Young Writers Society

Oh yes, oh yes.
A Crusader prayer? Right up my alley. The Crusades are my favorite time period in all of history, and I have devoted myself these past few years to researching all of the events as deep as I can.
Does your prayer put a smile on my face? Yes.
This has to be my favorite line of the poem,
"Blood and sand, blue skies above, a tarnished flag."
For some reason even this tiny snippet of description is enough for my to imagine a great battle upon the sands of the Holy Land, and this knight's comrades who died there.

"We, God's holy men, with fearless hearts,
we march upon Jerusalem."
I love this too. Jerusalem was always the ultimate goal of all the Crusades, whether it was capturing it, defending it, or recapturing it. Many knights and pilgrims alike cried when they reached the city, after having traveled so long to get there.

"for we are men of Christ,
and for Him we fall."
Indeed almost everyone on crusade would gladly have died for their Lord, which is why they were such a terrifying and effective army, leading them to capture all of the coastline of the Levant. Since their time, never has a military force been filled with such religious zeal.

Latin? Yes oh yes.
Even though no knight would have known the Latin language, or been able to read or write at all, I'm sure many memorized prayers from the monks and priests they traveled with on the long roads.
I've included Latin in my crusader stories as well, and it really is a beautiful touch.

This is perfectly accurate and all except for the last two words.
"Deus Vult."
God wills it, as it translates to, was only used as a rally note or a battle cry, and only in and around the First Crusade around 1100 AD. So it would not have been used at the end of a prayer like this one. It was meant to be screamed with your fellow knights before a charge against the Saracens, and not in prayers and holy dealings.

Nevertheless, this is a great poem you've got here.

10/10
Outstanding job.

The first thing I'm going to do, and I recommend you do the same, is respectfully toss @fortis's review out the nearest window and wash my hands of it while simultaneously pointing to her review as a prime example of why knowing your audience is so important, and why showing it to said audience is equally important.

(Sorry fort, but we're not interested in writing modern poetry here. ;P The faux-archaic stuff is where it's at.)

With that said, in the first stanza, you resort to a slant rhyme, which is a rather modern convention. While extant examples of poetry may now have the appearance of having utilized slant rhymes, those slanted rhymes are artifacts of shifts in how the language is spoken rather than being intentional at the time of composition.

While you certainly could aim for more authentic faux slant rhymes by utilizing extant examples thereof, that would also require greater accuracy in the vocabulary and grammatical constructions, which would be a lot more work than simply adhering to exact rhymes.

Authenticity is a laudable goal and all, but I've found that writing and reading in this style is a lot more enjoyable when concessions are made to modern conventions in language. There fast approaches a point where authenticity can become more of a chore than a pleasure for the reader as the focus shifts from the content to the form, rather than the form being a meta reference to the traditions the content is calling upon for context.

With that said, although the majority of stanzas follow the same "five lines with the odd lines all being rhyming" pattern, the lengths of these lines are inconsistent from stanza to stanza, and sometimes inconsistent within a stanza. Coupled with how the pattern of stresses (the meter) also varies, and the piece feels quite a bit more modern than ancient, word choice and grammatical transpositions aside.

One of the key things to remember about ancient works is that they were primarily transmitted orally, and thus the forms used were incredibly important as mnemonic devices to assist the storyteller in remembering what came next and retelling it accurately from telling to telling. The patterns themselves were clues as to the type of story being told, which is why we have forms called elegiac couplets (and the corresponding elegies written/transcribed in them) and odes.

While they can be a bit challenging to work with, you're missing out on quite a lot by not using them as they instantly instill a piece with a sense of ancient gravitas, including sillier pieces like the starting lines of an epic detailing the struggles of Humanity versus athlete's foot, rendered in the Grand Style of dactylic hexameter.

Dactylic hexameter is very tricky to write naturally in English, for the record, but it's also quite flexible due to the lengths of the lines and lack of required rhyme.

On a side note, science Latin, Church Latin, and Latin-Latin are three very different beasts, with science Latin being very, very wrong according to the other two.

Hello!

I don't think this is bad at all for what you're going for.
I am no expert in this sort of poetry, but it looks pretty good (again, FOR THIS SORT OF POETRY)
But the thing is. No one writes this kind of poetry anymore. That's because it's old and outdated and archaic and... well, boring.
It's very crusader-esque, but we aren't in a crusade right now. It's hard to relate to this.
This poem would go FANTASTICALLY in a novel about a crusade or something like a crusade. But as it is now, in our modern world, this couldn't really ever be published elsewhere because it's not relevant to anyone's lives.
Does this make sense? I hold firm that the best way to write poetry that people are interested in is to read /very/ modern poetry. Read poems that were published in poetry journals within the past few months. Styles change often. To be a successful poet that people are interested in, you need to keep up with the times. It's just like any art form.

In terms of technicality, your poem seems pretty good. You do have some awkward phrases that might just stem from this archaic style, but I feel like they would be awkward even for the style.
For example, one that really stuck out to me was:
"those who blooded lie."
I feel like even back then people would say "those who lie bloodied on the ground" or something less... pretentious?
There are some other examples /I/ thought were awkward, but I don't want to pull them all out, because what I find awkward, you might not, so I want it to be you who decides whether something is awkward or not.

This is mostly what I have to say! I hope this helped!
Keep writing! The best way to get better at poetry is first reading a lot of poetry, and then writing a lot of poetry. You can do it!

~fortis

I don't think poem is bad, on the contrary I find it interesting what prompted you to write about war and combine it with religion. It is different, and I like different. There are many poems that celebrate the obvious beauty in life like love and not many that focuses on the less happy topics .
I think the poem sounds a bit monotonous like a prayer, and I am a bit confused whether its supposed to be a prayer or a poem.

To make it sound more like a poem I would introduce the poem to Jesus, God, Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit then describe the war, its consequences and its end, then write the stanza for forgiveness to all the sinners involved in the war and for guidance to heaven (preferably not with crows/vultures who just pecked over my dead body, its frightful enough to die painfully in war personally I prefer angels to guide my soul). This structure would make it sound less monotonous and the Virgin Mary, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all more or less one. I mean they all have the power to forgive & teach on God's behalf.
Like in the first stanza you introduce the prayer/poem with imagery about war....I could do with more detail ...is it actual war? Or is war a simile to life?

In the sixth stanza..it isnt clear how it link with the fifth ...after the Lord, Holy Spirit, Mary has been asked to bless our kin ...it seems to jump to the kin marching to war, perhaps you could link the two by saying 'With your holy fire...' or something like that.

I also don't have a Latin background so I won't comment on the Latin

Keep up the good work! I'd love to read future poems by you.