Poetry A cursed paladin's verses

Samrux

Samrux

Santa Claus
This thread has emerged from the novel I am writing; Story of a Paladin. In it, Samrux is condemned to be immortal, and to forever stay in the dungeon. At one point, he starts writing poetry.

As so, this thread will contain poetry related to the dungeon, and Samrux's life. Every poem will also have a link to the post in which the poem appears in the story itself.







<@ Skeletons @>
Necromancer.png
-page 36

The dead march on,
never to see the light of dawn,
their sergeants the wizards
that fill them with evil fog.
Their robes bleeding,
their look hollow,
their bones twitching,
their souls no more.





<@ A Paladin's @>
PaladinHammer.png
-page 37

My weapon now my only companion;
how futile this saddening God’s neglect,
of being trapped with my comrade of endless adventures,
that from affection none I can expect,
when all else has left, and life has me abandoned.

Its incredible power now bears no use
here, in the depths where I am kept recluse.
Since there is nothing to defend or stand for,
my hammer; my ally, serves me not anymore.





<@ Blue Flares @>
WaterCandle.png
-page 38

Oh candles, of the healing Waters,
your light comforts and soothes.
Of our magic you are daughters,
of our culture you preside for humanity’s youth.

Flares of hope you once were,
blazes that shined to signify purity,
brilliances of nature that humans preferred;
the rejuvenating liquid above every element else.
But you’re now trapped in eternal obscurity.

By your gleam I now cry and worry,
for the meaning and hope which you've lost,
and the things that were but are no longer holy.





<@ Precious relics @>
Muramasa.png
-page 39

Wonderful, admirable, delicate, unique
are the objects unhappily inhabiting, so to speak,
this place of death, one and a million weeks.
They are The Kingdom’s ancient relics of antique.
If only they weren’t all destroyed, or asleep,
any other human creation with them wouldn’t compete;
the Muramasa in a glare could make you bleed,
but as all others it’s trapped in isolation extreme.







<@ Hell's Embassy @>
Paladin.png
-Page 34

I was placed in an embassy under the counsel of hell;
the tomb of the things never alive nor dead.
I throw a scream always asking God, in fear,
whether I will ever be freed, or my exit ever made clear,
if this was an act of chance or punishment,
if I should continue my hopes, or succumb
to the voices of this solitary dungeon with no judgement.

My curse implies that I am now an immortal being,
and with infinite time on my hands, I have nothing more to expect
than for me to one day become nothing more than a monster:
Fate from which I have no chance of fleeing.

I encounter myself in a real-life tragedy,
of which the spectators might be demons,
in big joy laughing over my pain and agony.
I don’t know for how long I have been resisting,
or if I should continue to.
When my story appears to be ending,
I always realize how it is just starting.













Thanks to @TheQuietBisharp, from who I got the few verses that made me start writing poetry.
Also to @Qui Devorat, the first poet of our community, who one day begun what we have now.

I will be writing more soon.
 
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I can see quite the amount of errors concerning syllable count and meaning, but other than that, cool.
 
Pixel said:
I can see quite the amount of errors concerning syllable count and meaning, but other than that, cool.
Click to expand...
While I appreciate any feedback, I'd appreciate it more if it didn't only say "[x] is wrong", while not elaborating on [x]. I know that you can do that, since you know much more about literature and poetry than me.
 
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Sorry for the rudeness, but how the hell can I elaborate on syllable count? The amount of syllables is not correct, which renders the poem influent?
 
Pixel said:
Sorry for the rudeness, but how the hell can I elaborate on syllable count? The amount of syllables is not correct, which renders the poem influent?
Click to expand...
I know so little about poetry apart from the use of figures of speech, and boring Spanish classes. I'm writing by heart, really.
I suppose I should investigate more. I believe that the amount of syllables that a poem must have (?) is something that you know a lot about? To be honest, the idea itself is weird to me. I go with what sounds good, and I confess that that novice practice wouldn't be very respectable to anyone with a little more knowledge.
 
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You have a fair sense of poetic language, I think—these are lovely to read! I'll try to help explain Pixel's point, though I'm afraid I'll be going on personal experience more than academic schooling, too. Also, you may or may not know most of this: I'll be as thorough as I can, just in case.

Most (though not all) poetry is based on metre, which is a kind of regular rhythm that can be heard in the syllables. Much of it, especially in English, is also based on rhyme, which is the matching of the final sounds of poetic phrases. (Okay, that sounds a lot more complicated than I thought it would, especially for something you more or less know already). Rhyme and metre are used to structure poems coherently, to symbolically link words and lines, and to make the poem sound aesthetically pleasing.

As far as I'm aware, all rhyming poetry is metric, though not all metric poetry is rhymed. You seem to have aimed to write rhymes in most of these poems, which cues readers to expect a rhythm as well. ('Skeletons' is the possible exception.)

There are very specific, rigid structures for some kinds of rhyming poetry, but it's perfectly possible to have a beautiful-sounding poem that is also relatively free. I've given you a bunch of abstract ideas, so here's a basic example of poetic meter in English:

"Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble."
The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I. By William Shakespeare.
Excerpted from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Macbeth/Act_IV because I'm awfully lazy. Original source unknown.​

Hopefully, while reading this, the natural rhythm of the lines stands out:

"Fil-let of a fen-ny snake,
In the cal-dron boil and bake;..."

English metre is based on the stress patterns of words: which syllables are emphasised, and which are not. All English words have a fixed stress pattern in their pronunciation - if you try to stress the wrong syllable, you may notice the word doesn't sound right. Metric poetry must have a clear, repeated pattern of stress in the syllables. Returning to the example:

S___u___S__u_S___u___S
fil let of a fen ny snake
S__u___S___u____S____u___S
in the cal dron boil and bake

(where S stands for stressed and u stands for unstressed.)

And,

S___u_S_____u__S_____u___S____u
for a charm of power ful trou ble
S____u_S____u_____S____u___S__u
like a hell broth boil and bu bble

As you can see, the metre is quite regular, though allowing for some variation: "S-u S-u S-u S" in the first case, and "S-u S-u S-u S-u" in the second. This metre can be referred to as trochaic tetrametre: each line is composed of a trochee (S-u, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed. This is a kind of poetic foot) repeated four times. In most of the lines, the final trochee is truncated, meaning the line ends with a stressed instead of an unstressed syllable. This does not need to be kept consistent, except for the sake of rhyme. To my understanding, this kind of truncation can take place when a line ends on an unstressed syllable, but not if it ends on a stressed one.

There are several kinds of metre, but they all employ this kind of rhythmic regularity, at least in English poetry. Another example is the ever-popular iambic pentametre, which goes "u-S u-S u-S u-S u-S" (because the u-S foot is called an iamb, and there are five of them). An example of it, again from Shakespeare, who is well-known to have used it:

"But, O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!"
Othello: The Moor of Venice, Act III, Scene III. By William Shakespeare.
Excerpted from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Othello,_The_Moor_of_Venice again. Original source unknown.​

Well, that's just about all the insight I have about metre.

Rhyme you're probably less of a stranger to. Looking at the first example given, you can see that the rhyming scheme here is a simple series of couplets:

"Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble."

It's a series of five pairs of rhyming words: one could represent it as AA BB CC DD EE. Of course, rhyming schemes can be much more variable than metres, even within a poem. No given rhyming scheme is really wrong, unless you are trying to write a rigid-structure poem, like a sonnet. The rhymes don't even have to be at the ends of lines—they can occur at regular intervals in the middle of a sentence, as you can see in Poe's "The Raven" (also a good example of a structured rhyme scheme used to extraordinary effect).

I am not nearly qualified to explain different kinds of rhyme schemes, of course. Feel free to experiment! Instead, let me briefly explain how rhyming itself works.

The rules for two words to be considered to rhyme are as follows:
  1. Both words must sound identical, starting from the vowel of their last stressed syllable. 'Denote' and 'remote' rhyme, but 'talking' and 'singing' do not.
  2. The last stressed syllable cannot begin with the same consonant sound (or lack thereof) in both words. 'Denote' and 'devote' rhyme, but 'denote' and 'connote' do not. This is also the reason you can't rhyme a word with itself.

Unfortunately, the spelling of English words doesn't always precisely reflect how they are pronounced—and it is the pronunciation that matters in rhyme. (That's not even starting on how different dialects of English pronounce words somewhat differently.) For example, in "A Paladin's", you rhyme "use" with "recluse", which would be fine if not for the fact that the s of "use" is pronounced /z/, the voiced fricative, while the s of "recluse" is pronounced /s/, the unvoiced. Since in both words the final 's' is part of the last stressed syllable (assuming you pronounce "recluse" with stress on the 'cluse' and not the 're'), the rhyme is not quite right.

There are similar rhyming problems elsewhere in the poems: in "Blue Flares", "were" is coupled with "preferred", though one ends in a /d/ and the other does not; and "soothes" is coupled with "youth", though one ends in a /z/ and the other does not. "Worry" is also coupled with "holy", when apart from the /i/ sound at the end they actually have no phonetic similarity. (The other rhymes in Blue Flares are excellent, though! "Purity" and "obscurity" rhyme excellently, as do "waters" and "daughters".)


Again, the poems are delightful! These are simply meant to serve as a rough introduction to structure. Hopefully you find them useful. ^^
 
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@Midtime You Sir/Ma'am are a person that I want to know more of.

First of all, the help that your post has provided (and will provide in my future reads) I will describe as immeasurable. I couldn't have been given a better insight into the whole topic by any different means, and I can see the effort you put into writing the entire thing. Thank you.

Rhyming is a thing that I have always wanted to do, even if it's not an identical rhyme, to try and keep the poem together. Since I had been writing by heart until now, I hadn't really noticed the natural flow that language and poetry have and should have. That is the first thing I will try to aim for from now on (I repeat; try), and try to move away a little from forced rhymes and the such, and instead reach for a more fluent poem.

I have a question though. I am aware that "near rhymes" exist; or at least, I was taught in Spanish class that words with matching vowels are a different kind of, but still valid, rhyming. I might have stretched it a bit too far with soothes and youth - It is not a good rhyme because the "th" in both I am aware sounds different, and only the "oo" truly exists in both. But following what I was taught, it should still make some sense, I believe?
The poem that I wrote today, before reading your comment, went to use that technique too. Is near-rhyming or vowel-rhyming a common practice, or something that I should be using frequently? What really counts?

The use-recluse issue, among others like worry-holy might originate from my mother tongue Spanish. In Chile, there is no difference between "s" and "z" sound-wise (In contrast to Spain) for example, and while I might or not have adapted to most of the correct English pronunciations (standard ones at leat), many things still sound the exact same to me (like /ə/ and /ʌ/); in every-day use I suppose.
Anyways, I believed that those rhymed, and still kind of do (near-rhyme?), but moving on because confused.

Following the vague yet still well-meant help/intervention by Pixel (I am pretty sure that intervention doesn't really fit there - either way, thanks Pixel), I did try to strive for a more fluent structure for today's poem, regarding syllable amount. Without the technical or more professional explanation from your part, though, I assume that I didn't do too well either.

I too thank you for the kindness. Education should include both justice and love; that you tried to teach me the basics while still motivating me and telling me the things that I did right, is simply warm inside.



This is the poem that I wrote earlier today. Haven't found a name, though. I am more or less ashamed of it now, after your post. Edit: At least it's got /ik/ in the entire first half.

Wonderful, admirable, delicate, unique
are the objects unhappily inhabiting, so to speak,
this place of death, one and a million weeks.
They are The Kingdom’s ancient relics of antique.
If only they weren’t all destroyed, or asleep,
any other human creation with them wouldn’t compete;
the Muramasa in a glare could make you bleed,
but as all others it’s trapped in isolation extreme.
 
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Oh! I didn't notice you weren't a native English speaker. I apologise if I sounded a bit abrasive because of that. Starting out with a smaller English vocabulary increases the difficulty of grappling with poetic verse ten times over, and I definitely haven't given you enough credit for producing poetry in this language that reads quite well even with that difficulty. Sorry!

It's not at all uncommon (in my limited experience with poets and poetry) to face endless frustration in trying to fit rhymes and structure together so that the meaning is clearly conveyed and the poem still reads fluidly and beautifully. Being willing to use half-rhymes makes the process easier, but they are generally seen (as far as I know) as distinct from perfect rhymes and uniformly inferior to them, closer to an acceptable flaw than a functional element in a rhyming poem; and even when one does settle for an approximate match, it's preferable to find a word as close to a perfect rhyme as is possible. The strongest condemnation I can make of the overuse of half-rhymes is that it obscures the existence of the rhyme scheme, which can prevent readers from perceiving the poem's structure. Naturally, aiming for perfect rhymes throughout a rhyming poem requires an extraordinary effort to be spent in thinking of words, trying them out, rephrasing, restructuring, and generally agonising over your work just to get a few lines the way you want them to be—just like every other aspect of poetry.

One thing I think I ought to emphasise is that you have no obligation to revise your poem to suit the criticisms of any other person, if it is not the vision of the poem that you have in your head. That many readers will find perfect rhymes and consistent metre more pleasing to the eye and ear is a fact; whether or not including them brings your poem closer to what you want to write is something only you know. That is the only thing that really counts—producing the poem that you desire to produce. Only time spent pleasing some one else at the expense of your vision is wasted time.

In addition, should you wish to explore alternatives, there are models such as blank verse, which uses no rhyme, and connects the poem together through other techniques—repetition of words or structures, thematic exploration, powerful central ideas, and other things that are familiar to the writer of prose; or free verse, which is perfectly capable of exploring the beauty of words and phrases in the total absence of either rhyme or metre, and focuses on capturing the everything else from which poetry is actually made.


What little criticism I can offer has already been given; I'm no good at that sort of thing. But I do want to say again that you clearly have a lot of fascinating things to express, both in your writing and your poetry. It's a pleasure to be in your audience!

(Also, should you still want to know more about me, I'm writing a fanfiction, and it's in my signature, and I would dearly like comments of any kind, because I'm a total attention hog who wants nothing more than to be read.)
 
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@Midtime in my experience, I'm better off being treated as a native English speaker (Or at least, for the vast majority of situations). I've been told that my lexicon (that is the correct word) is better or richer than that of many native English speakers, and that my story is written in an almost professional level, or over anything people think they would be able to make. Being given some liberty or "acceptable range of failure" because I wasn't born with English would simply hinder my progress, I believe.

While I still have loooooots to improve in this tongue (Good luck finding someone to vocally practice with in Chile), I hope it is not self-centered to think that I'm already far enough in it (at least on the written side) so as to be expected more from.
 
I apologise for that, then. I didn't intend to specify an acceptable range of failure—there is no limit to genius; I only wanted to properly acknowledge the effort that had gone into the work. Please, keep writing!
 
I summon @Midtime to judge how I did on this poem.

I tried, actually tried, to give this poem a good pacing, metre, structure. I don't believe I yet understand how to properly do it; the examples you kindly provided feel too restrictive, and I believe that some things simply sound good without me trying to fit them to those rules. I'm struuuggling and am confused with this new concept that I knew nothing of before.

Here it goes.

Edit: So I just noticed that the best rhyme in the following poem only works because I conjugated the verb wrong. aghhh



<@ Us hosts, you the guest @>

Visitor, why have you came?
Did you not know what you would find?
I know there is not just you to blame
But what will happen to you, I will remind:

Visitor, In here you will die.
In here, your very flesh will grind.
The insane skeletons inhabiting this hole
Might burn your skin to be black as coal.

Visitor, don’t set a step inside, return to mankind.
For centuries I have tried to stop them and their evil binds.
Your head will be taken off, of your corpse they will dispose.
Any hinder for them, try as I might I don't seem to pose.
 
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