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Thursday, October 7, 2004 |
I was inspired by this post at Crooked Timber, which celebrates the UK's National Poetry Day with one of Shakespeare's lesser-known but most beautiful sonnets, to post the one and only sonnet I've ever written (so far).
It was genned up in a hurry one day in response to a challenge in the auld (late 90s) Salon Table Talk "Books" section. One of the irascible regulars was complaining (soon after I posted a quite different offering in the "Post Your Poams" thread, if I remember right) that nobody even knew what the meter of a classic sonnet was, much less how to write one anymore. To him, it was (I'm paraphrasing here) all free verse and other foolishness these days. Young whippersnappers! Get offa my lawn!
So of course I had to prove him wrong. Not terribly wrong, mind you, since it isn't a good sonnet, but I proved to the old coot that I could imitate the Shakespearean FORM (which is the easiest of all the old sonnet forms, truth be told).
Chapel On the Headland
The bells above my head now ring a time
Too soon to love you, and too late to know
How to resist, how to elude the flow
Of hope rebounding in their chime,
Or this glow of you beside me, this silent crime
Of wishing you would be an undertow
To me, and pull me to the waves below
The steepled cliffs our chastened lives have climbed.
The sea beneath the stones beneath our feet
Echoes with each wave the carillon
Which slowly tolls the hour above the street,
A beat, a roar, and then the antiphon.
My life is on the rocks, and bittersweet
Will be this love that I embark upon.
The bells above my head now ring a time
Too soon to love you, and too late to know
How to resist, how to elude the flow
Of hope rebounding in their chime,
Or this glow of you beside me, this silent crime
Of wishing you would be an undertow
To me, and pull me to the waves below
The steepled cliffs our chastened lives have climbed.
The sea beneath the stones beneath our feet
Echoes with each wave the carillon
Which slowly tolls the hour above the street,
A beat, a roar, and then the antiphon.
My life is on the rocks, and bittersweet
Will be this love that I embark upon.
There are additional poetical celebrations in the comments thread over at CT. Go look.
5:45:13 PM
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