Look, a test! It's FOUR OR LESS!

[featherynscale]

Here's a challenge to sharpen your brain on dull, grey Friday: Take a piece of literature, poetry, play, or other type, your choice, and re-write it (or a chunk of it), using only words of four letters or less.

This is not as easy as it sounds. If you are re-writing poetry, can you keep the sense of the thing and still keep the rhyme scheme and scansion (if any)? (Bonus game: once these get posted, can you tell what they are? Mine's pretty easy.)


Big cat, big cat, who is on fire
In the wood in dark, so dire
What hand or eye that will not die
Did make the form we fear to spy?

In what far off sea or sky
Did burn the fire of your eye?
What wing bore him up to sol?
With what hand dare he take the coal?

And what wide back, what art, what goal?
Did form the thew that held your soul?
And when thy soul did move in thee
What hand or foot made this to be?

What did beat, and what did bind?
In what oven was thy mind?
What held thy form, and what dire hold
Did grip that fear and make so bold?

And when each star did toss his dart
And wept as if the sky did part
Did he grin, his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Big cat, big cat, who is on fire
In the wood in dark so dire
What hand or eye that will not die
Did make the form we fear to spy?

(I wrote this for a similar challenge a few years ago, and then lost it, but today I discovered it and wanted to pass the fun along.)

Comments

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Naw, you gotta have Nantucket in that one, or it just doesn't work.