In his poem “The Mower against Gardens” Andrew Marvell intimates that many gardening techniques create hybrid mixtures as mix-ups, compounded by such combining.
To man, that sovereign thing and proud,
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it came;
He grafts upon the wild the tame:
That th’ uncertain and adulterate fruit
Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,
Lest any tyrant him outdo.
And in the cherry he does nature vex,
To procreate without a sex.
’Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot:
Where willing nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence: ...[more]
Similarly Daniel Defoe describes the mixtures of races that makes up our lineage in “from The Trueborn Englishman”
...Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust...[more]
And perhaps as a consequence of such admixtures, our language became broader and thus richer not least with the construction of kenning words from the Norse such as ‘flame-farewelled’ for death and ‘whale road’ for the sea.
But so too have we joined nouns or verbs together to make compounds that have meanings beyond the original roots. sagebrush; thought-provoking; sideline etc
So for today’s prompt we are turning our attention to compound words and revisiting a prompt that Grace posted in October 2021 that is the Compound Word Verse. (See here).
A poetry form invented by Margaret R. Smith (source here):-
- 15 lines
- 5 stanzas
- 3 lines per stanza
- rhyme scheme a,a,b
- meter 8/8/3
- last line of each stanza includes a compound word using the same stem
e.g. footsore, footstool, footage; OR underfoot; pussyfoot etc - poem’s title includes the stem word
Suggestions: For the a/a/ rhyme scheme try using less predictable perfect rhymes or imperfect rhymes instead
And since the third line b rhyme is made on the stem word then it probably works best if the stem is kept to either the first or last part of the compound rather than interchanged
Hint: I use this link to help me find words with the same root
Once you have written and posted your poem, according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.
Please also TAG dVerse in your post, or include a link at the end of your poem that leads readers back to this dVerse prompt
[N.B. Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST]
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