Spenserian Quintilla

[Tinker]

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American Verse

The Spenserian Quintilla is an American stanzaic form which was first recognized by Miller Williams in Patterns of Poetry when he notes a Spenserian variation framing The Second Best Bed by Howard Nemerov, he called it the Spenserian Quintilla.

The elements of the Spenserian Quintilla are:

1. stanzaic, written in any number of cinquains.
2. syllabic, L1-L4 are 8 syllables each, L5 is 12 syllables.
3. rhymed, axabb cxcdd etc x being unrhymed.

   The Second-Best Bed by Howard Nemerov
   
   Consider now that Troy has burned
   ---Priam is dead, and Hector dead,
   And great Aeneas long since turned
   Away seaward with his gods
   To find, found or founder, against frightful odds.
   
   And figure to yourselves the clown
   Who comes with educated word
   To illustrate in mask and gown
   King Priam's most illustrious son
   And figure forth his figure with many another one
   
   Of that most cremented time
   In times have been or are to be
   Inhearsed in military rime;
   And will recite of royal fates
   Until, infamonized among those potentates

   By a messenger from nearer home,
   His comedy is compromised
   And he must leave both Greece and Rome
   Abuilding but not half begun,
   To play the honest Troyan to a girl far gone.

   The wench lived on, if the son died---
   All Denmark wounded in one bed
   Cried vengeance on the lusty bride,
   Who could not care that there would follow,
   After the words of Mercury, songs of Apollo.
   ------------ from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov 1977