Lament for a Working Man:

[Filíocht]

The father died.:


No sooner was the old man dead
did the crows gather 'round his bed;
No sooner had he shut his eyes
did those vultures revel his demise.
As soon as all the birds were fed,
the candles out, the taste of dread
was spread on wings across the skies
as his soul flew and my soul died.

[ellajam]

Hi, this is well done, the main issue i have is with those "did"s. They read awkwardly for me. I've put some possible fixes below for you to consider,.They may not be better than what you have but maybe they will spark something for you.

The father died.:


No sooner was the old man dead
did the crows gather 'round his bed; than crows did gather 'round his bed
No sooner had he shut his eyes
did those vultures revel his demise. than vultures reveled his demise
As soon as all the birds were fed,
the candles out, the taste of dread
was spread on wings across the skies
as his soul flew and my soul died.

I'm no meter expert but I gave it a go. Thanks for the read, nice piece.

[Erthona]

Filíocht,

ellajams suggestion for line 2 is spot on, it gets you back to a four foot line.

Regarding line 4, neither what you have or ellajam suggestion is in iambic tetrameter like the rest of the poem. It is going to be difficult to use vultures. If the line started with vultures with the second syllable being stressed it would work out to one foot of iamb. 

"did those vultures revel his demise."

Here is ella's suggestion

"than vultures reveled his demise"  As is plain her suggestion is better than what you have, but still has two groupings of two non-accented syllables. To be grammatical it needs  the preposition "in", so it reads:

"did those vultures revel in his demise"  To leave it in its current state would be equal to saying "He jumped boat."

With that in place the problem becomes one of meter, inserting the "in" into the sentence. Here is how it is accented now:

"did those vultures revel in his demise"

As you can see you are one accented syllable short, along with your other problems related to the meter.

At the moment I have nothing to recommend.  The last four lines are dead on as far as the meter. Lines 5-6-7 are very good iambic tetrameter, the last line is a bit shaky, but I do not have the time to examine that. 

As far as the thesis of the poem to me it really does not come out in the poem. Were the title not there I doubt that anyone would guess it has to do with a " Lament for a Working Man". There is nothing within the poem that revels the old man is the working man. Plus the poem should be able to stand on its own without needing the title to support it. To me, introducing the speaker as a character in the poem seems a little odd, especially as he states the strangest thing. Due to his father dying, as we must assume it is the father dying that leads the speaker to the state his soul has died. One would generally think his soul might ache, or feel battered, but it seems somewhat nonsensical for him to state that his soul died. I think most would agree that losing a parent is a terrible thing and takes awhile to recover from such an event. Yet I doubt many would think the event was such as to kill someone's soul

 


Dale 




.

[ellajam]

I was saying "than vultures reveled his demise."
I'm having the same issues my own work, ear off, huh?

[RiverNotch]

The father died.:

No sooner was the old man dead
than crows assembled 'round his bed
No sooner had he shut his eyes 
than vultures savored his demise
As soon as all the birds were fed,
[and] the candles [were] out, the taste of dread Or maybe I'm just reading this line wrong.
was spread on wings across the skies "spread on wings" and "across the skies" feels kinda redundant. Something different should replace either of those two phrases.
as his soul flew and my soul died. Suddenly moving onto what happened to the speaker's soul feels like a really big cop-out. I mean, it's a clean ending, but it isn't anything special. Something more profound would be better here: maybe a continuation of the description, since the poem in general already shows how bleak the vision of the speaker is. 


And I kinda want to see more viscera in your description of the carrion feast, if only to make it more powerful and, well, unique.

[milo]

I was saying "than vultures reveled his demise."
I'm having the same issues my own work, ear off, huh?

Your is actually correct. /his/ gets promoted thanks to the rule of three.

[Erthona]

Ella wrote: "I was saying "than vultures reveled his demise."

I'm having the same issues my own work, ear off, huh? "

Evidently not; I always defer to milo on question of meter as he is the resident expert. So I sit corrected, because I just can't stand so long anymore. Plus I prefer to sit on my laurels rather then rest on them. Anyway as regards the following:

"still has two groupings of two non-accented syllables."

I downdgrade that to "one" grouping of two non-accented syllables.  




dale

[Rogue Yun]

The father died.:


No sooner was the old man dead
did the crows gather 'round his bed;
No sooner had he shut his eyes
did those vultures revel his demise.
As soon as all the birds were fed,
the candles out, the taste of dread
was spread on wings across the skies
as his soul flew and my soul died.

Your rhyme scheme is aa,bb,aa,bc. I really want to make the last word "dies" so that it can be "bb," but what you have could very well be intentional and I wouldn't want to go against any intention that you might have had. Well done! I hope to read more of your poetry!