To trudge the road, the odious ode! (adventures in poesy with thanks to Stephen Fry)

I'm reading Mr Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled", and alongside enjoying the poems of others that he shares and learning about different poetic forms, I'm also doing the exercises that he sets, to have a go at writing poems of some of the diverse forms.

And so to exploit a particular feature of this dark age, I shall post some of my efforts to this blog.

Here is a rough draft of a villanelle:


To walk the line too quick to end,
The days with our experience fill,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.

Each day, what breaks we cannot mend
and bright fresh sparks does habit kill,
To walk the line too quick to end.

Unto the grave our birth does send,
Hearts that now throb, time shall still,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.

Yet God makes move eternal trend
and entropy energy ever to thrill
to walk the line too quick to end.

For mankind Christ the rules can bend,
Cold void made pure with love's good will,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.

With higher powers our life can spend
As gloried hope sweets bitter pill
To walk the line too quick to end,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.