Forward! I say,
Upward! Overcome!
And go under!
Thou hast nothing else.
Forward! I say,
For thee awaits no destination,
For thee awaits no goal,
But forward thou must’st go –
And under!
Walk up to that looking-glass,
Gaze upon that there –
Let the flame of thy soul flare up,
Clench thy hands into claws
And tear that down –
Then rise!
Thou canst have nothing else –
Become!
From death’s gulf springs new birth,
As in the spring of the Earth!
I command thee,
Go forth!
—
Become what? Go under what?
Thou sayest, I make no sense!
There is no what in my maddened word-glut,
I say – I truly have no defense.
But my words, maddened though they be
Shall prove themselves – now thou just see!
But must’st thou reply, I do not know why,
“Just shut up and bite me?!”
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
improve your grammar
Hey Wunderbar!
This is an interesting piece, as you've written in the piece using proper English (Old English). This language is always good for poetry as deeper meanings and expressions come along with it.
Content wise, it's clear that you discuss the way our world works, thus the significance of the title. You've used tools like literary devices to show the way the world works.
Grammar and Spelling is doing good justice in this work. You've ensured that readers grasp your content much easier with proper grammar and spelling.
Structure wise, you have two stanzas. I feel You could have three stanzas instead of one stanza and a short concluding stanza.
It's quite coherent as you talk about your attempts to control the world, but eventually the world has its own way of working things.
Literary devices such as adjectives, metaphors, and personification could be identified.
My personal rating for this work is 3.9/5
Keep up the good work
That wasn't Old English, that was Modern English with some Early Modern English thrown in. If I had written a poem in Old English you probably wouldn't've understood at all. This poem is about how hard it can be to communicate deep truths, and shouldn't've been coherent at all, as a lot of the phrases I used are literal translations of German phrases taken out of various things I read that don't mean anything in English that were added for the sole purpose of being incoherent. The speaker's speech is supposed to be jarring, over-the-top, and incoherent, and the listener just says "shut up" even though they're trying to communicate a revelation (in this case, that of acquiring dominion over the self).
Yes, I mentioned earlier that you had used proper English. Pardon me for mentioning old English. Please do pardon me for misunderstanding the sole message of this piece.
I was able to pick up the voice of the character, but not really about how it was conveyed. In the context of the character being all confused, I mentioned coherency.
:3 Hi there, Desdemona here to drop a review.
It's incredibly inspiring to me. I just looked at my chemistry homework and went "FORWARD I MUST GO". Thank you for that, I was procrastinating really hard <3 
I really like this poem
I just have a few minor issues with your choice of words.
It isn't "hast" but rather, "hath", and also it isn't "must'st" but just "must". These are simple errors you can fix by reading stuff written in old language, like Shakespeare. No big deal
But apart from that, you've done an incredible job. I have great respect for rhyming poetry that makes me feel something. Keep writing, I'll keep coming back to you to check up.
Love, Des
Thanks. I'll fix the Early Modern English parts then. The goal of this was to sound really over-the-top and nothing more, but if having bad Early Modern English distracts from that, then I'll change it.
ey b0ssi, it's awtbeyders
I'll just say this now, I love this poem. It's very simple and has only one objective: make you laugh. This medieval speech/pep talk is a newer approach; I don't see this very much. It feels truly like a captain lifting his soldiers' spirits before they go into war.
The best part about this poem is you put everything about you into it. You poured all the strong feelings and risked everything for this one poem. That I have to commend.
Anyways, keep on writing, and hopefully I'll see more of your great works in the future.
Thanks! Well, one of the goals of this poem was to sound over-the-top in how it spoke, so using archaic forms of English contributes to that, along with the bad calquing from German. I didn't really make this poem to pour everything into it, but I'm glad you liked it.
I can relate to this poem lots. Sometimes in a game of Team Fortress 2 where my team is losing, I just give them some sort of man-speech that usually starts with "Men!"
Even if they don't understand English lel