The following description is reposted with permission from The Poets Garret. My thanks for the fine body of work maintained on that site.
Wreathed and Unwreathed Sestets
Wreathed poetry is simply a natural blending of English poetry with the Celtic Welsh. Its creator George Herbert was born into a wealthy artistic family in Wales and later was educated in Trinity College, Cambridge and was unpublished until after his death. It is believed that his poem A Wreath was inspired by the Welsh form Englyn cryrch which uses an internal rhyme scheme with an external one and gives a couplet scheme of:
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
The red in the second line indicates that the internal rhyme can be anywhere in the first part of second line and can be a repeat word rather than a rhyme. that is the poets decision. There is no internal rhyme in the first line, It was later that poets saw the possibilities and created the sestet with a rhyme scheme of:
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
Here is an example of that form:
Not Nerd
A simple envelope is not hard
What is hard is finding words
Words are a problem to the bard
Because bards are never nerds
As for nerdish be on your guard
Yes guard against all lollard’s
Anon
Unwreathed Poetry
Later poets realised that some Irish forms led with an internal form and from that was born Un-wreath poetry, simply the reverse of Wreath in that the first line starts with an internal rhyme with the second external and so on, there being no seventh line there is no external rhyme, giving this sestet a basic rhyme scheme of:
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. a.
My Example
Form: Wreathed Sestet
Hurry Earlier
“I think I’ve water on my brain –
all my hurry in vain to night.
And yet tonight with all this rain
I’ll miss the train though it’s in sight.
The lights shine brightly in the train.
Wasted time caused this pain and plight.”
© Lawrencealot – March 3, 2015
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