Hi, John--I think you’re making too much of this (supposedly) being an “old-fashioned poem.” Do you think that any poem about the seasons is by definition old-fashioned? I'd say that it's the treatment, not the theme, that really classifies a poem as reflecting a specific era. Even chilly twists on spring are not new: I did a search for poems in this vein and found this actual old-fashioned poem, also a sonnet:
Sonnet
by Mary Locke
I hate the Spring in parti-coloured vest,
What time she breathes upon the opening rose,
When every vale in cheerfulness is dressed,
And man with grateful admiration glows.
Still may he glow, and love the sprightly scene,
Who ne'er has felt the iron hand of Care;
But what avails to me a sky serene,
Whose mind is torn with Anguish and Despair?
Give me the Winter's desolating reign,
The gloomy sky in which no star is found;
Howl, ye wild winds, across the desert plain;
Ye waters roar, ye falling woods resound!
Congenial horrors, hail! I love to see
All Nature mourn, and share my misery.
Not that your poem has to be (genuinely) old-fashioned in order to be successful—not at all—but I think it’s important to be clear on what you’re actually doing vs. what you’re trying to do. And then you can decide which to embrace. So, to your poem:
The first stanza annoyed me with its combination of clunky meter, bald telliness, and flippant dismissal of spring poems. The underlying sentiment has promise enough, but I think there’s a more artful way it could be presented—with a more compelling meter and an approach that evokes that genre of poems for a moment; gets inside them.
The second stanza worked better for me, as I started to feel an earnest mood rising from the n and contrasting with S1. Don’t get me wrong; the meter still bothered me here. And I got tangled up by “the snow banks waver,” I think because I interpreted “ignoring” as a modifier for “the fools” rather than “we of the cold.” (The following is the commentary I’d generated just before I realized that you probably meant to modify “we of the cold” here: “I’m wondering what you mean by ‘the snow banks waver.’ To me, ‘waver’ in the context of what’s preceded would most immediately suggest that the snow banks are starting to melt. But this would not threaten the spring poets’ point of view, so that interpretation must not be correct. They waver in their attempt to melt? A different verb might serve better here.”)
I like the imagery starting from that line, though, and moving into S3. “Tilted sun” is a neat characterization, and I like the vowel sound repetition of “tilted,” “fulfills,” and “slipping.” “Slipping duty” is a neat phrase, too. But then I got a bit bungled by “so white we walkers wonder if it might disappear.” Now, if snow is going to disappear by melting, whiteness would not be an indicator—to the contrary. Of course, whiteness can also seem to disappear by blending into the sky or even into the imagination, but both of these are wholly different dynamics. What meaning are you going for here? The meter in this stanza is also very irregular, but it bothers me the least of all the stanzas’, probably because it’s almost correct accentual verse, with four stresses per line save the last one.
Finally, the couplet with its apropos-of-nothing rhyme and extra feet seemed really out of place--cerebral and tacked-on while saying nothing new. I think you’d be best off not making any conscious attempt to be “old-fashioned,” because you have your own voice, which is much more compelling than this couplet--
it feels like a pose.
For interest, here are a few more classic poems (besides Eliot’s) that I found on this basic theme:
https://poemanalysis.com/emily-dicki...t-first-robin/
https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/...incent-millay/
There’s another great one, too, that I remember from my childhood, but not well enough to pull it up. Aagh! I'm still hoping to reconnect with it somehow.
Cold Comfort
Linear Mode
