To Know The Lake

[ElleW]

For pleasure, I explore a nearby lake
and spend long hours strolling through the fen.
When daily struggle wears my patience thin,
I find it helps to seek out and partake
of worldly wonders flowing in my wake.
I study ducks and deer and, once, a wren
sang gaily from the sedge and urged me in
to learn the sort of home a bird can make.
And yet I often wonder if mere man
(who sees but blurry images of truth)
can truly comprehend nature’s parade.
Though we profess to view all life’s long span,
our fleeting human tenure (mankind’s youth)
makes claims of earthly wisdom sheer charade.

[twoleftfeet]

Nice 1 L,

Sonnit, innit?

Just a couple of suggestions:

"to learn the sort of home a bird can make"
- I would be tempted to find an alternative fror "learn".

Similarly with
"Though we profess to view all life’s long span"
- I would change "view all" e.g "to learn from life's long span"?

Great title, especially as the Lake is a symbol for Yin - the Invisible/Unknown/Intuitive

Geoff

[Wabznasm]

Elle,

This is ambitious, which is refreshing, but also rather muddled and awkward at points. You're working within strict confines too (I presume this is syllabic rather than accentual?), and so I'm going to have to point to a few aspects of that along the way as well.

When daily struggle wears my patience thin, --

'wears my patience thin' - I like the use of the colloquial and the odd dash of cliche, they make a poem slightly more homely. This, however, seems less a cliche and more an awkward poetic detour in order to snatch the rhyme and the metre.

'When daily struggle' - the missing article turns the simple aspect of doing something into a grand and despotic force inflicting itself upon man - as if it is some universal structure than can be extracted, as essence, from something ('Ah hah! I knew, if only we'd scrutinised it, the washing up embodied that fiend 'daily struggle'!). I would also argue it's quite a typical compensation for the metre, and the grand heroics of it don't suit the tone of the poem.

'to seek out and partake' - not necessarily a tautology, but a bit repetitious nonetheless?

'I study ducks and deer and, once, a wren
sang gaily' - the tense jump is a little awkward

'a wren
sang gaily from the sedge and urged me in
to learn the sort of home a bird can make. ' - if you read that out loudly, it seems far too long a breath (I would suggest, for metred writing, that no more than a line and a half can exist without some form of caesura, but then that's me).

And then the jeremiad. Well, I'm not going to go at this philosophically or anything, but in all honesty, I doubt you could get away with 'who sees but blurry images of truth' in the current stage of thinking.

(mankind’s youth) - reads as if it is in there for the rhyme.

And structurally, I don't think you have enough in the octave to swing the sestet. You suggest a universal truth, and yet you offer no consolation. All you've really done is negate the first half of the poem. By this I mean that there's really no other body that you suggest does see the other side of truth. All we get is

I study ducks and deer and, once, a wren
sang gaily from the sedge and urged me in
to learn the sort of home a bird can make.

(oh, and 'wordly wonders') as antecedent to this philosophy. If, maybe, you wanted your argument to have a little more gusto, then i'd suggest an upheaval of the form: turn this into an English sonnet. Speak more of the birds, the lake, the things that you think do see the purity of nature, and then, in the couplet, hint at the conclusion. The rhetoric in the sestet bludgeons the reader too much and its tone is one that says 'Look, it's bloody obvious. Haven't you read the rest of my poem?'. But the poem doesn't back it up. I would also argue the sestet is no more than an elaborated truism of olden times. Perhaps, maybe, just allude to this in the couplet with an image? Otherwise your poem is on the one hand chunky (images, sounds and sights in the octave) and on the other vapid (words that don't really signify to anything previously in the sestet). To put it simply, you haven't proved your sestet.

I do go on, don't I?

Dave

[twoleftfeet]

And then the jeremiad. Well, I'm not going to go at this philosophically or anything, but in all honesty, I doubt you could get away with 'who sees but blurry images of truth' in the current stage of thinking.
Dave

Hmm. I took that line to refer to the Bibilical quotation:
"For now we see through a glass, darkly"
- didn't the Bard use it?

Philosophy-wise
- the point of the Lake is surely that you don't know how deep it is because you can't see to the bottom?

Geoff

[Lake]

Elle,

I enjoyed reading this, I guess I like all nature poems. In your poem, from observing the nature you have arrived at the realization of human nature. Dave has discussed all the technical aspects of which I'm not capable. Like Geoff, the title caught my attention. I smiled at his interpretation of lake.

the point of the Lake is surely that you don't know how deep it is because you can't see to the bottom?

You can't fathom...

Thanks for the read.

Lake

[ElleW]

Thanks, Dave, Geoff and Lake for commenting on this sonnet. These, pantoums and villanelles intrigue me, but I'm not that great at them!

Geoff, thanks for the suggestions.

Dave, thanks for the many suggestions and for recognizing the Italian form.

Lake, glad you enjoyed this, that you understood the turn at L9.

Thanks again to all for reading and commenting.

Cheers,
L