The Mirthful Smiles is a solemn poetic form intended to amuse the audience concerning a specific place, originating in The Passionate Scourge. The form guides poets during improvised performances. The poem is three sexains. Use of metaphor is characteristic of the form. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines sometimes have reversed word orders. Every line of the poem has an initial caesura. The sixth line of each sexain must expand the idea of the fourth line. The rhyme scheme of the poem is AABBAA.