An Ode to Hard Work
The human world split by a barrier
Not by a thin line or a glass mirror
But by a mountain with an up and down
Those of talent against those of hard work
One keeps striving and continues to strive
Reaching the goal, almost there, then surpassed
Out of the blue, comes a star shining bright
Genius blazing away
Passes his counterpart with naught a hint
Of the struggle to challenge those above
Looking on in utter defeat, hard work
Utter humiliation, dejection
Thoughts reigned supreme of ‘why him, why not me’
Going home, with that thought stuck in his mind
He catches sight of two fledglings flying
Sees his own life reflected in their flight
One keeps flying high, higher and higher
The other near the ground
Laughing at this royal rule of the world
He solemnly walked away from his dreams
The following day he meets the same birds
Looks down first with naught a sight of a bird
Looks up to the heavens, sees salvation
A bird flying high above the other
With wounds all over its tiny body
The miracle he never did, it did
Flying high with the mark of a victor
Hard work had genius beat
A new rule was formed that day for humans
Hundred times of hard work beats a genius
Epilogue:
First, I would like readers to look at the picture. The picture illustrates a point mentioned in my poem but the difference is that I continued on it. There is a fully bloomed flower near the end of the stem and the pictures displays it near the top, thus it gives of the impression of the flower climbing to greater heights. The flower symbolizes hard work, the endless of hours of work put into getting to that level. However, after trying so hard, another flower started to grow right above it, symbolizing talent. Although the first flower tried so hard, it can never surpass the flower right above it from the very start, symbolizing that talent is better than hard work from the moment of birth. That was what my first two stanzas described. This was not my only inspiration as i am basing this on people i know who are working very hard to beat those with talent
As a result, one of the main themes in my poem has to do with a favorite theme of John Keats that is conflicting issues. The obvious issues at conflict here are hard work and talent. I enjoyed Keats conflicting themes has it brought bought sense of the argument to me giving me a wider and broader view of his poems. To me, a one-sided poem holds no potential for comparing your choice of interest against another theme so as to prove and regurgitate your point more strongly.
In this poem, I tried to employ poetic elements of an ode in my poem but only partially succeeded. I used iambic pentameters with iambic trimeters on the 8th line not only to keep to the structure of an ode but also to illustrate a point of my poem. If you read the poem carefully, you will realize that the 8th line of the 1st stanza talks about talent winning, the 8th line of the 2nd stanza talks about hard work losing and the 8th line of the last stanza relates the occurrence of hard work beating talent. I wanted to reinforce the point of endless tries to surpass those currently above you.
Roy, 2B/07
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