I found this yesterday - hilariously enough, it's a poem I wrote when I was around fifteen, and playing about with Tolkein-style mythological imagery and new rhyme-scemes. I think I was aiming for a personification of winter. I don't think I quite managed it. Also, note the fifteen-year-old angst and complete failure to maintain the rhyme-scheme in the last verse. But, you know... I was fifteen, and we need twenty three posts.
The Winter Throne
He came again this morning; full
Of bellicose belligerence;
His cloak was choked with ice and wool
From creatures beyond recompense.
He thundered through, with his Host;
A seething, breathing, heaving mass
Of diademed demonic class
That each sought to destroy the most.
They broke off branches and froze the grass
And left us with our ghosts.
They came again this morning; out
Of frozen hideouts further North;
Where creatures thick with scaly clout
Hunt and feed as men come forth.
The night is all eternal there
In older, bolder, colder lands
Where Shadows flee the sun’s soft hands
To breed the ice that fills their lairs.
They tear down trees, turn earth to sand
And horde their ill-gained wares.
He came again this morning; aimed
For the Mountain Citadel
To renew his Yule-tide game
Of recreating Earthly Hell.
He saw the walls and tore them down
In rumbling, crumbling, tumbling stone.
He entered purposely alone;
He came to reclaim his crown
And gain again the Winter Throne
To draw the Summer’s frown.
He killed again this morning; all
The townsfolk’s children gone away.
We screamed and swore to take the walls
Of the Citadel come day.
The gates we burned in fire and flame;
A whirling, swirling, twirling pyre
That swarmed and warmed the Winter Sire
Until, screaming, out he came.
We stoked the blaze and urged it higher;
And grieved his very name.
He died again this morning, in
Ice and fire, rage and hate;
We scattered him to all four winds
And drove his Host back from the gates.
There we stood, together, alone
In grieving, disbelieving pain
As the snowfalls turned to rain
And promised Summer would atone.
We cried; awaiting his regaining
Of the Winter Throne.
Also: I totally managed to get a line of cynghanedd in there. Points to whomever sees it first.
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5 comments:
Wow, you were writing this when you were fifteen? I couldn't write this now! At fifteen, I was still learning to write my name.
(SPOILER: The line of cynghanedd is coming up, so anyone still playing skip to the next paragraph. It's "And horde their ill-gained wares.")
Although loads of lines came very close - I expected there to be more, and a few lines sound like cynghanedd when spoken aloud owing to similar sounds.
(Cynghanedd actually allows you to treat certain letters as identical, I believe, like "f" and "ff", so "of" cynghanedds with "off". "Z" and a soft "th" would count in English, therefore.)
...Actually, that's not the correct answer. "And horde their ill-gained wares" contains only six of cynghanedd's required seven syllables and conforms to none of the accepted four types, since although 'wares' rhymes with 'their' it's the final, not the penultimate, syllable.
There is one that's actual cynghanedd, and I'm gods-damned proud of it. Find it, children!
...Oh, and thank you.
It's a cynghanedd draws, not sain! the "nd" in "and" answers the same two letters in "gained", and the rest can be ignored because they're either at the end of the two halves of the lines, or are skipped for cynghanedd draws reasons, or are "h" and therefore ignored.
But I didn't spot another! How strange.
(And this isn't a cywydd, so I maintain that you don't need seven syllables for a line of cynghanedd. I may stand alone in this belief.)
Without seven syllables it cynghanedd's, it's not a cynghanedd. This is a line of proper, no-messin', full on cynghanedd, and it's a damn sight better than anything as poor as that attempt at traws. Which is one of two loser cynghanedds, by the way. Might as well not bother if you're not going to do it properly.
And aren't you thinking llusg rather than sain? Sain's cool.
Surely its "of bellicose belligerence?" but its been a long time since I cynghanedd-ed.
Anyway, I love this type of poetry- its so 19th century countryside-angst. I love it! It has really good strong rhyme and rhythm, plus a rather clever emotive use o' language. I could write an essay about it.
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