Poetic Challenge using Longfellow's "Excelsior" Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hi all,

Based on the success of the Robert Frost challenges here in Karnak, I'll throw a new (old) poet into the mix. This one is a bit longer with nine quatrains.

Taking Longfellow's Excelsior poem below, create your own using the same end words of each line. ONE REQUIREMENT - REPLACE the word "Excelsior" with something else of your choosing and it should also be your title..

Good luck!
~Cleo

Excelsior


The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

"Try not the Pass!" the old man said:
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!"
This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!


Copyright © Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Larry]

Farewell

Life’s shadow faded much too fast
to see the tears. My time had passed
into that somber realm of ice,
impaled on Death’s extreme device.
Farewell.

From sunshine, now I lie beneath
Earth’s emerald face in silken sheath;
deaf to soft steeple bells which rung
my epitaph with gilded tongue.
Farewell!

Though some had said, “Walk to the light
which shines on spirits, pure and bright.”
The lives I’d lived before were shone
to me… A hypermnesia groan!
Farewell?

Mistakes in life, things done and said,
no Hell or Heaven overhead;
just endless doorways open wide.
“Again?” Nirvana’s guard replied,
“Farewell!”

So I returned once more to rest
upon another mother’s breast;
forgetting sights seen with soul’s eye,
retracing life until Death’s sigh.
Farewell.

As each tree grows, a broken branch;
and mounts succumb to avalanche,
experience a last goodnight,
when worn to sand from snow-capped height.
Farewell.

Words softly said, sent heavenward
as I’m interred near Saint Bernard,
a tiny church submerged in prayer,
while dirge was played; a solemn air.
Farewell.

Soul sought again, like baited hound,
for last rewards but naught was found.
Though body lay as cold as ice,
caught once again in Death’s device.
Farewell.

Then, suddenly, through silv’ry gray
I saw the door. Nirvana lay
before me now, and from afar
a voice rang out, bright as a star;
“Fare Well!”

Larry