even innovative for its age, moving from iambic pentameter for the first invocation to a mixture of tetrameter and pentameter in the following two stanzas. It exposes a process--that of liberation from the regularity of metre which convention demanded to a more flexible and vocal mode. The shorter lines are appropriate to a hymn, and heighten the rhetoric. While the poem is laden with classical and pastoral allusion, it's worth remembering that moonlit arbours and groves would have been local and ordinary features of the various country-houses Montagu inhabited. from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: A Hymn to the Moon by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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