University Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1908-1916, 1914-03-05
The following article by Professor
Miller Is designed to be of aid to those
wishing to enter the Field poem con.
test at the University OF Missouri.
BY Raymond ID. Miller.

wishing to enter the Field poem con.
test at the University OF Missouri.
BY Raymond d. Miller.
The failure of the contestants for
the Field prize during the last two
years has been in large measure due to
unskilled technique. A poem which
reveals metrical crudities will invaria-
bly, be thrown out. in spite of other
merits it may have, whereas a reason
ably successful theme, developed in
faultless verse, with adequate dictiOn,
has a much better chance of winning
the prize. 1t is hoped that the con-
testants this year will give more at
tentiOn to the technical side of versifi-
cation.
In restricting the meters employed
in poems submitted for the Field prize
to the iambic pentameter, rimed or
blank, and the Spenserian stanza. the
committee sought to guide rather than
to hamper the contestants. Young
writers are often tempted to essay
some bizarre form TO which only a
miracle of genius could give life
Trochaic and dactylic rhymths have
seldom been markedly successful in
English poetry. and the seductive Tilt
of the anapest has made many versi-
fer content with superficial clever
ness. To succeed with the forms that
have been approved by the great mas
ters is true test of merit Yet within
the limits set. the choice is by no
means narrow, as a glance at the sub
joined list will show.
Blank verse:
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath
of morn,
Far from the fiery noon. and ewes
one star.
Sat gray-haired Saturn. quiet as a
stone.
Keats: Hyperion.
Examples: Shakespeare's PLAYS
largely: Millions Paradise Lost:
Wordsworth's Prelude, Excursion.
Tintern Abbey: Shelley's Alastor. Ar
nold's Schrab and Rustum: TennysOn's |
Idylls of the King, Ulysses, The Prime
cess, Enoch Arden: Browning's The !
Ring and the Book, Andrae del Sarto:
Stephen Phillips Paola and Frances
ca.
Heroic COmplet "a a b b e d d. J.:
At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero. the fair.
Whom young Apollo courted for her
hair,
And offered as a dover his burning
throne,
Where she should sit for men to
gaze upon.
MarlOwe: Hero and Leander.
Examples: Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales largely; Dryden, Pope, Gold
smith, Johnson, Crabbe; Keats's Endy-
miOn, Lamia; Shelley's Epipsychidon;
SordellO; Swinburne's
Tristan of LyOnesse: Morris's Life and
Death of Jason.
The Heroic Quatrain "a b a b): |
The boast of heraldry. the pomp of
power.
And all that beauty. all that wealth
e'er gave,
Awaits alike tn inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the
grave.
Tray: Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard. d.
The quatrain may be variOusly rim
ID: abba, as in Tennyson's In Memo
lam four-stress verse: aaba, as in
Fitzgerald Rubaiyat of Omar Khay-
'am.
Stanza (ababb):
Upward along the aeOns of old war
They sought him: wing and shank
bone. claw and bill
We're fashioned and rejected: wide
and far }
They roamed the twilight jungles of c
their will:
But still they sought him and desir- L
ed him still. f
Moody: The Menagerie.
he Venus and AdOnis Stanza (ababcc) h
But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled I
by me:
uncouple at the timorous flying hare. c
Or at the fox. which lives by sub d
tlety. n
Or at the roe. which no encounter f
dare: +,
Pursue these fearful creatures DER h
the downs, 1
And on thy well-breatb'd horse n
IL. 4.