A throwback to a vivid, more romantic time.

I like how this poem carries a particular, original rhythm. The rhyme is a bit uncommon as well. A sample verse:

The dawn of peace may take an age,
But comes with waxing pace,
For in the blackest, cruelest page,
The man of yore found grace.

This is the second verse. All the verses in this poem, five of them, have the same meter and rhyme, a neo-formalist chant of sorts. These are followed by a three line refrain with its own rhyme: a x a.

The verses all follow abab. The missing line in the final refrain leaves an impression of unfinished business, hence the title “An Unfinished History.” My favorite verse in this little ditty is a bit on the confessional side, which I tend not to go for much, but in this case I found it appropriate:

To counter songs of bleakest sight
That from these fingers flew,
I write assured that human plight
Will stain the hands of few.

The “I” adds an element of mystery and intrigue that doesn’t come through in the rest of the poem but that I’d like to be there. Preceding this verse is a nice set up and the first mention of I at all.

I love how the poem moves from the light that gathers “on the crust of dawn” to “Ah, and here I sense an urge.” This is a turning point in the poem where movement goes from the primordial dawn of history to “draw these lines that I might purge / The fog from verse for all:”

And this is where the poet, Isaac Hopkins, an 18-year-old college student, reveals for the first time that his unfinished history is an ars poetica that praises the history of verse itself. What we think is a history of time is actually a history of poetry. And then in the end, the poet, or poets, becomes a beast who become the “champions of mental man” who “Will cleanse – are cleansing now -” and all of a sudden I feel cleansed.

Hopkins may be a young man, but this particular poem shows a strength of age. I like the change in rhythm from line to line – A lines stick to iambic tetrameter while B lines sing along in an iambic trimeter. The oscillating rhythm is a part of the poem’s charm and adds a post-postmodern flavor to the Romantics’ signature.