LXXXIV

Don September 26th, 2009

LXXXIV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            Here I am particularly experimenting with the effects you can achieve with one of the aspects of sprung rhythm, what Hopkins called “clashing accents”:  two monosyllabic stressed feet suddenly coming together in an otherwise flowing line.  See if you can find them.

 

 

Commentary, Romans 8:22

  

And the Sea rises and falls, and the Moon walks,

And the leaves unfold like a scroll rolled each spring,

But no one stops to read them, and the Wind talks

Of the flesh that weeps and the soul that cannot sing.

 

And the Sun rises and sets, and the Rain falls,

And the leaves achieve a glory of red and gold,

But the long Darkness grows, and the Snow calls,

And the leaves clutch like withered hands, and old.

 

And the Crone counts the dead leaves in the dark light

And will not tell the numbers that she finds;

And if the child can be born in the hard night,

He’s swaddled in the subtle shroud she winds.

 

And the Sea rises and falls, and the Moon walks,

And the leaves unfold like a scroll rolled each spring,

But no one stops to read them, and the Wind talks

Of the flesh that weeps and the soul that cannot sing.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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