Swinging into action!!!
by cricketjeff on July 21, 2008. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
In life she sung and swung upon the stage
To entertain the men who lived alone
The most exciting singer of her age
One drunken fan whose sanity had flown
Took aim and put a bullet through her head
Sad silence came to claim the singer’s throne
The gods could not accept that she was dead
And asked that she would sing her song again
Before she’s laid in her eternal bed
Just close your eyes and listen for each strain
Her song will come to you from clouds above
And all of nature joins in her refrain
Each day a fairy gives the swing a shove
And underneath the clouds she softly sways
So everyone can hear and fall in love
The song she sings will haunt me all my days
The sight of her the sweetest I could know
She left me in a soft romantic haze
I heard her song and saw her long ago
On purple ribbons trailing from the sky
And every day my love for her must grow
I never had a lover who could fly
Whose skin took on the shades of sunset glows
I’ll be in love with her until I die
Her face is like the petals of a rose
Her song is of a lark in Yorkshire’s dales
She rains her song to wash away my woes
And when I die I’ll take immortal sails
And we’ll duet the gods to earn our wage
Our love will feed a million minstrels tales
The only way I can escape my cage
Author notes
The form is Terza Rima. This is an ancient form, Dante’s Inferno etc are
written in it. Like his mine are in iambic pentameter but they don’t have to be
although each line should follow the same meter.
The rhyming goes aba cbc dcd ede … zyzy
finishing with a four line stanza to use up the left over rhyme. The last line
is often indented, but that’s just because that’s how the first printed
examples were done.
Just to tidy this one up I finished with the same rhyme I started with.
English