poem #17



The trouble started on the day
After the day before.  
Youth and hope and love decay,
And regret won’t restore.

It seems this old and weary world
Holds much more bad than good.  
I’d have assayed, but I was hurled
In this life before I could.   

A world of cloud and bitterness,
A life of scrape and thorn,  
So who would ever acquiesce
Ever to be born?  

Because briars outnumber flowers
By ten to one at least,
Weakness humbles mighty powers.
Famine goes before the feast.  

But feasts are more than fillings ups,
And hunger’s just a pinch.
And emptiness can’t stopper cups,
And straitening can’t cinch.   

Bounty and joy are plenitude,
And destitution lack,
So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,
No loss can take it back.  

A single flower fortifies
To brush away the burs.    
Striving wins because it tries.  
Forlorn despairing errs.

About this poem

Terence, this is stupid stuff: no beer here, just entropy. I put a trochee in the second foot of the first line of the fourth stanza for the harshness of it. I also meant the double plural in the first line of the fifth stanza. I also meant to double up on the “evers”.

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Submitted by DavidPlantinga on July 15, 2021

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
7

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFXF GHGH IJIJ AKXK EEXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 833
Words 145
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

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    "poem #17" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/105068/poem-#17>.

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