03-04-2020, 08:14 PM
My brain likes poetry with rhyme, and with minimal training in rhyme and meter it's quite likely I'll inadvertently write tattered lines. I've been working to correct any such lines in my poems, but that effort could be more complicated if a tattered line might actually be valuable. Anyway...
For the two lines being discussed, adding a syllable to each will produced a consistency of A/B lines with 8/6 "feet" throughout the poem. For the first one, I've thought "for added time" could be a choice; for the second, "yield up" certainly works but so would a change in verb, to such as "give up" or "let go".
More important to me is the dichotomy the poem presents regarding death. In the first four lines, the view is that no pleas can change the inevitable. Lines 5-8 however, suggest that an appropriate approach to the inevitable might get you something. Well, you still get the inevitable, but maybe more on your terms - if you've developed the proper greeting?
For the two lines being discussed, adding a syllable to each will produced a consistency of A/B lines with 8/6 "feet" throughout the poem. For the first one, I've thought "for added time" could be a choice; for the second, "yield up" certainly works but so would a change in verb, to such as "give up" or "let go".
More important to me is the dichotomy the poem presents regarding death. In the first four lines, the view is that no pleas can change the inevitable. Lines 5-8 however, suggest that an appropriate approach to the inevitable might get you something. Well, you still get the inevitable, but maybe more on your terms - if you've developed the proper greeting?