I was around twenty when I wrote this following sonnet. A few days ago, I changed its last two lines–and, just now, line one’s “eagle eyes” to “sharpened eyes.” I have all kinds of trouble evaluating it. It may be okay or even good, but it’s so much in a long-disused style, in spite of its backwards rhyming that halfwits won’t consider rhyming, that I can’t read it with much enjoyment.
John Keats
He read of Greece; and then with sharpened eyes,
espied its gods’ dim conjurations still
in breeze-soft force throughout his native isle–
in force in clouds’ remote allusiveness,
in oceanwaves’ eternal whispering,
in woodlands’ shadowy impermanence.
Once cognizant of earth’s allure, he sought
a method of imprisonment – a skill
with which to hold forever what he saw.
The way the soil and vernal rain converge
in carefree swarming flowers, Keats & Spring
then intersected quietly in verse.
The realms he had so often visited
at once grew larger by at least a tenth.
Odd how bad “in carefree swarming flowers” seems to me today. Change it to “in meadows filled with flowers.” Don’t know what to dao about the final couplet.