A First Poem

My daughter is taking a poetry class this term that consists of reading through and completing the exercises in The Grammar of Poetry: Imitation in Writing by Matt Whitling, as well as participating in a class where she reads through “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare. I also plan to add some poetry memorization later in the year.

In Lesson 11 of the curriculum, Katherine the Great was asked to write a poem using iambic tetrameter. This is her result:

The Cave

There is a cave upon a bay,
Upon an ocean wild and gray;
And many a traveler long has sought
This pirates trove long since forgot.

For in that cave there lieth gold
And silver, diamonds, treasures old,
All mold’ring in the dank and gloom,
Their seekers sailing to their doom.

Now to that shore remote I came,
The pirates treasure for to claim;
But lo! the love of Christ I found
More precious than the fortune ‘round.

Call me a proud parent, but I think her initial foray into poetry turned out quite well.