>
> Hello Mary! Thanks for looking in on this one. What would you say is the
> most awkward moment in the sonnet?
>
> Carl

Difficult to say Carl, but if pushed I would say somewhere within these
lines...

> by work and trade. A garden sculpture tap
> released a spire of joyful plans: Nemours
> a subtle marvel to behold: the might
> of shooting, reaching water. Dirt, manure

 simply because I feel there are too many colons and I lost my way within
the meaning.  Perhaps a dash after 'behold' might have been better, but then
I am no expert.   After reading some of the other comments I begin to wonder
what I see that other perhaps don't.  But then again it is all a matter of
taste.  And I love sonnets.

:)~Mary

> > I have only seen photographs of Longwood Gardens, never been there
> > but how you describe it in the sonnet is how I imagine it to be.  I
> > did not know the history of it beginnings so this makes for an
> > interesting work.
> > I like the line wraps (enjambment?) nice work.  Nice tone and flow
> > too.
> >
> > Mary
> ========poem below is same as original========
> The Longwood Story
>
> My father killed, and I his eldest son,
> a Brandywine du Pont, began to map
> my way within that name: a future won
> by work and trade. A garden sculpture tap
> released a spire of joyful plans: Nemours
> a subtle marvel to behold: the might
> of shooting, reaching water. Dirt, manure
> are cheerful mire! We'll catch electric light
> in lustrous leaping sprays and tumbling pools,
> and stroll through cacti, boxwood, hothouse ferns
> and vines in shallow blackened mirrors. Schools
> of fish and floriculture give returns
> on my initial buy of Pierce's Park,
> established now as Pennsylvania ark.