Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.
So, hey there. Scarli is back....with more poetry. Heh. Anyways, I wrote this with the help of some friends. You know who you are! They suggested things, and it all just fit together. So, like, enjoy and crit and stuff, okay?
when kingdoms fall
hear the wind across the plain,
and the piercing sound of a harpy’s roar,
hear the thunder of a thousand hooves,
and the beating of a dragon’s wings,
echoing before the longest fall;
a scream, a cry, the softest sigh--
breathless amongst the winter skies,
hear the beating of a hundred drums
announcing war and the coldest heart,
a haunting sound beyond castle walls;
hear the cries of a hundred, thousand,
and the haunting call of a warrior's horn,
hear the clanking of the soldiers' shields
and the calls for blood, and more,
the rumble of the citadel's doors;
a sigh, a scream, the loudest cry--
echoing off a dozen stone walls,
hear the glass of windows shattered,
and broken, hopes and dreams cast aside,
a last ditched effort to stay alive;
hear the shouts of unruly peasants
and the silence that says betrayal,
hear the arrow through the air,
a whistle and a thud, the fastest death
for a kingdom on the verge of war;
a cry, a sigh, a wretched scream--
silence for a second that speaks for all,
hear the gurgle of a dying man
as his crown hits the sand;
that brief moment when kingdoms fall.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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129,360 Literary Works • 671,505 Reviews
Hi there!
I'd like to start by saying that this is a fantastc poem, the colors and the images you manage to depict so clearly are wonderful. And, in the middle of the great war that you describe, it is not just ethe bloodshed and the cruelty that youdepict, but also some psychological aspects of both knights and people.
The ending is magnificent, the king's death is exposed simply and directly and the first and last lines of that part that rhyme are very well done.
I must say I got here too late, and the others have already done the nitpicking. I have nothing left to say. I really enjoyed reading this peace, I hope that you will write more!
I really enjoyed this poem! It was rich with imagery and I always had a beautiful, yet ghastly and grim picture in my head. Thank you for this beautiful piece.
Onto the nitpicking:
With the pay that you've punctuated everything, this is one long sentence. That doesn't feel right. Try to punctuate everything as if you're writing a story.
In your stanza, "a sigh...", you connect two very different ideas with a comma. That needs to be fixed
Also, you start every line with a capital.
That's all for nitpicking! I really enjoyed your piece and I hope that you write more!
Hey there, here to review!
I really liked the poem. I liked how the first verses in some stanzas are practically the same, but you modify them so there isn't really any repetition.
I like how you said first:
And after you changed it to this:
I think this was very good since it gives more importance to those two verses, and it makes ou want to go back and reread the first one.
Also, I love the way you ended the poem.
I really liked that the first and fourth verse rhyme, which gives the poem a better lyrical impact. Also I liked how you filled the space between those two, explianing how the king dies.
However, there are a couple of things that you might be able to improve.
Firstly, this is not really a mistake, but I think this verse would sound better if you wrote it like this:
You are writing everything in present, so you should probably keep it as well with "shatter" instead of "shattered".
Then:
Since you wrote the winter skies, a hundred drums, the coldest hearts, I think it would be more appropriate if you wrote the castle walls. That is not really necessary but it may help the flow a bit more.
I don't really have anything else to say, your poem is really very good. Keep writing, I look forward to reading more of your works.
-AlfonsoFernandez, proud member of the Review Rippers from the Commonwealth
Hey Scar!
ooo so I'm a notorious title-skipper, and so when I read through this poem the ending actually came as a delightful surprise in summing up and providing context for everything. I'm not sure how other readers might feel about this, but I will throw it on the table as a suggestion to re-title it so as to not give away the "kingdoms fall" conclusion for the title? Perhaps it was unintended to be suspenseful in that light, but hey! I enjoyed it as such ^-^
Some of my favorite lines: beating of a dragon's wings..."broken hopes...last ditched effort to stay alive"... "the crown hits sand ...when kingdom falls - especially nice here.
On Structure / Form / Diction
This poem had an interesting structure to dive into, the repetitions sort of helped turn up that noise and confusion and chaos in battle, which is a nice effect. There are moments where I felt the poem might've lacked in cohesion though, but these are just minor gripes that can be whittled and polished in subsequent drafts if you choose to revise this one.
Spoiler
Now, it seems to me that the poem is structured in sets-of-stanzas, so two stanzas for 1 set which represents one idea. I like this set-up as it allowed me to organize and orient myself through the sounds. The first set has a more "tense" sound to represent anticipation before a battle, and it also has lots of images of fantasy and glory - all the dragons, harpies, the beating of the drums, etc. The second set is more to do with the actual battle - clank and shatters and drums sort of represent the broken dreams and the horror. Although, I feel this stanza could've emphasized more of the horror aspects, I suppose. We get a horn and calls for blood rising the tension -- but then it falls back down and seems anticlimatic with the broken windows.
The third set is more of the aftermath. So we get our silences. We get the gurgling dying men and the crown hitting sand. This was my favorite of the sets c:
Now, I've highlighted all the sound-stuffs, because I recognize that this was a sound poem and to an effect -- all of these sounds jam-packed together certainly helped me imagine the craziness of the scene - but at the same time it is too telling. Too much sounds without moment of reflection about the sounds, or without much variation between the sounds. Maybe if you focus on one particular sound effect for each set -- so the first can be the drumbeat, the second perhaps the clash/scream, and the third can be the silence and the last thud of a dropping crown? That way, you use less sound words -- and you have more space in your poem to add depth (maybe by using metaphors or extended metaphors)? Or combine sounds with other things. You can still create that anticipation for battle and the gravitas of noise/confusion by tone and careful selection of words, just perhaps do it in a way where the sounds are sprinkled and emphasized and we're given more meat, as opposed to dumped through the entire poem -- you don't want this JUST to be noise. So, I'd suggest focusing each set with precision. Concise! That'll give you more of a progression, which I think is what you are going for, no? Let me know if this is confusing, I am more than happy to chat this one out.
Speaking of progression, I say this is a progression poem because I noticed the refrain in lines 6, 16, 26 -- there seems to be a progression here which is really nice effect! The shifting screams,cries,sighs is really cool - I just wish you would've used better words than scream/cry/sigh xDD These words seem sort of bland and get lost amidst the other stuff. Perhaps words that evoke more pain or a progression in pain for example? A wail/howl or a hushed wimper? Something that gives us sounds + something extra. Sigh doesn't really give us anything? Is it a resigned sigh? A last sigh of death? A bored sigh? It doesn't add much to this piece. Screams/cries are synonyms of each other - so while the set-up is designed to give us a sense of progression -- the words themselves do not.
Hope this helps,
~ Audy
I think this poem is truly great, it's not everyday that you come across such a brilliant work of beauty. Reading and then speaking the poem aloud, gave me the opportunity to see the image you created, a breaking kingdom, and then a broken kingdom. I definitely love your poem and encourage you to never stop writing them, as this is a true work of art. Your rhyming scheme was different, in a good way though, it's very unique, I look forward to seeing more of your work! c: