Anachronism
 

Were but I born to years before mine own,
Been nursed on accents ere this vulgar plea,
When you wert thou, and y’all were reckoned ye,
And antique stars, their fledgling lustre shone

Upon the mewling tongues of th’ English voice,
I’d count myself amongst my kith and kin;
Yet Time brought endings ere I might begin,
And destiny denies me ev’ry choice.

Those selfsame stars, once bright with lusty beams,
Hath waned and welked till faint with feeble fire
As th’ embers of those raptured lights did fade.

Now infant wailings turn to bygone screams,
And youthful bliss concedes to withered ire
Where all these transient things are dust and shade.

So you were born in wrong time. You bemoan your fate in the language of the time you wish you were born in. It’s a nice conceit. It is clear that you take much delight in that language. I have some sympathy in that I enjoy passages from the King James Bible more than modern translations even if I understand the meaning less clearly.

My main difficulty is that you were not in fact born in 17th or 18th century, and I cannot be sure you are using the language as it would actually have been used at that time. I’m not sure I can trust you. I worry that, even if you are a very knowledgeable scholar of older englishes, you may still be writing some form of gadzookery.

Hi N

For me, one problem this sonnet has is that it lacks development. The sestet doesn't add much to the octet, but more seems to reiterate it, spell it out. In particular S3 seems to merely expand on the metaphor in S1 in predictable ways -- spelling out things already implied. S4 says, basically, "ah, the old ways have gone", which was already made clear in the octet.

To make the poem more interesting, your might think about how it could turn. How, having taken us one way, take it in another. Maybe the N tells us that despite it being gone, he will still inhabit it, for example.

Were but I born to years before mine own,
Been nursed on accents ere this vulgar plea,

Grammatically, the opening seems off. "Were but I ... been nursed". "been" seems superfluous, "nursed" on its own does it, I think.

And antique stars, their fledgling lustre shone

So, back then the stars were relics of antiquity, but their light was new. I'm not sure how that works. Old stars with new light?


Upon the mewling tongues of th’ English voice

This is the English language the N pines for, yet its described as mewling? Imitative of a cat or a child. A crying sound? The N isn't making it sound attractive here.

I’d count myself amongst my kith and kin;

"kith and kin" is something of cliché -- at the very least a stock phrase. Maybe just keep "kin"?

And destiny denies me ev’ry choice.

What choices is the N denied? I don't get a sense of this from the poem. He wishes he were born 400 odd years ago. But he hasn't been. So now he has some choices? It sounds like there are at least several, but I'm not really clear what they could be. And destiny denies these choices. Is "choice" the right word here? Are you being pushed into it by the rhyme?

Those selfsame stars, once bright with lusty beams,
Hath waned and welked till faint with feeble fire
As th’ embers of those raptured lights did fade.

This seem to reiterate the above. We know the stars once shone with new light on the English language, and the N wishes he'd been around for that. From this it's already very clear that the N thinks they no longer shine with new light, that the light is less bright or less energetic in the present day. So these lines don't really do much to develop anything, and that's a sizeable chunk of your poem for nothing much new to happening. I'd say you need to rethink this section.

Now infant wailings turn to bygone screams,

Why "bygone" screams? Wouldn't that put them in the past and contradict "Now"?

And youthful bliss concedes to withered ire

I'm not sure how language today is intrinsically any more angry or ire-filled than it was back then. I'm wondering if this word-choice was rhyme-driven?

Where all these transient things are dust and shade.

Where is this? I'm not convinced that "where" makes sense in the context of what precedes.


Personally, I think you should consider posting some poems in modern English, as you speak it. Currently, I think, all the Olde Worlde stuff is obscuring your writing. The reader is distracted by your archaisms, has to work harder to get at the sense. As a result, you're not getting that much useful critique.

If you write in modern English and post it here, you will learn more about how to improve your poetry, and will improve much more quickly. Any weaknesses will be harder to hide, will be much more out of the open, absent the camouflage of archaic grammar and word choices.

And everything you learn about structure, metaphor, word choice, rhyme, metre, pacing etc in the process will be just as applicable to your poems in archaic language.

Anyway up to you. But I can see myself very quickly getting tired of trudging though all these archaisms.


Best,

Matt

If I hadn't read your comments on another thread about how you reject modernity, etc., and wish to recreate poems that might have been written in the 17th century, I would take this as a humorous send-up of that same ridiculous attitude. There's no way in the world anyone would mistake the language of this poem for authentic language of an earlier century. It's more like a Pig Latin translation of 17th century language, and it feels like that was your intent.

While I am not an expert on archaic grammar, I do believe that "hath" is a singular. Your use of it with the subject "stars" is so in-your-face wrong that it's part of what convinced me that this must be a send-up.

Anyway, you do create a context (wishing you were born in a different era) that makes using archaic language perfectly acceptable, unlike in your other poem where the archaic language was inexplicable. If you intended the archaic languge to be an accurate representation of how people spoke and wrote back then, I'm afraid you haven't achieved that. But if you intended a humorous send-up, the poem is more successful but still could lean a bit harder into the humor.

Yes, this sonnet is an enjoyable and self-justifying use of archaic language. And you seem to be linking nostalgia for Early Modern English to nostalgia for your own infancy, which is interesting.

I’ve had the same doubt. Matt and I both asked whether you had a target period in mind or were happy with a language that just sounded archaic. I guessed that your last poem was mid to late seventeenth century, but this one, with its nostalgia for “thou” and “ye” points back to 1600 or earlier. I’m far from an expert on any of this, but you should watch out for things like:

- “you wert thou”—The subject is “you,” so the verb should be “were,” regardless of period.

- “Those selfsame stars … Hath waned”—As Roger has mentioned, “stars” is plural, so the verb should be “have.”

A few more thoughts:

You shift from “Were I” (= If I were) to “been” (≈ “If I had been) in the first two lines, and I’m not sure this works very well. I’d be happier if the first line were:

Had I been born to years before mine own,

I don’t think the inversion in S1L4 needs a comma after “antique stars,” but punctuation followed different rules in earlier periods, so I can’t say that with confidence.

I don’t understand the use of “Upon” in S2L1: “I’d count myself among my kind upon their tongues”?

The mix of present perfect (hath/have waned) and simple past (did fade) in S3 is questionable, though the archaic wording makes it less noticeable. Would you write “The stars have waned as their embers faded”? The perfect is admittedly a slippery tense, but it sounds odd to me. The sentence is also a bit redundant—along the lines of “He ate the bun as he swallowed its crumbs.”

The alliteration in S3L2 is nicely reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon verse.

Hello N. Matheson,

I don't see what poetic benefits you are getting out the archaic language. If 17th century (hearsay states that this is the era being imitated) English is an instrument, then you are not making it sing. This effort is making me want to go see how many poems from the 17th century I actually like. Which poets would I spend my time reading? Who speaks to me across the centuries?

Rhetorically, there is a lot of redundancies as N states and restates the same riff of "being born in the wrong time", but instead of the repetitions developing interest, it gives me the feeling of filling out quatrains and tercets by spinning out content.

To be more specific, I don't think "youthful bliss concedes to withered ire" is making some argument of modern English being particular angry, but it is merely a variation of the "happy youth to sad old age" motif that is part of the poetic bag of tropes. The purpose is emotional colouring displaying the N particular subjectivity of a negative attitude to Modern English vis-a-vis poetry. The poem has its own problems without making up straw men.

Yeah!

By the way, N., you might find it easier to write your poems in modern English and then use an online translator to convert it to an Elizabethan dialect.

You've already received good advice, which I endorse, so I'll just add two more thoughts:

First, N., I think you might enjoy the Pop Sonnets site. I found it so amusing that I bought several copies of the book to give to my nieces and nephews. The author translates 20th- and early 21st-century song lyrics into Shakespearean sonnets, and it's a fun puzzle to see how quickly you can recognize which song is being (Shakes)peare-pressured.

Second, what if your nostalgic narrator were suddenly to find himself indeed transported to a previous age — but as a woman, and/or as a slave or peasant? Finding himself the de facto or actual property of the courtiers with whom he had assumed he'd be "kith and kin" — and/or perhaps being designated a heretic or witch to be executed, to boot — might cure that nostalgia for yesteryear pretty damn quickly.

I haven’t experimented with this particular translator, but the fact that it falsely offers to translate into Old English (= Anglo-Saxon) does not inspire confidence. I have tried an “English to Shakespearean” translator, which produces such an ungrammatical pseudo-archaic mishmash that Shakespeare should press charges for defamation of character.

It wasn't a serious suggestion, Carl.

I dunno. "wert" is second person singular, so would have been used with "thou", and the point being made, I think, is that "thou" has become "you". You who I now call "you", I would have called "thou". So my take is that the N has substituted the modern "you" and kept the archaic verb, intentionally mixing modern and archaic for effect. For me, that works.

But, a different issue: should it be "wert" or "wast"?

Many online sources give "wert" as subjunctive and "wast" for the indicative. This seems to be the case for Shakespeare and the King James Bible (which is usefully searchable by word), at least:

Thus Romeo says:

"Thou wast never with me for anything ..."

Ezequiel, King James Bible:

"Thou wast perfect in thy ways ..."

Whereas Falstaff, using the subjunctive, says

"I would thou wert a man's tailor ..."

ditto Job, King James Bible:

"If thou wert pure and upright ..."

So, maybe it should be "When you wast thou" rather than "wert"?

That said, no doubt exceptions to the above occurred at different times and in different regional dialects. Still, I guess that raises the question: Exactly when and where is the N wishing to have born? Or maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe any inaccuracies (assuming this even is one) are permissible on the grounds that they'd bear out the poem's conceit that he wasn't! :)

-Matt

Hi, N—

Nice callback to Horace in the last line!
Glenn

Ok, if it’s intentionally ungrammatical, I guess I can accept that, though I personally don’t think the effect, whatever it is, is enough to compensate.

Or as Shelley said in To a Skylark "Hail to thee blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert". Should that be wertn't or wastn't?

I think Joyce Grenfell had it about right

Hi N.M.,

I won't ding you for wanting to write in an anachronistic idiom; there is a time and place for poetic pastiche/mimicry and I've seen it used to very powerful effect. One of my all-time favourite novels is A. S. Byatt's Possession, which won the Booker prize in the mid-90s and is absolutely full of this sort of thing, albeit imitating a more modern period than you are here.

To really pull it off, however, will probably require you to (a) choose a distinct time period -- people have noted that your expressions seem to be ranging between the centuries a bit -- and then (b) really deeply immerse yourself in the language and literature of that period. So if you want to write in Elizabethan/Shakespearean English, for example, that means reading not just Shakespeare for drama but also Marlowe, Dekker, Kyd, Middleton, Fletcher, Jonson, etc.; for prose, probably a lot of the English reformers, the Book of Common Prayer, and the King James Bible; for poetry (besides Shakespeare), Spencer, Sidney, Jonson, and Campion.

In the meantime, as you're doing this deep reading, I echo Matt's earlier suggestion that writing poetry in your own contemporary idiom will also be helpful in terms of increasing your general poetic skill; the tools you will gain this way will, of course, be available to you regardless of which era or style you write in.

I think it's become apparent what I desire is simply impossible. If I'd been born 400 years ago maybe, but what I want is to be as skilled and versatile as those poets were. But I do not think I have that talent, nor is it even achievable.

N, it is easy, in the present, to imagine that poets, in the distant past, sprang fully formed from the womb. But, though there may be some magic involved, that magic was only realized through hard labor, and frustrations lived through. The gilding of language you seem to long for so earnestly is more a quality of time, the buff and polish of years and years passing: I suspect it's the distance from the present moment that supplies the light that gleams and glitters so.

If your task seems unachievable, I don't think that is due to any lack of talent, only to an unwillingness to face the tasks at hand rather than taking refuge in tasks long-since accomplished.

Nemo

Up to a point, yes. But I find it hard to believe any amount of skill can make one rival the likes of Shakespeare.

N., I remember you saying that if you couldn’t rival Shakespeare, you should give up writing. If all writers felt that way, English literature would have ended with Shakespeare—or Chaucer—or the Beowulf poet. Virgil would have put his stylus away after reading Homer.

In the Middle Ages, some thought of it this way:

“Who sees further a dwarf or a giant? Surely a giant for his eyes are situated at a higher level than those of the dwarf. But if the dwarf is placed on the shoulders of the giant who sees further? ... So too we are dwarfs astride the shoulders of giants. We master their wisdom and move beyond it.”

To Nemo’s advice, let me add that most people born 400 years ago had very limited horizons. Judging from my family tree, I probably would have been an illiterate farmer with no room in my head for anything poetic. Be glad that you live in a time when you can grow in so many directions—including back to Elizabethan poetry.

Carl, I think the "on the shoulders of giants" metaphor is usually attributed to Isaac Newton. At any rate, he wrote in a letter to Robert Hooke in 1675: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.

Years ago I read a book that explored the origin of this phrase/metaphor, though I've forgotten much that I learned. I do recall that it was a fabulous book that I enjoyed quite a bit. This is it.

Stephen Hawking and Umberto Echo also wrote books with the same title.

Roger, the quote I cited is from Isaiah di Trani (c. 1180–c. 1250), but Wikipedia traces the metaphor back to at least 1123. I’d never heard of the Merton book. Thanks for that!

.
N — My only thought on the subject is wether or not a reader from back in the time would detect something askew about it; sense something they couldn't put their finger on; be unable to match up the indelible yet changeable fingerprint of language in the context of evolution. That's really my only thought. As a rule, I don't enjoy a poem I can't connect with on a linguistic level.

I'm curious, though — do you ever write poetry in a more contemporary tongue? I'd like to read it. It's obvious you have a poet's soul.

Welcome N!

.

Hi N,

You are clearly sincere in your attachment to the verse and voice of the past, so it seems pointless and churlish, I suppose, to keep telling you that you are misguided. A person likes what they like. I wonder, though, if your poems have to be quite so stuck in the past to the point where your word choices are so archaic, and sometimes incorrect as has been pointed out, that the result sounds like bad pastiche. I had a quick go at modernising some of the language here. The result is still very old-fashioned sounding but, to my ear, it sounds at least more sincere. I couldn't help but get rid of those initial caps too. As Jim says, you are not lacking in some talent. It seems a shame, to me, to be quite so chained to the language of several centuries ago. I feel like I'm staging an intervention ha.


If I were born to years before my own,
and nursed on accents before the vulgar now,
when y'all was sounded ye, and you was thou,
and ancient stars, their fledgling lustre shone

upon the solemn tongues of the English voice,
I’d count myself amongst my kith and kin;
but Time arrested, before I might begin,
and destiny denied me every choice.

Those selfsame stars, once bright with blinding beams,
have waned and faded, faint with feeble fire
like embers of enraptured lights that fade.

Now infant wailings turn to bygone screams
and youthful bliss concedes to withered ire
where all these transient things are dust and shade.

Talent is as talent does, but I'll bet on hard work over natural talent every time. Writing is a craft; it can be developed. And it's not as if the poets of the past didn't put in the work, or progress in their skill and style over time. You can see the differences between, say, Titus Andronicus and Hamlet. And while we have 154 published sonnets by Shakespeare, we have no idea how many sonnets he wrote and decided not to publish because they weren't ready or just for practice or not very good or he didn't feel like it, or, or, or...

Maybe you'll be as skilled as some of those greats if you're willing to work for it. And even if you're not as skilled as them, who knows what wonderful things you might write along the way? But you definitely won't be as great as they are -- or even as great as you could be -- by giving up and refusing to try.

And yet, the broad consensus I have found among scholars and historians is that in 400 years, no author, however skilled, has surpassed Shakespeare's genius. It does seem to have concluded with him.

Ok, even accepting that premise as true -- I'm asking this sincerely and with kindness -- why give a shit?

N. Matheson will never write as well as Shakespeare. So what? Aren't you even a little curious about what he can do? Obviously you've got some grit and gumption because I remember having this exact conversation like a year ago and you're still here, you're still writing. There's part of you that's determined to be a poet anyway. Listen to that part of you.

For a simple reason I fear oblivion more than anything else. If I am just another of countless poets, I am more terrified than I can express of being forgotten. Only a select few people ever get remembered, and if I fail to achieve that, I'll consider my life to have amounted to nothing. I would rather have never existed to begin with.

Those select few who are remembered are still in oblivion. Blake died penniless and mocked but laughing and clapping his hands at the face of God.

Who cares what the "broad consensus" says! The broad consensus can talk a lot of bollocks sometimes. N, you have the worst case of the anxiety of influence! You don't really seem interested in engaging with what people have to say about your poems. You seem stuck in this Catch 22 of posting archaic sounding poetry, then when people criticise it for sounding archaic you self-pityingly bemoan that you will never be "as good as" Shakespeare. Newsflash! No, you almost certainly won't, so stop trying to compete with him! If you genuinely believe that there is nothing to be learned from anyone post Shakespeare — from Milton, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Eliot, Plath, Proust, Joyce, Rilke (and on and on) — then yes. Stop.

But if you need to write you will write. And I really believe that you will find it so freeing when you learn to do so in your own voice.

If I can't be as good as him, and I do believe he ended poetry and literature, then I guess I will stop.

With respect, I think we're now heading into territory far beyond the ken of a poetry workshop. The level of anxiety and distress you seem to be suffering around this idea of being remembered is probably worth exploring with a kind counselor or therapist.

Keep writing anyway.

As far as such subjective things can be quantified, not one of us here is “as good as Shakespeare”. Indeed, every poetry workshop/journal in the world could be sub-headed Not As Good As Shakespeare. But then, Shakespeare probably thought he wasn’t as good as Chaucer…

Sincerely N, and with genuine concern and kindness…what Christine said.

It might help you to be remembered if you'd tell us who you are.

In the meantime, 'Tis Sweet to be Remembered.

Writing in the 16th and 17th centuries, William Shakespeare did not try to sound like a writer from 400 years earlier. That's probably a big part of the reason that he's so well remembered and highly regarded. Just for the exercise, why not explore what thou canst do with the idiom of thine own era.

Then I have to question why he hasn't been replaced with a more contemporary author. It seems to me his version of English is rated superior.

N. Matheson,

Wow.

For some reason threads such as this tend to go on much longer and generate more interests than threads about actual poems.

Wringing one's hands about Shakespeare means one does not have to use those same hands to revise one's poems, right?

If you love the old English so much, then why not revise your poems to at least correct syntactic errors? I myself do not know if you recognise the mistakes people have pointed out, because you have not responded. For all I know about archaic syntax, you might be actually be right.

Some folk do not even think the English language is all that compared to what other languages can evoke of emotion and cognition. Some folk do not even think English sounds all that nice. Some folk do not even think Shakespeare is all that.

Wow.

" I have to question why he hasn't been replaced with a more contemporary author. It seems to me his version of English is rated superior."

No, that's silly. His writing is rated superior, not his "version" of English. There were many other writers who wrote in precisely the same "version" of Elizabethan English, but you do not revere these writers. This should be enough to prove that it wasn't the good fortune of capturing the language at its peak moment of development that made Shakespeare a great writer. It was the inner artist, not his mastery of thees and thous.

I'm sorry but I disagree. If this was remotely true we would be reading translations of his texts into Modern English, yet to do so is blasphemy. It's his version of English that helps makes his works superior, a modern translation would be deemed inferior by every metric.

"Shakespeare" is used as shorthand for supreme achievement in literature in the same way Michelangelo is used as shorthand for supreme achievement in art and Newton for science. All these figures were products of that incredible, intense flowering of post-medieval forward looking thought that we call the Renaissance, leading into the Enlightenment. They have become totems. But art, and science and literature progress and change. And all these people, were they alive today, would embrace that change, I'm sure.

Shakespeare isn't remembered because his "version of English...helps makes his works superior", whatever that means. Shakespeare wrote in early modern English and in the literary style of his time, but it is the beauty and imaginative reach of his poetry and his psychological complexity, in the plays as much as in the sonnets, that makes him stand out, not the fact that he wrote "thou hast" instead of "you have" and used the auxiliary verb "do" ("rough winds do shake", "as two spent swimmers that do cling together"). Of course modernising Shakespeare is unnecessary but in those examples, I would argue that very little would be lost in modernising "thou hast" to "you have" and the only problem with "rough winds shake" and "as two spent swimmers that cling together" would be in the metre. The genius of Shakespeare doesn't lie in his old-fashioned syntax and vocabulary because he absolutely wasn't old fashioned!! He invented words! If you want to play in the same ballpark as Shakespeare be modern.

And I'll leave it there, I think.

Voltaire: “France has not insults, fool’s-caps, and pillories enough for such a scoundrel. My blood boils in my own veins while I speak to you about him … And the terrible thing is that … it is I myself who was the first to speak about this Shakespeare [in France]. I was the first who showed to the French a few pearls which I had found in his enormous dunghill.”

Leo Tolstoy: “I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: “King Lear,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless.”

George Bernard Shaw: “There is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare … It would be positively a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.”

Not that I agree with any of this rot, mind you. Orwell makes short work of Tolstoy in an article called “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool”: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

Then how do you agree with Orwell and bother writing? If Orwell was right, then we've basically reached the zenith. It's all inferior from here.