A Prayer for My Daughter its "metremes", or rhymical motifs, rather than common metrical devices. The poem also may be read to consist of straightforward iambic verse that relies on common metrical devices such as elision, acephalous lines, promotion, and metrical inversion. Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 of each stanza are iambic pentameter; lines 4, 6, and 7 are iambic tetrameter. For instance, using traditional principles of scansion, stanza two may be scanned as shown below, where syllables in all caps represent metrical beats, lower-case syllables represent metrical off-beats, the vertical bar represents the termination of a metrical foot, and apostrophes represent elisions.
Paris: A Poem The speaker goes on a daylong stroll, beginning in a metro tunnel, before emerging onto the streets and visiting sites such as gardens and museums. References to advertisements, art pieces, literature, and music, as well as conversation fragments, are interspersed throughout. Parts of the poem imitate the appearance of the thing being described, such as posters and plaques. While the poem is primarily written in English, many of the lines use French and a couple words are in Greek. Mirrlees never wrote anything similar in style after "Paris". The first edition of the poem, Hogarth Press's fifth publication, was printed