An Introduction: The Candle

 

            When first I wrote “The Candle” for Mimi some time back, I only wrote the first two stanzas, and afterward I always enterprised to addend it. I later did add two more stanzas to make it thirty-two lines long. It’s not my best work, but it may be the most important composition I’ve done. It’s no Donne or Spencer, but she’ll do. Of course, I never did write Mimi a song (in whole anyway), so perhaps this can be a temporary substitution .

            I wrote this poem in an interesting way, though it would be undue flattery to call it novel. The top parts and bottom (indented) parts of the stanza have different rhyme schemes. This creates a sort of separation between the two sections. I created this separation so that the reader could peruse just the top halves of the stanzas or just the bottom halves, and still discern the poem’s theme or idea. Basically it’s the same poem, written in two different ways, combined together.

 

ABAB Top  ---1          Dost thou know, my world is but a candle?:

2          A flicker of fragile flame who fights to exist.

3          And that which blow faster than flame can handle,

4          Oft extinguish that light which fights to persist.

CCDD Bottom 5                      When thou depart, it takes its knavish shape:

6                      That wind to end put my refulgent state.

7                      Desolate left am I, lachrymose, bereft-

8                      By wind whose breath is malice deft.