Virginia Lucas Poetry Scrapbook

Formal Description of "The Shipwreck"

John Wilson’s The Shipwreck is a poem that flows in iambic tetrameter through most of the poem, save a few sections that stray and utilize a dactylic or anapestic meter, such as in the line “Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast.” This poem abides by true rhyme for most of the poem, with a few sections utilizing slant rhyme. The meter ranges from trimeter to pentameter in varying sections and a few of the lines have impure meters, for example “Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer!” This poem does not follow a singular poetic form, but it changes between couplets and quatrains as the poem progresses. It begins in ABAC and then immediately begins a couplet rhyme scheme of DDEE for a few lines until it returns to the ABAC rhyme scheme. It is in the later part of the poem that it reverts again to a couplet rhyme scheme that is written in slant rhyme. Many the lines have masculine endings and adhere to masculine rhyme except for a few lines, one example of a variation with feminine rhyme being “The main she will traverse forever & ever aye”. There are singular instances of double rhyme and triple rhyme respectively, with “asunder” and “thunder” being rhymed and then “beautiful” and “that hath flown” as well. This poem contains many instances of enjambment, at least in the way that Virginia Lucas transcribed the poem into her scrapbook. Wilson uses alliteration only once in this poem in a very short capacity, which is the use of “deep darkness”. Wilson personifies the ship in this poem by using the pronoun “her” in reference to her and describes the ship’s parts in a humanlike manner. Wilson uses simile and metaphor throughout the poem to characterize the shipwreck and the feelings of anxiety the sailors felt before the ship got wrecked.