Monday, January 15, 2018

What is the rhyming scheme of the poem "As I was walking"?

"As I Was Walking" by Walter de la Mare is written in "stichic" rather than "stanzaic" form. This means that it is printed continuously rather than being divided up into stanzas separated by blank lines. It consists of twenty-eight short lines.
It is written in accentual verse with two strongly stressed syllables per line and an irregular number of weak syllables.
Despite being printed in stichic form, the poem follows a four-line stanzaic pattern, consisting of seven groups of four lines rhymed ABCB. This is the rhyme scheme used in "ballad meter"; although, ballad meter traditionally alternates lines of iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter and de la Mare uses accentual dimeter instead. The lines at the ends of these quasi-stanzaic four-line groups are always end-stopped.
The first four lines actually rhyme ABAB, but the next four are typical of the general pattern:

And wing, like amber, A
Dispread in light, B
As from bush to bush C
Linnet took flight: B

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