Death unto Light

by ThePloyMaker

Prelude

To the princesses I call,
So that I may have strength
That this story recalled
Be completed at length.

To the goddess of sunlight,
I ask for your rays
To purge lies that may blight
When I speak of those days.

To the goddess of stars,
Your serenity become mine
Through the lyrical bars,
Every stanza and line.

Help guide those who will see
To the lesson you've taught.
This burden, this lot,
To teach falls to me.

---

Death we know as cunning.
Captures all in his grip.
Yet from his finger tips
Some choose to try running.

What is worse, though,
are those who tried stealing;
who from Death they tried healing,
But now they do know

That Death is a jealous pony
Whose wrath quickly explodes.
They pay more than he's owed,
and who's left is left lonely.

I assert thee, my student:
be it slow, be it fast,
He will have his amusement.
He will have his last laugh.

---

After a millennium imprisonment
Escaped both empire and king.
The former was innocent,
The latter a malevolent thing.
This, the Crystal Empire that I speak
Was caused by King Sombra to be loveless, weak.

But the efforts of Twilight Sparkle,
and her dragon assistant,
made this empire much less matriarchal,
And from the King's hatred resistant.
The ponies spirits she raised,
The dragon a crystal heart saved.

Though the King through barrier attacked
To keep his subjects submissive
He found that power he now lacked,
His harsh rule turned permissive.
And through the crystal Heart's power
They toppled his black crystal tower.

The subjects rejoiced.
The ruler believed dead.
And with heart and with voice
they cheered, fears put to bed.
But the mist was still lurking,
On his revenge he'd be working...

---

From a few months of wondering
He'd finally caught wind
Of a queen whose blundering
Led to her subjects' chagrin.
This queen, though not a pony
Had quite the talent of being a phony.

Her subjects where starving,
And she couldn't provide.
Too many headstones they were carving.
"It will get better," she lied,
But they remained loyal.
For her changelings, she toiled.

They fed from what they could,
Getting more and more desperate.
Rags where banners once stood.
Their nest more and more desolate.
There were dying whispers of mutiny,
But the queen passed their scrutiny.

One day, a black mist
rolled into their nest.
Into their thoughts it hissed,
"Does the queen really know best?"
The changelings fought the thoughts back.
But their commitment started to crack.

The revolt started small,
With a few changelings imprisoned,
But the black mist still called,
And soon a revolution had risen.
But the small army was still a minority,
and the queen's changelings were still top priority.

Then a black unicorn appears
Promising better life, better health,
Saying the queen was incompetent,
And thought just of herself.
A larger army he raised,
And then her nest he razed.

They stormed her quarters,
She didn't even fight.
She stood down her supporters,
And thought toward her plight,
"Perhaps, for them, this is best,"
As they blasted holes in her chest.

---

An army was now at Sombra's disposal.
Though weak from years starved,
His promises of love that's ambrosial
Their undying loyalty carved.

He spoke of an attack on the ponies,
And rallied the changelings to attack.
The changelings critiques halted only
By a thick mist, deep and black.

His plan was one of stealth,
Not a full fledged attack.
Replace a few ponies with wealth,
Make industry collapse.

---

In Canterlot, out of nowhere,
Business slowed to a hault.
Factories soon grew bare.
Many ponies laid off.

The ponies pondered the problem,
And, as businesses failed,
And an anger soon blossomed,
At her boss one pony flailed.

During this short, violent scrimmage,
A punch had hit truly.
It shattered the changelings false image.
It hissed at her cruelly.

The changeling was imprisoned,
And interrogated fully.
The ponies didn't believe vision,
And their trust had been sullied.

The princesses sought aid
From this vile paranoia,
And found an ink made
by the zebra, Zecora.

It revealed the true form,
Be it pony or changeling.
It was soon required worn,
The paranoia then waning.

---

It soon became clear
That his scouts wouldn't return.
Sombra's anger was reared,
As his first plan was burned.

He would have to use force,
And he thought where to start,
The Crystal Empire was his course.
His objective the: crystal heart.

The objective was soon completed,
With not even a shout,
The heart was left public, unheeded
His insect got the heart and got out.

As the thief returned,
Sombra rallied a front
Toward the empire he turned
His attack forceful and blunt.

The Empire stood no chance
They tried to retreat
But the opposing's chants
Made them freeze on their feet.

"All will be spared,
As long as none try to flee."
The phrase stopped all who cared
Of their captured families.

And with utmost ease,
The empire was again his.
His army could feed,
No greater vict'ry than this.

And with a captured
Place of operations,
He started, enraptured
His a war preparations.

---

Now, our story takes place
in a war-stricken land
Where there's scars on each face
and the food's mostly canned.

Where the fighting was worst,
land is desolate, deserted.
The poor animals are forced
from their burrows reverted.

A yellow pegasus hurries
the critters to new forests.
As shots are fired they scurry
from the damned, hellish chorus.

The flying insectile equines
make a powerful army
whose attacks one would find
to resist was near barmy.

But the ponies fight with valor,
And so the war rages.
They showed strength in their caliber,
So that peace'd be their wages.

---

Now, this story I tell you
Is not of war or a fight,
But to bring death to light,
From what most thought they knew.

This is a fantastical journey
Of one whose intentions seemed pure,
But thoughts of beating death lured
her into a road that's most thorny.

Author's Note:

Since I do not have an editor, and that I write and proofread most of this at three in the morning, pointing out grammatical mishaps and places where the meter seems weird would be a big help to me. Anyways, this took a heck of a lot of work to finish, and I can't imagine the rest will be any easier, so some love and encouragement will be greatly appreciated.

Comments

[Star Cloud]

I'm sure it's my grammar that's wrong, but shouldn't it be "Into"?

[ThePloyMaker]

6781834 Can you tell me where it is? At least what section its in?

[ThePloyMaker]

6781834 Oh, you meant the title XD my bad. Well unto is the archaic word for "to," and I wanted it to kind of represent a journey from "Death" to "Light." But thanks for pointing out that it might confuse some people. (The title is kind of a work in progress.)

[PrussiAntique]

Forgive me for the following analysis of the first section seems a little harsh, but I must say I find that you've developed the meter in what seems to be a highly counter-intuitive fashion. I'm a great lover of poetry and read a lot of the classics, and thus I do hope you can forgive me for giving a very honest metrical examination of the first section.

Beginning with the first stanza: 'To the princesses I call...' is good in that it is an example of epic invocation,- and possibly lyric address,- but the rhythm feels more than a little forced. I only understood it was intended to be anapæstic dimeter only once I read the entire section aloud,- after scanning it on the page a few times first. The first line,- which has a stress rhythm of ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ˘ ¯,- starts a reader off on the wrong foot as it is metrically irregular. 'This story recalled' was also a confusing turn of phrase,- at least to me,- as it seemed like it referred to something that had already been said,- an odd thing to feel at the beginning of a poem. While it may be intended to be an example of in media res, it should be remembered that in media res is a narrative device,- you start at the middle of the story, but not at the middle of the narration, which stands outside of the story itself.

The second stanza the only incongruous word is 'blight'. To me at least, you seem to be using blight as a transitive verb, but one which has no corresponding transitive object, making the transition to the last line feel grammatically awkward.

The third stanza has another example of irregular rhythm, namely the second line, which scans as ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ˘ ¯ ¯. The irregular rhythm, coupled with the octo-syllabic line feels very clumsy, particularly as the stress in 'become' reads as strongly as the stress in mine. The result, when read aloud is that a rogue spondee has suddenly appeared at the end of an already un-metrical line. 'Serenity' is also a singular noun, which means it should be followed by 'becomes'.

The fourth stanza is again metrically odd. The lines rhythmically scan thus:

Help guide those who will see.
¯ ¯ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯
To the lesson you've taught.
˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯
This burden, this lot,
˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯
To teach falls to me.
˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ ¯

The triple stress at the opening of the first line feels slightly forced and is, at least if I were reading this the first time, very difficult to catch. When unexpected, I find it an almost natural reflex to try to read 'those' as an unstressed beat. the third and fourth lines of the stanza both have only five beats in them. While it works in the third line due to the caesura before 'this lot', I find that it makes the fourth line feel somewhat clumsy to read, especially as 'fall' is very difficult to naturally force into an unstressed beat. I think the most glaring thing about this stanza as well is that it also changes the rhyme scheme from alternating rhymes,- abab,- to an envelope scheme,- abba,- which is very, very off-putting when read aloud. The aural effect of an envelope rhyme scheme is very different to an alternating rhyme scheme, and this unexpected shift within the same section makes it very easy to trip up a reader,- at least in my opinion.

While the intention is good and lofty,- to write a verse epic poem,- I do wonder if the methods you've chosen,- in stanzas rather than blank verse; shifting rhyme schemes and stanza forms; relatively short lines to convey a long narrative,- are the best ones for the task you've set yourself.

[ThePloyMaker]

6782026 Thanks for the critique! I'll see if I can fix some of the errors, but to be honest, meter was pretty much an afterthought for the whole thing. I mean, writing this in the state that it is took quite a few hours of pondering and sitting in front of a computer. I wanted to use stanzas like paragraphs, each one on a different thought (although that may not have turned out as well as I'd hoped). Also, to be honest, a set meter was just a bit much for me. I'm no Shakespeare. I was wanting the change in rhyme scheme to kind of be a transition into the next section which was supposed to be a little off-putting. But you do have a very good point about the sudden change in rhyme scheme. I think I'll look the sections over and try to fix things to make it more coherent. One major thing, though, is that I have a big outline set up for the entire story, and this first chapter barely scratches the surface. I've got an awful lot to write and the more "official" (for lack of a better word) the more I get caught on stanzas that I thought were meant to be simple. But I will definitely do more, and get better. Thank you very much for the criticism and despite my faults I hope you still enjoyed it.

[PrussiAntique]

6782094 Understood! It's just that I always tend to read poetry aloud as well as on the page, as I find rhyme and rhythm become much more meaningful when it can be used to emphasize things through aural effect. I'm glad to hear you're intending to continue this and that you have an outline all set up. I do love poetry, and to see more of it is always a pleasure.

Again though, I'm just wondering if the stanzas may be acting against you,- generally stanzas and rhyme schemes are the province of lyric poetry which has an emphasis on musicality, whereas blank verse tends to support epics and narrative structures much more effectively. Comparing how the meter works in Milton's blank verse epic Paradise Lost, one can see how blank verse gives Milton much more narrative flexibility,- he's able to use the length and relatively easy rhythm of iambic pentameter to form complex ideas without needing to restrict himself through awkward rhyme combinations. In contrast, Tennyson's epic elegy In Memoriam, which is written in envelope tetrameter quatrains has to limit itself to certain syntactic and rhythmic patterns so as to adhere to the chosen stanza pattern. If you want to look at how a highly restrictive rhyme scheme may work on an epic, Pope's mock heroic The Rape of the Lock shows how heroic couplets can carry a narrative,- although in my opinion heroic couplets are actually stupidly difficult to write well, and it's very easy to write yourself into a corner as two lines of iambic pentameter are nowhere near long enough to give full breadth for a truly epic narrative to be built.

To be honest, the short 'simple' stanzas are actually the hardest to write, at least in my experience. I only just graduated from hexameter/heptameter lines to tetrameter, and I still have a lot of difficulty sustaining them. I don't think I'd be anywhere near brave enough to write anapæstic dimeter,- you are wonderfully audacious; that I must applaud :)

[ThePloyMaker]

6782190 For the changing rhyme schemes and stanzas between sections I was kind of going for a stitched-together feel. Like the narrator had stitched together poems he'd heard of the events depicted. I'm not sure how well it turned out, and I'd really like your opinion on it.

[PrussiAntique]

6782254 I actually think the stiched-together quality works well, but I have to say that it only really registers on a second reading. The change between the 3rd person narration of the first stanza to Celestia's in the second in only clear after one's read it. As a conscious technique it work very well in terms of content , so things like 'my student' to 'our story' serving to emphasize the change in perspective quite well.

In terms of stanza form though, I think you'd have to make stanza changing a much more obviously conscious technique. What I mean by that is perhaps to associate very specific stanza forms to different characters and narrative voices, so as to make it clear that the change in stanza pattern also signifies a change in speaker.

So if you had alternating rhyme, anapæstic dimeter quatrains for the 3rd person narrator, then Celestia would speak her poetic fragment in a different form, such as stately alexandrines or rhyme royal. King Sombra would have some other stanza form, like the three-line aba stanzas of a villanelle (or villain-elle) to differentiate his narrative and so on.

If stanza-work isn't what you're after, then I think that register and semantic shifts are another way to go. When you wrote 'I assert thee, my student', the shift in narrative perspective is clear as glass. There is an obvious change in register due to the archaism of 'thee' and the use of the latinate word 'assert', and the use of a specific semantic term 'student' makes it very elegantly clear who is speaking to whom. In one line, you make it very clear to a reader who is the audience,- Twilight Sparkle; who is the speaker,- Princess Celestia; and what is the power dynamic that underpins their relationship,- student-teacher. Very well done.

[ThePloyMaker]

6782353 I hope I'm not asking too much, it's just pretty rare to come across someone with fair knowledge of this particular subject. I'm not going to ask you to be as thorough as you were for the first section, but can I ask if you have any kind of general thoughts on the story itself? Does it feel like it's paced fairly well? I think I could better pace it out if I took your suggestion and make it more free-verse. It is rather difficult to try and make it very lyrical and very narrative, and even though that's what I set out to do, perhaps I have bitten off more than I could chew.

[PrussiAntique]

I actually think in terms of pacing, the story actually flows quite well. You have all the hallmarks of an epic poem,- in media res; themes such as war and duelling civilizations; characters that belong to epic narratives, such as queens and kings, etc. I don't actually think I have any problems with pacing at this point. As a prologue to an epic narrative, it works fairly well in setting up the conflict and one's expectations to come. I'd have to read the rest once it's written to see if the piece delivers but at this point, you have no complaints about narrative from me.

[Star Cloud]

6782013 Okey!