lesson for a boy
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long--
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng;
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride--
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise,
And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies;
Tender warmth at his heart, with these meters to show it,
With sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet--
May crown him with fame, and must win him the love
Of his father on earth and his Father above.
My dear, dear child!
Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge
See a man who so loves you as your fond S.T. Coleridge.
Footnotes in an old Norton reader explain the poem was originally written for/to Coleridge's elder son Hartley, but later adapted for Derwent.
What with the ready-reference remarked in connection with the Chuang Tsu story, the recent spate of postings in iambic pentameter, and the bibliomantic revelation of a destructive writing effort by Crowley, it seemed like time to post this: a) I would like to refer to this piece -- as a compendium and illustration of feet-other-than-iambi -- in much the same way I refer to the Prince's Cook; b) it is plausibly destructive writing because, let's face it, this poem is not beautiful, it does not even try to be beautiful, and after
. . . Five miles meandering with a mazy motionand the like -- real, beautiful art constructed with metered rhyme -- this lesson is a pedantic exercise, interesting, informative, perhaps educational with respect to obscure metrical feet, but more of a well-executed exercise than objet d'art. Accordingly, a poem against poetry, minutely addressing minute details of the practice of constructing poetry, this work seems to partake of some of the ethos of destructive writing.
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
The reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war! . . .