Phenomenal.

This feels darkly emotional – puts me in mind of Dickinson and Poe.

Mystery and Memory.

The ficly house may be a little dusty, but the lights are still on.. :)

Awesome sauce! I was waiting for you to misplace a syllable or something but the rhythm remains perfect throughout. A wonderful poem: very factual but with a solid background of emotion too.

Great imagery, I thought, especially in that second stanza.
“Lush carpets graced the floors, the walls
Bedecked in finest tapestries
Along the paneled wooden halls”

Good stuff! Thanks a bunch for taking part in the challenge – don’t forget to comment on all the others =)

Woooooaaaaaah! That was a fun ride.

My thanks to you all.
In light of the novel I am currently writing, my attentions toward Ficly have strayed, but I am not yet a stranger.

Wow. I really liked that. A lot. Great job!!!

This was brilliantly done! The flow of it all was perfect. And since I LOVE imagery, you totally have me head-over-heels for this ficly. XD

Grand atmosphere created here. The rhythm isn’t perfect throughout, but it really doesn’t matter because the imagery is so weighty. Nice job.

I’m not really good with poetry and the story completely lost me, but I’m commenting because that’s the spirit of this contest. Good job, I think.

I second the Poe nomination. Something about the cadence in my head screams NEVERMORE. Generally I’m not much for poetry but this is pretty awesome. I can see it embossed in silver across a night time scene that includes the details of the poem in haunting artistry.

Like boxofun, I’m not good with poetry. Maybe this is why I couldn’t find the rhythm in the second stanza.

Best advice I can offer, really, is to ignore this comment.

Nice! Evocative imagery!

Ok, I read it again and I really liked the rhythm much more this time, for whatever reason. The only line that tripped me up was “But for pair that opened wide”, because the lines surrounding it do not begin with a stressed syllable, and the word “but” doesn’t immediately indicate stress. If anybody doesn’t get what I mean, here’s the whole second stanza (stressed words bolded):

There is…
A man-sion…
I knew…
Nor that…
Lush car-pets…
Be-decked…
A-long…
The doors…
But for pair that ope-ned wide.

It’s the only line starting on a stress. Seriously this is minor, and you may have guessed I’m only picking through it because I’m avoiding homework right now.

Hm. That was negligent on my part. Good eye, and fixed.

Hm…

I am confused.

But I liked it anyhow. c:

I absolutely adore the spoken rhythm of these verses. Especially the last line of every stanza.

This was great. You had a really nice rythm going. And it was quite Poe-esque, yes. Quite chilling with the way that the last line of each stanza broke the iambic quadrameter rythm, in much the same way as a person’s heart falls when they think there’s one more step at the top of a staircase, and for a brief moment your foot falls through the air and you’re certain that your life is over. You conveyed that with rythm alone. This was wonderfully augmented by the verses themselves, which had quite a chilling ghost story feel to them.

On another note, Emilou. How do you go from “Great Job!” to 2/5? doesn’t make sense. To correct for this, regardless of my own opinions, I am now obliged to rate 5/5, though I feel I probably would have gone for that anyway.

Definitely agree with Timertoesa about the rhythm. It flows very nicely. Mysterious meaning, but that works in poetry. For me it read like a lament of the costs of heading out to seek adventure and forsaking home.

Line 5 looks like it should be ‘Their’ not ‘There’

Other than that it has a really good flow to it, I like it very much

I really enjoyed how well you held to your structure while retaining artistic expression.

Demi, line 5 refers to an undisclosed entity within the place (there), and does not attribute gold wings and red eyes to the trees (their).

Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, is that you? Very nice.