Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.
Show rules for this event
James
The day we cease to believe, we cease
To be, to breath, to keep our lease,
On bodies dying by degrees,
With hearts that too know atrophies.
With minds unfixed on something pure,
No beloved truth held firm and sure;
No cause for slings to be endured,
No better future's gold allure.
But just to want, to hope, believe,
Cannot alone these things achieve.
There must be more, be not deceived -
The work will never see reprieve.
The light of faith, the sweat to try,
The wings on which we all must fly.
Ours not from faith & works to shy,
Ours to believe, & do, or die.
To be, to breath, to keep our lease,
On bodies dying by degrees,
With hearts that too know atrophies.
With minds unfixed on something pure,
No beloved truth held firm and sure;
No cause for slings to be endured,
No better future's gold allure.
But just to want, to hope, believe,
Cannot alone these things achieve.
There must be more, be not deceived -
The work will never see reprieve.
The light of faith, the sweat to try,
The wings on which we all must fly.
Ours not from faith & works to shy,
Ours to believe, & do, or die.
From the subject matter:
I'll guess that the title comes from the Letter of St. James in the New Testament, and as such, the content of the piece is pretty much straightforward. I always appreciate that in poems. :)
The form's nicely straightforward, too, and I like the "slant rhymes" throughout--one of my favorite poems of all time, "Bagpipe Music" by Louis MacNeice, does this sort of thing, ending the lines with words that don't-quite-but-almost rhyme. That and the irregular syllable pattern serve the poem's message, too, with the difficulty of maintaining belief reflected in the difficulty of maintaining rhyme and rhythm.
If I wanted to get all "quibble pants," I could point out that the word should be "breathe" in the second line and that the period at the end of the second stanza doesn't belong there since it's not a complete sentence. But the poem says what it wants to say in a simple yet interesting way. Can't really ask much more of a poem, seems to me...
Mike
I'll guess that the title comes from the Letter of St. James in the New Testament, and as such, the content of the piece is pretty much straightforward. I always appreciate that in poems. :)
The form's nicely straightforward, too, and I like the "slant rhymes" throughout--one of my favorite poems of all time, "Bagpipe Music" by Louis MacNeice, does this sort of thing, ending the lines with words that don't-quite-but-almost rhyme. That and the irregular syllable pattern serve the poem's message, too, with the difficulty of maintaining belief reflected in the difficulty of maintaining rhyme and rhythm.
If I wanted to get all "quibble pants," I could point out that the word should be "breathe" in the second line and that the period at the end of the second stanza doesn't belong there since it's not a complete sentence. But the poem says what it wants to say in a simple yet interesting way. Can't really ask much more of a poem, seems to me...
Mike
The versification is pretty and well-executed. An erudite interpretation of the theme, but lacking any concrete objects. Compare the effect against the pietist's rejoinder: "epistle of straw".
I like the way the final line evokes "Charge of the Light Brigade" to me, but I don't know if that was the intent. Like the first poem I reviewed, this feels front-loaded by what sentiment it's expressing, then doesn't really develop it any more. The rhythm and rhyme are just a little off, and I feel like this is something that's supposed to sound more like song lyrics than a written poem. In music, there's more flexibility to hurry or stretch syllables as needed, and there's more going on to distract from words that don't quite rhyme, like "cease" (soft s) with "degrees" (hard s). But in a poem, there is no such distraction. There's just the words on the page, nothing more, so it becomes much more obvious when things are kluged a bit to fit the mold. Augie suggests that these imperfections play to the poem's message, and while I could buy that, it falls into the category that it's the less obvious interpretation. Take a story that has sentence fragments in it. The author's skill in other aspects of the story can convey to the reader that he knows what he's doing and these "mistakes" are intentional. Fragments can be an effective way of communicating things, after all. But if the story is riddled with what seem to be unintentional spelling errors, then the reader's just going to assume the author doesn't know what a complete sentence is. All that is to say that there's an art to doing something that's conventionally wrong and making it clear it's a stylistic decision, so if that was done in service to the theme, it might take lampshading it a bit by making an explicit reference to it.