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It’s Only a Thought

It’s only a thought to help pass the night,
But what if our love should come to naught?
Christ! That would be an unbearable plight.
__It’s only a thought.

But thoughts can stir feelings and feelings distraught
Can so swiftly put slumber to flight.
It’s no wonder I’m so overwrought.
But love like ours has incredible might,

With faith it is filled, with passion fraught.
Peace. Time will teach me to be more contrite.
__It’s only a thought.

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Richard Bailey Johnson is a retired physician residing in Williamsburg, Virginia.

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7 Responses

  1. Jeremiah Johnson

    I love some of the ambiguity in your lines. How the relationship is both “filled with faith” and “fraught” with passion – like, is that “fraught”-ness encouraging or not? The placement of “Christ” and “Peace” in those 3rd lines has an interesting affect too – is the “Peace” peace or not. Enjoyably disorienting!

    On another note, your poem reminds me of John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” not thematically, but stylistically:

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47380/in-flanders-fields

    Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    “It’s Only A Thought” is similar in lyric form to John McCrae’s rondeau, of which form the Society of Classical Poets has a number in the Rondeau category listed below right. However, that is a large family of forms, and Richard Bailey Johnson’s work is actually a roundel, invented by Algernon Charles Swinburne, maybe with help from Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45301/the-roundel

    Above linked is Swinburne’s first example from his collection called “A Century of Roundels.” Swinburne’s hundred poems do not include any love poems so successful as Johnson’s. His “Wasted Love” and “Dead Love” are fine examples of the form, but as titles suggest, present a disillusioned view of love. See as well Ernest Dowson’s “Beyond,” also known as “Love’s Aftermath.” My favorite Swinburne roundel is the more pleasantly positive “My Mother Sea.”

    Please excuse me, Richard, for supplying these academic comparisons. I hope other readers can easily find them online, for they shed some light on your effort. You are to be commended for trying the roundel and coming up with such a well-written one. Concerning this kind of lyric created by an Englishman, it is good to have another good example. I’d suggest for the sake of standard form, and if you like the idea, that you have our moderator move your second stanza line space. Swinburne and others normally present a roundel in stanzas of 4 lines, 3 lines, and 4 lines.

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Margaret – thanks for providing me with the proper term! I’ve read a lot more than I’ve actually studied poetry 🙂 I’m curious if there are any good books you would recommend on the nuts and bolts?

      Reply
      • Paul A. Freeman

        In addition to Margaret’s recommendations, I’m currently reading Stephen Fry’s ‘The Ode Less Followed’, Jeremiah. It covers almost everything about formal poetry in a light, humorous way and has already positively affected my own poetry.

    • Margaret Coats

      Reading is always the best start, Jeremiah, and the way onward as well. For nuts and bolts about form, I prefer Lewis Turco’s New Book of Forms, with which Turco pretentiously includes “A Handbook of Poetics,” that you may not need. Most of the book, though, guides you through varied forms of lyric, with outlines and examples. Concerning the present poem, you could have noted that it has 11 lines, and looked under “11-line forms” to find three names, then further looked for those names alphabetically to see if the poem corresponded to any known 11-line form. I will warn you that Turco is not complete, and in some contexts not easy to use. But it is a smallish book, with so many copies sold that you can find a used one cheap. My preferred college textbook, “Poems, Poets, Poetry” by Helen Vendler, is larger because it is half anthology, again maybe something you don’t need. Her text includes no discussion of forms–but Vendler was the most inspiring of poetry teachers to young students and old poets alike, as well as a stellar critic. I worked with her for a few years, and I hope you will discover more about her from my poem of tribute on September 16. Thanks for your request!

      Reply
  3. Paul A. Freeman

    Nicely done, Richard. I enjoyed the emotional changes in each stanza, from ‘unbearable plight’, to ‘overwrought’, to ‘Peace’. Describes the volatility of love to a ‘t’.

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply

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