Hendeca Life

Tags

death, hendecasyllabics, homage, life, Poem, Poetry, rebirth, Robert Frost, Sonnet, Tennyson

Greatest changes occur with life’s beginnings,
Sun-rays flooding the earth with pulsing seconds,
Time jerks forward with creature’s maiden stirrings,
Life sparks life, for the slower hour beckons.

Rainbows bringing rebirth to stagnant marshes,
Algae choking the reeds on water’s window,
Depths of motion in liquid circle thrashes
Until yellowing leaves have cast their shadow.

Living slows with the autumn closing shutter
Forcing light into night’s eternal darkness.
Cattails bend in the frosted lines of water
Giving homage, unmoving, frozen, timeless.

Freezing death can be seen the tender creeper;
Life rebirths into life, with death, the sleeper.

Note: This poem is written in eleven syllable lines, hence the hen-deca. This poem is written with the anglicized meter of Catullus, a famous Latin poet. I also wrote this using the rhyming form of a Shakespearean sonnet.

Other well-known hendeca-syllabic poetry include “Hendecasyllabics” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and “For Once, Then, Something” by Robert Frost.

Please also note, that Tennyson’s poem to his critics contained the name of the type of poem as its title. In a way, Frost was a clever poet and did the same thing…as “For Once, Then, Something” can be seen as “For One, Ten, Something” (One-ten being how eleven is formed in hen-deca). Also note, that Frost, in using that as his title and as the last phrase of his poem, likens the title as the “white pebble” of his poem, the hidden truth, which I believe his critics failed to realise. Very sneaky….

Another great exposition of Frost’s poem can be found at http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/frost-henddecasyllabics-for-once-then-something/

Last and not least…it’s open link night over at dVersePoets.

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[[Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven]]

Tags

Dreams, generosity, love, Poem, vunerability, Yeats

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
– William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

First off, the name Aedh in the title is Gaelic and carries the meaning of ‘fire’. Several early catholic saints, it seems, were named such. Yeats’ uses this character in a number of his poems in a manner quite different from its meaning. His character is pale and lovelorn near a polar opposite of fire.

I first encountered this poem (or the last few lines of it) in the movie Equilibrium. For those who haven’t seen it, it combines elements from Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and 1984. An interesting movie for those who haven’t seen it.

Of course, when one reads this, one immediately knows that this is a love poem. Here is a man who wishes to give his love not just his entire world, but all things in existance as they are represented by the cloths of the heavens. He is willing to lay everything down under the feet of his love.

However, he is poor, and can only dream of laying everything under the feet of love. As is so often done in life, people put everything on hold for love, even their dreams.

Dreams here represent happiness as well. When one places happiness under the feet of love, pain and misery can be the result. This is why Aedh admonishes his love to walk softly, lest his dreams, his happiness, and his very self be twisted and contorted by the passing of love.

Love makes us vunerable. We are often hurt most by those we care about, despite intentions. Love works best when the dreams of both are near equal. Then, there exists that wonderful treading softly of four feet (and not two). Love is most tender when our innermost selves are viewed with understanding by another.

Stepping outside of the original intent of the poem, groups of people can make many things happen when they walk intently on a shared dream. Wonderful things, and dreadful things. Unfortunately, mankind hasn’t quite reached the point of being able to tiptoe about the dreams of all men. When we have achieved this, we will have achieved a true life, filled with liberty and happiness.

[[The Road Not Taken]]

Tags

choice, lifestyle, Nature, Poem, Poetry, regret, road not taken, Robert Frost, wisdom

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It would hardly be worth starting the memorization of poetry without hitting some of the all time favorites. “The Road Not Taken” is the perfect poem to start this journey.

Many people will take a shallow reading of this poem and say that ultimately, each man must choose his own path to walk. That is, of course, absolutely true. There is more to it that this because Frost himself said that this was one of his ‘tricky’ poems.

He could be saying that it doesn’t matter which road to take. Just choose one, and perhaps someday, you’ll be able to take the other path, and another journey.

Frost could also be thinking of some past choice of his own. He made his choice and lived his life accordingly. The path he choose didn’t take him back to make the choice again. This would be why he would be telling this story with a sigh after achieving the wisdom of old age. Perhaps there is a bit of regret in the past. Most of us live with regret. I may regret something someday, but for now, I have chosen to live without them. I am more of the type of person who will cast his anchor down where he is (another story) and start from where I am now. It seems more practical to live in the now, as opposed to the past.

Ultimately, whilst there may be some regret at some fork in our lives, Frost isn’t entirely regretful of his decision that “made all the difference.” We, as humans, love to consider the past and how things may have been different if we had acted otherwise. Most of us, if all things were equal, would choose the same things we did before, if possible.

For each decision in our lives, it is hard to know where it will lead. Somethings can be foreseen, but all decisions eventually bend in the undergrowth of the future. There is a nice contrast here between the future which is generally pictured as ahead and above us, while here it is imagined as greenery below us. Our future is like a low green fog that sneaks up on us; and before we know it, we are completely lost in the woods, perhaps not even knowing what brought us to our current condition. That is, of course, seeing the glass as half-empty. The half-full glass shows us that we walk the road to our future, and clear the path before us.

We all must choose our own paths, and we are happier if we can do so without regrets. If there are regrets, we still need to remain sure enough of ourselves and our life’s decisions to remain living. Life is such a wonderful thing. How much more so is the fact that we can choose our lives. We can choose to pursue our life, our liberty, and our happiness.

Have you chosen wisely?