Warning, this is long and I went English-nutty on it.
First off: *applause*
That's freaking phenomenal. Your stress-unstress stuff is on point, you remain consistent in your rhyming scheme, and the flow of each syllable in each line was rhythmic and above all
nice. There are flaws, but I enjoyed reading it.
As you said, there are occasions where you need to play "tricks" to retain the rhythm. Which is fine -- a lot of poems I've read don't even bother with having a rhythm at all. Plus, what points where
I stumbled in reading it wouldn't be noticeable in re-reads, nor if it's read out loud in a performance. In fact it's good to have these points in poems that are read out loud, as it encourages speeding up and slowing down (and let's be honest, a poem that retains the exact same rhythm over and over gets boring).
The points I could bring up as criticisms are just style choices. I know that some poems don't bother with punctuation at the end of each line, and leave the reader to assume where it would lie. Yet you've been slightly inconsistent. For most of the poem, punctuation is absent, bar for this stanza:
And though the sky moved on,
My ray no longer glittered,
Within my mind the picture shone
A sight that never withered
I suppose I could assume that if this was read out loud, the commas would hint to longer pauses than natural. It's not really important, but it did feel a bit jarring. But only a tiny bit.
Overall, you constructed this poem well. It sounds good, it's fun to read, and you know what you're doing (or have good instincts/a detailed guide).
Now moving past the shape of the poem, into the content. I'm going to go full English-nut on this.
I really like the line "The city was looked on, not seen" in Stanza 1. It's a similar distinction to people speaking
at and not
to one another.
Additionally in Stanza 10 (the last one), the phrase "Let them perceive in blades of grass // The glory of an anthem" is a really nice line. To go full English-y and overboard, "anthem" implies humanity, loyalty, duty, order, and so on. It also, to me, evokes the notion of battle, as many anthems have themes along those lines. Couple that with "blades," and the notion of war is further emphasized. Battle and the glory in it has been emphasized a lot in poetry. So, let us instead apply that glory, that honour, that grandness, into the natural world.
*Coughs* Of course, that's with full "English nuttiness" engaged. I may be right, and I may be completely missing the mark and/or overthinking things completely. Heck, if I was analyzing this for an English class I'd probably work out how to link this to, I dunno, the Industrial Revolution.
I could go on, but then I'll probably be pulling rubbish out of nothing and end up going "THE CURTAINS ARE BLUE TO SYMBOLIZE DEPRESSION ASFFNLAG."
Ok, now for some negatives regarding content and word use.
I can't recall the exact term for this, sorry. Some of this suffers from what I'm going to call "adjustment overload."
"Let pass a
tiny glimpse of light
A
single ray of Holy Love"
"Yet somehow
faintly slumber"
It's something that pretty much everyone deals with (and I have so much trouble with, you have no idea). People like to "soften" things, and adjust them to better fit their imagination. Such as using words like "slight," "very," "a bit." You can probably spot me doing this in all of my posts. People like to specify exactly what they are talking about. But it makes everything look weaker. I know that in essays, the effect is that the writer looks uncertain of themselves. In prose, the words get in the way and are more frustrating than anything else.
This is a style choice. I'm well aware that while
I try to avoid this, other people choose to do so. Plus, you've used it sparingly. In all honesty, I shouldn't even bring it up, but I like bringing up "things done well," and "things that could be better," when talking on other people's things.
Another thing that I hate to bring up is that some parts of this feel "deep for deepness's sake." Take this part:
Once alone I glimpsed the glow
The forest's sudden wonder
The glory of the things that grow
Yet somehow faintly slumber
Beside the old young forest stood
A city full of people fair
A story evil somehow good
A tale of hope's untold despair
First, the use of "things" smacks of vagueness. Yes, I get that it needs to be vague enough to encompass all the things in the forest, but
things is just a painful word in prose.
Things is always vague, and almost always needs to be a different word. Plus, from the line it resides in, the
things are meant to be seen in a positive light. I'm not everyone. But to me,
things has negative connotations. It smacks of lurking
things, of crawling
things, of
things best forgotten and left in the dust, never to be spoken of.
Erm. Now that I've gotten my irrational and emotive rant out of the way, back to the stanzas.
The phrase "A story evil somehow good // A tale of hope's untold despair." Like I said, it feels "deep for the sake of deepness." It's unspecific, it's vague, and can be connected to literally anything. It's English student bait! Ahhh! My one weakness. =D Also, the word "somehow" fits the same bill. "Somehow" to me always feels like a cop-out. It's not a major issue, and shouldn't be worried about, but that's what I think whenever I see a "somehow" used seriously.
You've probably learnt or been made aware of most of this. "Several years" means a lot in terms of writing ability. But hey, now that I've written this, other people can see it. Plus, it lets me exercise my creative writing muscles.
This poem was fun. I like the structure, I like the themes, I like the poem. It isn't perfect, but I liked it.
...Wow, I wrote a lot. I'm going to put it in spoilers. And you said
you had rambled.
