Poetry Exercise: Spenserian Stanza

The last of the open forms: the Spenserian Stanza is a 9 line stanza of which the first 8 lines are iambic pentameter and the last line an alexandrine ie iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc.

This form of verse the poet Spenser took.
Immortalised "The Faerie Queen" he did.
From then the form took life and shook
Our senses in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
"St Agnes Eve" - the cold crept in, it slid
By Keat's genius the fluttering owl's wing
Enshrined this form forever: iamb feet
Lord Tennyson, his "Lotos-Eaters" sing
Same tune and ends too with the alexandrine.

*Finally* I've completed Exercise 11 in Stephen Fry's book, "The Ode Less Travelled". It's been a long stretch of just composing self-referential poems describing these open forms.