Ode to Sorrow
I.To taste the poet's plight, youth, love, the Muse
together inspire this reflective rhyme,
this thoughtful ode, for once more I must choose
to look inward before the end of time.
If love is life, then wherefore is this death?
How long lasts spring's short season, if brief is youth?
What is the Muse, if she offers no pleasure?
How can joy reign, if Sorrow conceals truth?
How might divine impulse inspire, give breath,
to test the questions of my ode's measure?
II.
O, what delight is there, when springs of youth
dry out and just the dregs of life remain?
When children bloom, and lust's fire burns like truth,
and adolescence's new desires sear the brain;
when youth is gone, and life's sunsets approach,
the carnal pleasures of those youthful years
as winters of increasing age begin,
and Cupid's arrow-tipped, twin-feathered spears
no more fly true—for autumn's stern reproach
wilt life like corpses dead in their coffins.
III.
With vanished youth young love, no more present,
(alas! true love, as well) betrays its flaw;
life's spring and passion are together meant,
as nature's one, eternal binding law.
But love desired is love which must inspire,
though bountiful are fish that fill the ocean:
the casting nets for love is Greek fire,
which can burn young lovers who are carefree;
sought hastily, love without true emotion
can turn young couples into a tragedy.
IV.
Ephemeral is love! The Muse, however,
like suitors will dash the Parnassian heart.
Her love, like fate, is cruel; faithless forever,
she'll adulterously guard her Pierian art.
No higher purpose has the divine Muse,
than to jealously conceal the sacrament
of the oracles of Mt. Helicon,
whose sacred, weighty, epic strains are meant,
for grandiose and ceremonial use,
that only Homer, inspired, can sing upon.
V.
If Homer sung of Helen and of Troy,
and it pleased him to spend his all on his Muse,
then I'll do likewise; I'll steal his epic joy,
to steer my bark on Homer's Trojan cruise.
Youth, for all its lust and luster, is gone.
Love's truth, for me, is a lifeless Dead Sea;
only love for measure and rhyme, like old age,
remains; and though, for me, there's no more dawn,
I leave despair's trauma far behind me,
to view the Word in its reflected image.
Poetry by Ngoc Nguyen
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Written on 2025-09-19 at 05:28
Tags Ode Love Sorrow
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