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A Celestial Sonnet
by Reinette58 @ 2008-05-11 - 08:09:15

Beneath the Elfin oak I fantasise
Of eons past before the dawn of man
When visionary fairy folk began
A monument to Luna, old and wise.

By flood of moonbeam - liquid, crystalline -
They danced and offered homage to their queen.
Aloft in velvet cosmos - stark, serene -
The mighty goddess watched them build her shrine.

As stone by stone, the stately megalith grew,
The worshippers rejoiced with wine and food.
By subtle scent of sacred sandalwood
They showered the sight with blooms of rainbow hue.

Today, their tribute stands so proud, erect -
Stonehenge, designed by eerie architect.

Written in 1997 in response to a writers' challenge on 'fantasy'.

Iambic pentameter, woo-hoo!! Just a quick post this morning and it's off to my son's footy game. Damn, my husband needs the modem for work again ... hard to type quickly with a scaly-breasted lorikeet sitting on your hand!!

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some1elsesome1else [Member]
2008-05-11 @ 13:00

Nice, long enough, didn't see the ending coming. I like it.

I have a historian friend who is in to lots of fairy (and other mythical) stuff - would it be okay if I sent him a copy of this, or would you rather I didn't?

And the rhyming pattern is interesting, but that might be because it's probably the first non-Shakespearean style sonnet I've read :).

(oh, also, just to say that if you hit the 'reply to comment' button then I'll get an email telling me you've said something to me specifically)

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Reinette58Reinette58 [Member]
2008-05-11 @ 21:08

I belonged to a poetry group when I wrote this and they said the rhyming scheme was valid. Just for curiosity, I did an Answers.com search on 'What is the form of a sonnet?' as follows:

The most general form of a sonnet is a poem of 14 lines, written iambic pentameter, or in some continental styles the meter may be hendecasyllable or the Alexandriene meter. However there are two specific forms of sonnets which have a certain structure, these are the Petrachan (or Italian) Sonnet and the Shakespearean Sonnet.

These two styles generally employ a specific rhyme scheme. in the Shakespearean sonnet the rhyme scheme is usually A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G. wheras the Italian Sonnets are usually written in a rhyme scheme A-B-B-A A-B-B-A (for the sestet there were two different rhyming possibilities) C-D-E-C-D-E or C-D-C-C-D-C.

There is one other major form of English Sonnet, this was the Spencerian (named after the poet Edmund Spencer) Sonnet which had a different rhyme scheme again. It followed A-B-A-B B-C-B-C C-D-C-D E-E.

For more information regarding this topic, and for more about the various poets who wrote sonnets such as these you may want to read the wikipedia article on the sonnet: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet)

I'd be very interested in what your historian friend had to say. I like to do correct history where possible, fussy thing that I am - ex-research Scientist and obsessive-compulsive Aries. Mmm, interesting, thanks.

Wrote a short story (another fractured fairytale) - we added an extension 2 years ago and a lot of stuff got packed away in the garage. Must embark on an archaeological expedition next weekend and try to find it.

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some1elsesome1else [Member]
2008-05-11 @ 23:09

Ah, definitely, short stories are the way to go (I'm not biased am I?).

Thanks for the information on the sonnets, it's interesting seeing how different patterns give a different feel - almost completely separate from the words - to the sonnet. Makes me want to have a go... maybe later.

A simple reply from my friend went: 'You can never get too much elfin goodness :)' - not sure we'll be getting much more than that, sorry. He did also mention about Hawaii having an Anglo-Saxon elf-specialist, but that was linked to something different.

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Reinette58Reinette58 [Member]
2008-05-11 @ 23:21

WOW, a Hawaiian Anglo-Saxon elf-specialist!! How truly random.

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