Form, rhyme and rhythm

• Form Both poems comprise two equal stanzasstanzas: Lines of poetry that make up a unit; verses. of four lines each. This form is used for many children's poems and nursery rhymes, even today. Why do you think Blake used such a simple form?
• Rhyme You can see that all four stanzas have the same rhyme scheme - with rhymes at the end of lines 2 and 4, and internal rhymes in the third line of each stanza:"The mire was deep, and the child did weep".

  This simple rhyme [rhyme: In poetry, the use of words which have the same or a similar sound - eg 'flow' and 'bow' - to form a pattern of sound. ] scheme is typical of nursery rhymes and other types of children's verse [verse: This has two meanings: lines of poetry that form a unit (=stanza), or a broad collective word for poetry. ]. It reinforces the simple, child-like feel of the poetry, and helps to make the stanzas memorable.

Jack and Jill went up the hill, To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down, and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

Rhythm If you read the poems aloud, you can hear that each stanza has a stress-pattern of four stresses in lines 1 and 3, and three stresses in lines 2 and 4. Each line consists of 4 or 3 metric feet [metric feet: The units of rhythm in poetry. In English, each foot usually contains one stressed and one or more unstressed syllables. A line of verse with 5 metric feet is called a 'pentameter'; one with four feet is called 'tetrameter'. ] - groups of stressed and unstressed syllables [syllables: The units of sound that form a word eg. tiger has 2 syllables ti-ger, and alligator has 4 syllables al-li-gat-or. ] - like this:

The night ¦ was dark, ¦ no fath er ¦ was there

The child ¦ was wet ¦ with dew

This type of metre [metre: The rhythm in a line of poetry; the number of 'metric feet' (units in a pattern of rhythms) in a line of verse. Each foot usually contains one stressed and one or more unstressed syllables. ], with each foot consisting of an unstressed, followed by a stressed, syllable, is called iambic. Because it is not completely regular - sometimes there are three syllables instead of two, sometimes the stress is on the first syllable instead of the last - the overall effect is of an underlying sing-song beat, combined with the irregular stress-pattern of ordinary conversation. This makes the poetry's sound pattern more interesting.

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