Virginia Lucas Poetry Scrapbook

A Formal Description of "Ode to the Flowers"

“Hymn to the Flowers” by Horace Smith is a sixty line poem broken in fifteen stanzas of four lines. The poem tends to follow an iambic rhythm. Each stanza contains three lines in iambic pentameter and a final line which is either in iambic dimeter or anapestic dimeter depending on the stanza. In the first stanza, the first three lines are in iambic pentameter with a tag at the end of each line, and the fourth line in the stanza is an anapest followed by an iamb. In line six, a new trend throughout the poem is started through “Before the uprisen sun, God’s lidless eye”. The second line in each stanza drops the tag at the end of the line. Line eight, “Incense on high”, begins a pattern that remains consistent throughout the fourth line of each stanza for the rest of the poem. Line eight is in iambic dimeter, and the fourth lines in each stanza do not divert from that pattern except for two instances. In line thirty-six, “From lowliest nook”, the rhythm is an iamb followed by an anapest, and in line fifty-six, “And of second birth”, it is an anapest followed by an iamb. The rhyme lends quite a bit to the poem as a whole. The poem follows a quatrain rhyme scheme with no rhymes repeating more than once throughout all sixty lines of the poem. Each stanza is also written with enjambment through each of the for stanzas of the poem with a conclusion to the thought in the fourth line. The aforementioned tag is a feminine rhyme. Feminine rhyme remains consistent through the entirety of the poem. Line two breaks the feminine trend and switches to masculine rhyme. The second line in each stanza remains consistently masculine rhyme. The last line in each stanza is also a masculine rhyme. While the rhymes are in quatrains, the quatrains also follow a feminine, masculine, feminine, masculine scheme. The consistency of the iambic meter and use of feminine rhyme lends itself to the song-like nature of the poem. This calls to mind a hymn a congregation may sing during a church service with the “natural” rhythm and light rhyme scheme.