A castle, bathed in red and gold,
shades the setting sun.
Its majesty hides what lies inside,
an evil, just begun.
An accursed place,
where evil thrives,
hallows of crossbones,
eclipsing many lives.
The shimmering waters in the mote,
warn others of this fate,
A heartless, deadly enemy,
silently waiting in hate.
To those who wander in and find,
a fear beyond this world,
pray that they shall die in peace,
as its enmity is unfurled.
As the mountains darkenand the seas are stilled;
we think in vain
of the hero's, killed.
---------------------------------
A widow, veiled in blackened silk,
cries pitifully by a grave,
morning her dead husband,
whom she sadly never forgave.
A weeping child, of less than eight,
stands frozen on her own,
her father, whom she loved so much,
has left her all alone.
Each day more calumnies are made,
and yet more brave men be going,
braving this treacherous eternal,
leaving still more people mourning.
---------------------------------
A soldier, from many wars long past,
skilled with sword and spear,
prepares to test his aptitude,
and battle with his fear.
To his destiny he marches on,
to brave the furthest foe,
he has won so many battles,
but that was long ago.
---------------------------------
At rest in her insipid bed,
bathed in silver moonlight.
Lies his daughter, in a fine silk gown,
she is his one delight.
She had features of a summer rose,
the disposition of a lamb,
her flawless beauty earned her respect,
she was addressed to as madame.
Her mother passed when she was young,
afflictive it may be,
she very soon forgot her,
for she was only three.
So she grew up with her father,
and adored him all the while.
It seemed that no one could forget,
the balance of her smile.
------------------------------------
He thought of nothing but her,
as he traversed the mote,
but cruelly he slipped and fell,
and fought to stay afloat.
He thrashed about, in the icy waves,
he could see the darkness come,
and finally he gave up home,
and to death he did succumb.
-----------------------------------
She woke awash in icy sweat,
after a dream of numbing death,
little did she know,
she had witnessed his last breath.
She never knew what happened,
as life came, and passed her by,
she only cared about one thing,
she never got to say goodbye.
---------------------------------
The castle stands there to this day,
holding fear, and dark and doubt,
never spoken of, nay never thought of,
for when people go in, they never come out.
Author notes
This is my masterpiece, I'm so proud of this poem I know it has a few rough spots, but I'm forever editing and changing things...
If you see something that could be improved, let me know, and I'll have a good look.
A contest entry
- Just be yourself- by Nishantshah2381.
300 points, ended January 15, 2008, 6 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Comedy Tragic Fairy Tales ~~ by Melodies.
600 points, ended January 16, 2008, 12 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - anything goes, options, a prompt and a picture by my1lovewearsdiapers.
400 points, ended January 19, 2008, 27 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Gimme Danger Stranger. by Master Anarchy.
300 points, ended January 20, 2008, 7 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - In loving memory of.............. by my1lovewearsdiapers.
350 points, ended January 25, 2008, 24 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Something real by hey charlie.
300 points, ended January 31, 2008, 35 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Give me something so spirtual so that the hair on my arms and neck stands up by SueMason.
600 points, ended January 23, 2008, 18 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Anything and everything! by My Selfish Romance.
300 points, ended January 26, 2008, 97 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Make Me Cry by dead-love-for-fun.
600 points, ended March 1, 2008, 34 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - ~ SET the BAR ~ Anything Goes~ Possible of 5750 points handed out! by Florida Sunshine.
950 points, ended February 24, 2008, 182 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - ANYTHING IN THE WORLD!!!! 1000 pts. by Rdy2begorgeous.
1000 points, ended February 21, 2008, 64 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Your most eloquent Prewrite by Arrianna MacEwan.
450 points, ended February 25, 2008, 17 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - The endless contest (or longest contest is more like it)! by Ted E Bare.
450 points, ended April 30, 2008, 96 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please be honest, don't be afraid to be critical, I'm all for improving my work:)
Comments
1 - 18 of 18
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very nice and imaginitive write. I always liked ballads. Good luck in the contest.
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As the makings of an Epic ~ I think you're off to a great start ~ My only suggestion is the conclusion ~ you started it with the tie of the Castle ~ My assumption is the stanza's below are those who'se entered the evilness of the castle.... but I'm not really sure ~ Now you need to tie it all intogether like you did the first stanza ~ or at least bring the connections together ~ at first I thought the widow the child and the soldier were together ~ entering this la'bode' but Now I'm thinking it isn't tied together ~ as I first assumed... ~ a final stanza could make all the connections of the castle to your characters you've developed.
Awesome job thus so far~ I enjoyed the read ~ Thank you so much for entering the "Set the Bar" Contest ~ I really appreciate you sharing your work with me ~ best of luck to you! -
This lacks originality. Maybe experimenting with different styles of writing would help you expand your horizons a bit. Just a thought. Thank you for entering, but this is not what I'm looking for. Good luck with your future writing.
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wow, really beautiful, full of emotion and a story wonderfully told.
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wow
I AM SPEECHLESS that does NOT happen very often
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this is very nice...a bit long but great!
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Sorry -- u need the book's title!!! i don't mean to be harsh it's the rules!!!! good luck in the contest and ur a great poet! thanks for entering!
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I believe that I have already commented but if I havent I will say again that this is a wonderful write and very heartfelt thank you for entering
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That was beautifull and well written. It flowed well although it seemed that the rhyme faltered in just a few placed. Not enough to lessen the effect thiugh. Great great job.
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Wonderfully dark. I don't know what else to say but "wow."
I love the way you've written this.
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Bathed in poetic blood, the critic succumbs to eternity...
My last thought was "do red and gold symbolise blood and money"? For me, red and gold symbolise mysteries of the Rose and Cross, as Rosicrucian principles rather than Christian ones (the Rho-Chi is similar, but not the same). And I am a painter, and I can be slow. So I took them on board as colours without wondering too much.
Had I read "crimson and gold", I would have leapt to that implication more quickly. If it is so. The allusion to sunset I thought neat.
**********************************
SECTIONING. The piece is titled "The Castle", but each section might equally well, both for the reader but also the writer, take a title. I saw "A Castle", "A Family", "A Soldier", "A Thought", "A Dreaming" as appropriate. In either case "-----------"'s look to seperational: ******** or @@@@@@@@@@@@ or ########### might serve better, the first being my personal default.
**************************
Punctuation is at times curious. The : and the ; also exist, and one does not always need a , at the end of line. Remember that phrases ",...,"'d around may be removed from a sentence and the sentence still remain comprehensible.
eg.
As the mountains darken
and the seas are stilled,
we think in vain,
of those who were killed. - as you have it, were better cast as
As the mountains darken
and the seas are stilled:
we think in vain
of those who were killed. - at least that is one alternative. The problem lies in the "vain,": if one removes that comma, then the colon serves best to express the intended meaning.
*****************************
MINOR SPELLING ERRORS: Past by the spell check, but:
wander in an find - "and find";
less that eight - "less than".
**********************************
THE FLOW of the piece is good. As free-verse (technically, no set meter - very few poets use meter, and if they think they do, use it correctly, these days. That aside, there is no set line length, and the rhythm pattern exceeds the rhyme pattern (abc
considerably). It reads well. For the most part.
To those who wander in an find,
a fear beyond this world,
pray that they shall die in peace,
as its enmity is unfurled.
reads poorly at the last line. Personally, I read my stuff aloud back to myself, to hear its flow, and my variations with that flow (there usually being more than one way to emphasize words and meanings of words - one reason I do not believe in meter as a practicing poet). I would suggest
"as its enmity's unfurled" or "as enmities unfurl", the latter being best, IMHO, as more ominous.
I would also use, in place of "a fear", "that fear" or "the fear", again for dramatic effect. The generalised truth of the indefinite article - "a" - is no match for the definite truth of the definite article - "the" - so far as adding weight by repetition and reflection/reiteration/mirroring of meaning goes.
Similarly, ... OK: you changed that stanza:
Each day more calumny's are made,
of more brave men who've gone,
to brave this trecherous eternity,
but still more people mourn.
I don't think "calumny" (plural: "calumnies") is the right word, for all it holds meaning. However, I'd say leave it, for it does -mea culpa: maybe it is the right word- reflect the widow's grieving, and the child's.
I was going to say "who have" flowed better than "who've", but the added length of "calumny's"(sic) weights things differently. However, that said, the stanza reads clunkily. If you want a clunky stanza, fair enough, but it does detract from the lyric, light tragedical, fairy tale flow of the piece.
Without giving analytic more, I would suggest (and note I suggest only by way of example - the spirit of the critique, not its embodied word, is what is of importance to me as a student of poetry: "It is I that write and I just might have reasons so right even I don't know them." applies here):
Every day calumny's made
of more brave men who've gone before
to brave this treacherous eternal,
and still more people mourn. - Why "but"? What's the objection, implied by a "but", to the situation described, viz: tragedy of treachery and mourning people?
OR:
Each day more calumnies are made,
and yet more brave men be going,
braving this treacherous eternity,
leaving still more people mourning. - I prefer the flow of the first, but this latter yields a double meaning to the calumny: the misunderstanding of the people left behind, and the mistaken ambition of those going.
**************************************
{Now I don't have the poem to Copy and Paste - damn!}
***************************************
"little did she know
she had witnessed her fathers last breath" - you've changed this, I recall. I liked to extended last line because it drew out the drama of the situation. However, the "never knew what happened" and the "witnessing" don't add up. I suggested last night
"after dreaming many deaths
little did she know she had
witnessed her father's last breaths.", implying in this middle line her ignorance - a trick of versification very useful to the poet - and making less definite, by verbalising a noun, what she had witnessed.
**********************************
"His confidence dwindles
as he climbs the treacherous hills,
yet for his family - I change the "but"
this is a duty he fulfills."
The flow of this stanza is short in the first and last lines, but here that caesura is good, emphasizing the meaning of the piece, where earlier it was clunky. No fixed rules, but it doesn't disturb the fairy tale air in the way mere clunkiness did.
*******************************
One suggestion:
"her golden hair is glinting
wound in one long curl"
Writing "wound up in one" says the same thing, but also implies an emotional entanglement, and the extra syllable does not disturb the flow. One syllable either way usually doesn't, depending on euphony and phonetic values.
*********************************
OK: I should not go on (I feared I would, to that Castle of Critique, swamped around by Read and Goaled...), but I add a suggestion regarding the first stanza:
If it is money and blood - the threat is never clearly stated, but if: then:
"A castle ... gold,
shades out the bleeding sun; - the castle did not shade
majesty hides what lies inside, the sun, did it?
an evil, man's number one." - "Money is the root of all evil, but not its seed nor watering" etc.)
***********************************
OVERALL: Worthy. I was tempted to award a Silver Trophy to it, for symbolic reasons: the flow and the subject matter were well done, and silver is to me a shining metal of spiritual worth, but not the incorruptible gold. For reasons of my own sanity, I shall keep the contest at Gold + HM's, unless I award this a 30-point Silver (if I can, and I still assess the contest this way in a few days).
******************************
Anyways, I add another clappy, and exit, stage left.
Master Anarchy. -
Thanks everyone for all your honest comments
I've done a fair bit of editing and I think what I've done to this piece of work works a lot better, thanks again for all your help!
-
now its worth a read
I was glad tht you changed tht lines.Nevetheless now its epic(near about) to read
new rating:
content-7.5 out of 10
vocabulary-6.5 out of 10
accuracy-8 out of 10
creativity-7 out of 10
theme-7.5 out of 10
originality-7.5 out of 10
totals-44 out of 60
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I can see from the ramparts...
I pass this piece to the finalists, simply for its length, which I applaud.
I print it out to consider it at my leisure.
GL.
MA.
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WOw I like this alot there is a few rough spots, and I have to slightly agree with the guy below about the plot but other than that dang this is awesome
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I read through the other comments on the piece and I have to disagree with one of them this is a wonderful pen and I am glad you chose to enter I found it touching and a joy to read I liked the flow and how it is full of emotion you did a great job and again I thank you for entering
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A storybook adventure, most surely! I would love to see this fine story illustrated in pen and ink pictures.
It is lovely, to be sure. 
Sad and splendid.
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A FORLORN GIRL AND HER DAD :A GOOD THEME
You did the justice with the character here with the end lines.
But one thing i did like to mention is that you can improve your this piece of yours about the little girls younger days
one more thing to keep in mind while writing story is the plot you need to set. here there were not more interaction between the characters i mean to say that you didnt describe the emotions tht properly
Please try to avoid maudlins in between some lines
I dont meant to be rude . but ur work is average
Sleeping in her wooden bed,
lies his sleeping girl,
her golden hair is glinting,
wound in one long curl.
He taught her from an early age,
of many things he knows,
but most of all he taught her,
of the love that he bestows
would like to improve on thee lnes
and set the plot tof the story first and then mention these stanzas
for me I can rate your stuff :
content-5.5 out of 10
vocabulary-4.5 out of 10
accuracy-8 out of 10
creativity-5 out of 10
theme-6.5 out of 10
originality-5.5 out of 10
totals-35 out of 60
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