A Poet's Journey

(How Far Can You Go?)

By Fox-Trot-9

August / Spencerian Stanza: Unrequited Love

When twilight's bluer shades are colored black,
   And day's courageous deeds replaced with fear

To go along with dreading some attack,

   The Night (in robes of black) would then appear

   To greet me with a smile of wicked cheer:

Her angry image doth congeal the blood;

   Her eyes could kill with just a single leer;

Her smiles could throw a knight into the mud,

Perhaps upraise the dead, perhaps unleash a flood!

And yet, when I do look into her eyes

   (Black as the deepest voids of outer space),

I see within those pools of inky skies

   The stars that form the tears upon her face;

   Oh, sorrow not upon my sad disgrace!

Better by far to kill me with your spite

   Than torture me with tears I can't erase!

Where is that flame that used to burn so bright?

Where is your warmth? Where is my guiding star tonight?

Such wicked fancies burn inside the soul,

   Where idleness and sin can often dwell

With noble aspirations of control

   Over the inconsistent dip and swell

   Of destiny, the chance to sound the knell

Of love, desire, resentment, pain and woe.

   Your absence makes the Heavens seem a Hell;

Better by far to follow you below,

For where your presence is, right there my heart shall go.

(To be continued...)

A/N: This is the Spencerian stanza, a 9-line stanza invented by Edmund Spenser, written in iambic pentameter with the last line written in iambic hexameter to add some variation. The last line is also called an Alexandrine. Edmund Spenser used this stanza for his epic poem, The Faerie Queene, making this form good for narrative poetry and other extended poems.

Meter: iambic pentameter/iambic hexameter
Rhyme: ababbcbcc