Short Particular Measure All the authorities seem to agree that this has 6-line stanzas rhyming aabaab, with syllable counts of 668668 (that’s 334334 in feet). Mysteriously, all the authorities then go on to give examples with syllable counts of 448448! On the assumption that what they say is more reliable than what they do, I offer this as an example of SPM:
He made the sheep and hogs; He made the mice and frogs, Our great Creator sempitern – And us, and cats, and dogs. So say our theologues: One day to pasta we’ll return.
Pasted from <http://volecentral.co.uk/vf/measures.htm#Short%20Particular%20Measure> My thanks to Bob Newman for his years of work on the wonderful Volecentral resource.
My example
Loosing It! (Short Particular Measure)
I’m really quite amused when some words are misused Since poets offered help one time cannot be disabused they cannot be excused. Perhaps they ought to switch to mime.
Description: A stanzaic sestet with lines of two lengths and two rhymes. Lines 1, 2, 3, and 5 are four feet long with the “a” rhyme. Lines 4 and 6 are two feet long with the “b” rhyme.
Attributed to: Habbie Simson, the piper of Kilbarchan Origin: Scottish Schematic: Rhyme: aaabab
Meter (Iambic):
xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX xX
The Burns stanza is named after Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). The form already existed before he made it his own; its old name was standard Habbie, after Habbie Simpson (1550-1620), the Piper of Kilbarchan, its earliest known exponent. (I have seen the spelling standart Habbie often enough to think that maybe it isn’t a misprint after all.) This form is also sometimes known as the Scottish stanza or the six-line stave.
Stanzas have 6 lines rhyming aaabab, the a lines having four feet each and the b lines two, something like this:
The Fire Brigade
Their uniforms are so divine, A shiver tingles up my spine! I swear I never saw so fine A band of men. Their mission: let nothing combine With oxygen.
My heroes! For although each knows The perils, through the fire he goes Armed only with a rubber hose With which he aims His stream at all the reddest glows To douse the flames.
Such gallantry! And yet he spurns The prize his courage surely earns. My ardour for his brave heart burns And won’t extinguish. I serenade him à la Burns (Although in English).
The Burns stanza is an example of rime couée.
Notable Burns stanzas:
A great deal of Burns’ work, including To a Mouse, To a Louse, To a Haggis, etc. A nice modern example is W N Herbert’s To a Mousse.
The foxes sleep without concern then yawn and wake and take their turn at foraging with time to burn; and when they’re done from all their worries they adjourn. and just have fun.
I often wished that I could sleep without a need for counting sheep but having problems seems to keep my mind awake I’ve bills to pay and floors to sweep for heaven’s sake.
The things the neighbor lady said about another neighbor’s bread (a cause for gustatory dread) now interrupt with thoughts of recipes instead I can’t keep up.
Today I didn’t gas the car. Tomorrow I can’t drive too far. I’m meeting Bobby at the bar, and with his dad! Is that unusual? bizarre? or is it rad?
I need to get my clothes all clean. I’ll wash them in our new machine. Perhaps I’ll cut down on caffeine. And then I’ll doze without the thinking in between, do you suppose?
The foxes living near our yard don’t think of debts or their bank card. They don’t find sleeping very hard. Live for today is seemingly a fox canard; can that be hard?
The foxes sleep without concern then yawn and wake and take their turn At foraging with time to burn; and when they’re done from all their worries they adjourn. and just have fun.
The foxes sleep without a care, their ears alert to what’s out there detecting sounds with time to spare and then they play. It’s here and now, not when and where. Let’s live today!
Rime Couée is a tail-rhymed verse form of 12th century Provencal troubadours. Though it originated in France, it is thought to be the predecessor of the more popular Scot form, the Burns Stanza.
The Rime Couée is:
stanzaic, written in any number of sixains made up of two tercets.
accentual, folk meter of normal speech. L1,L2, L4, L5 are longer lines of a similar length, L3 and L6 are shorter lines of the same length.
The lai is a form of French origin, even more ancient than the virelai ancien (which evolved from it). It is not to be confused with the Breton lay, a quite different form of which Chaucer‘s Franklin’s Tale is an example; or the lay, a term sometimes used for a short historical ballad, such Sir Walter Scott‘s Lay of the Last Minstrel; or with the word lay used simply to mean a song.
Having ensured your total lack of confusion, let me tell you what the lai actually is. It’s like a slimmed-down virelai ancien, with the stanzas not linked by rhyme. Here’s one:
Lai of the Cow
The praises I sing
Of that wondrous thing
The cow.
Let the rafters ring!
My Muse shall take wing,
I vow.Foods our cattle bring
Are fit for a king,
And how!
As white as can be,
The smooth quality
Of silk,
The epitome
Of maternity,
Its milk.You have to agree
You never will see
Its ilk.
For an honoured guest
Save the very best:
The cream.
While those not so blest
Make do with the rest,
And dream.
So nice to digest,
That when it’s suppressed,
Folk scream!You can churn milk, so
It becomes yellow
Butter.
What could beat that? Oh,
Don’t scoff in that low
Mutter!
I will not forgo
Such pleasure; I’m no
Nutter.|
Or you cheddar it.
Thus you make a bit
Of cheese,
A prerequisite
For one exquisite
Good wheeze:
Let’s get the grill lit
And make Welsh rarebit.
Yes please!
Our bovine-sourced feast,
Has it still not ceased?
Good grief!
No, last but not least,
Its flesh when deceased:
The beef.
The worth of this beast
Could not be increased,
In brief.
The syllable count in each triplet of lines is 5, 5, 2, and each triplet rhymes aab. The number of such triplets must be the same in each stanza, and at least two. To assert my virility, I chose to use three. According to the definition I have used, all the triplets within a stanza must use the same rhymes – so in this example the rhyming scheme for each stanza is aabaabaab.
However, I have in front of me a poem by Paul Verlaine – it’s called Chanson d’Automne – which has lines the right length for a lai, but stanzas that rhyme aabccb. So is it a lai? I don’t know, but it’s a far better poem than mine, which is the important thing.
As with many of these old forms, the effort involved in writing one is usually out of all proportion to the worth of the finished poem. But don’t let me talk you out of it!
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