Tell Me Not

[homer1950]

Tell me not your troubles 
and mine you shall not hear


Tell me not your sorrows and 
I will not shed one tear 


Tell me not your gaities
and I will not smile 

Tell me not your dreams 
and I will not be beguiled 


Tell me not your truths 
and I will speak no lie


Tell me not you love me 
and I will surely die

1st re-write


Tell me not your troubles and 
I will not cause you mine to hear

Tell me not your sorrows 
and I will not shed one tear

Tell me not your gaities
and I will not smile 

Tell me not your dreams
and I will not be beguiled 

Tell me not your truths
and I will not tell you my lies

Tell me not you love me
and I will surely die

[Richard]

Hey Homer,
This is a a hard one for me. I find it a bit over sentimental, but the ending did have an affect on me as a reader. To me, that justifies some of the sentimentality. The only other thing that stands out to me besides that, is your use of repetition. I'll go into more detail below:

Tell me not your troubles -I understand that "Tell me not" is very important to the meaning of the poem, but I would be interested in seeing you trying to come up with different ways to word that. Or at the very least, think about changing the title to something different since you use the phrase so much throughout the poem.

and mine you shall not hear



Tell me not your sorrows 

and I will not shed one tear -The phrase "shed one tear" is not a full cliche, but is somewhat close to one. Maybe use a different word than "shed"?



Tell me not your gaities

and I will not smile -Is the lack of punctuation throughout this poem intentional?

Tell me not your dreams

and I will not be beguiled 



Tell me not your truths

and I will speak no lie -I know the repetition of "and" is done for effect. However, I think it's worth challenging yourself to edit this and use a different way to connect the lines.



Tell me not you love me
and I will surely die -Maybe I'm being sappy, but I like the ending. To me, the previous stanzas seem to be setting this up as a somewhat antagonistic relationship, and this ending packs extra punch because of that.

I think you have a decent first draft here, and you should definitely take the time to edit this.

Thanks for the read,
Richard

[Knot]

.
Hi homer,
I'm broadly in agreement with Richard on your piece,
the ending works very well, it's just getting there that
is a bit of a let down.
I'm less troubled by the sentimentality than the flirtation
with cliché (in addition to the one Richard identified),
the truth/lie stanza seems particularly poor to me.

The title reminded me of
's/he loves me
s/he loves me not'
which I liked.

I think the repetition of 'not' in both lines of each couplet
is a weakness, the second diminishing the first, and all
ultimately detracting from the final stanza.

The lack of an 'I' in s1, compared to all the
others, is rather noticeable.

Is there really much difference between 'troubles' and
'sorrows'? If not you might cut the first stanza.

As a way out of the cliché/I and trouble/sorrow issue
(assuming you agree such exists ) you might consider
cutting both s1/s2 and replacing s5, so beginning with
s3/s4, also perhaps alternate 'speak not' with 'tell me not'.
Just a suggestion:

Speak not of your gaities
and I will not smile

Tell me not your dreams
and [I'll] not be beguiled

Speak not of your sorrows
Else with mine I'll reply

Tell me not you love me
Or for certain I'll die.

I think you need to make more of what Richard calls the
'antagonistic relationship'.
(Tell me not of your lovers - sprang to mind)

Not convinced by 'gaities', maybe 'revelries' or 'revels'?


Best, Knot.



.

[billy]

hi homer, some of the cliches could be made original ideas. i get the feeling you going for period piece. to some extent you get there but at a cost. for it to work as a period piece it needs to be original. and have an image or two

Tell me not your troubles 

and mine you shall not hear



Tell me not your sorrows 

and I will not shed one tear



Tell me not your gaities

and I will not smile 

Tell me not your dreams

and I will not be beguiled 



Tell me not your truths

and I will speak no lie



Tell me not you love me
and I will surely die

[homer1950]

Thank you all I really appreciate your taking the time to help me out. It’s why I love this site so many other poetry sites either do not care or are afraid to give constructive advice, cheers

[ellajam]

I like the rhyme of smile and beguiled.