“O’er the deep! o’er the deep! / Where the whale and the shark and the sword-fish sleep!”

For Poetry Monday, a 15-line variant sonnet:


The Kraken, Alfred the Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.


Even young Tennyson had a way with sounds. It took a while to temper the pomposity, though. And how to better land the ending (those last two lines need a little more development to really stick it -- either start using Revelations imagery earlier, right after the delayed volta, or give up the already creaking sonnet form and spin it out a few more lines).

---L.

Subject quote from .