All hail True Love
All hail True Love
Athena
Christina
Meaner than ever
On a new endeavor
The weather gets better
We do NOT need a new header
Toast to true love
There is one above
My name is Timothy
But when spoken upon your lips
It sounds so differently than any other
Your lips must be smoother than butter relaxing like rain
I never knew another to be more graceful or outspoken
Maybe I would like to take a closer look inside your soul
Would I find Disappointment or Encouragement
Or better yet Empathy
Like The Force of Your Soul that Flows through Me
Like Whip cream and Strawberries
Like any anywhere in Texas
If I could escape this place like Sodom Gomorrah
Because I want to be with you today and not tomorrow
And that be my sorrow
And when see me down casted maybe I need to borrow
A smile with a few words of encouragement
Because if two faces confront me
I can't afford to be caught off my guard or in my sleep
Cause it's my soul Satan wants to corrupt
It's the Love for you in my heart that will never give up
(A Poem of Leadership and Courage)
In the heart of our nation stands a man so tall,
A leader who answers his people’s call.
Through trials and storms, he does not sway,
For duty and honor light his way.
General Mkhwanazi — a name of might,
A symbol of justice, of truth, of fight.
You wear your uniform not for fame,
But for the love and pride in our country’s name.
You walk with calm, you lead with grace,
Integrity shining upon your face.
Where others falter, you choose to stand,
Guided by purpose, with a steady hand.
In the darkest hour, when fear takes hold,
Your courage speaks — strong and bold.
For every soul you’ve sworn to protect,
You’ve earned the nation’s deep respect.
So here’s to the General, steadfast and wise,
A guardian beneath South African skies.
May your legacy forever remain,
A beacon through struggle, through joy, through pain.
Mono Aluminum Pijin they called him. A rascal and a sailor. He buys beef jerky by the bucket. He shaved his beard with a hand carved whale bone. They roll the flanks of mutton in braided lamb chitterlings, and roast them fair and square. The sauce is sweet nuff for dipping. As He crosses his legs to raise his pinky in the air. Far to perfect is the evening, might a woman wish to dance. She'd be greasy if she lean on me, cause I wiped the grease on my pants.
Mono Aluminum Pijin they called him. A rascal and a sailor. He buys beef jerky by the bucket. He shaved his beard with a hand carved whale bone. They roll the flanks of mutton in braided lamb chitterlings, and roast them fair and square. The sauce is sweet nuff for dipping. As He crosses his legs to raise his pinky in the air. Far to perfect is the evening, might a woman wish to dance. She'd be greasy if she lean on me, cause I wiped the grease on my pants.
There is a hut,
I'm riding on a rut,
I hope it does not rust,
I don't need to be hasty,
Where things can in a hurry,
I am a bit blurry,
I made it on the top of a cherry,
You don't need to feel sorry,
I saw something shiny,
Soon, it will be rainy,
I hope it is sunny,
Until the water stream is runny,
I am not a phony,
I am very keen,
It is enough for me to be lean,
Keep me in the lane,
I carry myself a cane,
To show what it meant,
I'm trying to be sane,
I'm sitting on a pane,
I know it is such a shame,
Look what had come,
It is not Rome,
I know it is the same,
It is my other jam.
A conglumalate of comapnies gathered together to Unite
under one banner. The sorted the talents, and ranked : reranked
several Pro Grapplers.both in Kayfade and for-reallie-dough!
They excluded the Juggernaut.
The one the World might envy.
But the saw fit to advertise in markets where they are sucluded and often riciculded.
A straight forward Sports Genred Event.
Was advertsied. The Caption said on this date from now and forever all the world shall speak of _______________ As World Champion! They advertised it like they were from the year. 2033 which is a big deal in some wrestling areas. The Guilds and The Guilded are to compete before an "awaiting " Hungery World!
I think this is a novel concept.
Bravo!
Bravo!
I 'am dead inside. Each new day I feel another part of me die. IT's like a withering old house. You thought it'd be a good idea then you realized the work and just left it. Years later you return and find holes, vines all up the house, so much that you can barely see it. Like the vines felt the need to protect and secure it, so that it's never left alone again. Untouched and Unloved (except for the vines). Even Mother Nature feels the pain for the left behind, the forgotten. She finds a way to hug and protect what once was. She finds a way to keep the house hidden from pain. I"AM THE HOUSE and IAM DEAD INSIDE
The outward action received
as red cardinals emerges
singing on top of the bird bath
releasing heavenly tunes
while the four of clock
flowers began to open
as the church bell chime
just in time for mass
the holy spirit lands
deep inside my heart
my spirit soars opening
the church doors only
God knows why these
flowers opened and closed
the holy trinity's now exposed
written by mrs yolanda joy nicholsen
The Parrot
The bird in the cage has featherless wings folded
to the naked body like squeaking scissors
I'm 89 today let, me out of this bloody cage!
Its owner is hard of hearing, is the widow of a war
veteran, I think the First World War
She tells everyone she meets, 8 million horses and
12 million donkeys were killed on the battlefield and no one
took notice
Humanity only thought of their suffering and were
impervious to animals' feelings, more, a wounded animal was eyed as a potential meal by hungry soldiers
Dragged from a green field to a soggy battlefield and
not a word of thank you
Goulash, the famous Hungarian dish, was made from horse
flesh and camouflaged with paprika, pepper, and salt
for 89 years, the parrot had only been able to read
the titles of books on the shelf on the opposite wall
It had a lively mind and listened to the radio every day
well educated can squawk with the best of them
Two people and a dream
It is easy to start a war, send up a rocket, and get one in return and spiteful words lead to hatred of the sort
the consumes the soul and reason disappears in the fog
of odium that can only end in the slaughter of a nation
The military invasion of Gaza began with righteous anger and a thirst for revenge, but now as vengeance
has been sated it is time to end this if it is not too late
the political leader of the invading nation is tired, he knows he was overreaching himself to his enemies at home's delight, his face drawn and depressed as he senses the prize to pay for failure, a political death
His name will forever be the one who started a war that
nearly brought his own country into nuclear ashes only
stopped by those he had hated the most
In the end, we might live to see a country of two people
where religion is a private affair that does not interfere in the daily life of the people
And this nation shall be mighty and bring peace to a region that has, for too long, been in the shadows of so many
wars suffered where much blood has been spilled
morning in Happyland
As the night dissipated and the modest dawn came
seeping into my room, I looked up to the ceiling
a black cloud hangs over my head
I moved the cloud to the dark/brown wardrobe
where it blended in with the skeptical color.
The closet is very big and empty, I sometimes walk into it when I remember things from my youth, that I ought to be ashamed of; I said “In my youth” These days I have lost the ability to be dishonorable in my daily life, or I have developed the shield of honesty and there is nothing to be
inglorious about.
Coffee and toast, no time to sit down, I have to drive my wife to town to see her doctor about her bones, there will be no place to park and I have to drive home, til she calls for me to pick her up.
I have to renew my driver's license soon, I dread
if I fail, and walking much is not an option I leave walking to people who like following narrow tracks
and get their feet wet in the tall morning grass
with this, I walk back into the wardrobe.
Failed poet
It is worrying when your mind is electrocuted by overthinking when you know for sure the system
is out to get you
The man sat naked on his roof as was his want none can deny this common right.
They tried to get him down from there, but he insisted they must hear his earth-shattering poems
of the sort that make grown men weep, go home
make love to their wives, and start a sheep farm in the utter Hebrides.
They got him down from the roof by telling him a hall was ready for him to speak, his dog didn't believe this and bit a nurse's ankle.
Then it was a morning when many middle-aged men slept in a big room; and in the gray morning light he wondered how come, there were so many failed poets
When feeling better, he came to the understanding that poetry is only beneficial for the millions of verse makers who otherwise will take to drink.
edited
The lady who cleans the dead
The woman who washed and dressed the body of my wife´s brother came for a visit and to get paid for her service
I noticed the nails of her hands were manicured pink
did she in her daily work touch more dead bodies daily than live ones? She looked beach clean, bet she used gloves when eating lunch.
I made ill at ease, studying her like she was an alien, deeply tanned, this was understandable spending so much time in a cellar full of corpses.
Why had she chosen this profession, perhaps she had studied to be a doctor and failed.
A new idea struck me if I suddenly died, she would clean me, put lipstick on my dead lips, and rouge on my cheeks for a cheap laugh
I smiled broadly at her and nodded to what she said showing my best side, you never know.
A warning!
I saw a man with a hastily packed suitcase asking for a room
at a B/B, looking agitated, there must have been an almighty
row, which he, a mere man, had lost.
After booking in, he came down to the bar, had a large whiskey with a beer chaser, still talking to himself, saying what he had failed to say when losing the argument.
He had borrowed money and given his wife a new washing machine; we in the bar knew it would be cheaper to buy his wife a bouquet of roses.
Oh, silly man, a wife is not a maid; she does your laundry not
because she likes to, out of love and to be appreciated.
If you don't take your suitcase and go back to your wife, tell
her you are sorry, you will end up like us sitting in a bar regretting the past.
Introduction
The repeated return of a refrain creates a special kind of suspense: readers know which words are coming, but not what those words will mean after another stanza has altered their emotional setting. That tension makes Chant Royals especially rewarding to read side by side. One poet may make the refrain sound ceremonial, another ominous, another comic, and another quietly resigned. The pleasure lies not only in recognizing recurrence, but in hearing significance accumulate around it.
As you browse the community poems, notice how much variety can arise within the form's demanding rhyme architecture and extended development. Writers may build an argument, unfold a narrative, praise or condemn a subject, stage a dramatic address, or circle an unresolved feeling. Some voices may sound elevated and public; others may use the grandeur of the form to frame intimate, contemporary, or deliberately playful material. The final envoi can serve as dedication, verdict, appeal, reversal, or compressed afterthought, changing how the preceding movement is understood.
Reading one example reveals a solution; reading several reveals a field of choices. Compare how different poets prevent recurring sounds from becoming predictable, how they give each main stanza a distinct purpose, and how they prepare the refrain without making it feel inevitable too early. Read beyond the first example and consider where the form seems to intensify thought, where it tests a writer's diction, and where an individual voice pushes against ceremonial expectations. The collection becomes most useful when approached as a conversation among interpretations rather than as a display of identical structures.
Reading Guide
A Chant Royal rewards attentive reading because its effects develop cumulatively. The ear encounters familiar rhyme sounds and the returning refrain, while the mind measures what has changed since their previous appearance. Rather than judging only whether a poem appears formally complete, follow the relationship between recurrence and progress. Strong examples make each return feel earned by new imagery, argument, narrative pressure, or tonal complication. As you read the community poems, compare not just their subjects but the different ways poets manage expectation over an unusually sustained pattern.
- Track the refrain's changing meaning. A repeated line can sound confident at first, doubtful later, and devastating or comic at the close. Ask: what has each stanza taught me that changes how I hear the same words?
- Listen to the rhyme words before the rhyme itself. Reused sound families create memory, but obvious word choices can make the poem feel driven by necessity. Ask: does each poet select words that deepen the subject, or do some line endings merely complete the pattern?
- Map the work of each stanza. Length alone does not create development. A stanza might introduce evidence, widen the setting, challenge an earlier claim, or shift from public statement to private admission. Ask: could any two stanzas exchange places without changing the poem?
- Notice syntactic pacing. Sentences may flow across lines and stanzas, or close firmly at strategic moments. Varied syntax prevents the repeated architecture from sounding mechanical. Ask: where does the poet accelerate, pause, postpone completion, or allow a full stop to give the refrain extra weight?
- Watch the balance between elevated form and speaking voice. Ceremonial language can suit the form, but intimacy, irony, and colloquial directness can also create productive contrast. Ask: does the diction feel native to the speaker, or adopted merely to sound grand?
- Study the envoi as a change of scale. Its compression can turn accumulated material into an address, judgment, plea, or final complication. Ask: does this closing passage merely summarize, or does it reveal why the entire sequence had to unfold?
Compare several poets' approaches aloud as well as silently. The ear will often detect strained emphasis, lively recurrence, and tonal change before the eye explains them. Let each poem show how convention can become dramatic action rather than ornament.
Writing Tips
Begin by treating the Chant Royal as a structure for sustained thinking, not as a container to be filled line by line. Bring material with enough depth to survive repeated examination: a public question with competing claims, a person seen from several angles, an obsession that changes under scrutiny, or a story whose consequences widen. Before drafting, identify what must advance in every main stanza and what emotional or intellectual burden the refrain will carry when it returns.
- Choose a subject with multiple facets. A single observation may become thin when extended. Look for material that can move through scene, reflection, contrast, consequence, and response. If you cannot name several genuinely different pressures within the subject, the poem may become repetitive before the envoi arrives.
- Design the refrain for transformation. Avoid a line that explains everything on its first appearance. A useful refrain is clear enough to remember but open enough to acquire irony, grief, defiance, or tenderness from changing contexts. Test whether it can remain grammatically natural after several different kinds of lead-in.
- Build a rhyme bank without becoming its servant. Gather nouns, verbs, modifiers, phrases, and slant possibilities associated with the required sound families, then reject words that pull the poem away from its central vocabulary. A common beginner mistake is inventing an irrelevant image solely to justify a convenient rhyme.
- Give each stanza a dramatic assignment. Draft a brief prose map such as invitation, complication, counterargument, revelation, and reckoning. The labels need not appear in the poem; they simply prevent five sections from making the same statement in different words.
- Vary sentence shape against the recurring pattern. Mix short declarations with longer suspensions, strategic questions, and sentences that cross line boundaries. If every line closes as a complete grammatical unit, the rhyme may become overemphatic and the pace ceremonial in an unintended, monotonous way.
- Use images as an evolving system. Return to a few related objects, colors, textures, or settings, but alter their function. An image first presented as decoration might later become evidence or threat. This internal echo helps the long poem cohere without relying entirely on end sounds.
- Protect the speaker's natural authority. The form can tempt writers into inflated diction, inversion, and antique filler. Elevation is effective when the subject and speaker earn it. Read every sentence as ordinary prose and ask whether you would retain its word order if rhyme were not involved.
- Make the envoi do more than recap. Decide whom, if anyone, it addresses and why the voice changes scale at that moment. It might deliver a charge, expose the speaker, redirect the refrain, or leave a deliberate residue of uncertainty. Compression should increase pressure, not reduce the ending to a table of contents.
During revision, first ignore the pattern and assess the poem's movement, imagery, voice, and stakes. Then inspect sound: mark repeated filler words, weak rhymes, accidental singsong passages, and stresses distorted by convenience. Read the entire draft aloud without stopping between stanzas, then again with full pauses before each refrain. The first reading tests continuity; the second tests expectation and impact. Finally, ask a reader to identify where attention drops and what changes at the envoi. Repair the poem's dramatic logic before polishing mere compliance.
Interesting Facts
- Length creates pressure for genuine development. The form may look difficult chiefly because of its rhyme demands, but its subtler challenge is sustaining consequential thought. A technically orderly poem can still feel static if each stanza restates the same premise.
- The refrain is both an anchor and a moving target. Its wording remains recognizable while its emotional force can change radically. Context may turn assurance into self-deception, praise into satire, or lament into acceptance without altering the recurrent line itself.
- Restricted rhyme can expand invention. Because sound families recur, poets must search beyond the first obvious vocabulary. That pressure can uncover surprising verbs, images, and associations, although it can also expose forced diction immediately when the search has not been selective.
- The envoi changes the reader's sense of distance. After an extended sequence, the shortened close can feel like a speaker stepping forward. An address to a person, principle, object, or absent audience may recast what seemed descriptive as an appeal or judgment.
- Formal smoothness is often least noticeable when it works best. Readers remember the refrain, argument, atmosphere, or culminating turn rather than the labor required to coordinate them. When rhyme repeatedly calls attention to itself without serving meaning, the underlying scaffolding remains too visible.
- Comparison reveals flexibility better than isolation. As you read the community poems, one interpretation may emphasize ceremony, another narrative momentum, another wit, and another inward meditation. Reading several examples helps distinguish the form's durable identity from any single poet's stylistic choices.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and structure become inseparable in a Chant Royal because the poem repeatedly revisits its central language while continuing to develop. Themes work especially well when recurrence can alter their meaning and when the envoi can concentrate the accumulated stakes. The possibilities below are literary affinities, not measured rankings of what PoetrySoup poets write most often.
- Mortality and time. Repeated sounds and refrains can imitate inevitability, while each stanza presents another life, season, memory, or resistance. The closing compression can make a broad meditation suddenly personal.
- Praise, tribute, and commemoration. The form's amplitude supports a many-sided portrait rather than a list of virtues. A refrain can gather ceremonial force, provided specific scenes and details keep admiration from becoming abstract.
- Civic argument and public conscience. A poet can examine an issue through testimony, consequence, objection, and appeal. The envoi is particularly suited to changing exposition into direct address without requiring a simplistic verdict.
- Devotion, faith, and doubt. Recurrence can resemble prayer, vow, or ritual, yet changing contexts allow belief to be questioned rather than merely announced. The refrain may grow steadier, more troubled, or newly ambiguous.
- Love, absence, and obsession. Returning language naturally evokes a mind circling what it cannot release. Distinct stanza purposes are essential here, so emotional intensity develops instead of repeating one declaration.
- Satire and comic grandeur. An elaborate structure applied to vanity, bureaucracy, domestic conflict, or a minor frustration can create productive disproportion. Precise timing and controlled diction keep the joke from exhausting itself before the envoi.
- Journey, conflict, and transformation. Extended movement allows stages, encounters, setbacks, and changed understanding. A stable refrain can mark how far the traveler or speaker has moved even when the repeated words remain the same.
Browse the poems in this collection to see how similar subjects can produce sharply different results. Compare which poets use the refrain as confirmation and which use it as contradiction; notice who moves outward toward public statement and who turns inward. Shared themes become most revealing when each poet's images, voice, pacing, and final address transform them.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of the Chant Royal lies between recurrence and consequence. Its repeated architecture promises stability, while a successful poem must keep changing the reader's understanding. Technical recognizability therefore represents only the beginning. The deeper achievement is to make every return feel both expected and newly necessary. If the refrain arrives unchanged in significance, or if the recurring rhymes merely demonstrate endurance, the poem can become an impressive frame around insufficiently developed material.
Memorable examples make structure participate in the subject. A poem about inevitability may use recurrence as pressure; a satire may turn ceremonious repetition into comic insistence; an elegy may let the refrain gather names, images, and absences until familiar words become difficult to hear in the same way. Editors and attentive readers notice whether the sequence has an internal argument, even when the poem is primarily lyrical. Each main stanza should alter the field: enlarging the scene, challenging a claim, sharpening a contrast, or exposing something the speaker had not yet admitted. The envoi then feels less like an attached requirement than the only scale on which the poem can finally speak.
Common weaknesses usually arise when the pattern begins making artistic decisions on the poet's behalf. Predictable rhyme can flatten surprise; forced inversion can damage the credibility of the voice; identical stanza movements can make recurrence feel mechanical. Over-explanation is another danger, particularly when a poet tells readers what the refrain means after the surrounding imagery has already shown it. At the opposite extreme, insufficient development leaves the poem with abundant sound but no accumulating pressure. Strong revision asks not only whether each part fits, but whether removing or rearranging a stanza would change the emotional logic. If not, the sequence needs sharper differentiation.
Individuality remains visible through diction, scale, stance, and the handling of expectation. One poet may use a public, declarative voice; another may create intimacy by letting formal grandeur contain hesitation and broken confidence. One may make rhyme nearly transparent, while another foregrounds sonic pattern for wit or incantation. Comparing multiple community poems develops judgment because quality cannot be reduced to a single model. Readers begin to sense when difficulty has generated discovery, when repetition has accumulated meaning, and when the closing address changes the whole. The most persuasive Chant Royals do not conceal their conventions; they make those conventions seem inseparable from what had to be said.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on what a Chant Royal can sound like. Compare the poets' handling of refrain, tonal development, rhyme pressure, stanza purpose, and envoi. A thoughtful comment might identify where a repeated line changed meaning, where an image carried the sequence forward, or how the ending reshaped what came before.
Then try composing your own interpretation and publish it on PoetrySoup. Bring a subject that can deepen through recurrence, and let your individual voice remain audible inside the shared convention. Your poem can add another approach for future readers to consider, discuss, and learn from.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 228 Chant Royal poems, offering readers a substantial range of interpretations to browse and compare. Across a collection of this size, visitors can examine different choices in voice, subject, refrain, pacing, rhyme, and closure without assuming that one example represents the whole form. Individual poets may closely follow established conventions, adapt them to suit a particular artistic purpose, or challenge reader expectations while retaining a recognizable relationship to the form.
Chant Royal Categories
Definition | What is Chant Royal in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.