Wreathed and Unwreathed Sestets
Wreathed poetry is simply a natural blending of English poetry with the Celtic Welsh. Its creator George Herbert
was born into a wealthy artistic family in Wales and later was educated in Trinity College, Cambridge and was unpublished until
after his death. It is believed that his poem A Wreath was inspired by the Welsh form Englyn cryrch which uses an internal
rhyme scheme with an external one and gives a couplet scheme of:
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
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The red in the second line indicates that the internal rhyme can be anywhere in the first part of second line and can be a
repeat word rather than a rhyme. that is the poets decision. There is no internal rhyme in the first line, It was later that
poets saw the possibilities and created the sestet with a rhyme scheme of:
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
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Here is an example of that form
Bleeding Heart
I build the words of love in ink,
and ink shall stain across the page,
each page reveals my broken heart.
The heart that bleeds each time I think,
my thoughts of you my loving guage,
a guage that none can fill the part.
Sarah Rayburn
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Un-wreathed Poetry
Later poets realised that some Irish forms led with an internal form and from that was born Un-wreath poetry, simply
the reverse of Wreath in that the first line starts with an internal rhyme with the second external and so on, there
being no seventh line there is no external rhyme, giving this sestet a basic rhyme scheme of:
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. b. x. x. x. x. x. a.
x. a. x. x. x. x. x. b.
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. a.
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