Her Song -edited

[kindofahippy]

Her Song



She woke when dusk was trailing colored ribbons ‘cross the sky.
The birds warbled their nocturnes near the stream that trickled by
and from her mossy bed she rose and stretched her arms and sung
her praises with the birdsong- as the verdant valley rung (comma makes more sense than hyphen)
and echoed with the sound of it, across the noisy stream (nice enjambment, maybe starting with echoed would sound better for meter)
awoke a lonely wanderer Into a stranger dream
than the one that he had left when his eyes opened to see
shafts of light piercing the clouds o’er darkening valley.
‘
He heard the sound of singing ‘midst the birds’ worshipful notes
and was drawn towards the stream where the water-lillys float.
He spied her, ‘cross the water, lotus dreaming; thought her fey
And lovely as the birds who sang his fear of night away.
He watched her singing with them, caught the ethereal song-.
the trees and wind and birds and stream carried the tune along,

And his waking now was dreaming and his dreams inside a dream,
he joined the song the valley sang and plunged across the stream
lotus filled, full of longing, but she’d disappeared from sight.
The singing ceased as darkness grew, the day gave way to night (darkness fell)
and he found himself alone again listening for her song
and forgot the trees and birds and stream also sang along. (who also sang)

He went on lone and lonely and she watched him stumble by (as instead of and)
now awake but sadly dreaming, and she heard him moan and sigh
at the darkness that had sprung up and the lotus driven dream-
yet still the wind and trees and birds sang praises with the stream.
“In this valley” said the wanderer, “I sometimes hear her song;
I wander into harmony, the whole earth sings along.”

Beautiful, mopkins, simply beautiful! I could sing this it's so smooth, it's like reading butter.

Meter

According to Wikipedia, this is heptameter, seven iambs per line. It's a little long winded, but not overbearing, and honestly, I find that long meter perfectly suits a poem about elven love. The length of the lines is very haphazard, but saying the poem aloud, I hardly noticed due to the enjambment which keeps the poem flowing.

S3:L1 has eight iambs, it kind of tumbles onto the next line with a thud. Same thing for the last two lines here. I think changing "inside" to "in a dream" could fix that line.

Theme

Love poems are overused and I know I've seen at least a couple fantasy ones before. You have some cliches to work through. Bird song, flowers, and the protaganist yearning for a siren; all these things can be found in ancient Greek epic poetry through modern times.