Eighth Grade Education circa - 1895 - - (long)

[Carol]

Carol  earlier:
> 
> <snip> I don't understand "For tare?" Does anybody? 
>  
> Anybody:
>  
> To tare is to subtract the weight of the wagon from the total to
give only the weight of the crop inside it.

Carol:

Thank you! I don't recall learning any such thing in seventh- or
eight-grade arithmetic, but it was a long time ago. I prefer English.

Now, just for fun, anyone for a lesson in meter and rhyme scheme to go
with the reference to Shakespearean sonnets in another post? (Poetry,
not math?) That I remember though I don't think I learned it in eighth
grade.

Identify the meter (stanza three works best as it's the most regular)
and rhyme scheme (count "hear" and "where" as a rhyme) of the
following stanza and, for extra credit (no looking it up on Google!),
identify the title and author of the poem:

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being	 
  Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead	 
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,	 
 
  Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,	 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou	         5
  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed	 
 
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,	 
  Each like a corpse within its grave, until	 
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow	 
 
  Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill	  10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)	 
  With living hues and odours plain and hill;	 
 
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;	 
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

Or an easier one, at least in terms of author and title:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

Note that the second line is irregular; don't use it to determine the
meter.

Carol, wondering how "anybody" remembers such things ;-)