Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets VI

I no longer remember when I wrote this sonnet; I do know that for some reason the first line resonates with me, and pops up into my memory at strange times and in strange places.

Monochromatic as I used to be
Portrayed in only grayish scale and hue
I seek the color of eternity
Unending swathes of purple, red, and blue.
A deep cerulean to coat my sea
The evening sky a bronze museum piece
And shadows of the deepest shade of plum
Unsettling the steady light grey hum
That fills my world and never seems to cease
Except to modulate and mock at me.
These vibrant and demanding colors rise
Where black and white have stood this endless while
They burst from out your smile and your eyes
And spring like flowers in your brilliant smile.

What Went Wrong:
I think we can all look at the final two lines here and say in unison what went most wrong: I used smile twice. That was silly of me, and it robs the ending of substantial punch. I think it might be better rewritten as (well, almost anything, but try this on for size) "They burst out of the sweetness in your eyes/And spring like flowers from your brilliant smile," which has the additional virtue of correcting a couple other minor errors, specifically the prepositions. It's better to burst out of than from out and better by far to have flowers springing from the smile than in the smile, unless the subject of the poem has been eating the topiary. I'm also not a huge fan of "grayish scale and hue," because it means "gray hue" but is stretched out over more than twice as many syllables for no real reason besides meter. The "steady light gray hum" isn't nearly as bad an offender, but in the context of having already had a "grayish scale and hue" it suddenly looks suspicious. Also, is the world black and white or gray? It seems that it's probably grayscale, but the sudden introduction of the starker terms in line twelve seems out of place. And if the colors "never cease/except to modulate," are they ceasing or aren't they? It seems a bit confused, and not in a particularly fruitful way.

Not Too Shabby:
The idea of the poem is spot on. The rhyme scheme is innovative (ABABACDDCAEFEF) and I think does a nice job of bringing out the unusual nature of the colors being mentioned in the middle sestet. It also contrasts nicely the first and last quatrains with their opposition of the narrator's monochromatic life and the "demanding" colors the subject is introducing into that life. Some of the lines are quite good, notably the first, third (which is a little hyperbolic, but works well to introduce the specific colors that follow), the eleventh, and the fourteenth. I'm also quite happy that "purple, red, and blue" are then mirrored in "cerulean," "bronze," and "plum," albeit in the opposite order, which works well as conservation of color lends a sense of sincerity. I love the idea of the colors "demanding." And I simply cannot get over that first line: fitting "monochromatic" into iambic pentameter makes me ecstatic for some reason.