Who Art Thou?
Who art thou that prowls passageways at dusk?
Garbed in a white gown with white slippered feet.
No trace left at dawn but a perfumed musk
Of the dust swept up by thine trailing sheet.
Who art thou that nightly haunts my abode?
Bringing chilling drafts and agonised cries
To stir my guests into the waking world.
You. With moon tainted face and hollow eyes.
Who art thou? A shadow of existence,
A memory to haunt a tortured soul.
Just one candle is suffice to enhance
Your face invisible; nothing to behold.
Just one candle and you no longer stand;
Not in mind, in place, nor in memory.
Just one candle and my nightmare's in hand.
Just one candle grants me my liberty.
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125,025 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Oh Jasmine, what would I do without you? Thank you so much, you're always so incredibly helpful!
I'd half forgotten about this one actually but I do like the theme and I've certainly moved away from the old dialect so writing it again could prove to be quite promising. In fact, you might remember why I went through the archaic language phase? When Claire and I were practicing for the novel that has not yet been written. Hehe.
I really must go, in part to avoid getting too far off topic and in part because there's a bus I must catch and so much still to do. Expect to hear from me on Wednesday at the very latest with a long reply to your e-mail and hopefully at least half those edits I owe you,
Heather xx
Hey, look what I found!
I love your theme and imagery. I'm not so sure about the archaic style. I know that's what you intended to do, so I think this could just be a matter of personal preference.
I'm not so sure about this;
"No trace left at dawn but a perfumed musk
Of the dust swept up by thine trailing sheet. "
"perfumed musk of the dust" doesn't make much sense to my mind, and so this sounds a little forced.
I'm not sure about rhyming "world" with "abode", and I think that:
"Bringing chilling drafts and agonised cries" is a little weak. Your imagery here could be more powerful.
The next stanza is very good. I'd say "your invisible face", as the twisted syntax irritated me. I'd say "is enough" or "will suffice."
I love;
"Just one candle and my nightmare's in hand."
For the sake of experimentation, I'd try this without the archaic diction. Hope this helps.
Jas
Thank you, that's very encouraging =)
Although i normally do not read these types of poems, I did like this one. I found it very intriguing,
lyslolstinks
Thank you Kim, I'm glad you liked it =)
That's a really good idea, Colleen and something I haven't tried before. I think I'll ask my sister to do just that when she returns.I'm ambivalent on this one, Heather. It's well-written overall, but I think it might have been overdone. Plenty of writing guides I've read advise against the use of archaic diction, but I disagree. I think it can be very effective if used well in a poem written in traditional style.
As I said, though, it might have been a little forced. I stumbled as I read the poem. It's a very good imitation of an older style of writing, but it's difficult to imitate. It's not one thing in particular, but it was not...hmm, comfortable (for lack of a better word) to read, especially in the last stanza. Each phrase is beautiful on its own, but you struggle when it comes to making them flow.
I think this problem just takes time to sort out. Keep returning to this poem, definitely. Read it aloud a bit, or ask other people to read it aloud. The first time another person reads it, you can hear where they stumble or are forced to change their manner of speaking to make the line work.
Keep working on it! Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.
-Colleen
I thought this was very good. very well written.
i could tell it was a nightmare. i liked the discriptions you used.
as far as critiquing, it doesnt matter if they dont like the topic. as long as you enjoy what you are writing. it will never appeal to everyone, so write for yourself. and let them critique the grammar ect.
you did a great job.
kim
An archaic poem is basically a poem written in old English. And thanks for the review =)
I don't know what an Archaic poem is, but that was quite good.
I'm not a fan of the Old English words (thou, thine etc) but I still really enjoyed this poem.
This was my favourite stanza:
I love the 'moon tainted face' description. Except, it's confusing because in the next stanza, you say that it's/her/his face is invisible. So how would you know about the moon tainted face and hollow eyes?
Anyways, despite that, it was excellent. I loved your descriptions!
-AYRA
Thanks for the comments all, those are some really helpful suggestions and I'll cetainly take another look at this! It's been a while since I've written an archaic poem actually. Perhaps I'll do another =)
I'm studiyng Shakespear next year so I better get use to this. Even though I am not that good to understanding it, but ah well. It is either shakespear or 5 hours of tenses.
The second and the forth stanza are my favourite.
I think there should be a little more work done on the 1st and 3rd stanza. Just different words or something. (But heck, what do I know about this stuff.)
OK, just to start out, I'm not really a big fan of archaic-ness, much. On some its Ok, but on this it just sounded a bit overdone.
But there are a lot of good qualities about this. You captured my attention right off the bat, and I kept reading because it was interesting. I actually liked the word choice. And the poem souded dark, and, though I'm not really a fan of "dark" poetry, this was pretty cool!
A good poem, but some of the phrases are kind of overdone. But all in all, good job!
it was very pleasant...i enjoyed the general feeling of darkness and about the ghost thing it was tilting more towards a ghostlike character rather than someone.
overall i like it tho...
Hmmm I liked the archaic-ness. But stuff like that is cool. I'm kind of indecisive on my opinions of this. It was cool, but then it was also really... empty. I liked your description of the thing, person, who ever and when the candle showed that no one was their, or it gave you freedom, I got the impression that it was darkness you were hiding from, and I liked that. But maybe I read too deep into it. ><
if there is anything I disagree with more, it's this. Goodness.... I love Ed to pieces, but, no XD That's like writing a paper in English and then translating it into French, for French class. You just don't do it, because the poem should be written in what ever language/dialect you want to write it in. Although, you should think about what you want to say, and what you want to write about, without getting so caught up in the dialect.I didn't catch the rhyme scheme until it was mentioned, but maybe I'm just not paying attention right now. I agree that you should rhyme throughout the whole thing. Either have a rhyme scheme, or don't, is what I think.
Hope this helped, deary!
Abode and world do not need to rhyme, neither do existence or behold. I believe we can ignore this. The consistency is not harmed.
First off, I am not a poet. I feel out of place here and I cant offer very much more than an opinion. That said, I liked it. Because? For one, I like the over-use of 'candle', really paints it for me and caught my attention. Poems are suppose to grab you from the first line, then hold you all the way to the final stanza. You did not completely capture this, but it is there. Obviously, I kept reading
Alright, I'll say it right now; I'm generally averse to archaic poems. And even beyond that though, this seemed forced. For instance, I'm certain you misused 'suffice' here:
"Just one candle is suffice to enchance ".
And I hate to say it, but the rhyming was awful. 'Abode' and 'World' don't rhyme in the least, nor do 'existance' and 'enchance' (which should be 'existence' and 'enhance' respectively, by the way).
Overall, this seemed so squeezed into archaisms that it sacrificed the actual content. If you're really determined to keep that Ol' Time feel, I'd recommend writing this in modern language first, and then transcribing it back a few centuries. Nix the rhymes altogether.
Mmmm... it's in a very old-fashioned style that I'm not really a fan of (it's not your fault, really), so I won't waste your time talking about that, letting one of our better critiquers take care of that.
Still, one thing I noticed was that, though you described someone you didn't know, you didn't really describe the figure much. It seemed more like a ghost than anyone, and even then, you spent so much time trying to stick it in this format that you barely described anything. Take a deep breath and try to say what you really mean.
Good luck!