The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–96). Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is ABABBCBCC.
"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats. The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year after the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome.
William Dunbar was a Scottish makar poet active in the late fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles. He was likely a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie. His surname is also spelt Dumbar.
Rhyming scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other.
John Mayne (1759–1836) was a Scottish printer, journalist and poet born in Dumfries. In 1780, his poem The Siller Gun appeared in its original form in Ruddiman's Magazine, published by Walter Ruddiman in Edinburgh. It is a humorous work on an ancient custom in Dumfries of shooting for the "Siller Gun." He also wrote a poem on Hallowe'en in 1780 which influenced Robert Burns's 1785 poem Halloween. Mayne also wrote a version of the ballad Helen of Kirkconnel. His verses were admired by Walter Scott.
"Ellens dritter Gesang", in English: "Ellen's Third Song", was composed by Franz Schubert in 1825 as part of his Op. 52, a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's 1810 popular narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, loosely translated into German.
Richard Holland or Richard de Holande was a Scottish cleric and poet, author of the Buke of the Howlat.
"To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785" is a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1785, and was included in the Kilmarnock volume and all of the poet's later editions, such as the Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect . According to legend, Burns was ploughing in the fields and accidentally destroyed a mouse's nest, which it needed to survive the winter. In fact, Burns's brother claimed that the poet composed the poem while still holding his plough.
"I that in Heill wes and Gladnes", also known as "The Lament for the Makaris", is a poem in the form of a danse macabre by the Scottish poet William Dunbar. Every fourth line repeats the Latin refrain timor mortis conturbat me, a litanic phrase from the Office of the Dead.
Galwegian Gaelic is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic formerly spoken in southwest Scotland. It was spoken by the people of Galloway and Carrick until the early modern period. Little has survived of the dialect, so that its exact relationship with other Gaelic language is uncertain.
The Prophecy of Berchán is a relatively long historical poem written in the Middle Irish language. The text is preserved in the Royal Irish Academy as MS 679 (23/G/4), with a few early modern copies. It is a prophecy made in the Early Middle Ages.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) is a narrative poem in six cantos with copious antiquarian notes by Walter Scott. Set in the Scottish Borders in the mid-16th century, it is represented within the work as being sung by a minstrel late in the 1600s.
Elegy for J.F.K. is a piece of vocal music composed by the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky in 1964, commemorating the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Schir Johine the Ros, ane thing thair is compild, also known as The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie, is the earliest surviving example of the Scottish version of the flyting genre in poetry. The genre takes the form of a contest, or "war of words", between two poets, each trying to outclass the other in vituperation and verbal pyrotechnics. It is not certain how the work was composed, but it is likely to have been publicly performed, probably in the style of a poetic joust by the two combatants, William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy, before the Court of James IV of Scotland.
In 1819, John Keats composed six odes, which are among his most famous and well-regarded poems. Keats wrote the first five poems, "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche" in quick succession during the spring, and he composed "To Autumn" in September. While the exact order in which Keats composed the poems is unknown, some critics contend that they form a thematic whole if arranged in sequence. As a whole, the odes represent Keats's attempt to create a new type of short lyrical poem, which influenced later generations.
"The Deserted House" is a poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1830, as part of his collection Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. The poem is characterised by its reliance on short lines which alternate in rhyme and meter to prevent a felicitous feel. In the poem, Tennyson uses the image of a dark house as a metaphor for a dead body
"Halloween" is a poem written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. First published in 1786, the poem is included in the Kilmarnock Edition. It is one of Burns' longer poems, with twenty-eight stanzas, and employs a mixture of Scots and English.
"Meeting at Night" is a Victorian English love poem by Robert Browning. The original poem appeared in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) in which "Night" and "Morning" were two sections. In 1849, the poet separated them into the two poems "Meeting at Night" and "Parting at Morning".
Walter Kennedy, younger brother of John Kennedy, 2nd Lord Kennedy of Dunure. Clan Kennedy. He was parson of Douglas who acquired Glentig in 1504 from John Wallace, and married Christian Hynd.
"Ca' the yowes to the knowes" is a Scottish folk song collected by Robert Burns from 1794. Although sometimes attributed to Burns himself, the seven-stanza original poem is thought to be the work of Ayrshire poet Isabel Pagan, a contemporary of Burns. The poem was partially revised by Burns, and he added an eighth stanza. Burns later re-wrote the poem on a solitary stroll in the country, and this second version consists of six stanzas. It is possible that Burns was not aware that Pagan was the original author, only noting that "this song is in the true Scottish taste, yet I do not know that either air or words were ever in print before."
