The Lady Fair

[Jesterhead]

In the garden of the lady fair,
Laid as if she slumbered in delight.
And so the open skies did stare,
At the azure fields of heaven in its sight.

Set with flowers, of the orange glow,
Around the gentle white sparks dew.
Like twinkling stars, within a rainbow.
That sparkle in the evening blue.

Lies a little virgin girl to rest,
Blushing in the golden cast of the sun.
Sweet and pure in her light summer dress,
As adorn as the modest rose and beyond.

Beautiful as the rose, that lies in her angelic hand,
As the steady wind strays upon her golden hair.
Slowly as if the azure leaves dripped on command,
She opens the eyes, of the long loved lady fair.

As I beside the apple tree stand by,
She looks at me and to the river between.
Which slowly streams in her lovely blue eye,
As she looks down, I against the apple tree do lean.

A bridge is then built over the saffron river,
That did not flow onward to the sea.
The quiet river that did palpitate forever,
As then for a love to come, to let it be.

[MorpheusSandman]

This piece has some good stuff in it, and, as always, I'm a sucker for neo-classicism. I do think you let the ABAB rhyme scheme tie you up too much, though. As I've said elsewhere, rhyme schemes - especially couplets, but definitely ABAB as well - really requires a regularity of meter or a careful attention to rhythm when the meter is altered. You really have to watch out for lines that end in a trochee that doesn't even place the stress on the syllable that lines like the "Set with flowers, of the orange glow, || ... ||Like twinkling stars, Within a rainbow." where the stress is on "glow" in the first line but on "rain" in the second.

[Jesterhead]

thank you. I didn't notice that the stress wasn't placed correctly with glow and rainbow. It seemed perfect to me the way I read it.

[MorpheusSandman]

One thing to be careful about when you're reading it back to yourself is that you don't get so caught up in your meter that you forget where stressed naturally fall. This is something I had to catch myself doing early on and if you read some of my early poetry I'm really bad in assuming that the intended rhythm will (or should) alter how someone would/should naturally say the words.

[J.D. Sparks]

I have to agree with both of Morpheus Sandman's comments regarding metre. I also noticed a couple grammatical issues that could be easily tidied up and make the whole poem a bit more polished. (For example, in your opening lines you say:

"In the garden of the lady fair/
Laid as if she slumbered in delight"

Unfortunately the syntax here seems to interrupt your subject-verb agreement. Perhaps you could consider "In the garden of the lady fair/ she laid as if slumbering in delight." But this might not work for you. There are also some smaller typographical errors like "I beside the apple tree standS by" when there should be no s on stands.)

But other than these minor issues, I really liked the fact that it was such a vivid mini-narrative!

[Jesterhead]

Thank you, Morpheus and J.D.

I have corrected the 's' on stands, but I have alittle trouble with 'slumbering' it doesn't seem to work for me, but I am open to any suggestions or corrections you may have.