[Robert Pecotte]

The rhythm, the beauty and the solemn salute do not disappoint. I would like to read something this graceful everyday. One should wish for such a tribute; this one was deeply loved.

Surrounded by the white,

Fr. RP

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

I share John Beaton's reservation about the use made of the seasons in this poem. The imagery is very beautiful, moving and finally somber, but the whole doesn't have the force of individual lines in it. The first line of the sestet has a metrical kink in it, at least to my ear.

[Terese Coe]

When I see hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, as I have the last few days, the last thing I would think of is a dead soldier. Or dead person. The spring flowers are bursting with life and the air is bursting with sunlight.

Consequently this didn't move me as one would expect.

[Mary Meriam]

Terese -

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

~Hamlet

[Petra Norr]

About the first line of the sestet... “Towards” is a two-syllable word in much of the English-speaking world. But if you regard it as one-syllable, it might seem like a glitch.
The word “flowers” in the fourth line is treated as a one-syllable word, as it often is in natural speech and in formal verse (in both old and new poems).

Others have mentioned the variations in this sonnet, and someone called it loose meter. The first line could be scanned as having an anapest: /ia soft/. Personally, I didn’t hear it as one because even in everyday speech wisteria is elided. In the third line, I do think there is an anapest: /ening world/. It’s not loud, however, and it’s also easy to elide the syllables.

In the second stanza, L2 has a trochee in the first foot and L3 is a headless iambic line. In combination, those lines produce a slight trochaic sound, which then is reinforced by the trochaic opening of the sestet. I think these substitutions suit the content perfectly. They create a more somber tone that goes hand in hand with autumn, the approaching winter, the last of the flowers and the ebbing away of life.

In the sestet, there is also this line:
pale soldier roses, rearguard in retreat,
What would Mr Sound-and-Sense Pope say about that? I think he would applaud. The line has so many strong stresses and even a trochaic foot within the line -- /guard in/. The result is a very heavy line that matches so well the “soldier roses” and the figurative language – the image of soldiers marching or trudging off in retreat.

That’s how I see the variations. I don't regard the sonnet as having loose meter. I think it's IP with very skillful use of metrical substitutions.

[Alan Wickes]

Like others, even if I had not seen this elsewhere, I would have recognised the author. Really it should not be possible to write a convincing sonnet using flower imagery and changing seasons within a lament without becoming simply derivative. Yet this is a timeless classic and it would be ungenerous to see it as simply 'textbook stuff'.

So how does the poet pluck something extraordinary from such familiar material? Partly it's got to do with how well crafted this is - on all kinds of levels. The use of repeated phrases - giving it, as others have noted, the hint of a villanelle - that's very effective. Personally I think piling up references to different flowers does not detract from this at all but adds a rich blossoming effect. It is this central contradiction between the blossoming flowers and the sense of withering, mournful loss which makes this so memorable.

Yes, of course it's been done before, but the poem does stand up well amongst its famous antecedents and that is no mean feat; moreover the illustrious ancestors mentioned - 'In Flanders Field' et al, are not sonnets and I cannot bring to mind an actual sonnet covers this territory quite as well as this. That being said, I'm not sure it is quite fair of Mary to post a passage from Hamlet as a comparative example!

Alan

[Chris Childers]

I object to objections to "towards." I pronounce it as one syllable generally, but it is clear what the meter wants me to do, and rather than be intransigent, I oblige. Everyone should be like me.

I read this without recognizing or worrying too much about the title, and I found it a nice poem about getting old, in the vein (if not the league) of 'that time of year thou mayst in me behold.' (I'm not hugely fond of lines 5-6, which seem competent but unexceptional.) I also didn't worry about the flowers, though from Catherine's careful explication, I see that I missed a lot. But I thought it was perfectly comprehensible without all that. The explication adds layers, but it is unnecessary to basic understanding.

It's baffling that the meter has garnered so much discussion. The poem is metrically FINE, even accomplished. But all the meter chat feels like the old days, when this place was more about coloring in the lines than it has since become.

The poem is pretty, and good. Doesn't set me on fire, but so much the worse for me.

Chris

[Tim Murphy]

I stand with Alan and Rob on this. Well put, Gentlemen. Author, cross the lane and blow a kiss for Tim to the grave of you know whom.

[T.S. Kerrigan]

I'm puzzled by the quibbles about the difficuty of this poem. Anything that is discernible from standard reference sources is fair game. To be unaware of the native fauna and flora, moreover, is to be a stranger in one's own land. The appreciation of this poem is more than worth the perceived difficulties.

[David Rosenthal]

Beautifully written and well-crafted, but it somehow did not grab me. By L4 I had a good idea where this was going, and by L8 I was sure what L14 would be. I don't know enough about flowers to get any subtle references that may have been hidden in them, and I had to take N's word for the seasonal appropriteness of many of them. Meanwhile, I simply didn't connect with it, which is likely no fault of the poem.

David R.