Cavatica
31st May 2005, 05:55 AM
I really, really liked this. Your meter was good, the story was good, the rhymes were good, your vocabulary was good. My only gripes have to do more with content than form.
For instance, in this couplet:
Come help! Come Help! Thread falls west!
Stand with me, defend my nest!
--Thread falls from the east, not the west (since that's the direction the planet rotates); I know you needed the rhyme, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Also, Thread is always capitalized (to distinguish it from the harmless stuff) and between is always italicized -- and I THINK you probably wanted an "and" between "wheeled" and "flamed" in "He dodged and dove and wheeled flamed."
Make sure you're consistent with your punctuation; if you're going to end your first stanza with a period, you should probably end all your subsequent stanzas with periods (in fact, it felt to me like you should probably have periods at the end of every sentence). Same goes for capitalizing the beginning of every line. There are a FEW places I thought could stand some punctuation. For instance:
She had no time to sing or mourn
Alone she fought for those unborn
...might work better as:
She had no time to sing or mourn;
Alone she fought for those unborn.
Or:
She dared not leave, her eggs were all
She burned her wounds and flamed the fall
...could possibly be:
She dared not leave, her eggs were all--
She burned her wounds and flamed the Fall.
Stuff like that. Again, really nitpicky stuff. On the whole, though, I became absorbed in the story really quickly, and didn't stumble on any of the rhyme or meter. Nice work! :>
For instance, in this couplet:
Come help! Come Help! Thread falls west!
Stand with me, defend my nest!
--Thread falls from the east, not the west (since that's the direction the planet rotates); I know you needed the rhyme, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Also, Thread is always capitalized (to distinguish it from the harmless stuff) and between is always italicized -- and I THINK you probably wanted an "and" between "wheeled" and "flamed" in "He dodged and dove and wheeled flamed."
Make sure you're consistent with your punctuation; if you're going to end your first stanza with a period, you should probably end all your subsequent stanzas with periods (in fact, it felt to me like you should probably have periods at the end of every sentence). Same goes for capitalizing the beginning of every line. There are a FEW places I thought could stand some punctuation. For instance:
She had no time to sing or mourn
Alone she fought for those unborn
...might work better as:
She had no time to sing or mourn;
Alone she fought for those unborn.
Or:
She dared not leave, her eggs were all
She burned her wounds and flamed the fall
...could possibly be:
She dared not leave, her eggs were all--
She burned her wounds and flamed the Fall.
Stuff like that. Again, really nitpicky stuff. On the whole, though, I became absorbed in the story really quickly, and didn't stumble on any of the rhyme or meter. Nice work! :>