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| Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, by Francesco Hayez (1867). Image Source: marsmet543 / Flickr |
PAD Challenge, Day 16 prompt: we have our third Two-for-Tuesday prompt: write a poetic form poem, and/or write an anti-form poem.
Today, I have decided to invent my own poetic form, which I have called a gesima.
How to Write a Gesima
The first stanza has seven pairs of one line of heptameter (seven syllables), followed by a line of tetrameter (four syllables).
The second stanza has seven pairs of one line of hexameter (six syllables) followed by a line of tetrameter.
The third stanza has three pairs of one line of pentameter (five syllables) followed by a line of tetrameter.
Inspiration Behind the Gesima
In the Septuagesima Season (called Gesimatide by some), there is one week of Septuagesima (seventy), one week of Sexagesima (sixty), and only three days of Quinquagesima (50), leading up to Ash Wednesday and the holy Season of Lent. This Gesimatide leading up to Lent was often called "pre-Lent" in English (this Season was abolished in the Missal of 1970 because of much misunderstanding and ignorance even on the part of liturgical reformers; however, it is now seeing a revival thanks to the Sarum Use employed by the Ordinariates established by Anglicanorum Coetibus).
The first stanza is for Septuagesima week, hence the lines of heptameter.
The second stanza is for Sexagesima week, hence the lines of hexameter.
The third stanza is for Quinquagesima week, hence the lines of pentameter.
Since this season prepares for holy Lent, and Lent is called Quadragesima (forty), the second lines of all three stanzas are tetrameter. The first lines coupled with the second lines of four syllables are a way of saying, "It's Gesimatide. Get ready, Lent is on its way! Prepare now your hearts, wills, and bodies for the penance."
But there is one last thing that is special about the poem: it's as if the poem is spoken by two voices. Thus, the poem makes the most sense when reading the longer lines first, and the tetrameter lines second. If it were put to music, two different voices could sing the lines simultaneously.
And now, on to my form (gesima) poem...
The Babylonian Captivity
Seventy years as captives
With bitter tear,
For idol-worship punished,
How could we ring
Sabbaths Israel defiled,
The songs we sing
Consciences Judah beguiled,
To captor’s jeer?
Prophets shamefully reviled.
To torment’s wrong
This valle lacrimarum:
We grant no song
Ere heaven’s joy, earth’s strong gloom
In Babylon.
The blood of them
Embrace the fast with cheer.
Who died for Him,
Lent's corporal weakness
Of Church the seed,
Should lead us to meekness,
The harvest-wheat
And to great compassion.
Sown in good ground
Mortifying sadness
Where grace abounds
Leads to Easter gladness
As time goes 'round.
Choose your penance now,
Fasting and prayer,
Bend your haughty brow,
Almsgiving dare,
Grace's work allow,
Your soul to spare.
From the Scripture
Jeremiah 25:8-11: “Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, says the Lord, and for Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these nations round about; I will utterly destroy them, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting reproach. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”
2 Chronicles 36:15-21: “The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, till the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged; he gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfil seventy years.”
Daniel 9:2, 22, 24: “I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years which, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. [Gabriel] came and he said to me, ‘O Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.’”
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