The O'Shaughnessy

• The O’Shaughnessy

is a verse form patterned after a single stanza in “Ode” by Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881).

The O’Shaughnessy is:
○ stanzaic, written in any number of octaves.
○ metered, sprung rhythm, alternating trimeter and tetrameter lines. The odd number lines are trimeter and the even number lines are tetrameter.
○ rhymed, rhyme scheme abababab. The odd numbered lines are feminine rhyme and the even numbered lines are masculine rhyme.

Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=668
My thanks to Judi Van Gorden for creating the fine resource at PMO.
Sprung rhythm is a poetic rhythm designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech. It is constructed from feet in which the first syllable is stressed and may be followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables.[1] The British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins claimed to have discovered this previously unnamed poetic rhythm in the natural patterns ofEnglish in folk songs, spoken poetry, Shakespeare, Milton, et al. He used diacritical marks on syllables to indicate which should be drawn out (acute e.g. á ) and which uttered quickly (grave, e.g., è).
Some critics believe he merely coined a name for poems with mixed, irregular feet, like free verse. However, while sprung rhythm allows for an indeterminate number of syllables to a foot, Hopkins was very careful to keep the number of feet he had per line consistent across each individual work, a trait that free verse does not share. Sprung rhythm may be classed as a form of accentual verse, due to its being stress-timed, rather than syllable-timed,[2] and while sprung rhythm did not become a popular literary form, Hopkins’s advocacy did assist in a revival of accentual verse more generally.[3]
Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprung_rhythm>
For a thoroughly technical treatise on Sprung Rhythm see:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/Papers/HayesAndMooreCantwell2011GerardManleyHopkins.pdf
Note: The Ode presented above does NOT comply with the specifications presented, in that the second stanza has a rhyme pattern of  a a b b a b a b.
My example poem:
In Transit

In Transit (The O’Shaughnessy)

She made my ride to work a pleasure
Although she dressed in casual clothes
She’d beat the rest by any measure.
When first I thought to speak I froze.
But transit-time provided leisure
and we both used it I suppose
to stoke romance we’ll always treasure
for on this night I shall propose.

(c) Lawrencealot = July 6, 2014

The Gilbert

• The Gilbert is a verse form in which a theme reoccurs in different settings from stanza to stanza. It is named for William Schwenk Gilbert (1836-1911) of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, (operettas for which Gilbert provided the lyrics). The form is patterned after his poem The House of Peers.

The Gilbert is:
○ written in 3 septets.
○ metered, L1,L3,L4,L6,L7 are tetrameter , L2 and L5 are trimeter.
○ rhymed, rhyme scheme xabbacc xdeedff etc. x being unrhymed.

The House of Peers by WS Gilbert
When Britain really ruled the waves –
In good Queen Bess’s time)
The House of Peers made no pretence
To intellectual eminence,
Or scholarship sublime;
Yet Britain won her proudest bays
In good Queen Bess’s glorious days!
When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte,
As every child can tell,
The House of Peers, throughout the war,
Did nothing in particular,
And did it very well;
Yet Britain set the world ablaze
In good King George’s glorious days!
And while the House of Peers withholds
Its legislative hand,
And noble statesmen do not itch
To interfere with matters which
[They do not understand,
As bright will shine Great Britain’s rays,
As in King George’s glorious days!
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=668
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for her years of effort in creating this fine PMO resource.

My example poem
The NBA Finals 2014 (The Gilbert)
When San Antonio had lost
one game to tie it up
some thought the Heat could now prevail
at home, and through the series sail.
LeBron, he just said “Yup.”
But then the Spurs began to mesh.
The bench produced to keep Tim Fresh.
With seventy-one first half points
the Spurs put on a show.
When “Pop” told Leonard, “take the game,
to them!”, he did so to acclaim.
and made Dwayne Wade look slow.
The three main stars became his cast;
and his defense kept James harassed.
When it was done, then anyone
who knew the game could see
the team denied their dream last year
had switched into their highest gear
B-ball as meant to be.
They polished up a show for fans.
There was no sitting on your hands.
© Lawrencealot – July 3, 2014
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The Gilbert

Trilonnet

Created by Shelley A. Cephas
A 14 line poem made up of four tercets and one rhyming couplet.
Meter: iambic tetrameter or iambic pentameter.
Each 3 line verse is an unrhymed triplet, but there is rhyming between the stanzas..
2 rhyme schemes: abcabcabcabcdd  or abccbaabccbadd
Example Poem
Little Brick Library
When I was young,  and that means wee,
My nearby library did astound.
I started stopping every day.
I’d roam the shelves from about  three
’til five o’clock or ’til I’d found
one book I could not put away.
It was wonderful they were free;
the best resource that I had found
and books had so darn much to say.
This was long ‘fore girls intrigued me.
The building was a good friend found,
where I’d rather hang-out than play.
Those short years opened wide the door.
to much I still plan to explore.
(c) Lawrencealot – May 4, 2012
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