Poetry ~ Part 1

Readers, today’s article is all about poetry. Poetry is unlike any other type of literature in that it not only provides description and furthers your imagination but also appeals to the emotions. This may be a good thing from time to time for poetry can express Biblical truths and the right reaction to issues in life.

Before continuing, we need to discuss the symbols of rhyme. Each letter of the alphabet represents a word at the end of the line. Paired rhymes are marked with the same letter. After a stanza, you would label the lines starting from a again. Here is an illustration for clarification; the letters are bolded and are at the beginning of each line:

England to America
By Katherine Lee Bates

A And what of thee, O Lincoln's Land? What gloom
B Is darkening above the Sunset Sea?
A Vowed Champion of Liberty, deplume
B Thy war-crest, bow thy knee,
B Before God answer thee.

A What talk is thine of rebels? Didst thou turn,
B My very child, thy vaunted sword on me,
A To scoff to-day at patriot fires that burn
B In hearts unbound to thee,
B Flames of the Sunset Sea?

Hopefully, the illustration helped. Just for some “Bonus Facts,” Katherine Lee Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” and popularized Mrs. Claus. Those were pretty random. Below is a list of types of poetry, and examples to go with each type. Because I’m giving examples, I will probably have a couple of parts to this series.

The Ballad

Ballads are usually associated with the Wild West and cowboys which is partially true. Ballads are grouped in stanzas of four lines and usually follow rhyme schemes such as abab or abcb. There are two types of ballads: the folk and literary ballad. The folk ballads are the ones that were sung by the cowboys in the West. The literary ballads are more common and were written as an imitation of the folk ballad. Below is a stanza from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “The Ballad of the Harp Weaver.”

A And piled up beside her
B And toppling to the skies,
C Were the clothes of a king’s son,
  B Just my size.

One more thing to note about the literary ballad is that it doesn’t always have four lines per stanza or follow the usual rhyme scheme. “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” by Robert Browning has six lines per stanzas and a rhyme scheme of aabbcc. It is still considered a ballad though because it was written in order to imitate a folk ballad. “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes is another ballad with six lines in each stanza.

The Sonnet

Although sonnets are usually categorized along with the literary works of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare is only responsible for one type of sonnet. The Shakespearean or English sonnet has four stanzas with a rhyme scheme of abab for the first three stanzas and aa for the last stanza. Another interesting fact about the Shakespearean sonnet is that the symbols of rhyme do not generally restart at the beginning of the alphabet for each new stanza. The stanzas may or may not be split apart as well. Take a look at the example below:

Sonnet XXIXBy William Shakespeare

A When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
B I all alone beweep my outcast state,
A And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
B And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
C Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
D Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
C Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
D With what I most enjoy contented least;
E Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
F Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
E Like to the lark at break of day arising
F From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
    G For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
    G That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

A thing to note about the poem above is that lines six and eight (beginning with “Featured like…” and “With what...”) do not exactly rhyme. The words possessed and least exhibit eye rhyme which means that they look like they are supposed to rhyme but don’t. The words again and plain are another example of this. Another bonus fact is that Shakespeare wrote approximately 173 sonnets in his lifetime along with his plays and narrative poems.

Another type of sonnet is the Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet. This sonnet has two stanzas: one with eight lines and another with six lines. The first stanza presents a question or problem and the second problem presents an answer or solution. The rhyme scheme varies greatly for this type of sonnet. The English Romantic poet John Keats wrote many Italian sonnets, and people dispute that he might have become as famous as Shakespeare regarding poetry if Keats had lived longer. Here is an example of an Italian Sonnet by Keats:

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
By John Keats

A The Poetry of earth is never dead:   
B When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,   
B And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run   
A From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;   
C That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead      
D In summer luxury,—he has never done   
D With his delights; for when tired out with fun   
C He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.   
E The poetry of earth is ceasing never:   
F On a lone winter evening, when the frost     
G Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills   
E The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,   
F And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,   
G The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

One can notice that the rhyme scheme for the octave (a stanza of eight lines) follows abba and cddc, and the sestet (a stanza of six lines) follows efg twice. Also the pairs of dead and mead and the pairs of lead and weed are not taken as eye rhyme because they are in separate groups within the octave.

Sonnets relies heavily on form and rhyme; that is why I didn’t center the poems like I did with the ballad. Sonnets are used to express deep thoughts and ideas as well.

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Come back on Thursday for another July special. By the way, if you subscribe to my blog, you will receive the latest updates and special news ahead of time. Just use the “Follow by Email” button on the right. I am going to close this article with a sonnet I wrote for Thanksgiving 2016.

Sonnet of Praise

When I to others complain and blame
God for all my storms and woes;
When I groan for lack of wealth and fame,
My love for God, cold it grows.
I see myself, my soul, my heart,
And I see that the fault is mine:
My ingratitude tore my joy apart,
For to God, my ungratefulness is a crime.
He has blessed me abundantly and I
Should give him all the praise,
But I don't and raise a pitiful cry
Against him; but now, I’ll stand amazed:
      I see His splendor among the heavenly ranks;
      For His grace and goodness, do I give thanks.