Does Hope
So very often
Look like
Despair?
Monthly Archives: September 2014
Sonnet VII: Despair
Beyond too joyous hope to hope to fall
From grace, beyond the reach Thy creeping call
Would trace, beyond the eve that would deceive
Our life and love to misery’s enthral:
Away, we run and hide from Thy dispelled
Enchant, a way to slip away Thy held
Incant, away! ’til we’ve some scant reprieve
Some innocence of that our lives were felled.
Depart our path! so might we live anon
Past night; depart! or join us now upon
Our flight; for we perceive that Thou wouldst grieve
Would we depart without Thee, and were gone.
But still… our love would try… to still goodbye,
To stay our leave… and hesitate to die.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Intro 7: Stay
I cannot bear the solitude
That both of us
Would leave
Behind
Sonnet VI: Aftermath
What did I gain; what medal did I earn
That showed I gave–and nothing but my best–
When what would die in battle was a dream,
Such dreams as fade away when once confessed?
What did I profit; what was left to learn
When fighting for a dream had left me vexed
And reeling from this death in the extreme
Rapidity of my defence? What next
Would fade; when hence, what of my heart’s concern
Forbade continuance; what prayer could
I speak, or beg, or wrest of my esteem?
And who would answer me when next I stood?
Yet I return to war–still feinting, deft–
This battle to redeem, with nothing left.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Intro 6: Redemption
What do I redeem
When no objective is made
With nothing at stake?
Sonnet V: Redoubt
All was given, everything was left,
And every hope would swell that I redeem
With nothing taken out; and when I deftly
Built up my redoubt, I felt returning
All that gifted, everything that stood
To gain and give me gain in my esteem
In every way in which such profit could
So bolster my redoubt, my feared concern
That some were not as they appeared; that next
To me–so closely held to my extreme—
So close my sense of safety had been vexed
To lay such siege, my hasty need to learn
How best to live within a fading dream
When once confessed, received, but did not earn.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Intro 5: Siege
The depths of my soul
Sent me spinning into cloister and redoubt
No wall was left untouched
Except that in my desperately held defense
Myself remained, but nothing more
David Emeron: Sonnets 