No Second Troy

“No Second Troy” follows a strict form reminiscent of the speaker’s beloved’s “high and solitary and most stern” (Line 10) mind. The poem consists of 12 lines of iambic pentameter. Most lines, such as “[w]hy should I blame her that she filled my days” (Line 1) have significant trochaic and spondaic substitutions. In the case of the first line, the spondee (double emphasis) on the fourth foot, “she filled” (Line 1), reflects the speaker’s feeling of fullness. Other lines, such as “[w]ith beauty like a tightened bow, a kind” (Line 8), use perfect iambic pentameter (or five feet of unstressed followed by stressed syllables) to represent the beloved’s rigid tension.

Each succession of four lines in the poem follows an ABAB alternate rhyme scheme, making the whole poem ABABCDCDEFEF. This rigid form is similar to that of a sonnet—which fits the poem’s searching tone and emphasis on an unobtainable beloved—but denies the sonnet form by only being 12 lines and not having a volta, a turn of thought or argument in the poem. The poem also deviates from conventional forms by extending its clauses beyond each rhyming section. Typically, each set of alternating rhymes should end at a completed clause.