Innocence

[dukealien]

Innocence

Innocence looks ever toward its loss
blindly fleeing magic and wonderment
realizing not what its yearnings will cost;
too late to recapture childhood’s content.
Willfully, these carefree days fall away,
Annus mirabilis they disappear.
Yearning, he bids not these marvels to stay,
nor joy does he bring without sending tears.
No! Wisdom secures not fled innocence
nor buys back that ransomed for pleasures brief.
Forever regret stains this happenstance
the rest of life spent in thrall to this grief.
Truth on young ears falls dumb: ignored bequest.
“Once out you may ne’er return to this nest.”


Yeah, I know it was supposed to be a sonnet, but...

It starts out as a sonnet and ends as a sonnet... don't sell yourself short (g).

In basic critique, this contains many good thoughts on the subject of innocence and its loss.  On the way to expressing and organizing them, there are a few things you might wish to consider as you rewrite.

First are, of course, possibly tightening up the rhyme and meter.  A sonnet doesn't have to be iambic pentameter, and rhymes don't have to be exact to serve perfectly well.  However, it may be worth altering sentence structure just enough to (for example) get verb forms to match so rhymes aren't compromised by a trailing "s" in one form but not the other.  Meter is similar, and could be tackled a line or two at a time to get a little closer to "pure" IP (which is sort of mythical, anyway).  It should prove noticeably easier to read aloud as that gets closer.

Another general area you may want to examine is inversions, that is, sentences not in the common spoken word order - "John quickly to the field runs" would be an inversion of "John runs quickly to the field."  It's often possible to use normal structure if one puts one's mind to it, and again this makes the reader's job easier (no need to mentally re-order sentences for understanding).  Inversions also sound a bit archaic, but if that's your intent, go for it!

Another area to look at is consistency (continuity, if this were a story).  You begin by referring to Innocence as "it" but later personify it as "he."  A small change would eliminate this minor problem (and help the reader, who otherwise will be looking for a person other than Innocence to which "he" refers).

The verso at line 9 is nicely in keeping with the sonnet form, and the final couplet is a good redirection/new development.

Example of inversion below includes a rewrite, may be skipped.

For line 8,

nor joy does he bring without sending tears

could change to

nor does he bring joy without sending tears

which can be read as iambic though "without" remains an allowable variance.  Your version emphasizes "joy"  rather than "he," though.