Silver Spur
Why is "Fast rode the knight" a good poem?
Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
"To save my lady!"
Fast rode the knIght,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good banner
Still waved on a castle wall.
. . . . .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at foot of castle wall.
What the hell, besides it being old, makes this a classic poem?
The knight is so gallantly described, most all of his description being in relation to light--"flickered", "gleamed", "silver lights", "gold". He is described with elegance and grace, with the meter flickering between dimeter, trimeter, and tetrameter in steady beats so as to bring emphasis on the knight's actions.
The ellipses appear, almost encompassing the entirety of the battle in just those five periods, and the poem quickly and sharply returns to the Knight's horse, which was until this point unmentioned throughout the poem.
The poem switches to monometer to refer to the horse, which is even denied the article "the" to at least denote some sort of relevance. It uses trochaic tetrameter in order to describe it, causing emphasis on the very ugly words: BLOWing, STAGGering, BLOODy THING. This creates a sense of stress on the horse's pain and work.
Each line of the final stanza is just a portion of the next, and they are almost written with apprehension--as if the writer wanted to stop writing about the horse as fast as he could.
This stark contrast serves to bring to light the poem's overall meaning.
It's obvious the poem is merely illustrating the point that we as a people always remember the hero that saves the day and looks good while doing it--but what of his steed that got him there? The one that endured the most hardship and torment, and then never even claimed the glory? Who just died without the comfort of a complete sentence? This theme, and the aspects of the poem that go along with it just go to show the amount of genius that went into creating this poem--or any great poem, for that matter.
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