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A Victorian marble clock

Three tings at the third hour
So sweet and simple saccharin
That they puncture my confusion
And crumpled sweating assemblage
With an easy purity
Three rings at three from
The Victorian marble clock
To remind me that time has forever thus
Been marked by objects both destructive
And sublime, and our only crime is
The shame of not being here to witness
That lost era: elegance
And all it promised to be.

Style / type: 
Free verse
Last few words: 
Not much to say - a beautiful object - observed.
Editing stage: 

Comments

"the lost era's elegance
and all its promise to see..."

"to remind me that time has forever struck"

emphasis of struck..as the clock struck three
the personalization of the poet.
"I was struck by the care and craftsmenship
of this time...(literal) clock
the clock was striking the hour!
different ways to verse interpretation and
representation in works to give them a casual
subtle impact....or the vivid clever impasse
of moment..movement
victoria was into all things moving at that
decorative embrace of design...
beauty in detail and new ideas...the formality
of form pushed to the excessive limits
the cultural revolution...industrial revolution
creative revolution and social consciousness
..
thank U

As elegant a response as I could hope for. Thanks. I do find that trying to imagine myself literally in another time, in certain places, where it's quiet - apart from an old Grandfather clock is transformative. I found a little known, tucked away place in Hobart, where you wander around, and absord this incredible collection of objects. No one (and i can't fathom why) seems to go there in the midddle of the day, prefer to rush around eating kebabs and looking at the same skyline. Whenever I move to a city, I like to walk and feel it's every nook and cranny - find all the little hidden corners:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tasmanianarchiveandheritageoffice/sets/721...
http://www.linc.tas.gov.au/allport/Pages/virtual-tour.aspx (they housed a collection from several generations of a family of Lawyers in early Victorian Hobart - truly stunning, where I found the marble clock - also "Gould's book of fish as in Richard Flannagan's novel is housed there)

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

This sounds like the falling tree in the forest, were the three chimes the same ones as one hundred plus years ago.
In front of me here at the comp I have a photo of my father he was born in the Victorian era 1897.
The pic is of him and his friends in full uniform during the fist world war, between us two we have 118 years at present, has anything changed are we still the same in some obscure world.
Good write and great to see you here,
Yours Ian..

.
Give critique to help keep Neopoet great.
Unconditional love to you all.
"Learn to love yourself first"
Yours as always, Ian.T, Sparrow, and Yenti

that it evoked some memories of that time Ian, it really is a stunning place I discovered the Victorian Marble clock, shared these links with Esker too. Did make a slight adjustment, clarifying the ending a little i hope. This is where I found it, for your interest:
http://www.linc.tas.gov.au/allport
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tasmanianarchiveandheritageoffice/sets/721...

Take care,

Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

Part of the wealth of this site is the sharing of comments..for critique of course and for
drawing in like a storyteller the very spirit of the work itself along with the bones..
I think of that time and see Dickens of course.....and the use of kids and slaves of
countries put too "some good use anyway"...Nursery rhymnes and great fairtales came
about anyway or at least their gathering and construction...and edifices were crafted..
nothing is old here..mid eighteen hundreds onward crude log homes in wilderness
rough roads through towering forests then mucky road and rocky ruin....Pioneers came
free land grant...clear an acre a year and you could have a hundred...etc most was
poor land down our way...not all....but there are brick shoppes..simple two to three
story places built much similar to our american cousins....In places like Quebec one
can see in towns like city of Quebec more older buildings....the further back history
of my people..Well I am Ojibway somewhere in here..One can sense out where they
would have desired.....In each little brick town there were curio shoppes....I found so
much there during eighties and then early nineties.....machinery I liked...car guages
clothes and bomber compasses...Sperry Pathfinder...and the old commnwealth issue
for everything from the trainers to the lancs...I had two of those compasses at one
time...Like typewriters...they come and go....as poor or wealthy most are too routine
oriented to have time to stare at the horizon.....I just do it even if Im supposed to be
somewhere else..ha ha ha....Enjoy your poetry...will check out the link...and...
there were rules upon rules....like always back then...like there today.....I have yet to read Jules verne.....a hero to many of my friends.....

Hey Esker - thanks for the follow up. Yes, I think it's good to use this place as a forum, kind of like a table to come and drop all your trinkets on to, stuff you find, stuff that inspires. I keep looking for little hidden nooks and backwaters in the old town. Hobart is only 200 odd years old, but it has some of the best examples of sandstone old settlers cottages, lining the rivulet that cascades down from "Welly" as it's affectionately known or Mt. Wellington - was "Poorawetter" to the tribes that lived here back then, amongst other names.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Wellington_(Tasmania).
Funny you mentioned Dicken's - there is a great gushing bronze rendering of Sir John Franklin, one of the early Govenors of Tasmania, being irreverently pissed on by a number of Guisers in the middle of the town square. Legend has it, that when his expedition tried to crack the North-West passage ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition ), his ships got stuck in the ice, and they eventually resorted to cannibalism. Anyway, Dickens was persuaded by his widow to write a gushing celebratory play, in which he cast his own kids as players, and friends, best friend Wilkie - who alledgedly wrote it, but it was really Dickens' baby, he became obsessed with the play as his own married life drifted apart like pack ice..
eloquently and brilliantly brought to life in Richard Falnnagan's book: "Wanting":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanting_(novel) - a lot of the unspoken mystery of Tasmania is potrayed in there, as wll as it's darker past..

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

the tiger..i watched early...early u tube on this ...thirty eight...last breeding pair...no one wanted this capable looking odd mystical beast to continue so they finished it...Im using words im learning..but true....What I liked was their bark or call...maybe like the wolves here.....something that they...society wanted to eradicate.......Franklin...an ambitious one....the empire...when all else was failing in the asiatic areas and elsewhere with the commonwealth....the north...we can conquer...away yea john franklin with the latest of tinned lead beef....and ships that are wood..they will be crushed in the ice that is eleven feet deep....Funny because the inuit saw these guys.....but some kind of communication issue...you know how it is.....we are superior..no we dont need help yet....and by then if I was the inuit I wouldnt go near them..they believe spiritual sickness over physical sickness but spiritual sickness was physical to them...and it would be catching....like dogs acting funny.....take no chances.....Franklins crew...first one to go was John Torrington.they dug through permafrost a proper burial...mean sledge hammer and pick six feet down...put in a proper headstone beneath a wall of rock..slate ruin beach almost...on a bay...they..historians dug him up years later...and he was pretty preserved.....eyes intact skin...the death grimace like the cowboy dried graves...and the rest of the mystery has been unfolding since...now the ships have been
found...drifted and eventually sunk in warmer climes.....Hudson met his fate there too long ago....
put he and his son in a lifeboat and basically mutineed them...but that might have saved the crew...arctic travel then was perilous.......I like how the english found their way to tasmania....quietly put away their issues.....go here..I mean we will send you here to quiet down a tad!!......

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