Seems like the poetry bug has bitten a lot of people today, so why not? Also, now I’m up to my absolute favorite type of poem in my Poetry Challenge, so I didn’t want to wait to post it.
Kyrielle poems (and Kyrielle sonnets, since they’re practically the same damn thing) are consisted of 4-line stanzas. Each line is 8 syllables written in iambic pentameter with the last line of each stanza repeating. Sonnets are 3 stanzas, and the last couplet is the first line repeated and the last line repeated. Rhyme scheme is either aabB, ccbB, ddbB, etc. or abaB cbcB dbdB, etc.
I like the sonnet form better, simply because, well, just because. I literally have dozens upon dozens of these cluttering up my computer. I’ll save you, the masses, and only post the two most recent ones.
It is a dark and lonely land
Yet here you come to take my hand
Your heart, the place for which I yearn
And to that place I shall return
A dream, as such unknown to me
Of dancing, flying, falling free
This fire inside now starts to burn
And to that place I shall return
A rising sun paints me with dew
And through it all, I’m bathed anew
Towards your dawning light, I turn
And to that place I shall return
It is a dark and lonely land
And to that place I shall return
…………………………………………………………………….
Two angels down with broken hearts
And searching for the missing parts
And giving all for true love’s sake,
In this, a new kind of awake
We walked through life lost and alone
Our broken hearts turning to stone
Ignoring that horrendous ache
In this, a new kind of awake
But now it seems we have the chance
To break the chains, be free, and dance
Our life is now our own to make
In this, a new kind of awake
Our love was born when Time began
And broke the laws of earth and man
Our love can make the mountains quake
In this, a new kind of awake
Two angels down with broken hearts
In this, a new kind of awake
Yes, I know the last one had 4 stanzas (gasp!). What can I say? I’m a rebel. Got the black leather jacket and everything.
Domina Jen 
It is indeed a dark and lonely land….made better when someone takes your hand. Yes, indeed. love reading sonnets, and you have made this one into a kind of song….xx
Thank you, little one. They’ve always been my favorite to write.
Thank you too, Jen. I always like reading them….though I have not written any lately. In fact, I used to mainly write sonnets, but have taken to a slightly freer form here. I may need to get back to that tightness. Then it is fun to take up freer forms – before going back to tightness. B&D really…constrict, release….God I am stupid….forigive me that one.
For me, the thing with the pentameters is to vary them….run on lines, and half lines. Then I find it works in all poetry….Milton was the master of that, though his sonnets are not as good as his longer poems (not that I am criticising them). Lycidas is a favourite of mine. In fact, in terms of a strongly felt evocation of the meaning of life, and God’s role in it, this poem has always touched me personally, even though most people say that he was not that close to the guy he wrote about….Samson Agonistes another favourite, where my masochism fits better to its themes….eyeless in gaza and all that….:)
Hmm, I haven’t heard of Lycidas. Time to do some reading!
And I love your poetry, and the freedom you give yourself when writing it. You’re so very talented, little one.
Jen, it mourns this lost acquaintance….and starts off mourning, and ends after a parade of classical heroes and deities, with a return to the God that Milton believed in….So, these two bits capture it, as well as his lovely style, the first as he mourns him…so beautifully done:
But O the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn.
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear
When first the white thorn blows:
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Clos’d o’er the head of your lov’d Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
Had ye bin there’—for what could that have done?
And this his statement of belief in a God…and heaven:
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the wat’ry floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high
Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
Wow, that’s incredible. Thank you for sharing it.
Yes, there is some loveliness about the poem, and how it sounds….he was always good with sound, but this poem is one I find moving.
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