If Ever There was a Moral

Hey Zelda, here to review on this oh so fine Review Day!


So, I think the theme is interesting -- it would be great if we could all agree on morality and laws although even then I'm not sure that would bring peace. Sometimes people know the laws or accept them, but they still end up breaking them... for instance speed limits. Most people agree we have to have speed limits or it would be chaos, but people still break them and cause accidents etc.

I thought again the flow and rhyming was very strong in this piece. All of the lines had good line length and weren't just short sentences on their own - so that's all in order.

I do have one wording critique though. In the beginning you say "If ever there was a moral"... normally an if statement ends with a "then...this would happen" or just "if there were morals, this would happen" like that's the normal sentence structure of beginning a sentence with "If" The second time you use if, you do this by adding "then" to follow it, but the first time you just say "If this..." "this", "and this". I'm not sure it's a partial sentence, but it does end up sounding a bit odd.

Well that's all I've got! Best of luck in future writing!

~alliyah

Go go team werewolves! This has been a werewolf review. Happy Review Day!

Hello, E.E here for a possibly quick review and maybe some utter nonsense! Grim is here as well, drinking hot cocoa and being a slacker. *Grim looks over, glaring* So, lets get started.

So, first thing I noticed is that a bunch of lines a missing capitals at the beginning while some lines do have them. You should know which lines these are unless this is your style. Just one place is in dire need of a comma and that line would be "then disagreements would be no more". Otherwise, the flow was great and and the title matched well with the poem itself.

Now is when I dissect your poem and see if I can't get its meaning right! So, in your poem you are telling us, the reader, that no one can seem to agree. That no one can seem to respect other. Now, in respect I do not mean a rich person telling a lower grade that they will respect them and not treat them like an animal. That is what is wrong. What I mean is that to respect everyone like we are all human, that we all matter, no matter the race, if we have autism or things alike. If we are in the LGBT community. You wish, as do most, that people would just talk through there issues and not fight in wars, to learn from history and not make those mistakes like during World War one, World War Two or the Civil War.

Overall, I loved the poem, it made me think and keep up the good work! Happy Halloween! I really need to go now Grim has souls to reap and he needs more cocoa. He has a problem, seriously. Cheerio and fruit loops to you!

Hey @ZeldaIsShiek! Stella here to review.

This poem is short and sweet, which is good because it allows you to pack a punch. But the issue with having a poem this short is that you have to make every word count.

First things first - conceed should be "concede".

The rhythm of the poem seemed off to me. You know when you read a poem out loud and you suddenly find that there are too many syllables in a line to stuff in for your rhyme to match up? For instance in these two lines:

"all must abide by this law,

all must be willing to concede."

the second line here has too many syllables to work in the rhythm. If you changed it to, for instance, "all must concede" I think that would be better.

Similarly your last two lines don't have the right rhythm either - they're both too long and they don't fit with the rest of the poem.

Regarding content though, I liked your idea. My college chaplaincy actually ran a series of sermons that this poem reminds me of, called "The Golden Rule" - that the majority of major religions circle on one main theme which is (to use the Christian example) "treat your neighbour as yourself" or basically do good/treat others well. It's just interesting and the poem made me think about that - that despite the central tenet of most religions being the same, they still bring a lot of conflict.

Which would bring me to my last point - your choice of the word 'moral' as the overall word of choice. I studied ethics a little bit in college and we had to learn the difference between ethics and morals, that is that morals tend to come within another set of beliefs (e.g. a religion). So I'd just wonder if you would want to use the word 'value' or 'law' like you have already, or if you're happy to stick with moral. Just something to chew on.

Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!

-Stella x

Hi there! Rose here back for another review on another poem of yours this poem will be much shorter, trust me, haha.

Just wanna say the rhyming was lovely done. you did a good job keeping it consistent.
The grammar was 95% spot on, I will add the small mistake in the critiquing I will put below.

In the first line I think it would look better as:

If there ever was a moral,

Hello! Feather here to review!

So I don't often review poetry (I hardly write it, either), but here I am. So it will probably be a kind of sucky review. But hey- practice makes perfect!

First: I totally agree with this, and thanks for putting the idealism into words. It rhymes well, its rhythm is good, and it is easy to read.

Second: the one criticism I have is that I think the last line, "and peace would come to our own lands" would read more smoothly if it said "...come to own our lands." Just a suggestion.

Anyways, it was awesome! Keep writing!

-Featherstone of the Knights of the Green Room