Prologue

[Bruce V]

This is a prologue to a poem of about 2000 lines I wrote.  

The world, like all things else, has its own soul, is by the selfsame Source created whole and individual, as you or I, with one set term in which to live and die-- an instrument of that one highest power who gives sweet purpose to our every hour.  Therefore with Earth, and with her smallest part are we conjoined, and held in Heaven's heart as children all, beloved of God, and meant to live in happy concord, each with each content to seek our private destinies, aware through all our lone pursuits that we must share whatever God has given.  Yet few perceive how thoroughly the spirits interweave their subtle essences into each force, each form on Earth, how gentle intercourse is ever maintained among the several souls that do indwell this world that onward rolls in seeming silence through the fields of space; or how the spirit of this sacred place we call our mortal home, communicates with every spirit that incorporates it's light into the natural web.  And so, unheedful of the sweetest strains that flow unceasing through this realm, we too oft miss the surest source of God's intended bliss-- that deep communion holy Nature gives to whomsoever in her graces lives.

This tale, therefore, is but the simple tale of one who came to lift the mystic veil  which others take as Nature's truest dress, but which the poets know does not confess the deeper truths of life unless one's eyes are keen enough to see what hidden lies beneath the outward, lovely show things, into the deeps, where Life to Heaven sings.

I appreciate the idea.  So much conflict in me on whether it should maintain a strict meter or sound more natural.  I set it out as a paragraph to see if I could understand it because I get lost easily in rhythm and rhyme.  I think your trying to sum up life the universe and everything but it's almost too big a concept to sum up so tightly and melodically.  The second paragraph there seems like the real prologue, still a little cryptic like I have to decipher language, but then again I get lost easily in rhythm and rhyme. The first paragraph might do well as an epilogue, I wonder how the actual poem goes, it it maintains this form throughout.  I'd definitely suggest adding breaks and other interesting sub bits to keep me going.  Hope this helps, thanks for sharing!

thanks for your input.  Let me just say that I know this work and its following body belong in the 19th century (my wife has told me often that I should have been born then.). So I understand the difficulties with rhyming iambic pentameter.  Part of my writing it lay in efforts to work with traditional forms.  On your wondering about whether it maintains this form throughout, the answer is no.  The narrator sticks with this format, but there are numerous nature 'voices/spirits' who each speak in a different meter and rhyme form.  Some are free verse, while employing other poetic devices (such as the spirit of a stream speaking in a non-rhyming, free verse format, but using the alliteration of l's an r's to mimic the sound of water over rocks).  As to it seeming to be a summation of everything....that's my bad.  The theme I was trying to introduce is:  consciousness is the substratum of all thing-- something I could have said in a simple couplet.   I blather on too much, just like I'm doing now.  So thanks again:  I can see some simplification would have made for better clarity.  (One thing:  perhaps it would help if you read it trying to ignore both meter and rhyme, but maybe that's what you did with setting it out as a paragraph.)