Have you ever seen a poem
Written with beats eight to a line?
No sign of iambs, nor of rhymes,
But simple trochees numb'ring four?
And if you did, what would you think?
Perhaps that after a few lines
You'd grow so tired and bored withal
That sleep would fall upon you till
The very rafters all around
Would slip into the same profound
Deep tedium like a burial ground.

Did Henry Longfellow know that?
And still he went ahead and wrote
The Song of Hiawatha --?
Perhaps he did, but then again
Perhaps he didn't want to say
Lest he should thus prejudge us all
And pit us 'gainst his masterpiece.

Ed

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On 6/19/20 3:33 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:

Have you ever seen a poem
Written with beats eight to a line?
No sign of iambs, nor of rhymes,
But simple trochees numb'ring four?
And if you did, what would you think?
Perhaps that after a few lines
You'd grow so tired and bored withal
That sleep would fall upon you till
The very rafters all around
Would slip into the same profound
Deep tedium like a burial ground.

Did Henry Longfellow know that?
And still he went ahead and wrote
The Song of Hiawatha --?
Perhaps he did, but then again
Perhaps he didn't want to say
Lest he should thus prejudge us all
And pit us 'gainst his masterpiece.

Ed

Anyone who knows his history knows Longfellow wrote his verses on the
deeds of Hiawatha out of admiration for the poem of the Finn Elias
Lönnrot called the epic Kalevala. Christ Church Oxford’s Ludovico
Carolus then wrote a satire on the art of photographing in the “easy
running metre”. Last came Cryer, in an effort to create a satire, also,
but his effort failed completely.

--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

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John W Kennedy wrote:

On 6/19/20 3:33 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:

Have you ever seen a poem
Written with beats eight to a line?
No sign of iambs, nor of rhymes,
But simple trochees numb'ring four?
And if you did, what would you think?
Perhaps that after a few lines
You'd grow so tired and bored withal
That sleep would fall upon you till
The very rafters all around
Would slip into the same profound
Deep tedium like a burial ground.

Did Henry Longfellow know that?
And still he went ahead and wrote
The Song of Hiawatha --?
Perhaps he did, but then again
Perhaps he didn't want to say
Lest he should thus prejudge us all
And pit us 'gainst his masterpiece.

Ed

Anyone who knows his history knows Longfellow wrote his verses on the
deeds of Hiawatha out of admiration for the poem of the Finn Elias
Lönnrot called the epic Kalevala. Christ Church Oxford’s Ludovico
Carolus then wrote a satire on the art of photographing in the “easy running metre”. Last came Cryer, in an effort to create a satire, also,
but his effort failed completely.

I think a trochaic metre is as natural to the Finnish language as iambs
are to English. That's because Finnish words are normally stressed on
the first syllable.

I feel that Longfellow might just as well have tried hexameter verse,
which again is alien to English rhythms.

My iambic satire was of any attempt to write heroic verse in English quadrameters. It just doesn't work.


Ed

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