Posts: 36
Threads: 6
Joined: Feb 2013
EDIT:
When you are old and grey
And I am gone away
Read these words of love
Pause a moment and reflect
Upon the times when we first met
On stumbling words of love
Smile sweetly in your way
Remembering a winter’s day
Our separate lives we put away
With promises of love
Contemplate the life we spent
The credit marked against the debt
The sum of all we tried to say
Our countless words of love
In silence I know you will hear
All the words of love we shared
Freed from breath but spoken still
In memories of love
FIRST POST:
When you are old and grey
And I am gone away
Read these words of love
Pause a moment and reflect
Upon the times when we first met
On stumbling words of love
Smile sweetly in your way
Remembering a winter’s day
Our separate lives were put away
With promises of love
Analyze the life we spent
The credit marked against the debt
The sum of all we tried to say
Our countless words of love
In silence I know you will hear
All the words of love we shared
Freed from breath but spoken still
In memories of love
Posts: 30
Threads: 13
Joined: Feb 2013
I'm not a huge fan of romantic poetry; but there is something special about love between an aged couple, and you do capture this
Smile sweetly in your way
Remembering a winter’s day
Our separate lives were put away
With promises of love
has got to be my favourite stanza, although it'd be a cold winters day, you can feel the warmth of their love.
In silence I know you will hear
All the words of love we shared
Freed from breath but spoken still
In memories of love
Just beautiful...I always imagine old people sitting in silence, with nothing more to say...nothing else needed to say...just content to be together. Nothing left to do, no careers to get in their way, just memories and love to share.
I too feel the 4th stanza spoils the poem...you;ve gone from something so gentle and pure in their love...to something that is a mundane stress - debt...cut that one out and I think it'd be a great poem.
Posts: 36
Threads: 6
Joined: Feb 2013
Thank you so much for the feedback, I appreciate it. I too am not a big fan of romantic poetry but hey, Valentines day fast approaches.
My wife is an accountant and financial analyst so the fourth stanza is a nod to her way of thinking which goes something like this; ME; "Hey Kalil Gibran says that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream." HER; "Well that's kind of a circular argument."
Yeah, it certainly brings you back to earth. We had that exact conversation before I added stanza #4. I used "Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be / And her quietus is to render thee." as inspiration. Should have known better. Shakespeare will screw a guy up.
Thinking of changing "Our separate lives were put away" to "Our separate lives we put away" I don't know.....
OK so I felt maybe it was "analyze" that seemed like the most distasteful word in there. So Analyze took me to Take Apart, which took me to Disassemble, which took me to Dissect (NO!), which took me to Study, which took me to Contemplate. Better, I think, but not completely there.
I constructed this stanza using a list of accounting terms so maybe there's just no hope for it. I still want to give it the flavor of an audit of our lives together, I guess I just need to figure out how to be more oblique. Thanks!
Posts: 5,057
Threads: 1,075
Joined: Dec 2009
while it has a nice sentiment and most would love getting a poem such as this. it feels pretty weak. could the 2nd verse be made the first and the 1st made the last. the verses would be better if they were all quatrains.
Christina Rossetti wrote;
remember me
when i am gone away
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
while your 2nd line is good, it's a pretty well remembered one if you've read her poem. rossetti's poem works well because of the words, the meter, and the rhymes.
(02-13-2013, 10:44 AM)Tommy Wrote: EDIT:
When you are old and grey
And I am gone away
Read these words of love
Pause a moment and reflect
Upon the times when we first met
On stumbling words of love
Smile sweetly in your way
Remembering a winter’s day
Our separate lives we put away
With promises of love
Contemplate the life we spent
The credit marked against the debt
The sum of all we tried to say
Our countless words of love
In silence I know you will hear
All the words of love we shared
Freed from breath but spoken still
In memories of love
FIRST POST:
When you are old and grey
And I am gone away
Read these words of love
Pause a moment and reflect
Upon the times when we first met
On stumbling words of love
Smile sweetly in your way
Remembering a winter’s day
Our separate lives were put away
With promises of love
Analyze the life we spent
The credit marked against the debt
The sum of all we tried to say
Our countless words of love
In silence I know you will hear
All the words of love we shared
Freed from breath but spoken still
In memories of love
