[Janice D. Soderling]

Catullus 46

Now spring brings back the thawed-out warmth,
now the raging of the equinoctial sky
subsides with the sweet breezes of Zephyr.
Let the Phrygian plains be left behind, Catullus,
and the rich land of sweltering Nicaea:
let us fly away to the famed cities of Asia.
Now my fluttering soul yearns to wander;
now my eager feet come alive with eagerness.
Farewell, dear bands of fellow travellers,
whom, having left home at the same time,
split paths carry home by different routes.

Latin is here http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Catullus_46

This rendition above isn't in hendecasyllablics. I mention this not because I know what I am talking about but because I am currently trying to learn to write it. So I am willing to be corrected.

The hendecasyllable is a line of eleven syllables, used in Ancient Greek and Latin quantitative verse as well as in medieval and modern European poetry.

The classical hendecasyllable is a quantitative meter used in Ancient Greece in Aeolic verse and in scolia, and later by the Roman poet Catullus. Each line has eleven syllables; hence the name, which comes from the Greek word for eleven. The heart of the line is the choriamb (- u u -). The pattern (also known as the Phalaecian) is as follows (using "-" for a long syllable, "u" for a short and "x" for an "anceps" or variable syllable). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendecasyllable

So this thread is dedicated to both the season of spring and hendecasyllabic verse--I know there are many talented members who can add more about this type of verse and maybe even find a better translation. You know who you are.

If that isn't your cup of tea, post your fave poem on SPRING which officially occurs today (in Sweden at the magical clock time of 23.45)

Yes, those in the land of Oz etc. can write about autumn if they'd rather.

[John Whitworth]

Tennyson wrote a poem in hendecasyllabics and, perhaps oddly, Stevie Smith did too.

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard it is, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty meter.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather -
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment -
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half-coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.

[Maryann Corbett]

Frost's "For Once, Then, Something" is my go-to model for hendecasyllables. It's summer and not spring in this poem, but hey, I'll take it.


For Once, Then, Something
By Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

[R. Nemo Hill]

The Frost has always been my model as well. In fact I used these lines...

I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,

...for my own hendecasyllabic foray, Ornithologium, published a while back in Measure.

The Frost is one of my favorites of his.

Nemo

[John Whitworth]

I suppose we couldn't see your poem, Nemo.

Here is Stevie Smith's.

It is the very bewitching hour of eight
Which is the moment when my new day begins.
I love to hear the pretty clock striking eight
I love to get up out of my bed quickly.
Why is this? Because morning air is so cold?
Or because of new strength that seems to come then?
Both. And also because waking up ends dreams.

[RCL]

Hendecasyllabics

By Algernon Charles Swinburne

In the month of the long decline of roses
I, beholding the summer dead before me,
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
Moving tremulous under feet of angels
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
Heard between them a voice of exultation,
"Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
All the fruits of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
All are taken away; the season wasted,
Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
When low light was upon the windy reaches
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."

[Allen Tice]

I love this poem. Go at it!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Ralph. Beautiful. Timeless.

Thanks everyone for all the fine poems posted thus far.

[Maryann Corbett]

Quick addendum: my own hendecasyllabic attempt is called "Life Bird."

I was really hoping we'd hear about lots more contemporary takes, not just the Victorian versions.

[RCL]

LUCID WAKING by Annie Finch

from Eve (1997)

Once I wanted the whole dawn not to let me
sleep. One morning, then, I awoke and watched as
waking woke me, came slipping up through half-light
crying softly, a cat leaving her corner,
stretching, tall in the new gray air of morning,
raising paws much too high. She came slow-stepping
down the hallway to crouch, to call, to answer
through the door, making still and slow the dawning
once so bird ridden —and the sun, the curtains—