A delightful poem. If I'm reading it right, it mixes some strictly metrical lines (I note the old-fashioned use of "do" in the 1st line of the 2nd stanza to ensure metrical regularity) with other lines , so the reader's--or perhaps I should this reader's--expectations are challenged, especially in the 2nd line of the 3rd stanza. To exaggerate a bit, It's as if Alexander Pope and a late Romantic collaborated on a poem.
Yes --- in the first stanza, for example, the last line starts on a stressed syllable, when the three preceding all seem to scan as more straightforwardly iambic --- so you notice the emphasis on the insect voices above the other natural sounds. There is a lot of nice stuff going on that way, in metrical variations.
Really lovely. When I read a certain kind of nature poem with strong meter and rhymes I brace myself against twee-ness. This one walked past the road to Twee without even a glance down it.
Thank you for this. I love the deictic "then" with all its freight of imagined background and context.
A delightful poem. If I'm reading it right, it mixes some strictly metrical lines (I note the old-fashioned use of "do" in the 1st line of the 2nd stanza to ensure metrical regularity) with other lines , so the reader's--or perhaps I should this reader's--expectations are challenged, especially in the 2nd line of the 3rd stanza. To exaggerate a bit, It's as if Alexander Pope and a late Romantic collaborated on a poem.
Yes --- in the first stanza, for example, the last line starts on a stressed syllable, when the three preceding all seem to scan as more straightforwardly iambic --- so you notice the emphasis on the insect voices above the other natural sounds. There is a lot of nice stuff going on that way, in metrical variations.
Really lovely. When I read a certain kind of nature poem with strong meter and rhymes I brace myself against twee-ness. This one walked past the road to Twee without even a glance down it.
Ha ha, it did indeed. Nary a glance in the direction of Twee.