The
river was singing again,
Of
secrets and tales unknown,
While
the breeze frolicked with the waves,
And
the shadows danced upon them.
It
dreams of its mother, the earth,
Dreams
of her as young again,
‘Ere
her children’s sins and follies,
Pained
and hurt her heart.
It
remembers the day still,
That
man and river first met,
Brimming
with curiosity was it, at first,
But
soon, the truth, it saw.
It
frothed in misery and madness,
The
waves frantically thrashed the shore,
The
chill, ever tormented the trees,
But
alas, none answered the pleas.
A
thousand years it watched man,
Watched
as he stumbled forward,
And
finally rose upright,
The
bane of the earth, he became.
A
thousand more it cried for man,
Cried
in vain to stop him,
As
countless countries were razed,
Until
nothing was left but rubble.
And
a thousand more it wailed for man,
Wailed
as he seared his rotten heart,
And
destroyed himself in the end,
Till
the earth was rid of its bane.
And
the river could flow, free and pure at last,
And
the trees could dance, ever in harmony,
But
alas, the spectres returned,
And
the river cried again.
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Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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139,920 Literary Works • 672,745 Reviews
Hey there, buddy! Hope you're having a good weekend
Again, I think a use of 'He' and 'his' here would be effective.Specifics
1. I think you've got a strong theme - poems about nature will always go down well with me - but my first impression is that you're a bit inconsistent - the present tense works really well in the later lines and I think it would be easy to implement at the start as well. I think you could also emphasize the personification a little more and maybe tighten your language here and there. Here's a quick example of some changes I'd suggest:
The river sings again,
his tales of secrets unknown
and the breeze frolics over the waves;
a dance between shadow and light.
2.
3. I'm not sure about the use of 'ere as it sounds very old fashioned but the rest of the poem isn't. Maybe use before instead?
4. Your language is flat here - pained ad hurt both mean the same thing and neither are very interesting or unusual words. Maybe go for something a little bit more abstract? Like 'before her children's sins and follies/ emptied the vaults of her endurance'.
5. I think you could cut everything after 'curiosity' in this line and it would flow more smoothly.
6. The rhyme here is a little painful as the poem doesn't rhyme elsewhere and it's such a direct rhyme.
7. I think the end felt a little repetitive and you lost some of the lovely focus on imagery which you had earlier.
Overall
I like the story of this piece and you've managed to write a poem about what humanity is doing wrong without it coming across as preachy which is actually hard to do so nice work there! I think the flow could be made more consistent if you decide to use present tense throughout - or even past tense. Choosing just one will make it much easier to read.
That's everything I wanted to say for now - you've got some strong ideas but with a little work on the flow and language, this could be even better.
See you around!
~Heather
p.s. Fixed the formatting for you - some word programs don't copy across well with the html so I edited it to add the line breaks.
Hey Rydia,
Thanks for checking my poem out and giving me some advice. A-A-and also, thanks for fixing the line breaks!
I've noted down everything, thanks again!! Also, should I edit my poem using advice from the reviews, or should 'I leave it, as it is?
No problem!
With poetry, it's often very personal so it's up to you which changes you make and which you don't. Some poets like to save multiple drafts of the same poem so they can compare the two. I usually say the line out loud to myself both with and edits and without and then I keep whichever I like the sound of better or if I think the suggested changes will take the poem in a really different direction, then I call it version two and keep them both as kind of 'sister' poems
Hello! Sheyren here to review this poem! I enjoyed this, and I'm glad I clicked on it! Now for the review part:
With poems, grammatical errors aren't a valid thing to correct since they're so flexible and without rules. And I didn't see anything that would be an error anyway. In reality, just about everything I can say about this is an opinion, so do what you want with the info.
First, your poem had noticeable parts to it, but it was all one stanza. For the sake of smoothly reading through the poem and getting clear divisions, I would split the stanzas. It seems like a small thing, but the effect is a lot larger than you'd expect. I see that Frindrrman said this too, and I think that kinda stresses the point. Rather than one big blob of poem, split it up and make it more focused. Like how when you write essays, you have a topic sentence in your body paragraphs. Give a topic sentence to your "topic stanzas." Don't change the poem, but just add some spaces. I'd suggest probably like every 4-5 sentences.
Another thing is that the rhythm was hard to follow at some parts of the poem. Most of it, I read through with a very specific rhythm that worked well. But when I got to some parts, like "a thousand years it watched man/ Watched as he stumbled forward/And finally rose upright,/The bane of the earth, he became." I think the best approach to fixing this would be to add some small words in the lines. Words that don't change the meaning of the line, but rather just add a syllable or two.
Overall, this was an awesome poem. I see your relatively new to the site, so welcome! I hope you enjoy it here and write more poems, cause I'd definitely want to read more of them!
-Sheyren signing off
Hey Sheyren! Thanks for checking in! I actually separated the stanzas in editing, but I don't know what happened. I intended for it to be 4 lines for each stanza.
Thanks for checking in again!!!
Small words, roger that!
I tried to separate the stanzas again, but I dunno, nothing changed.
That's odd... You might want to report that on the bug forum.
This poem was very enjoyable! The theme of this poem was quite meaningful and it remained consistent throughout the whole poem. I would like to give some advice for this work though:
The first thing is that I believe adding stanzas would help so that the flow of the poem is easier to understand.
Another thing I noticed was that while commas were abundant in this, periods were not. This made it somewhat tough to understand when a complete thought ended and when another one began.
"‘Ere her children’s sins and follies,
Pained and hurt her heart,"
I was surprised when I saw your addition of the word "Ere" meaning before (in time), I wouldn't have thought to use such a word, I like it!
I likely missed something that could be improved on but overall I really enjoyed this poem. Its imagery was spot on, it was just hard to keep it flowing without a use of periods completing each thought. I hope to see more work like this in the future.
Have a great day! ^-^
Hey Frinderman!! Thanks for the review, and yeah, I see your point about the stanzas. I did separate them in editing, but I don't know what happened. As you probably know, I'm new here, so I probably didn't do the write thing, lol. Anyway, thanks again!
And thanks again for the tip about the periods. I added them too
I tried to separate the stanzas, but it didn't work...