A Poet is Born

I'm going to put on display the firstfruits of my stay here at the Southwell Institute. Consider it an offering to the powers that be. I have completed my first assignment. I had to write a quatrain according to the following model (by Stephen Vincent Benet):

Daniel Boone

When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.

This is in common measure which involves two lines (the first and third) of iambic tetrameter and two lines (the second and the fourth) of iambic trimeter. My assignment was to write a poem on a historical figure prior to 1900, keep the rhyme scheme, and use one metrical substitution (which Benet allows himself in the third line, i.e. "And all lost").

For my subject I chose Thomas Aquinas's inmmurement. When he expressed an interest in joining the newly formed Dominican brotherhood, Aquinas was locked up in a tower by his mother. He spent a year with the text of Aristotle's Metaphysics and Sacred Scripture. Seeing that Thomas was resolute, his brothers had a woman "of loose moral character" enter the room to suade him from his decision. Aquinas snatched a stick from the fire, drove the terrified woman from the room, and seared the sign of the cross in the door after slamming it shut. Aquinas, so the legend goes, received a deliverance from all fleshly temptation through the ministry of angels after his display of determination to live a celibate life dedicated to study.

Anyway, here's my quatrain.

Aquinas Achieves His Chastity

Aquinas, caged, paced through the page
Of Aristotle's thought,
With fire excluded fallen flesh
And intellection sought.

I'll let you know what happens to it in class.