Subject: The meter...
Author:
Posted on: 2014-02-28 20:20:00 UTC

... is iambic tetrameter (though I think I have one 7-beat line in there). The assonance scheme is... complex. It looks like this:

There was a merry [passenger]
A [messenger], a {mariner}
He built a gilded
To and {had in her}...

In each set of four lines, there are three separate trisyllabic assonances to keep track of. Sometimes they're straight rhymes - 'passenger' and 'messenger' - but sometimes they're just little bits - 'gONDola' and 'wANDer in'.

I'd not actually made the connection back to alliterative verse - but you're right. I suppose it makes sense, since the Hobbits and Rohirrim have a history together, that they'd muck about with the same sorts of poetic constructs.

hS

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