Learn to critique 3

[Julie]

THE BEAUTIFUL NIGHT.

Now I leave this cottage lowly,

Where my love hath made her home,
And with silent footstep slowly

Through the darksome forest roam,
Luna breaks through oaks and bushes,

Zephyr hastes her steps to meet,
And the waving birch-tree blushes,

Scattering round her incense sweet.

Grateful are the cooling breezes

Of this beauteous summer night,
Here is felt the charm that pleases,

And that gives the soul delight.
Boundless is my joy; yet, Heaven,

Willingly I'd leave to thee
Thousand such nights, were one given

By my maiden loved to me!

[nyeldell]

I hate to see this sitting here all alone, but I have already participated once. I am bumping this up in hopes that someone who would like the practice will go at it. If anyone is interested, refer back to the first post for the concept, and don't be afraid to go at it! Good luck...

Nathan :-)

[aislin]

Originally posted by Julie:
THE BEAUTIFUL NIGHT.

Now I leave this cottage lowly,
~are you leaving the cottage crouching lowly to the ground or is it a lowly cottage? a comma before lowly would help if it is a lowly cottage.

Where my love hath made her home,
And with silent footstep slowly

Through the darksome forest roam,
~replace the comma with a period, it's the end of the thought.
Luna breaks through oaks and bushes,
~if you're in a forest, wouldn't the bushes be underneath the trees? if so, how could moonlight break through all the way to the bottom of the forest with the trees in the way? it would make more sense with another tree (ash tree maybe) instead of bushes.
Zephyr hastes her steps to meet,
~meet who? Luna?
And the waving birch-tree blushes,
~i'm confused. we have the moonlight somehow bypassing the overhead foliage to reach the bushes, Zephyr meeting a mystery thing and now a waving, blushing tree. why is the tree blushing?
Scattering round her incense sweet.
~is the tree scattering the incense or is it yet another unknown entity?
Grateful are the cooling breezes
~this sounds like the breezes are grateful for something
Of this beauteous summer night,
~and sounds like the breeze is grateful for the night being pretty
Here is felt the charm that pleases,

And that gives the soul delight.
~let me get this straight- the breeze is grateful for the night being pretty and that makes the soul happy?
Boundless is my joy; yet, Heaven,
~and makes you happy
Willingly I'd leave to thee
Thousand such nights, were one given

By my maiden loved to me!
~what!

a bit confusing with the subject switching from line to line. that needs to be clarified. otherwise, i liked the imagery and the rhyme scheme.

[crga]

First, thank you, Julie, for putting up "Learn To Critique" poems/topics for newbies such as myself to practice on before we attempt an actual criticism of others' work.

As for the poem at hand, I interpret it as fundamentally a love poem, based on my reading of the beginning and ending:

Now I leave this cottage lowly,


Where my love hath made her home,

...

...yet, Heaven,

Willingly I'd leave to thee

Thousand such nights, were one given
By my maiden loved to me!

In modern terms, the speaker is so anxious for his relationship with the "maiden" to go further that he would be willing to forego the pleasure of a thousand nights such as he describes in the middle of the poem if it were necessary to get to the next stage in the relationship.

Given this reading, my criticisms would be as follows.

First, if this is in fact a modern poem, I would say that the poet has done overall a good, if not perfect, job of emulating an archaic style. I would caution the poet that in general, attempting to emulate older styles is risky. It's hard enough to avoid cliches when writing in fully modern diction; it's nearly impossible when trying to write in an older style.

Considering the specifics of the imagery, the two lines I have the most difficulty with are:

And the waving birch tree blushes,


Scattering round her incense sweet.


I am hard put to visualize how a birch tree can "blush" in the moonlight, and if a birch tree has any characteristic odor at all, I don't think "incense" would describe it. I also find the jump from visual to olfactory imagery abrupt.

I agree with aislin that it's not crystal-clear whom Zephyr is hastening to meet, but I believe that "Luna" is the correct answer.

However, I believe that aislin may have been overly harsh in the criticism of the line "Luna breaks through oaks and bushes." If I had to revise it, I might possibly change it to "Luna breaks through oaks to bushes..." Otherwise, my only observation would be that we have an apparent conflict with the previous description of the forest as "darksome." It's not a flat-out contradiction, but I wouldn't personally use the word "darksome" to describe a forest where the moonlight is clearly visible on all the foliage. I found it natural to visualize the moolight as first reaching the trees and then the bushes below. Also, the only suggestion of temporal order in the progress of the moonlight is the word order in the phrase "trees and bushes," and I don't think it's critical to the poem.

As for the rhyme scheme, I see a problem with the fifth and seventh lines. The overall pattern of the poem suggests that they ought to rhyme, but at least in my dialect of 20th-century English, the words "blushes" and "bushes" do not.

Finally, the poet appears to have had some difficulty with the meter in the second-to-last line:

Thousand such nights, were one given

To follow the metrical pattern of the rest of the poem, one would have to read this line with an accent on "such" and no accent on "nights," but to read the line thus would be forced and unnatural. It is possible, of course, that the poet was deliberately making a metrical exception here. If so, however, the line might well be improved by putting back the article "A" ("A thousand such nights...") that the poet seemingly omitted in an effort to at least get the syllable count correct.

[This message has been edited by crga (edited 03-29-2001).]

[Andrea345]

This thread has challenged and threatened me for quite some time. Here goes!

Why did you break between the first line and the second? I agree with aslin about "cottage, lowly." The first line is a sentence but the line "Where my love" is a dependent clause and needs to be attached to the 1st line. I've taken the liberty of moving your stanzas around and messing with your punctuation.

Now I leave this cottage, lowly,
Where my love hath made her home.

And with silent footstep, slowly,
Through the darksome forest roam.

Luna breaks through oaks and bushes.
Zephyr hastes her steps to meet, *****to meet what? This preposition needs an object****


And the waving birch-tree blushes,
Scattering round her incense sweet.

What about using "scatters". It seems like most of your "2nd" lines read hard-soft in two syllables. "Scattering" is 3 and breaks the rhythm.

Grateful are the cooling breezes
Of this beauteous summer night.

Here is felt the charm that pleases,
And that gives the soul delight.

Boundless is my joy; yet, Heaven,
Willingly I'd leave to thee

Thousand such nights, were one given
By my maiden loved to me!

Well... two questions. Why are you capitalizing at the beginning of each line? And do you enjoy the rhythm of the piece to the extent that twisting the sentences for rhyme is worth it to you?

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 04-05-2001).]