Erithean Seas

The new edit is below...I couldn't bring myself to delete the old one until I had some reviews on the new version...


Erithea of the fairest seas
How many you have made strangers to thee
Thee'st always been ever cold,
Never a warm sea to me.

Erithea, I am yet young, yet I feel old.
A story thee art, long forgotten and untold.
To life and to living thou art hateful
A wintry spectacle to behold.

It was not the matter of the faithful,
It was not the matter of the grateful,
For I am neither to thee.
And yet, even if I find it hateful

I cannot tear myself away from the sea
And I, I alone, sail these waters alone.


EDIT:

Erithea of the fairest seas
How many you have made strangers to thee
Thee'st always been ever cold,
Ever stormy and dark to me.

Erithea, I am yet young, yet I feel old.
Thy adventures I have spoken much, and yet they remain untold.
I remember how many lives thou'st destroyed, how many friends I had lost.
I feel as if thee art the only one remaining, a fortune to me unforetold.

So many lives were cost,
So much time was lost,
And yet, here I sing, alone on a deserted boat for thee, ever hateful
Of what thou represent, a sea of frost.

It was not the matter of the faithful,
It was not the matter of the grateful,
For I am neither to thee
I find thee unconceivably, unbelievably dreadful.

Yet I cannot tear myself away from the sea
And I, I alone, do sail these waters alone.


Y'know, I think this one has lost some of the poetic edge of the older one. Oh well...

Hey Leza!

The main thing here is that you introduce a bunch of ideas (like feeling old, the cold sea) but you don't really expand on those ideas at all. So what I would like to see is an expansion of thought. Why isn't it a matter of the faithful? Or the grateful? And why are you the only one who sails alone?

So just expand. It'll be awesome.

*glomps.* Leza!

Okay. So I like this. It's nice. Reminds me of just a lone sailor, staring out into the sea, having a conversation with it because a) there's no one else and b) it's an old friend.

Erithea of the fairest seas
How many you have made strangers to thee
Thee'st always been ever cold,
Never a warm sea to me.

I think you should change "Never a warm sea to me" to something that doesn't reiterate that the sea is cold.

It was not the matter of the faithful,
It was not the matter of the grateful,
For I am neither to thee.

I like this. It's like you're insulting the ocean. Stupid ocean. But why? What did it ever do to you?

Why do you feel old?

I'd like to see why your character feels this way toward the sea. Expand. I remember you said, in chat, that your thee's might be in the wrong place, but they're not. They're all fine. So I think you did a good job.

Work on expanding on this and it will be so awesome, I'll die of squee-ing.

Take care!
Van

Hello there. I'll be critiquing both versions separately. :D

Erithea of the fairest seas,
How many hast thou made strangers to thee?
Thou'st always been ever cold--
Never a warm sea to me.

"Thou" is the nominative form while "thee" is the objective, meaning that if you replace thee/thou with "you", you would use "thou" when "you" is performing the action and "thee" when "you" is receiving the action.

"You went to the store," would become "Thou went to the store."
"She came to you," would become "She came to thee."

Now, the thing that stood out to me about this stanza is the length of the second line; it's much longer than all the other lines syllable-wise, and that tripped me up. When you have a poem that rhymes, you need to have a consistent rhythm throughout, otherwise the rhymes will tend to sound off and your readers will trip up.

As already mentioned, the last line was a bit redundant.

I made a few punctuation/word choice suggestions in blue. In particular, since you are using "thee" and "thou", it makes little sense to use "you" as well.

Erithea, I am yet young, yet I feel old.
A story thou art, long forgotten and untold.
To life and to living thou art hateful--
A wintry spectacle to behold.

In the first line, you use "yet" twice with only the word "young" in between. This is far too close and throws off the flow. I suggest shuffling the words around a bit to something like, "I am yet young, Erithea, yet I feel old." Because there's more space in between the repetition, it sounds better and not as redundant.

The line lengths are more consistent in this stanza, but they could use with a bit more tweaking. For instance, you could omit the "and" in the second line by substituting a comma.

It was not the matter of the faithful,
It was not the matter of the grateful,
For I am neither to thee.
And yet, even if I find it hateful,

I cannot tear myself away from the sea--
And I, I alone, sail these waters alone.

I think this would work better if it were formatted so that only the last line of the poem was on its own. It does not rhyme with anything else while the first line of the last stanza rhymes with a line in the second to last stanza. Also, using the word "alone" twice in the same line came across as a bit redundant.

I think that changing the "it was" and "the" in the first two lines to "t'was" and "a" would help the lines flow better. Also, the third line in the second to last stanza is much shorter than all the others.

Also, I thought the narrator was addressing the sea directly? Why are they suddenly referring to the sea indirectly in the second to last line?

Now, for the edit:

Erithea of the fairest seas
How many you have made strangers to thee
Thou'st always been ever cold,
Ever stormy and dark to me.

This last line is much better than the first version's. :D All my other comments on the first version still apply.

Erithea, I am yet young, yet I feel old.
Thy adventures I have spoken much, and yet they remain untold.
I remember how many lives thou'st destroyed, how many friends I had lost.
I feel as if thou art the only one remaining, a fortune to me unforetold.

You expanded all right, but not in the best way. You can add new stanzas or lines if you need to; just lengthening lines without regards to any rhythm really kills the flow and rhyme of the poem.

So many lives were cost,
So much time was lost,
And yet, here I sing, alone on a deserted boat for thee, ever hateful
Of what thou represent, a sea of frost.

You cannot be cost, you cannot was cost, and so you cannot were cost. You cannot actively cost something; something has a cost. Basically, "cost" as a verb has the meaning "to require a payment of something in exchange for something else". Basically, you misused the word "cost".

It was not the matter of the faithful,
It was not the matter of the grateful,
For I am neither to thee.
I find thee inconceivably, unbelievably dreadful.

Yet I cannot tear myself away from the sea,
And I, I alone, do sail these waters alone.

Same as the first version my comments are.

Overall, For Both Poems

You need to get your "thee" and "thou" straight. Also, before you try to rhyme things, first focus on rhythm and flow; these two elements are essential in poetry, and without these two, rhymes in particular fall flat. Consistent line length is one way of establishing a rhythm and flow. Another element you should look at is punctuation. Before you can leave it out/experiment with it, you have to master punctuation: know when it is used, how it is used, and, most importantly of all, why it is used.

One other thing: don't try to force your poem to fit into a particular pattern. In the edited version, forcing your poem to fit into four lines lead to a misused word and badly inconsistent line lengths. I've found it a good technique to write out a first draft of a poem without caring about formatting or anything and then, once that first draft is complete, going back and playing with it to find out what format (if any) works best with the poem.

I hope that was helpful. :D

Hallo, Leza!

Kyllo did quite a wonderful review there, and I would just say I concur and walk away, buuuut...

Good work. I like the ideas you introduce, and in both versions I think you can elaborate more, because we're missing something. What it is, I'm not sure? Is it the lack of feeling behind the lamenting? Is it the lack of tale behind it? I can't tell, but I think this needs more.

I would recommend giving up the rhyme, dear. It's not really propelling your poem forward, when it can, and I think it's pretty important that you use any devices to your advantage, and not to your disadvantage.

Meter is skelterish. I'm not sure if it was stylistic, but the staggered stair-lengths of your lines aren't doing anything of benefit for me, and I'd recommend trimming back a little.

Hope that helps,

June