In Dreams Reprising

There is more going on, technically, in this lyric than at first meets the eye. In all stanzas lines 1 and 3 have feminine endings, all others are masculine; lines 2 and 4 are trochaic, all others are iambic. In the first and last stanzas line 4 has four stresses, in the three intervening stanzas it has five. The first and last stanzas use the same rhyme sounds; all five stanzas use the same rhyme sounds in the last two lines. The first line of all stanzas ends with an 'r' word, the third line ends with an 's' word.

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   In dreams reprising
Old and aching loves long lost,
   In sighs surprising
Faces fresh as morning’s frost;
Yet many years have blanched my skin
Since last I whispered chin to chin.

   There’s she reproving

Skirmishing to seize her waist
   And, huffed, surcharging
Later ploys to gain an arm emplaced;
Bright-haired and steely like a pin
She led my hand to cup her chin.

   And she reprieving

Fancy feints to win a kiss,
   Amused, surmounting
All such fumbles with a tender hiss;
Green-eyed above a lover’s grin
She flounced my hair and chafed my chin.
 
   And both repressing
Tears at love’s inconstancy
   And, hurts supplanting,
Willing to forgive my truancy;
But I enthralled with hearts to win
Upended sense and turned my chin.

   In dreams reprising

Loves so true and now long lost,
   In sighs surprising
Faces thinned as some poor ghost;
Grown old with neither kith nor kin
My heart erupts and quakes my chin.

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© September 2014