Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Prompt 1- Week 1 Poetry Prompt

     This poem (When I was fair and young) is very structured. It has four main sections, each of them five lines long, the last two always being "Go, go, go seek some otherwhere," and "Importune me no more!". Most of the lines aside from those last two are 12 syllables long. Interestingly, the third paragraph's second line is only ten syllables, but then the fourth paragraph's second is 14. It's almost like the writer (Elizabeth I) was purposely balancing out a shorter line with a longer one. I could be completely wrong, but this structure reminds me of something my middle-school teacher said about Sonnets.
    
     There is rhyme in this poem as well. The first two lines of a section always rhyme, and the third line ends in an "oar" sound. This doesn't rhyme with the fourth line ("ere"), but it does with the fifth. So the pattern for the five lines in each section is pretty much A,A,B,C,B.   
    
     The message of this poem is that of remorse and regret from Elizabeth. When she was young, she had many suitors, but refused them all, thinking herself better than them. She hurt many people, but she didn't care. But then, she started getting older, losing her attention-giving suitors. After that, she grew very lonely, and wished she had never refused them.

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