An English Patchword ( rewrite)

[Michael Anon]

The title wasn't misspelled but I've decided to simply it as "An English Quilt".

Am working on the scansion with your suggestions in mind. Thanks for those.

Is the title intentionally misspelled?

That aside, and getting into the weeds of meter, since this is a decidedly English poem, English depends more on stress, not syllable count, so I'd largely ignore the latter. Conventionally, this means writing with a certain number of set feet---the two most famous examples are iambic pentameter, which goes

weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED

and then there's ballad meter, which goes

weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED
weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED
weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED
weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED / weak STRESSED

but another common example can be found in limericks, which goes

weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak
weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak
weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak
weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak
weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak / weak STRESSED weak

and at its bearest---for me, at its easiest---you just have a common count of stresses, something like

weak STRESSED weak STRESSED weak STRESSED weak weak STRESSED
STRESSED weak STRESSED weak weak STRESSED weak STRESSED
weak weak STRESSED weak weak STRESSED weak STRESSED weak STRESSED
weak STRESSED weak weak STRESSED weak STRESSED weak STRESSED

for an accentual tetrameter. This is the sort of form one most encounters in folk poetry, nursery rhyme, and pop song.

So turning to your verse:

Cover me ever so quietly
with a quilt of everything England
A ginger-bread bed-spread
With every coast and Inland.
 
COver me EVer so QUIETly
with a QUILT of EV'rything ENGland,
a GINger-bread BED-spread
with EV'ry COAST and INland,

The third line lacks a stressed syllable.

a PATCHwork FEAST of FIELDS and SHIRES
BOUNDaRIES and WHAT-not-MENTS,
SQUARES of CLOTH with LOTS of PLOTS
and PATches and SMALL aLLOTments

The whole stanza doesn't follow the model of the first, being accentual tetrameter than accentual trimeter, and the last line is missing a stressed syllable relative to this new model (not to mention it doesn't actually rhyme---rhyme in English strongly depends on stress, such that our ears tend to tolerate slant rhymes where the same pattern of stress is followed by the words over rhymes whose last syllable are exactly the same sound, but whose patterns of stress are entirely different).

withIN it ALL those TALL tales (or maybe withIN it ALL those TALL TALES?)
WOven WELL toGEther:
GREEN MEN and GRANDES DAMES (or, more comfortably, green MEN and grandes DAMES---scanning is as much an art as a science, after all)
ALL in an ENGlish WEAther.

Again, the pattern is different: charitably, it's now the less formal form of ballad meter. 

The rest I leave up to you for a variety of reasons, but let us be funny and say it's because I am lazy. Also because of this affected laziness prompting me to reiterate the old maxim of form informing function would I hold off on critiquing the matter of this piece....though, overall, it is cute.