Oversea Calls

[white camellia]

Fled the blue jailhouse and sat
Around, lilies in the shade
Called nightly across the ocean
beheld the heavenly gaze shine

Food n' forever love suffice
To keep her immune to sins
Or the mighty sound dissolves
And dies, her lying in idleness



Feel free to criticize.

[MorpheusSandman]

A very intriguing piece. I love the alacrity with which it moves from the worldly to the otherworldly, from movement to stillness, from the silly to the sublime. The lack of a proper subject in S1 is all the more noticeable by opening with a verb. It begins with a sense of urgency and movement, but the line ends with another, almost antithetical verb ("sat"), and by the next line we're already into the realm of idleness (as "sat" becomes "sat around) and reflection. The transition from fleeing a jailhouse, to sitting around, to lilies in the shade calling across an ocean is quite exhilarating in a way. Although I'd remove "shine" at the end of L4, and I would consider breaking the lines as such:

Fled the blue jailhouse and sat
Around, lilies in the shade called
Nightly across the ocean, Beheld
The heavenly gaze

I suggest this because it would create a pattern of line endings with verb/verb/verb and finally noun, as if the stanza itself is transitioning from activity to stillness (it may be better to change the verb "Beheld" to the participle "Beholding" to make the shift more transitional). The echo of senses of "called" and "beheld" is also worth creating the parallel here. I wish there was a way to create an echo between "Around" and "across," but I don't see one without ruining the other symmetries.

I'm not as taken with S2, but it's still not without its interest. I like the phonetic echoes of the line endings with all of the sibilance (suffice, sins, dissolves, idleness). In fact, it seems the word "idleness" itself is born out of the letters that make up the preceding line endings. Although, I wonder if this isn't too much and if it wouldn't be stronger to create a parallel between "sins" and "idleness" alone. It's an interesting note to end on with the potential play on the double meaning of "lying". There should also be more of a connection between the sound dissolving and dying and the "call" from S1, but I don't see it (or perhaps I don't hear it would be a better way of stating it).

[white camellia]

Thanks, Sandman. I like your version of Stanza 1. The "mighty sound" can mean that voice heard from across the sea.