<p>Earlier this year I wrote an epic poem that got published on the last page of my school’s literary magazine, and I’m considering working into my essay for a few of the colleges I’m applying to. I realize that it is somewhat common for students to include narratives and excerpts from various English essay in their application essays, but this poem, I feel, would give my essay an even more original quality than these students’ fictions. The poem–written in the epic, old-fashioned poetry style (what a shame that modern poetry has completely eclipsed it!), lyrical and ambitious yet mysterious and highly original–represents me as well as anything I’ve ever written (and strange thing that it should come in the form of poetry–something I’ve only tried twice). </p>
<p>Anyway, my question is this: Would making this poem the theme of my college essay be a good idea? Or is it too nebulous? </p>
<p>Thanks, any advice is greatly appreciated! </p>
<p>Franconia Notch </p>
<p>The woes of the night I should have heeded;<br>
Their portents of the morrow were all that was needed.
Yet careless I lay, and sleepless did stray,
To mysterious fears which no thought could allay. </p>
<p>As I whittled the night in those hours so late,
Like a fool unsuspecting in the hands of his fate,
The shadows did dance and the ravens did pray;
There was something amiss in that absence of day. </p>
<p>In the morning I rose with a new kind of taste–
A thirst, a desire, to be quenched with great haste.
I assembled the tools, and neglected the rules,
Which to me seemed mere guidelines for fools! </p>
<p>I must have been driven, looking back on that week.
But what–what end to a means did I seek?
Both wonders and evils did that night so entail,
And I caution
but never mind! and on with the tale! </p>
<p>I was many times lost, and more often confounded,
But such was my passion that I always rebounded.
Yet such was my glee, it came with a fee,
And ambition did all but desert me. </p>
<p>Like many a project abandoned in plight,
Or endeavor turned sour in the span of one night,
As did mine in the even’ing gloom,
Consign me in deed to inglorious doom. </p>
<p>I saw what I’d done; I saw my creation.<br>
'Twas a frightening thing that erased all elation:
The longer it seethed, the more steam it breathed,
With all the more fire was its armor enwreathed! </p>
<p>'Twas then I perceived what a fool I had been,<br>
As I found myself standing at the mouth of the den.
Within lay the beast, in the fury and flame,
Whom I’d nurtured and fed, and regarded so tame! </p>
<p>Should you ever conspire to plot your demise,
I trust that your fate won’t be a surprise,
As was mine on that most twisted of nights,
When I fought off a doom I’d conceived in delight. </p>
<p>Now here let me say, and say to you briefly,
What I did just then, and caution you chiefly,
Of the haunt of a ghost who keeps nightly his watch–
The loser of the battle of Franconia Notch. </p>
<p>I steeled my nerves; I prepared the attack;
I bent my knees; I drew my hand back.
“Fiery demon, your undoing’s a’comin!”
And I removed the muffins from the oven.</p>