
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