Structure
It is written in the meter called Political verse, iambic decapentasyllable (15 syllables), an evolution of the ancient Greek iambic trimeter (iambic dodecasyllable). It is not known whether it was actually set to music or it was merely a poem meant to be recited, as it only survives as a text.
Read more about this topic: The Dead Brother's Song
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“When a house is tottering to its fall,
The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part,
One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads,
And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)