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.
Syllabic verse "flowers" (a w-glide) as 1. Because these lines are longer, irregular, and frequently enjambed ("as the / dead fountains"), it is quite clear that the symmetry of syllables is not meant to be audible. Moore's use of end-rhyme is telling. Only 2 lines in each stanza are rhymed: these are "emphasized" for the reader by indentation, but "hidden" from the listener by radical enjambment ("fawn- / brown" and "coxcomb- / tinted"). Elizabeth Daryush, known for her use of syllabic verse, used the quaternion form for her celebrated syllabic verse poem 'Accentedal'. The modern French language does not have a significant