FaunI love these two poems; they are part of who I am. I love the colours in them - the dark blue and black of the night, the pale unearthly blue of the saints, the whiteness of the Moon. The arena of yellow eyes; the pale moon-glint and fen-frost in the darkness.
Haunched like a faun, he hooed
From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost
Until all owls in the twigged forest
Flapped black to look and brood
On the call this man made.
No sound but a drunken coot
Lurching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank
Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.
An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout
Goat-horns. Marked how god rose
And galloped woodward in that guise.
~ Sylvia Plath
The Moon and the Yew Tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.
This is the place where I will post my new poetry (and some of my old poetry when I get time). Le Beau Ténébreux is the nickname of the main character in the book What's Bred in the Bone, part of the Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies. It seemed like an apt description for my muse, who usually appears as a dark man with an air of mystery (and no, he does not bring me chocolates).
That solitude which suits abstruser musings - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He aerest sceop aelda bearnum
Heofon to hrofe Halig Scyppend
~ Caedmon's Hymn
Hwæt! we Gar-Dena || on geardagum
My love is like a red red rose. (Burns)Metaphors can be distinguished from other closely related rhetorical concepts such as metonym, synecdoche, simile, allegory and parable.
Trochee trips from long to short;˘ = short syllable,
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride --
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise,
And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies;
Tender warmth at his heart, with these meters to show it,
WIth sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet --
May crown him with fame, and must win him the love
Of his father on earth and his father above.
My dear, dear child!
Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge
See a man who so loves you as your fond S.T. Colerige.
| ˘ ˘ | pyrrhus, dibrach |
| ˘ ¯ | iamb |
| ¯ ˘ | trochee, choree |
| ¯ ¯ | spondee |
| ˘ ˘ ˘ | tribrach |
| ¯ ˘ ˘ | dactyl |
| ˘ ¯ ˘ | amphibrach |
| ˘ ˘ ¯ | anapest, antidactylus |
| ˘ ¯ ¯ | bacchius |
| ¯ ¯ ˘ | antibacchius |
| ¯ ˘ ¯ | cretic, amphimacer |
| ¯ ¯ ¯ | molossus |
- masculine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words. (rhyme, sublime, crime)
- feminine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words. (picky, tricky, sticky, icky)
- dactylic: a rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable ('cacophonies", "Aristophanes")
In the general sense, "rhyme" can refer to various kinds of phonetic similarity between words, and to the use of such similar-sounding words in organizing verse. Rhymes in this general sense are classified according to the degree and manner of the phonetic similarity:
- syllabic: a rhyme in which the last syllable of each word sounds the same but does not necessarily contain vowels. (cleaver, silver, or pitter, patter)
- imperfect: a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (wing, caring)
- semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
- oblique (or slant): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound. (green, fiend)
- half rhyme (or sprung rhyme): matching final consonants. (bent, ant)
