Nearer God's Heart ( in a garden)edit 0.001 erthona

[tectak]

"guttated," is a little iffy to hang your metrical hat on as it looks like it is three syllables when it is only two (I'm assuming a diphthong), as my inline spell checker doesn't think is a word and my dictionary makes no ruling on the adjectival form. If I read this as purely accentual verse without regard to meter, then all the lines work out to seven feet per line, which I read as like ballad meter in accentual verse in which you combine two lines into one as it has the xaxa rhyme pattern if two lines, but is in couplets when in one line, but it all sort of washes out to the same thing.

Daises bellis, pink perrenis, (4)
all around your head. (3)
Bella Donna, how you laid me (4)
in my flower bed. (3)

So the last two line work OK in accentual. Another point for you is that the four foot line reads slowly because of the extra syllable, but the short lines read as straight iambic tetrameter, which causes them to speed up.

of joy guttated, to wash away (4)
my sterile seedy past. (3)
Violas played and red your tulips (4)
...around my organ at last. (3)


If reading it that way instead of reading it as metered, then yes, the last two lines come out OK. I also noticed that at times, or at least two time, the first 4 foot line would have eight syllables and the three foot line only five, which still gives the same effect. It seems similar to a lines Blake used in the songs, although I won't go track it down, and as Leanne can attest (should she care to revel that association), our good friend Graeme King who is now dead to us, used this type of combined lines very often to comedic effect. I don't know if I ever mentioned it Leanne, but somebody had plagiarized his poem about the tiny elephant on AP, they at least had enough class to remove it and ban the person who used it as their own, after I informed them of the transgression, or transgraemtion depending on your preference. Ug, AP. Still, thanks to abu (of course you may curse him) I now have this little slice of pig heaven to roll around in.

Dale

Deep gratitude, Dale. It WAS in fun but that is no reason to drop standards. Your breakdown has cleared my thinking and will help others, too. I worked hard for two lips around my organ so forgive the pun and enjoy the fun.
Best,
tectak