The heavy lifting of poetry is by the images poets choose to convey meaning and experience, together with the rhyme schemes they adopt to add musicality to the verse.
Images can be of various kinds, as also can rhymes. Images and rhyme are the muscle and flesh of a poem.
Images come into play when poets use one thing to stand for another. Images are primarily of two sorts, metaphors and similes, which are simply metaphors introduced by “like” or “as”. In a metaphor a poet gives us something familiar to help us understand and experience something less familiar. A good image can make a lasting impression and convey a deeply meaningful experience. Consider, for example, the opening line of Psalm 23:
The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
We understand this image to convey the idea that God is our constant caretaker and guide. He watches over us like a shep-herd does his flock. But we also experience the feeling of safety, comfort, security, and overall wellbeing the image suggests.
Here are four images in an excerpt from our spiritual theology series on “Soul-Keeping.” I have put them in bold type to make them easier to see:
Thus, learn all that we can, we only learn
in error. Sin the balance in our soul
has radically upset, and though we yearn
to know true happiness and be made whole,
we cannot. We are clapped in chains of sin.
And what is worse, our modern age has sown
confusion in our souls and poured a thin
veneer of knowledge where bright truth has shown
in other generations.
The first two images suggest disruption in our inner life. We feel unbalanced and we realize that sin is holding us prisoner. We can see, in our mind’s eye, a balance tipped and handcuffs locked into place. We understand what is intended, but we also feel the imbalance and confinement which are suggested. The second set of images points to the role of the world in this disruption. The world has “sown” seeds of confusion and covered over true knowledge with a “veneer” of lies. The four images together paint a picture of the soul unbalanced and held prisoner to confusion and lies, and we feel the uncertainty and constraint these suggest.
In our Biblical theology series on Ecclesiastes, now available as the book Comparatio, Solomon used a metaphor and a simile to impress us with the greatness of the blessing of rain and to encourage us to be lavish in spreading God’s grace to others:
So cast your bread upon the waters; you
will find it after many days. And give
a serving of your goods and kindness to
as many as you can while you still live.
We cannot know when evil may appear.
Learn from the clouds which, like a sponge or sieve,
release their rains unto the earth, both near
and far, and bless the world with their largesse.
The intent is to encourage us to be generous with our blessings, as Solomon says plainly in the lines between these two images. Our sharing with others should be like chumming breadcrumbs to feed fish or fowl in a pool, which may one day bless our tables with a sumptuous fare.
In our creational theology series, “Creation’s Praise”, we made the point that the world offers a portal into the glory of God, as Psalm 19.1 insists. We referred to the world as an icon through which we may glimpse the glory of the Lord:
The vast world is an icon. It is there
and real, not just in a material sense,
but as a portal, traveled through by prayer,
to somewhere greater and more vast, immense,
and beautiful than what this world displays.
The creatures of the cosmos are all dense
with other-worldly life, which, if we raise
our sensors high enough, we can engage,
to know great joy and overflow with praise.
Icons are used in some Christian communions as windows into the unseen realm of Christ and His glory. In this series we showed, by many examples, how creation fulfills the same purpose. If we could look at—and through—creation like some Christians do with icons, we would have a more profound and constant sense of the Lord’s Presence. Then, not only would the glory of the Lord be present in the creation, but we would know that glory and experience it as well.
Metaphors and similes are used throughout the Scriptures to illustrate, bolster, and imprint profound mysteries and sound doctrines. They not only aid our understanding but impress our souls with a sense of greatness, majesty, beauty, urgency, or wonder.
The music of verse
Images work with rhyme in lyric poems as the most visible and versatile components of verse. While lines and meters carry us forward in reading, they tend to function under the radar of our consciousness. But images and rhymes are what we see most clearly. And, while many contemporary poets eschew rhyme, and some even scorn it (as did John Milton), rhyme can bring a kind of beauty and satisfaction to our soul, once we detect the rhyme scheme that is operating in a verse.
Blank verse is not true rhyme, in the sense that rhyme refers to sounds which agree. But in my view, blank verse makes a rhyme of line and meter. It does this by not distracting from the strict iambic pentameter form, but by urging it to the forefront, as if the real beauty of the poem were in its bones and sinews and not in any outward adornments. Here’s an example of blank verse from our Biblical theology series, “The Story”. It offers a reconstruction of the prologue to Luke’s gospel:
Since many have already taken it
in hand to put together an account
of all that has transpired among us—just
as those who, from the very start of these
events, were witnesses and servants of
the Word, and told them to us—so too I,
upon completing careful research, thought
that I should write out for you from the start
The Story in its fullness, orderly
and accurately, so that you might know
the truth, my friend who loves our sovereign Lord,
of everything you have thus far been taught.
Rhymed couplets—sometimes called heroic couplets—take the rhythm and line structure to a different level by rhyming the final word or syllable in each line. Here’s an excerpt from our creational theology study of The Odyssey in our series, “Reading the Classics: Homer”:
In Alexander Pope’s brief postscript to
The Odyssey, he cited critics who
its epic status questioned, since it lacked
the heroes and their many exploits, packed
into The Iliad. Pope disagreed,
insisting that an epic poem need
not follow one set formula or tell
one kind of story. For a poet well
might use this lengthy form with other ends
in mind than just a tale of heroes, friends,
and exploits. In The Odyssey, he claimed,
the poet took a different tack; he aimed
to underscore for all posterity
the moral conduct that made people free
and noble.
A favorite form of mine is terza rima. It offers a rhyme scheme designed to connect stanzas, allowing each stanza to shine with its own images and rhyme, but then setting up the rhyme scheme of the next stanza in the middle line of the tercet (a three-line stanza). Perhaps the best-known use of this is in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Here’s an example of terza rima from our historical theology series, “Lives of Irish Saints”:
From childhood, Abban meditated in
the Scriptures, and he took them all to heart.
He worked to overcome the power of sin,
to lead men to the Savior, to impart
His love to one an all, and to ensure
the Christian faith would make more than a start
in Ireland. He was pious, brave, and pure
of heart, committed to relieve the needs
of others, and determined to endure
whatever hardship as he sowed the seeds
of faith in Jesus by his words and deeds.
Here, the terza rima section of the poem ends with a rhymed couplet. Some poets prefer a single line, rhyming with the middle line of the preceding stanza, to end a section.
A quatrain is a four-line stanza, and these can employ a wide variety of end rhyme arrangements. Here’s an example from our practical theology series, Vantage Point.
The prophet scorned the academic dress
of those who had invited him to their
Parnassus of the Ivy League. Why wear
their garb, when he intended not to bless
them, but to warn, and even to condemn
their way of life, their stewardship, their views
and their pretensions? Though he would refuse
their outward show, he would reveal to them
the secrets of their souls, and scorch them by
his unexpected and unwelcome theme.
Dressed in his olive jacket, he might seem
to them a kindred spirit, come to ply
them with some words of revolution, or
congratulations for a job well done.
But what the exile had to say, not one
of them expected, or had answer for.
We can see another example of end rhyme in a poem composed in quatrains. This is from our spiritual theology series, “Soul-Keeping”:
The world tried to escape from reason, as
Francis Shaeffer consistently explained.
In the postmodern world, affection has
stood reason down. Priorities are strained
and values all are made to serve the self,
and all because the soul has been denied,
and God and faith unopen on the shelf
of learning sit, collecting dust. Once tried
and true, but now ignored and roundly scorned,
the faith of Christ and how it views the soul
have little place where truth is sought and learned,
and even less to help us to be whole.
One more example demonstrates how rhyme can lend meaning as well as music to a poem. Here’s an excerpt from our forthcoming spiritual theology series, “The City to Come”, in which the end rhymes and stanza length together suggest the interaction of God and man through the numbers three, four, and seven:
Illuminating grace is what I need!
The grace of God, communicated by
His Word, embedded by His Spirit, and
sharp focused on the risen Lord! Indeed,
I need God’s grace to see that wondrous land
of light, and if I plead for it and cry
to God, in time my prayers will all succeed.
In this example, two sets of end rhymes—one of three sounds ending lines 1, 4, and 7, and two of two other sounds (“male and female made He them”?) interlocked within the three in a stanza of seven lines, seven being the perfect number in Scripture because it combines the number for God—3—with the number for man and creation—4. The verses in this series work to lead us through the veil of unbelief to the world that is to come, so we can see how this unique combination of rhymes and stanza length can keep the theme of the series before readers’ minds.
One of my favorite books about understanding and composing poetry is Timothy Steele’s, All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing. And there is a good bit of delight to be known in reading and writing verse, as should be obvious. And when that “fun” is applied to theological truth, then a whole new world of delight can open to us. The combinations of line-length, meter, image, and rhyme that are available to a poet are many. Artistry exists in choosing just the right combination of these to elaborate the theme and achieve the poet’s meaning.
And yet there is more.
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