Novalis: A Tribute

[milo]

"Read it as it is written"

"Read it as it was intended to be read."

Not the same at all. My sentence has three more words than does yours!

Dale

You are going to get me moderated again!

---

Novalis

Not long after his final song was sung
did friend and colleague put him down in turn
as if the world from it a sickness flung:
a rash, wrought by how bright his star did burn.

The biggest problems are those produced by torturing your words to fit the form. Phrases like "did burn" are spoken as "burned" by humans. L3 is just unparseable it has been twisted too far. "wrought by how bright his star did burn" is just awkaward and clumsy.

Like smoke, their whispers clung to the arid
halls of Academe, where sterile thought
curbed every trace of any tender bid
could move a heart to seek the things he sought.

you can't really rhyme a fem ending with an iamb (arid doesn't rhyme with bid) also, you have some acute problems with meter. L5 has only 4 feet and at least one is an anapaest. Your other line wobble in and out of meter. You also have an unwarranted tense shift here.

Yet all such men fail thereby represent
what still remains the greatest human wealth
and lay in what is labeled sentiment
with scorn, by those who’ll never know the health –

Once again, the syntax and meter are pretty twisted throughout here. I can't figure out what subject "lay" refers back to, I think you may be missing an antecedent and if not, there is definitely an indefinite antecedent.

of he, whose tears of loss fallowed the earth
from which such azure blossoms came to birth!

I made it to the end and really have no idea what the poem is supposed to be about. Azure blossoms? From where did these things spring?

I think you should consider going through and trying to restate everything using as close to regular human diction and syntax as you can muster while maintaining a discernible meter.

Thanks for posting.