Celestial Love

[Cryptic Cadence]

What are your thoughts on this poem?

Celestial Love

It happened upon a waning moon
withered sentiment turned sepia.
A fall of ravens & thine eyes reflected dark holt.
Yonder came one, the sinister, chapé, the dexter stole the colour of thy love, Gules.

I remember us, danced with Zephyr, as he galloped across the Champs-Elysées,
but thou chose him of Sable, not true shield mantled gold...
...There is nothing like rum now, for drowning them in, and
as the celestial shine ebbs away, I await another coon's age for Sepia.

Cheers

[beautifulloser]

Hi Celestial

Not one for me I am afraid - too many thy's, thou's mixed in with a religous theme which ruined it.

Welcome to the forum - you'll find you get out what you put in, nice having some new folk around.

[Cryptic Cadence]

There is nothing religious about the poem. And the thy and thou is meant to reflect a time period. It's not contemporary. I'm well aware the forum is "contemporary" but I wrote this before I encountered the forum.

[David]

Jude (wasn't it?), this is a bit of a hodge-podge, methinks. You're another one that's come in a-thouing and a-thying. Those old words aren't compulsory in poetry you know. In fact they're a bit of a turn-off.

So what else? You've got a load of heraldry (I think?) terms scattered about, and a startlingly old-fashioned (and probably un-PC) phrase in "coon's age" (yes, I know it's a raccoon's age, but still ...)

Plus (sorry) I just don't think you can use whither like that. Still, some nice unusual words, some striking phrases ... definitely worth carrying on with this poetry lark. I just hope you're not another one who writes it but doesn't read it.

Anyway, keep on throwing your hat in the ring.

Cheers

David

[Cryptic Cadence]

Thanks for the comments guys, I personally like thy and thou, because...well most poems just seem to have "you" all the time. In French at least there is tu and vous. So I resort to the classical english form. "You" is more overused. Thy and thou, add more to it.

[Cryptic Cadence]

And yes, it is old fashioned incase no one has noticed, hence why most of the terms are like that

[barrie]

The third person polite and familiar forms are no longer a part of modern English. Saying that, I still use them in everyday speech - they still retain a place in the local dialects of much of England. Funny how they retain their original meaning - it's still insulting to refer to a stranger as 'thou' (pronounced, where I'm from, as in RP there), instead of using the polite form 'you' - ie, Worrer there gorpin' at? in place of, What are you looking at?
Fascinating stuff, but unless you're writing a dialect poem, it's best to use modern English.

Barrie

[Cryptic Cadence]

But modern english is sooooooooooooo boring

[Wabznasm]

CC,

It's nice to have you on board. Welcome and all that.

I'm going to go into this old versus new english. I like browsing workshop forums and would say this place is my favourite, yet why is this the only one where new people come in dropping thous and thys?

There are a few muddles with metaphor, prepositions, abstractions, pronouns, but they're part of the parcel. (Have you read The Scarlet Letter by the way? It's difficult to see 'sable' and 'gules' in something without thinking of the book).

Out of interest, do you read much poetry?

Not my thing, but stay on for the ride
Dave

[Cryptic Cadence]

Sable is in reference to a black knight, it's a heraldic colour, it's also to indicate one with a black heart in my poem.

There are no 'muddles', I've analyzed it carefully and wrote a 2 page analysis on my own poem.

This is not a modern type poem, it's not written in the modern way.

I don't read much poetry, I read some old english stuff, I do read Seamus Heaney sometimes, but it's been a while, I enjoy his poetry.

Thou and Thy is much better than YOU, YOU is just OVERUSED. It is, there is no denying that.

And also in most of the poems I've seen here so far, there has been an overuse of "I"

I this, I've that, I'd this, etc.

[Wabznasm]

Overused? Yes, I have to say they are. Other words i think over used in modern english are 'beacause', 'there', 'he', 'went', and, (and this one particularly gets me), 'and'.

Some 'muddles':

It happened upon a waning moon - so the 'it' actually happened, geographically, on a waning moon? You infer a bigger noun phrase that what you let on (i.e. an evening with a waning moon), and it stutters the read from the beginning. Plus. 'whither' suggests 'to which place' - you concede that the moon is referring to a situation, not a literal object.

Sentiment and sepia (one cognitive thing and one a colour) seem a little incompatible.

The third line: Grammatically, it suggests that the ravens, like the eye, reflect the 'dark holt'. And as for the holt, that is a woods. If the eyes are reflecting the ravens, how are they reflecting a completely different noun? 'Dark' is fine, but I think the metaphor here is slightly confused (you could make it clearer if you made the reader aware that the holt was a metaphorical one - at the moment, it reads literally).

I'm unsure about 'one' because with either meaning it is confusing. On the one hand, 'one' could refer to a numerical count of something. So an eye has come? If it means, as I expect it does, the formal 'one', then you wildly introduce the entity without any real background (and one, even in ME, was only for the subjective mood, not the indicative). You don't explain whom the 'one' is sufficiently either, and so the meaning of that line is a little confused. I would suggest 'thee' or 'I' (or Ic if you really want to write OE) for one. Much easier.

Why is gules capitalised? It wasn't in medieval writing.

I could be wrong, but Zephyr was actually Zephyrus in ME.

I would ditch 'true' - the true shield? the true process of mantling? the true gold?

Why do you have an ellipsis beginning a line if it ends one too?

You introduce 'shine', which is fine, but you haven't before. The problem is that this is an entirely new concept in the poem in the last line, and it loses the reader a bit. 'love' would suffice.

So there are some, what I consider, muddles. They've been addressed critically and with your attempted anachronism in mind.

And as for the I? Early English poetry was obsessed with it.

I hope that helps
Dave

[barrie]

Another couple of muddles - If you insist on using the more 'interesting' archaic forms, then make sure you use them correctly. Thy before a consonant, and thine before a vowel. You should have written thine eyes.

The other muddle is - thou chose. You must choose here, archaic or modern. What's it to be -

thou chosest or you chose?

Sir John of Milton.

[Cryptic Cadence]

Excellent, thanks for the corrections, I'll get cracking and change it.

"It" never happened ON the moon, in a lot of old poetry something happens during something and upon is used to reflect "during".

I know whither suggests to a place. Sentiment went somewhere back in time, to a place.

The fall of ravens has nothing to do with the eyes!!! It's different

One is someone else.

Gules is capitalized on purpose because it serves for two meanings.

Zephyr, Zephyrus, West Wind, all the same thing.

Well as for the shine, the moon is waning after all...so it makes sense the shine is fading.

I will correct the other stuff though. Like "thine"

[kozmikdave]

Welcome CC

I'd like to reinforce what has already been said about the form. It is not my cup of tea. But you seem determined to perfect it so that's cool. Thou wilt probably cop heaps each time, but we will come to recognise it in thy writing as thine own idiosyncracy.

I'm not steeped in mythology, so I shall have to do some background reading to come to terms with your images. It is quite an ambitious introduction, so I take my hat off to you.

[Cryptic Cadence]

I don't usually write early modern english type poetry. But I should have figured the criticism was going to come because no one understands the meaning.

However, thanks to all who did correct my work, because I thought there were no mistakes.

Thy, thou and thine are beautiful btw

[oranggunung]

Hey Jude

As others have commented, an ambitious first post for a contemporary site. You mention that the others in the thread have missed the meaning. Who is to blame there? Your choice of language has only served to obscure your intent. I wonder why?

If I skip over the archaisms and look at construction, perhaps I’ll cover some new ground.


whither sentiment turned sepia.

I wonder if you are too keen to use the word “whither”. Could you maintain the sonics by adjusting that word?

withered sentiment turned sepia.


ravens & thine eyes

why choose an ampersand? Is it consistent within the frame of the story? It distracts the eye. Almost feels like a texting option within much older language. You have already mentioned that the eyes and the ravens are not connected, yet the writing brings them close together. Is there a way of separating them?


I await another coon's age for Sepia.

Once again, the language seems out of keeping with the general tone. David drew attention to this before. I’m interested to see that it hasn’t acquired an apostrophe at the beginning, so I don’t think you intended it to mean raccoon. Having sifted through various meanings of Sepia, it appears that the apostrophe was never intended. An unsavoury ending, imo. Am I mistaken?


og

[Cryptic Cadence]

Hey Jude

Hey oranggung, thanks for your input.

As others have commented, an ambitious first post for a contemporary site. You mention that the others in the thread have missed the meaning. Who is to blame there? Your choice of language has only served to obscure your intent. I wonder why?

This is true, I'll post the true meaning up a bit later when I got more time.

If I skip over the archaisms and look at construction, perhaps I’ll cover some new ground.


whither sentiment turned sepia.

I wonder if you are too keen to use the word “whither”. Could you maintain the sonics by adjusting that word?

withered sentiment turned sepia.

Hmm, quite a few people have mentioned this. But I don't mean withered, withered is totally different from whither. Where sentiment turns into sepia. I used whither because the narrator actually goes back in time when he starts to reminisce, of course purely in memory. I know whither is an action in going from one place to another, like: "Whither thou goest" that is why I used it, his current sentiment goes to an old memory. But now that I think about it, withered sentiment too would make sense to an extent...

ravens & thine eyes

why choose an ampersand? Is it consistent within the frame of the story? It distracts the eye. Almost feels like a texting option within much older language. You have already mentioned that the eyes and the ravens are not connected, yet the writing brings them close together. Is there a way of separating them?

A fall of ravens is describing hair. Hair and Eyes, it draws attention to the face. Why? Because that's what attracts me most.
I chose an ampersand because I was describing beauty so they are connected, it was describing a location of the body. What I meant was that the eyes and the raven's aren't the same thing. They aren't, they are connected though, because it's part of the head/face, whatever you wish to call it.

I await another coon's age for Sepia.

Once again, the language seems out of keeping with the general tone. David drew attention to this before. I’m interested to see that it hasn’t acquired an apostrophe at the beginning, so I don’t think you intended it to mean raccoon. Having sifted through various meanings of Sepia, it appears that the apostrophe was never intended. An unsavoury ending, imo. Am I mistaken?


og

Coon's age means blue moon, a long period of time.

[oranggunung]

blue moon

Oops. Tried reading too much into it. Relieved to see my neurosis was unfounded. Still not sure that the line sits very well, though. I understand that the phrase may have been adopted from

in a crow's age

a better alternative?


og

[David]

I have to congratulate you, Jude, you've made us all put our thinking caps on. I hope you don't mind, but I'm still confused by some of your word choices. I'll try not to repeat what others have said, except where I think I have something new to offer. In particular, I'm not returning to the thous and the thines. That's thy choice.

It happened upon a waning moon

- "to happen upon" really means "to find unexpectedly". It's very unusual for it to be used to refer to the location of something happening, which is the sense in which I think you use it here.

whither sentiment turned sepia

- still not convinced by your "whither", which usually means "to what place?", so unless you're asking a rhetorical question about the place to which "sentiment turned sepia" (whatever that might mean), and I don't think you are, I don't think it works.

I remember us, danced with Zephyr

- well that's just not English, is it?

I like your last two lines a lot, but I'm still uncomfortable with "coon's age". I know it means a long period of time, but that's not the point. Whether you like it or not, "coon" brings with it a whole lorry load of unfortunate connotations that should not be ignored lightly.

In terms of the overall meaning of the poem, I understand that there is a deeper meaning, which you are privy to, that you intend to reveal at some point. However, you can't use that to dismiss or ignore the functional failures of meaning, at the simple level of word choice and usage, that have occurred.

I don't want this to be all negative. I can see already that you love language, you love words, you have a vivid imagination. All these facts suggest that you will be capable of writing some really good poetry. I hope to read it here.

Cheers

David

[Cryptic Cadence]

I have to congratulate you, Jude, you've made us all put our thinking caps on. I hope you don't mind, but I'm still confused by some of your word choices. I'll try not to repeat what others have said, except where I think I have something new to offer. In particular, I'm not returning to the thous and the thines. That's thy choice.

Hehe

It happened upon a waning moon

- "to happen upon" really means "to find unexpectedly". It's very unusual for it to be used to refer to the location of something happening, which is the sense in which I think you use it here.

Yep, in a sense, this moment happens unexpectedly. It never happened on the moon. This just happened during the full moon to new moon period. I better think about this one more now, lots of people have complained about it.

whither sentiment turned sepia

- still not convinced by your "whither", which usually means "to what place?", so unless you're asking a rhetorical question about the place to which "sentiment turned sepia" (whatever that might mean), and I don't think you are, I don't think it works.

Another word that has caused confusion, I guess it needs changing, and I didn't mean to ask a rhetorical question.

I remember us, danced with Zephyr

- well that's just not English, is it?

What do you mean?

I like your last two lines a lot, but I'm still uncomfortable with "coon's age". I know it means a long period of time, but that's not the point. Whether you like it or not, "coon" brings with it a whole lorry load of unfortunate connotations that should not be ignored lightly.

I can always fall back on blue moon, but that seems to be over used.

In terms of the overall meaning of the poem, I understand that there is a deeper meaning, which you are privy to, that you intend to reveal at some point. However, you can't use that to dismiss or ignore the functional failures of meaning, at the simple level of word choice and usage, that have occurred.

I don't want this to be all negative. I can see already that you love language, you love words, you have a vivid imagination. All these facts suggest that you will be capable of writing some really good poetry. I hope to read it here.

Cheers

David

Thanks Dave, no worries, I am not upset about the criticisms, infact all of you here are more learned than me and even though I am stubborn to change, when people have repeatedly pointed out errors in the same areas, I can't ignore it, so I will start to re-read it and edit the culpable sections.

Thanks David for putting time into this.

Cheers

[kozmikdave]

Ah the where and when of it all....

Just a suggestion, why not use whence instead of whither. It is obvious to me that

It happened upon a waning moon

was about time, but why not something like

It happened at the waning of the moon

You know it makes more sense.

My other question is about the repeated use of the word "sepia". In the first instance it alludes to the brown of old photographs/memories (at least, that's how I took it.) In the second it is quite different, capitalised and unfortunately connected with "coon's age". (BTW, I heard that expression quite a bit as a kid and always took it to be racist. I suggest you lose the expression if possible, because most readers will probably find it offensive. Not trying to be PC here - be quite happy with the term in an obvious context.) Is "Sepia" your name for a black lover?

It's a long time since I read the KJV but I think I find it a little easier to read as it follows the rules more stringently. I think I got tired of the archaic language as a child, being dragged along to prayer meetings, kneeling for an eternity to listen to old men sprout jargon that was designed to make us believe they were holy in some way. Hope you get a handle on it.

[Cryptic Cadence]

It happened at the waning of a moon doesn't flow too well.

There is nothing wrong with 'It happened upon a waning moon'

It makes sense.

This poem has nothing to do with religion. The earlier form of english is much richer, hence why I used it. I am not referring to old photographs, however that sentiment is what I intended to portray. Nostalgia, old sentimental feelings, etc.

Coon's age just means in a blue moon. And this has nothing to do with a 'black lover' Love yes, but not black lover

Sepia was capitalized, because that moment of sepia mentioned earlier, old vivid memory he reminisces is emphasized. That is what the narrator waits for. That's what the whole poem was about, that is what he longs for, he wishes. It's pretty much the basis of the poem, an old memory. Think of it as an analyzing hint.

As for your religious dislike, was that really needed here?
Some love their faith, some don't.

[Cryptic Cadence]

Here is the meaning behind the poem, it's fairly long, but you don't have to read it if you don't want

The first line represents the setting; a waning moon, where it's turning from a full moon to a new moon, and the enchanting glow is fading away conspicuously. The narrator starts to reminisce as nostalgia overcomes him. The use of the word whither portrays deep thought as his mindset is oblivious to his current surroundings, it is as if he literally goes back in time. Sepia defines an antique feel, a brassy look as found in old photographs that illustrates vividly a moment in the past. However it is not to do with a photograph, it's just to emphasize sentimental value.

A fall of ravens is essentially a metaphor for hair, luscious shiny black hair. The colour of a raven is that of a shiny black, 'a fall' indicating long flowing hair; the epitome of female beauty to the narrator. Her eyes are a dark brown, holt is wood, dark wood is brown, a deep brown, the 'reflection' is used as a double standard, mainly to inform the colour of her eyes, which the narrator cherishes but secondly to point to the fact that the setting of the moment is in a wooded area.

The tone now changes, a seemingly romantic mood is interrupted, evil seems to lurk. This line gives more clues to the setting, 'the sinister' and 'the dexter' is referring to parts of a shield, the setting can be concluded to be pre-1700. More double standards, 'the sinister' is the left hand side of the shield, which is 'chape', a golden colour. However it also means literally sinister, but disguised in gold to appear beautiful or true. Gold, enticing the woman. One must take note, that this enticement is not because of riches, but rather qualities of the 'one' that comes from yonder. However since it is sinister, these are fake or evil qualities appearing to be true, how fitting that this sinister side is associated with the left hand side, for only the right hand side is known to represent good. For e.g. “my right hand man”

The dexter is red, Gules is a heraldic colour representing red. Love is also red, this side supposedly 'steals' her love, we can conclude, she has gone with this one from yonder and given her love to him and takes off with him, so his right hand side is now taken by the narrator's love.

Further reminiscing, the narrator remembers when he and his love danced with the west wind (Zephyr) across the Champs Elysees, which were fields and market grounds, a most beautiful setting. But...he says, she chose him of 'Sable', a heraldic colour, which is essentially a black, meaning his black heart, or essentially a knight as can be concluded by all the heraldic imagery. But this knight as we know has false qualities, and stole her by deception. For he continues...'not true shield mantled gold' this is in reference to the narrator himself. The TRUE shield, the whole shield in gold, no deceptions. And the shield symbolizing protection, THE man for the woman.

He slowly fades away as he drowns his sorrows in rum, or apparently...the rum is just a metaphor for an object of consolation to the author, since his love left him, not the actual liquor. Rum, a dark red perhaps symbolizing something that is a colour similar to rum, this can be concluded because the poem revolves around the use of colours. And rum was a popular addiction for drowning out sorrows, so it fits the narrator's addiction is like rum. The last line means as the moon light (celestial light) fades away [remember, going from full moon to new moon] he awaits another coon's age (blue moon) (A LONG PERIOD OF TIME) for sepia, a vivid memory...

[David]

There is nothing wrong with 'It happened upon a waning moon'

It makes sense.

My, you're incorrigible, aren't you? Maybe that's a trait of yours we'll learn to love. Let's see.

Keep posting.

David

[kozmikdave]

As for your religious dislike, was that really needed here?
Some love their faith, some don't.

I wasn't aware I said anything about my faith or religious dislike, CC. I was referring to my mistrust of pseudo-archaic language. Ah, but that was a long time ago.