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Pea Green Boat

Something Rhymes with Purple

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Pentameters - The Origin of Iam O

i learnt my favourite sonnet on westminster bridge in the 19 nineties when i was a member of parliament. I'm quite a traditionalist, but i also like people like gerald manny hopkins who write sonnets in very curious forms that you wouldn't recognize as a sonnet. The first iambic verses were used by satirists to lampoon other people soy. They were kind of caricatures, if you like. That obviously doesn't fit with the way that it progressed, but that was its early, early meaning. And what intrigues me about this poem is that all the words in it are ones we still know and understand. It's written 220 years ago

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