Chaucer Announces His Desire to Retire
Whan that passing years and Father Time’s
made difficulty in my finding sounds… rhymes!
that to the ear are similar; and ere
a line’s complete I place an eye-rhyme here
to mark its termination, but end up—oft seems—
with six iambic feet, not five, while reams
of paper I’ve expended; ’tis perverse
not to retire before I face the curse
of
writing
(in
iambic’s stead)
free verse—
and also throuplets,
not couplets.
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Paul, this is a fascinating poem about Chaucer’s patterned rhymes like the metrical rhymed couplets used in the “Canterbury Tales.” He also wrote in “rhyme royal” with seven-line stanzas of ababbcc, ballades, octosyllabic couplets and other medieval formalized structures. Regardless of what others may say, unrhymed metrical blank verse would not appear in English until the mid-1500’s and true free verse in the 19th century. Medieval poets judged poetry by its adherence to metrical discipline, not expressive freedom.