The Messenger
The body is a vehicle for the soul,
An ambassador for the mind.
Without the life within, it is not whole,
But only an enclosure.
Likewise the spirit in a poem resides,
For one within the lines may find
That buried deep inside its message hides
A mirror-like exposure.
Copyright © 2018 Abigail Gronway – All Rights Reserved
Welcome to my series, Incremental Poetry, where each week the featured poem will be one line longer than the one I share the week before. I have no idea how long I’ll keep this up, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Thank you for stopping by.
About the Poem:
Just as the body is the outward expression of the real person within, so poetry is the outward expression of the thoughts of the poet.
Scansion:
The Abercrombie
patterned after “Hymn to Love” by British poet Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938)
a stanzaic form using sprung rhythm and an interlocking rhyme scheme
lines 1,3,5,7 are pentameter
lines 2 & 6 are tetrameter
lines 4 & 8 are trimeter and end with feminine rhyme
Rhyme scheme: abac dbdc (efeg hfhg, etc.)
NOTE: I’m not entirely sure what sprung rhythm is, so I just tried to include the correct number of stressed syllables in each line without paying close attention to any particular rhythm.