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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Very few accept to play your role in life.
Esmeralda seized your heart and stole it off.
She refused your tender heart to her to cling
while you followed her to grave and there lay in.
Who can live and die for love as you could do
though you had no hope that she could have loved you?
She refused even to say a word of love
while your heart cooed in her hands as a meek dove.
Hunchback, you were great in love and great in strength
and you gave her all you could, not fearing death.
When you found that she had gone, you followed her;
no fear of the scaring grave could you deter.
Nothing can sustain the heart, but love when true
and it shows that no fear can its call subdue.
Man defies the call of life but keeps love's voice,
Leading him from risk to risk of his own choice.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
Very few accept to play your role in life.
Esmeralda seized your heart and stole it off.
She refused your tender heart to her to cling
while you followed her to grave and there lay in.
Who can live and die for love as you could do
though you had no hope that she could have loved you?
She refused even to say a word of love
while your heart cooed in her hands as a meek dove.
Hunchback, you were great in love and great in strength
and you gave her all you could, not fearing death.
When you found that she had gone, you followed her;
no fear of the scaring grave could you deter.
Nothing can sustain the heart, but love when true
and it shows that no fear can its call subdue.
Man defies the call of life but keeps love's voice,
Leading him from risk to risk of his own choice.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
Published 19th Aug 2018
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20th Aug 2018 5:16am
20th Aug 2018 10:16am
This line:
no fear of the scaring grave could you deter.
means the exact opposite of what you (presumably) meant to say. Given its syntax, It conveys the idea that Quasimodo was unable to prevent graves from being scary and producing fear. So if you were trying to say that Quasimodo was not deterred from entering the grave where Esmeralda was laid by a fear of cemeteries, you haven't done so. What you've done is to let your apparent desire to have this line rhyme with the one that precedes it prevent you from saying what it appears you were trying to say.
Bad writing, this.
no fear of the scaring grave could you deter.
means the exact opposite of what you (presumably) meant to say. Given its syntax, It conveys the idea that Quasimodo was unable to prevent graves from being scary and producing fear. So if you were trying to say that Quasimodo was not deterred from entering the grave where Esmeralda was laid by a fear of cemeteries, you haven't done so. What you've done is to let your apparent desire to have this line rhyme with the one that precedes it prevent you from saying what it appears you were trying to say.
Bad writing, this.
This sort of inversion is allowed in poetry and used by the greatest poets.This is not a mistake. I've used it on purpose. This is poetry, and not a grammar lesson, my dear friend.
This is not a matter of whether it is legitimate at times to employ verbal inversion. It's a matter of making sure that you do not cause your readers confusion when you do so. And this is exactly what you do here, since your syntax gives the impression that "you", rather than "fear", is the subject of your line. Sorry, but "you deter" rather than "deters you" is a very clumsy and misleading way of saying "you do not let fear deter you".
21st Aug 2018 9:32am
Dear Baldwin,
Thank you for your very useful piece of advice. Keep in touch, please.
Thank you for your very useful piece of advice. Keep in touch, please.
