An English Patchword ( rewrite)

[Michael Anon]

Thanks for your trouble in close reading this you Duke. I'll seriously play with your suggestions.

Cover me over quietly with a quilt of everything England
A gingerbread bedspread with all its coasts and Inlands.
 
Squares of cloth with lots of plots and patches and small allotments,
A patchwork filled with fields and shires and boundaries and whatnot-ments.  "filled" is weak - formed or sewn?
 
Within it all the tall tales woven well together:
Green men and grandes dames all in an English weather.  perhaps capitalize "men" (part of Green Man) and italicize 'grandes dames"
 
A hunter and a hare in a brilliant broad embroidery,  remove "a" for flow
Stitched and fixed both higgledy piggledy, needle-neat and orderly.   good for sound but not for sense
 
Piping boys and girls and babes dressed in the altogether,  perhaps comma after "girls"
With John Keats among the pleats and the dancing that goes on forever.  drop "the" for rhythm
 
Knights on Horseback, love in a haystack all their groaning sewn in,  is "Horseback" capitalized for a reason?
Grandfather clocks and Goldilocks in the house she's all alone in.
 
Cover me over quietly with a quilt of everything England
 
Teacup spills and Welsh Hills, cat's hairs on the borders,
Cotswolds and blanket folds - all disruptions and disorders.  perhaps cut "all" for rhythm
 
Little Jack Horner there in the corner, all rucked in and tucked up,
While Little Bo Peep has let her sheep get all muddled and mucked up.
 
Tipsy maids in Gypsy Glades with garlands on a Mayday,
Cripples with their cricket bats and crones playing croquet.  "Cripples with... cricket bats" is odd
 
A Brueghel scene you might have seen but never on a bedspread:
The heroes and the heroines in all the tales you've ever read.
 
Simple Simon and the pie man and the Jack and the Beanstalk pedlar   spelt "peddler"
Who'll turn you into Puss in Boots, a prince or Cinderella.
 
There's a stain on the pane where Sir Gawain is outside a dragon's den;
And biscuit crumbs where Humpty comes with all the king's horses and all the king's men.
 
Cover me over quietly with a quilt of everything England.

In intensive critique, this is a list poem made up of rhymed or semi-rhymed couplets, with occasional refrains (Cover me...).

The lines have no set meter or rhythm, though some of the couplets have the same or matching rhythm for their two lines.  As a general rule, meter goes with rhyme.  If the two lines of each couplet scanned exactly the same, this would be more pleasing; as it is, the rhymes are not forced (good!) but consistent meter, at least between the lines of couplets, would be an improvement.

This is a good concept, but difficult in execution since each of the nursery rhymes from which the lines are quoted (and its title) has a different meter.  I suggest choosing a comic meter (example, "and there in the corner a-watchin' his luck is the girl that's known as Sue")  and fitting each of your story references into it.  Shorter lines would make this easier.

Another angle to try is including your narrator's reaction to the stories - which were liked, which were scary, and which not understood when young (those trembling haystacks).

For starters, try lining up a few of your best couplets for practice, in a consistent meter.  Interested in seeing your edits.