Perhaps the seasons are accursed
with scars and smitten bones,
their wounded muses rarely nursed
as love cast sticks and stones,
with Winter being jilted more,
like siren's lips unkissed,
whose phantom harp lies draped ashore
with lauds clenched tight as fists.
Divining stars round Winter stream:
"Is love's bed always snow?"
Yet neath silk sheets of melting glow,
love's follies faintly gleam,
and nights beside a lover's head
lie dormant as death's bed.
"Is love's bed always snow?"
(from 'First Love' by John Clare)
Author notes
laud= a song or hymn
To be incorporated in the poem: 'Is love's bed always snow?'
(excerpt taken from "First Love" by John Clare)
A contest entry
- Winklings #1 October Contest:: Allpoetry and Winklers Partner! by Lyndon.
875 points, ended October 15, 2007, 11 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
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Wonderful personafication of Winter. Is a (Laud) a new form developed by you? It's fantastic. (lAUD) as in pronounced?
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forgot to applaud
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hmmm... thought provoking, interesting and well written. brilliant. bravo!
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Beautiful.
Sorry I've not been around for a while. This poem pulls you in. It's quite a depressing thought that all the seasons are accursed, with winter being jilted more. I have a friend that has just left his wife after thirty six years and partnered a much younger woman. When I talk to his wife she definitely believes Winter is jilted more. It's all so sad. Lovely words, pace, rythm and imagery. It works on all sorts of levels. -
Solid construction and imbued with connotations.
The competition must have been fierce for this
not to make gold. I adore the whole flow of it...
the personifications so gorgeous and layered.
Just a masterpiece in my humble opinion. Blue
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Superb piece! Very smooth and voiced by the poet's muse'.Has depth of metaphores steeped in emotions. Well done!
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Superb construction.
I love this poem. I always feel mellow once winter begins to bite and the poem suits my mood.
Yet Winter has been jilted more,
like siren's lips unkissed,
These are very special lines. The poem scans well and raeds beautifully. Thanks for sharing.
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Bravo
Oh, do so like this one, indeed! Most deftly done, reminded me some of Thomas Lovell Beddoes! Excellent! bravo... bravo... bravo...
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"Yet Winter has been jilted more,
like siren's lips unkissed,
whose phantom harp lies draped ashore
with lauds clenched tight as fists."
Wow! This is written like a glorious song! I absolutely love your work!
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Congratulations on the trophy...I loved this piece!
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This is good Belle, so many images of cold comfort for the lovelorn. You pick from sonnet forms for your own style, quite innovative and good to read. Congratulations on bronze, a deserving winner.
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This is really excellent! i loved the imagery and the language you've used here. This is a poignant and brilliantly written poem!
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Chilling
A Frigid delight, and winter gets the cold shoulder!
COOL!!!
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Me again
(i) The genre: An interesting experimentastion with both the classical English and Italianate versions of the sonnet with a definite octet, and sestet made up of a quatrain and rhymed couplet. Rhythmically iambic tetrameters alternate with trimeters. Poets are meant to push the classical forms to fresh limits as well as illustrate that they can discipline themselves to centuries old forms if they wish. The past has no holds over creativity as such. Thank you.
(ii) Have you said something in this poem? The title announces the theme, as it were. Then you proceed to inform us through mood and images of wintry love in its personal application.
(iii) Is what you said worthy? Yes, of course it is. You have used poetry to enunciate the poignancy of grief in love unrequited from a physical lover but not a soulmate. I would suggest that Homo sapiens is not a species good at lifelong relationships of human love of man with woman, in the main. This poem speaks worthily of this situation.
(iv) Has what you said, been said well? Poetically speaking, yes. I would not use "hath". The archaic form is found among the odd Yorkshire quaker lost among the moors, today; numbering about twenty souls! And, if you use "hath", you needs must use "lieth", "doth" "gleameth" and so on. This is a small point and the poem has the flavor of Victorian English poetry.
(v) The poetic line? Of course it courses through your poem strongly. The title is the stated metaphor for the poem: your persona IS Winter, a sentient presence. Love has become argumentation (casts sticks and stones); it lies under a curse in that spiritual and emotional love are inadequate for the persona's Wintry experience. The winter of Love cannot resume its bardic talent: "whose wounded muse is rarely nursed".
Either human love has ended in male physicality or abuse of the tongue that can be just as violent. The pain of being "jilted" is intense in the oxymoronic line: "like siren's lips unkissed". Yoked lovers with one grown cold frosts over the other partner so that love has no substance; is insubstantial: " phantom harp lies draped ashore" and there is no music anymore. Beautiful poetry.
The archaism for praises, "lauds", is unusual in contemporary poems. The octet concludes on the note that even pleasantries are said through clenched teeth or as the poet puts it: " with lauds clenched tight as fists".
The quatrain of the sestet begins with the pronoun "her" made plain by the quote used, being Love, personified. Supernatural disclosure of the future through the folkloric referral to the stars fails in a fine piece of hyperbolic language:
'Divining stars around her stream:
"Is love's bed always snow?" '.
Note how well my given quote is used by this poet!
The snow reference in this poem reminds the Shakespearean scholar of Lear's reprimand to one of his daughters where he sees that her regenerative parts "presageth snow".
As in many sonnets, there comes the "yet"!
How contrastive is this piece? Again, the oxymoron of "melting glow" shows frustration with the persona's life of sex without love.
With alliterative force of the plosive effes, the fatuity of it all explodes in the line:
"love's follies faintly gleam".
Finally, the poignantly beautiful, if funereal, rhymed couplet all but buries Love:
" and nights beside a lover's head
lie dormant as death's bed."
The alliterative d's drive in the coffin nails.
Now, let this be a lesson to many readers: pretty remarks are easily said by you, but Allpoetry should be a place of getting to love the poetry of others as well as enjoying games of winning trophies. I do not detract from trophy hunters. Not at all. But the glories of poetry ought not lightly to be dismissed in any poem.
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Thank you so much for the trophy; however, I did not expect anything (I truly didn't).. I just thought my poem a unique way to use the quote you provided. I also appreciated the thorough critique from you, Ron, as this is how I learn and grow in poetry here on AP (and you never snub me or anyone but are gentle and patient in your teaching and acceptant of others style and uniqueness).
I did battle with 'hath' back and forth several times (changing it from has to hath at least a half dozen times.. so 'has' it is now!). Thank you for that pointer. With laud, 'laud' has a second meaning (other than praise); it means a song or hymn which was how I was inferring its meaning (melody-song-music)... the squelched song of Winter played on the phantom harp. Does that make more sense now? Thank you for accommodating me in your contest and for your astute eye as a judge and fellow poet. I am honored to receive any recognition. ♥ Belle
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Wow. I loved this. You do not know how much! The brilliance of this...the thoughts that were running around in my head while reading this...all make this piece really quite fantastic. Great job.
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this is very lovely, and I love as usual your beautiful way of doing your imagery. It always seems to have a life of its own. Very beautiful, and what a joy to read first thing this morning. Thank you for starting my day out on a good note. Best to you in this contest, you have done the prompt EXCELLENT!!!!
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I enjoyed this poem that Slipper
slipped up on.
This is in quite modern rhyming form. You rhyme in an interesting manner. Basically you write in iambic meter. The lines vary from Iambic trimeters to tetrameters, alternately. Rhyme scheme, octet: abab cdcd.
sestet quatrain: effe and its couplet gg.
You turn from the natural physical world quite well into the human nature world of feeling.
Many may not realize, but this poem has a persona who is in a state of yoked but unrequited love. I have read many poems of this genre but never one of the torment conveyed through such lines as:
' "Is love's bed always snow?"
yet, neath silk sheets of melting glow,
love's follies faintly gleam
and nights beside a lover's head
lie dormant as death's bed. '
Thank you for this delightful poem. Ron.
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Wonderful.
This is beautifully structured and filled with a simple but majestic imagery. I very much enjoyed this poem. Thanks for sharing.
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You are one of my favorite rhyming poets here...I love this one..I love the meter..the ending couplets are very powerful - excellent poem
Just read going nowhere's comment - very true - you do write with such an elegance - every poem I read of yours..I still remember the first time I read you...an amazing sestina for one of Zayra's contests..about your flowers ...loved that one..still have it bookmarked
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this was beautifully sobering.... you have a way of writing that i can't explain other than it is with an elegance that seems to just flow so easily and softly down the page... that sounds stupid... but that's all i could think of to describe the beauty of your work...
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Wow, you took the quote and the season dreamed with it, elegantly done in your wonderful style, O Queen! Good luck in the contest!
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