Ode to Innocence

The cry of every infant born
The purest ray of bright sunshine
Upon the bud on its first morn
The melting snow upon the pine
And all that beauty calls her own
Under the skies azure
And all the trees in forests grown
And all the stars that night has shown
All that was ever pure

Where shall I seek you Soul of Souls?
Which Wind shall I in pursuit ride?
The one who now your deeds extols
Or one who listens by his side?
Inside the ocean of my heart
Must I explore the deeps?
Or must I look outside and start
My sojourn into Nature's Art
Where sublimity sleeps?

Must I with passion fancies chase
Which float as feathers on the breeze
Over a child's enchanted gaze
Its ebullient heart to please?
Or must I lend a gladdened ear
To vibrant symphonies
Of avian minstrels and hear
The songs of effervescing cheer
Upon the emerald trees

You are my twin, born at my birth
And that of creatures great and small
A fountain of eternal mirth
In serenity's golden Hall
In arid deserts of old Age
A river running dry
Yet I know where upon this stage
To find your cherubic visage:
Chronos' tower high

Holds you for all eternity
The blossoms of Elysium
You from that Window cast on me
And they like winged angels come
Each day I worship at your shrine
And cleansed I am by rain
I am the world's, the world is mine
The snow still melts upon the pine
My Joy shall never wane

Author's Note

Chronos: Titan God in Greek mythology. Also the personification of Time.
Elysium: The paradise in Greek Mythology. The pure souls among the dead were supposed to go there.

Reviews

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear Shreyas

I'm back.

I feel a little like Oliver Twist in Dickens 'Please Sir, I want some more.'

I have read your Ode to Age and now we regress to Innocence.

I have to be straight with you Shreyas, every time I encounter you in poetry or by private email, I take several steps back.

Who is s this perfect gentleman?

It is what it is. we are who we are. But we are bound in friendship.

To this peom.

You self-admittedly move your self outside the strictures of other nineteenth or other century poets, but in two ways you remain within them;

1) The poem is still an ode and owns a shape which still remains amongst the ambit of however one might express it (mine?) the honourable traditional. With Keats on your side, who could ever go wrong? So much on this site is free verse or other versions. Honourable of course. Just another form of self-expression.That you seek our precedents has its own particular beauty.

2) However you do seek to create a voice outside the past and create a present past, I can still feel tones of vague similarity.

Let's cut it again my way.

Structure and rhymes: Five, nine line stanzas. Your consistent pattern of rhyme: ababcdccd.

Iambs / Metre / Beat: This I always find hard to fathom, should it come to repetitive structure. All I can say is it is mellow and works.

Antecedents: The only thing that I can see within my limited experience is Edmund Spencer's epic poem 'The Faerie Queen' There too we have nine line stanzas but the rhyme differs from yours as it is instead ababbcbcc.

As for metre his first eight lines are iambic pentameter followed by a single alexandrine in iambic hexameter.

Number of stanzas at odds.

Yours clipped. His lengthy.

Still I find it intriguing you both start rhymes in the couplets of abab.

Allusions: You dip your toes nto the myhology of ancient times, Ctronos and Elysium - the Elsysian fields even of the more recent 'Gladiator' film. Where of course you leave me pondering is whether your reference to Twin is literal, a reference to Romulus and Remus (to stick by mythology) or otherwise metaphoric.

Language / use of English: Exquisite and flawless. Of course there is an inevitability about structured verse which is there must always be a conflict between meaning and forced rhyme. It seems to me you do not force rhyme so much as to dilute meaning.

Meaning. Ah now this is my territory. My favourite place. The poem and the soul of the writer who wrote it.

But I have several problems here.

First is I review long.

My habit for good or ill.

That means I will put my heart and soul into anything I review.

At times I can get away with 20 paragraphs, but when I now review you, I fear I may get into the extended territory of 10,000 words, a tenth of a novel.

What increases my problem, perhaps as Top Reviewer on this site, is the care I take about my reviews limits the number I can realistically do daily.

I now have 543 read requests. I feel overwhelmed at times as I really do want to meet them all but physically and mentally I just can't.

All I can do is plough on, with the benefit of early retirement and do my level best by all, whilst keeping a small eye to my own health (including mental).

I therefore must keep my comments on your meaning here brief.

I drown in your meaning to the point where I lose the meaning and dwell in the music, much as one might do with a song, where the words matter less than the sound, or a painting's literal meaning is less than the splendour of the art.

You speak of the beauty of the child seen through the eyes of the child.

The beauty of nature in all its innocent glory.

Throughout you question your propositions. You wonder.

But in the last stanza you dwell in the world of the positive. You extract from your propositions a charming conclusion:

'Holds you for all eternity
The blossoms of Elysium
You from that Window cast on me
And they like winged angels come
Each day I worship at your shrine
And cleansed I am by rain
I am the world's, the world is mine
The snow still melts upon the pine
My Joy shall never wane'

Beguiled.

Shreyas. You have a talent for intellect and emotion, for style and beauty which extends way beyond my ability to comment coherently.

As I say, I could write 10,000 words on this piece, a tenth of a novel.

But in the end, what useful purpsoe would it serve?

In even attempting to address it, or pick at it, it would be to use an analogy I can use at times , which is in attempting to remove a tiny annoying flea, I in the process destroy the beautiful animal it inconsequentially inhabits.

All I can say.

Not enough.

Never could be.

Your enduring friend



James Hanna-Magill

[Augustus]

Dear James
As ever, I am overwhelmed by the affection and respect that you shower upon me. After Ode on Age, I expected a review of similar length from you. The length of your reviews bears testimony to your sincerity to this art. I have not gone through Spencer's poem, but I shall do so now. I cannot thank you enough. I cannot express all my thoughts here. I'll write a private mail whenever I organize them properly.
Your friend
Shreyas

[.:Arianna:.]

This was breathtaking...the flow is absolutely beautiful and the Harmony really entices the reader... i really enjoyed this one! Great work

[J.Black]

ODE TO INNOCENCE! I love this! You create master pieces. You incorporate so much into this, it's hard to pick out and elaborate on all- however, you constructed it well.

[emmajoy]

Wonderful .. this is as fine a poem an one of the recognised poet-masters could have written. Its meter's even, the phrasing wonderful .. such beautifully created cameos: ' Or must I lend a gladdened ear ~ To vibrant symphonies ~ Of avian minstrels and hear ~ Te songs of effervescing cheer ~ Upon the emerald trees'

Seems not only you know your poetry, you're well versed in Greek Mythology.

[Devons]

I wasn't quite so impressed by the theme of this poem as I was the structure of it. I think the structure is quite deceptively fascinating (the odd number of lines for each stanza) and this drives the meaning of the lines, therefore surmounting any problem of repetitious extrapolation. It would seem on the face of it that 9 lines as opposed to 8 would unsettle the rhythm and flow and rhyme of a poem but it is managed here with great skill (and I can't think of another example where it has even been attempted). Very well done.
As to the theme that the poem explores, it seems to me an exploration of a somewhat one-sided concept in that 'innocence' is never really lost (put simply). I don't necessarily agree, but the way it is expressed is very persuasive and beguiling. I believe that innocence is inevitably worn-down by time and experience, but I think this poem attempts to argue that this lost innocence is more a tainted perspective than an inexorable actuality. That conclusion is indeed a worthy and justified one, but I don't think the poem quite examines both points of view in this sense. Perhaps it is far too positive an approach for me to be able to appreciate its message.

[An owl on the moon]

Absolutely magnificent... filled with a beauty and sacred depth that stirs the soul... "Holds you for all eternity...And blossoms from Elysium..." Your words bring about powerful emotion, and the final line is simply perfect.... "My Joy shall never wane..." Wondrous!

[Lucy Joan]

Interesting comparison with birth and sunshine and the transition from winter to spring; it brings a very bright theme to this poem. On the second stanza:
Must I explore the deeps?
I believe you meant depths? Must I explore the depths?
You had a very strong start to this poem. The first stanza emanated a very pure and vibrant mood, which creatively relates to that of your other stanzas. The rhyme scheme of your poem was also very fluent and smooth; it flowed well with your creatively constructed poem, making it clear to understand and imagine the idea and allusion of self-realization behind the words.
Very well written poem! ^-^

[Fabian G. Franklin]

What a lovely and well crafted piece of verse, I enjoyed the read.