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Tread

Shelby Minick 1995 (Fairfax, VA)

August 22

Rhymed

I tread upon a darkened path:
Confusion’s shade and fog of wrath
Cloud so the way, my eyes do fail
To ascertain the narrow trail.

Tread follows tread as on I go,
Through brambles sharp along the road;
And voices soft but threat’ning speak
To call aside my weary feet.

But press I on, through murky way.
I must soon see the light of day;
For darkness lingers but a time
‘Ere it dispels in gold sun’s shine

About this poem

Musings on life's often dark path

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Written on August 01, 2022

Submitted by Dirhaval on August 03, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

: 27 sec read
: 82 Views

Quick analysis:

Scheme	AABB XXXX CCXX
Closest metre	Iambic tetrameter
Characters	422
Words	90
Stanzas	3
Stanza Lengths	4, 4, 4

Full analysis for Tread »

Shelby Minick

Shelby grew up reading from a young age and was encouraged to try her hand at different writing styles throughout her schooling years. She began writing poetry several years ago, and her influences are such poets as Tennyson, Longfellow, Kipling, and Tolkien, to name a few. more…

All Shelby Minick poems | Shelby Minick Books

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annetteberberena
I can relate
LikeReply8 months ago
Vixility
The lovely thing about this poem is how the universal theme of endurance (spiritual or otherwise) is expressed through classical vernacular and deliberate poetic meter. The poetic diction and devices used to covey the poem’s message are several and seldom used. For example, the poet uses an elision in line 7 in order to preserve the iambic tetrameter on which the poem’s structure is based. Lines 5 and 9 employ hyperbatons (e.g. ‘press I on’ rather than ‘I press on’). The end rhymes of lines 5 and 6 is a clever oblique rhyme that manipulates the long ‘o’ in order to achieve its end (via assonance). And of course, there is the triple alliterative ‘s’ processions of lines 7and 10, to name a few. But most importantly, the universal condition of struggle and temptation and endurance is a topic familiar to every last one of us—it is truly a broad-spectrum theme. Yes, I very much appreciate this poet’s style and choice of topic. more »
LikeReply8 months ago
Palomamckee
There were a lot of good poems and I had a tough time narrowing it down, but this one just kept popping up to mind. It reminds me of a Robbert Frost poem but more than that I like the message to keep walking through the darkness because the light will come and it will get better. more »
LikeReply8 months ago

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"Tread" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 3 Jun 2023. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/136951/tread>.

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