[N. Matheson]

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.

[Joe Crocker]

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.

[Matt Q]

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

[Roger Slater]

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.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Joe Crocker

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.

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

you do create a context (wishing you were born in a different era) that makes using archaic language perfectly acceptable

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.

Originally Posted by Joe Crocker

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’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.

[Matt Q]

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

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

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

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

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.

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.

[Yves S L]

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!

[Roger Slater]

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.

[Julie Steiner]

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.