The topic of this poem, the destruction of Atlantis, would have come about as I was in a bit of a "fantasy mode" at the time. Another (The Dragon) was written at about the same time. But in both poems the topic is almost subsidiary - they are all about rhyme and rhythm and verse structure.

The rhyme scheme and the structure are intricately tied together. Each "verse" is made of a set of 4 lines (quatrains), and I've even set a line between them as if each individual quatrain was a verse, but they are not. This is evident if you look at the rhyme scheme:

Quatrain 1: A-A-B-C
Quatrain 2: D-D-B-C
Quatrain 3: F-G-G-F
Quatrain 4: H-H-I-I

What rounds off each verse is the name: Atlantis.

In my original poem,I managed four verses of this complex scheme with only one compromise, in verse 2 where the H-H "rhyme" is "city" vs "country". It's not a rhyme, but it feels like one because of the "c..t..y" nature of the words.

Lines 1-3 of each quatrain were all terameter (4 sets of syllables), with line 4 being a trimeter (3 sets). The rhythm was predominantly iambic in feel (long-short), although some lines miss the first short upbeat, and there are words that occasionally have 2 short beats. And one of the reasons for reading the poem aloud is that the strong iambic feel will lead you into pronouncing words like "glittering", which would normally be 3 syllables, as if it were spelt "glitt'ring". Otherwise the strong beat would make you pronounce it "GLIT-ter_RING" and ruin the line. The wonders of rhythm. But there were enough other faults in the original lines to warrant correction.

Hopefully, I’ve managed to fix all that - got rid of the short beats at the end of lines (usually by changing rhymes), and put some short ones where required. Got rid of pesky short-short-long (anapest) and long-short short (dactyl) beats. changed things to get rid of the non-rhyme.