''Afterword on Rupert Brooke'' is a poem by

F. T. Prince Frank Templeton Prince (13 September 1912 – 7 August 2003) was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem ''Soldiers Bathing'', written during the Second World War in 1942, which has been frequently included in antholog ...

published in 1976. Prince's note on the poem states, "The verse is

syllabic A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

, in a measure of twelve syllables devised by

Robert Bridges Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was a British poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is ...

." He is referring to Bridges'

Neo-Miltonic Syllabics Neo-Miltonic Syllabics is a meter devised by Robert Bridges. It was first employed by the poet in a group of poems composed between 1921 and 1925, and collected in his book ''New Verse'' (1925 Events January * January 1 – The Syrian ...

. Prince writes that Bridges' poem " Poor Poll" was his first illustration of the meter's potentialities, and remains the best guide to its structure. He also states that he allowed himself fewer

elisions In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...

than did Bridges in the later and more famous example of the meter, ''The Testament of Beauty'' (1930), and that he aimed for a "greater variety of rhythm" than displayed in Bridges' poem.

References

* Prince, F. T., ''Collected Poems: 1935 – 1992,'' The Sheep Meadow Press, 1993. {{ISBN, 1-878818-16-3 British poems