---
# System prepended metadata

title: Dwarf Fortress Poetry Forms
tags: [Poetry]

---

Dwarf Fortress Poetry Forms
===
Hello. This is a page devoted to sharing some of the procedurally generated poetic forms which Dwarf Fortress creates (and which you can access in the XML files exported in Legends mode) for each world it creates. Several of the forms use styles and rules which are actually impossible in the English language (e.g. rules regarding tone, or, to a degree, quantitative meter). Those forms which are impossible in English will feature a note saying so.

For the moment, this page is organized by what world each poetic form comes from (which can be important, because there can only be so many names for each of these forms).
## Gateway region2
### The Glimmer of Glitter
The Glimmer of Glitter is a light poetic form concerning current events, originating in The Shark of Reason. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is divided into three distinct parts: six quatrains, another six quatrains and four to five septets. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines are required to maintain phrasing and they sometimes have reversed word orders.  
The first part is intended to praise the subject of the poem. It has lines with six feet with an accent pattern of unstressed-unstressed-stressed (qualitative anapaestic hexameter).  
The second part is intended to develop the previous idea. It has lines with four feet with an accent pattern of unstressed-stressed-unstressed (qualitative amphibrachic tetrameter).  
The third part is intended to move away from previous ideas. It has lines with four feet with an accent pattern of stressed-unstressed-stressed (qualitative cretic tetrameter).

12 quatrains and 4-5 septets? Are you fucking kidding me?
### The Lavender Lenses
The Lavender Lenses is a ribald poetic form, originating in The Shark of Reason. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is divided into three distinct parts: a line, a quatrain and a couplet. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines sometimes have reversed word orders. Each line has eight syllables.  
The first part concerns the past.  
The second part concerns current events. Certain lines often share an underlying meaning.  
The third part concerns the future. The second line of the couplet shares the underlying meaning of the first line.
### The Quiescent Play
The Quiescent Play is a poetic narrative concerning alcoholic beverages, originating in The Feverish Lie.  The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited.  The poem is divided into a quintain and a tercet.  Use of elision is characteristic of the form.  Each line has seven syllables.  Every line of the poem has a terminal caesura.
The first part is intended to express grief over the subject of the poem.  The rhyme scheme within this stanza is 1ab1b, where numbers indicate a refrain.
The second part is intended to refuse consolation.  The rhyme scheme within this stanza is abb.
### The Mountainous Prairie
The Mountainous Prairie is a poetic riddle intended to express pleasure with plants originally devised by the goblin Moldath Planaxes. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single quintain. Use of metaphor and vivid imagery is characteristic of the form. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines use the same placement of allusions. The fifth line of the quintain shares the underlying meaning of the third line. The first line has three feet with an accent pattern of stressed-unstressed-unstressed (qualitative dactylic trimeter). The second line has two feet with an accent pattern of stressed-unstressed-stressed (qualitative cretic dimeter). The third line has eight feet with an accent pattern of unstressed-stressed (qualitative iambic octameter). The fourth line has four feet with an accent pattern of unstressed-stressed (qualitative iambic tetrameter). The fifth line has five feet with an accent pattern of unstressed-stressed-unstressed (qualitative amphibrachic pentameter).
