Poem in alcaic style – Part 1/3

Photo credit: BBC

This is part 1 of a 3 part poem inspired by alcaic stanzas on the theme of living life well.

It has the right number of syllables.   But it was too hard to follow the long/short syllable format and I don’t think alcaic stanzas are supposed to rhyme.

A big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read it!

PART I. EPICUREANISM

All that exists, is matter in motion.

In essence atoms, travelling in The Void.

Indestructible though some collide

Others clumped to give the world creation.

 

Even our dear gods, are of atom and void.

Perfect beings in, imperturbable bliss.

Unconcerned with human frailties

No divine retribution to avoid.

 

All that we can know depends on sensations

when atoms collide, with human sense organs.

Prompted from birth prior to reason

Pursuit of pleasure our chief direction.

 

Right pleasure is found, not in self-indulgence

But in likeness of, our dear gods serene.

The highest pleasure comes down to this:

A mind where fear and pain have no remnants.

Alcaic stanzas

Picture credit: Philologia

I’ve decided to experiment with Classical poetry and approximate Horatian alcaic stanzas.  I don’t pretend to know much about it, but the basic pattern seems to be this.  A stanza is alcaic if:

1. it has four lines of 11, 11, 9 and 10 syllables, respectively
2. the first two lines are divided into two parts by a complete pause after the fifth syllable
3. it has a rhythmic pattern of long and short (rather than stressed and unstressed) syllables.

The rhythmic pattern is:

1. long long short long long [complete pause] long short short long short long
2. long long short long long [complete pause] long short short long short long
3. long long short long long long short long long
4. long short short long short short long short long long

An oft-cited example written in English is W H Auden’s In Memory of Sigmund Freud.

I’d be interested to know what you consider to be the positive and negative qualities of alcaics.  Lord Tennyson is reported to have described the Horatian Alcaic as ‘perhaps the stateliest metre in the world except the Virgilian hexameter at its best’.