Thread: Asclepiadics
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Unread 07-12-2004, 08:42 AM
Hugh Clary Hugh Clary is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Albuquerque, NM, USA
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This one by Auden is said to be in accentual asclepiads:

IN DUE SEASON


Springtime, Summer and Fall: days to behold a world
Antecedent to our knowing, where flowers think
Theirs concretely in scent-colors and beasts, the same
Age all over, pursue dumb horizontal lives
On one level of conduct and so cannot be
Secretary to man's plot to become divine.


Lodged in all is a set metronome: thus, in May
Bird-babies still in the egg click to each other Hatch!;
June-struck cuckoos go off-pitch; when obese July
Turns earth's heating up, unknotting their poisoned ropes,
Vipers move into play; warned by October's nip,
Younger leaves to the old give the releasing draught.


Winter, though, has the right tense for a look indoors
At ourselves, and with First Names to sit face-to-face,
Time for reading of thoughts, time for the trying-out
Of new metres and new recipes, proper time
To reflect on events noted in warmer months
Till, transmuted, they take part in a human tale.


There, responding to our cry for intelligence,
Nature's mask is relaxed into a mobile grin,
Stones, old shoes, come alive, born sacramental signs,
Nod to us in the First Person of mysteries
They know nothing about, bearing a message from
The invisible sole Source of specific things.


From http://www.lovenpoetry.com/terms%20a.htm :


Asclepiad:

A Classical metrical line made up of a spondee, two or three choriambs, and one iamb or spondee, i.e., / '' / ' ~~ ' / ' ~ ~ ' / ~ ' / (named after the Greek poet Asclepiades, ca. 290 B.C.). Examples of accentual asclepiads in English include Sir Philip Sidney's "O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness" from Arcadia, and W. H. Auden's "In Due Season."

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