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Still haunted by Haiku, and tried my hand at it, but I fall pitifully short of the Wordsworthian touch. But failure in this realm turned my mind to an old enthusiasm of mine, the Welsh englyn. This verse form was derived by the Welsh from the inscriptions which their Roman conquerors put on tombs ... A good englym must have four lines, of ten, then six, syllables, the last two lines having seven syllables each. In the first line there must be a break after the seventh, eighth, or ninth syllable, and the rhyme with the second line comes at this break; but the tenth syllable of the first line must either rhyme or be in assonance with the middle of the second line. The last two lines must rhyme with the first rhyme in the first line, but the third or fourth line must rhyme on a weak syllable. Got that?
--
"Haiku and Englyn" in The Toronto Daily Star (4 April 1959), republished in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1979) edited by Judith Skelton Grant, p. 241

 

Robertson Davies

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A rhyme's
               …
a barrel of dynamite.
                              A line is a fuse
                                                    that's lit.
The line smoulders,
                              the rhyme explodes –
and by a stanza
                        a city
                                  is blown to bits.

 

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