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.
Tercet the outer lines of the next stanza rhyme with the central line of the preceding stanza, BCB, as in the "terza rima" or "terzina" form of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. There has been much investigation of the possible sources of the Dantesque "terzina", which Benedetto Croce characterised as "linked, enclosed, disciplined, vehement and yet calm". William Baer observes of the tercets of terza rima, "These interlocking rhymes tend to pull the listener's attention forward in a continuous flow... Given this natural tendency to glide forward, terza rima is especially well-suited to narration and description". The tercet also forms part of