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Transcriber's Notes:

The following characters which may be unfamiliar are used in this
e-text:

    Þ, þ - upper and lower case thorn.
    Ð, ð - upper and lower case eth.
    Ȝ, ȝ - upper and lower case yogh.

Footnotes have been numbered sequentially and moved to the end of each
chapter.

Minor corrections to punctuation and capitalisation have been made
without note. Variant spelling, especially in Anglo-Saxon and middle
English poems, is as per the original. The following corrections to
typographical errors have been made:

    p.129: "I hope to get safely out of..." (had "... safety ...")
    p.401: "It cannot be said, however,..." (Had "In ...")
    p.457: "Lotos-Eaters" (Index entry, had "Lotus-Eaters")




                      ENGLISH VERSE

    _SPECIMENS ILLUSTRATING ITS PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY_

                    CHOSEN AND EDITED

                           BY

               RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN, PH.D.

        _Associate Professor in Leland Stanford Junior
                        University_

                      [Illustration]

                        NEW YORK

                  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY


                     COPYRIGHT, 1903,

                           BY

                     HENRY HOLT & CO.




                           TO

                   my Father and Mother

                     WHO HAVE GIVEN

         BOTH THE INSPIRATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY

                    FOR ALL MY STUDIES




PREFACE


The aim of this book is to give the materials for the inductive study of
English verse. Its origin was in certain university courses, for which
it proved to be necessary--often for use in a single hour's work--to
gather almost numberless books, some of which must ordinarily be
inaccessible except in the vicinity of large libraries. I have tried to
extract from these books the materials necessary for the study of
English verse-forms, adding notes designed to make the specimens
intelligible and useful.

Dealing with a subject where theories are almost as numerous as those
who have written on it, it has been my purpose to avoid the setting
forth of my own opinions, and to present the subject-matter in a way
suited, so far as possible, to the use of those holding widely divergent
views. In the arrangement and naming of the earlier sections of the
book, some systematic theory of the subject--accepted at least
tentatively--was indeed indispensable; but I trust that even here those
who would apply to English verse a different classification or
terminology may be able to discard what they cannot approve and to make
use of the specimens from their own standpoint. Even where (as in these
introductory sections) the notes seem to overtop the text somewhat
threateningly, they are invariably intended--as the type indicates--to
be subordinate. Where it has been possible to do so, I have preferred to
present comments on the specimens in the words of other writers, and
have not confined these notes to opinions with which I wholly agree, but
only to those which seem worthy of attention. My own views on the more
disputed elements of the subject (such as the relations of time and
accent in our verse, the presence of "quantity" in English, and the
terminology of the subject) I have reserved for Part Three, where I
trust they will be found helpful by some readers, but where they may
easily be passed over.

To classify the materials of this subject is peculiarly difficult, and
one who tries to solve the problem will early abandon the hope of being
able to follow any system with consistency. Main divisions and
subdivisions will inevitably conflict and overlap. For practical
purposes, basing my arrangement in part on that found convenient in
university lectures (which it will be seen is not altogether unlike that
followed by Schipper in his _Englische Metrik_), I have divided the
specimens of verse into two main divisions, each of which is suggested
by a word in the sub-title of the book. Part One contains specimens
designed to illustrate the principles of English verse, arranged in
topical order. Part Two contains specimens designed to illustrate the
history of the more important forms of English verse, arranged--in the
several divisions--in chronological order. Part Three has already been
spoken of. Part Four contains extracts from important critical writers
on the place and function of the verse-element in poetry,--matters which
give us the _raison d'être_ for the whole study of versification.

If there had ever been hope of making the collection of specimens fairly
complete, even in a representative sense, this would have been
dissipated by the discovery, during the very time of the book's going
through the press, of a number of additional specimens which it seemed
wicked to omit. Doubtless every reader will miss some favorite selection
which might well have been included, and suggestions as to important
omissions will be received gratefully. The attempt has been to put
students on the track of all the more important lines of development of
English verse, and to indicate, by including a considerable number of
specimens from early periods, the continuity of this development from
the times of our Saxon forefathers to our own.

Little consistency can be claimed for the practice observed in the
matter of modernizing texts that date from transition periods like the
sixteenth century. In some cases the text has been modernized, or
retained in its original form, according as it seemed well to emphasize
either the permanent significance or the historical position of the
specimen in question. In other cases the form of the text was determined
merely by the best edition accessible for purposes of reproduction.

Dates have been appended to the specimens in those sections where
chronology is a significant element. It has not always been possible to
verify these dates with thoroughness, or to distinguish between the date
of writing and that of publication; but it is hoped that inaccuracies of
this sort will at least not be found of a character to misrepresent the
historical relations of the specimens. Dates are not ordinarily given
for the poems of writers still living.

In the notes on the specimens I have tried to distinguish between
material likely to be useful for all students of the subject and that
going more into detail, which is intended only for advanced or special
students. Notes of the second class are printed in smaller type. There
has been no attempt to give the notes of a bibliographical character any
pretension to completeness. One may well hesitate to add, in this
direction, to the admirable material presented in the _Methods and
Materials of Literary Criticism_ of Professors Gayley and Scott.

I have resisted strenuously all temptation to choose or to annotate
specimens on general grounds of æsthetic enjoyment, apart from the
distinct study of verse-forms. Yet it would be useless to deny having
sometimes made choice of particular verses, all other considerations
being equal, for their poetic or literary value over and above their
prosodical. I shall not claim for the collection what Boswell did for
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, that "he was so attentive in the choice" of
the illustrative passages "that one may read page after page ... with
improvement and pleasure;" yet I may say that, so far from fearing that
the enjoyment of any poem will be injured by a proper attention to the
elements of its metrical form, it is my hope that many a haunting verse
may linger, a perpetual possession of beauty, in the memory of the
student who first found it here classified under a technical name.

Many obligations are to be acknowledged to scholars of whose advice I
have availed myself. Most kindly aid has been received from Professor G.
L. Kittredge and Dr. Fred N. Robinson, of Harvard University; from
Professor Felix E. Schelling, of the University of Pennsylvania; from my
friend, Mr. H. P. Earle, of Stanford University; and from my colleague,
Dr. Ewald Flügel. My obligation to Schipper's monumental works on
English verse will be obvious to every scholar. They suggested many of
the specimens of verse-forms, and are also represented by translations
or paraphrases in the notes; references to Schipper, without full
title, are to the _Englische Metrik_,--the larger work. I have also made
thankful use of Mr. John Addington Symonds's essays on Blank Verse, and
of Professor Corson's _Primer of English Verse_,--both somewhat
unscientific but highly suggestive works. The section on Artificial
French Forms obviously owes very much to Mr. Gleeson White's _Ballades
and Rondeaus_. A book to which my obligation is out of all proportion to
the number of actual quotations from it is Mr. J. B. Mayor's _Chapters
on English Metre_. This modest but satisfying volume seemed to me, when
I first was taking up the study of English verse, to be a grateful
relief from the thorny and often fruitless discussions with which the
subject had been overgrown; and in returning to it again and again, I
have never failed to renew the impression. Its suggestions underlie a
good part of the system of classification and terminology adopted for
this book. The new and enlarged edition came to hand too late for use,
but I was able to include references to it in the notes.

I must also record thanks to those authors and publishers who have
courteously given permission for the reproduction of their publications:
to Mr. John Lane, for permission to quote from the works of Mr. William
Watson and Mr. Stephen Phillips; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and
Company, for permission to make extracts from the poems of Mr. William
Vaughn Moody and from Mr. Stedman's _Nature and Elements of Poetry_; to
Macmillan and Company, Limited, of London, for permission to make
extracts from Professor Butcher's _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry_ and
from Mr. Courthope's _Life in Poetry and Law in Taste_; to Professor F.
B. Gummere and The Macmillan Company of New York, for permission to
quote from the former's _Beginnings of Poetry_; to the Lothrop
Publishing Company of Boston, for permission to reprint Mr. Clinton
Scollard's villanelle, "Spring Knocks at Winter's Frosty Door," from the
volume entitled _With Reed and Lyre_; to Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
for permission to reprint her rondeau, "A Man must Live," from the
volume entitled _On This Our World_ (published by Small, Maynard and
Company); to Dr. Samuel Minturn Peck, for permission to reprint one of
the triolets called "Under the Rose," from his volume entitled _Cap and
Bells_; to the Frederick A. Stokes Company, for permission to reprint
Mr. Frank D. Sherman's "Ballade to Austin Dobson," from the volume
entitled _Madrigals and Catches_. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Mr. W. E.
Henley, and Mr. Edmund Gosse have given generous permission to quote
freely from their poems. Mr. Henley was also good enough to suggest the
choice of the rondeau from his "Bric-à-Brac"; and Mr. Gosse, whose
unfailing courtesy follows up his numerous published aids to students of
English poetry, has also added some personal notes on the history of the
heroic couplet.

Finally, it should be said that a considerable part of the studies
resulting in this book was carried on while the editor held the Senior
Fellowship in English on the Harrison Foundation in the University of
Pennsylvania. If, therefore, the book should prove of service to any,
the fact will be a single additional tribute to the munificence of that
foundation.

    R. M. A.

    STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA,
    November, 1902.




CONTENTS


    PART ONE

                                                     PAGE
    I.  ACCENT AND TIME                                  3
        A.--Kinds of Accent                              3
        B.--Time-intervals                              11
              i. Regular intervals between accents      12
             ii. Irregular intervals                    13
            iii. Silent intervals (pauses)              16
    II. THE FOOT AND THE VERSE                          24
            One-stress iambic                           25
            Two-stress iambic                           26
            Two-stress trochaic                         27
            Two-stress anapestic                        28
            Two-stress dactylic                         30
            Two-stress irregular                        31
            Three-stress iambic                         32
            Three-stress trochaic                       33
            Three-stress anapestic                      34
            Three-stress dactylic                       37
            Four-stress iambic                          37
            Four-stress trochaic                        37
            Four-stress anapestic                       39
            Four-stress dactylic                        40
            Five-stress iambic                          41
            Five-stress trochaic                        41
            Five-stress anapestic                       42
            Five-stress dactylic                        42
            Six-stress iambic                           43
            Six-stress trochaic                         43
            Six-stress anapestic                        43
            Six-stress dactylic                         44
            Seven-stress iambic                         44
            Seven-stress trochaic                       45
            Seven-stress anapestic                      45
            Seven-stress dactylic                       46
            Eight-stress iambic                         46
            Eight-stress trochaic                       46
            Eight-stress anapestic                      48
            Eight-stress dactylic                       48
          Combinations and Substitutions                49
            i. Different feet regularly combined        49
           ii. Individual feet altered                  55
    III. THE STANZA                                     62
          Tercets                                       63
          Quatrains                                     69
          Refrain Stanzas                               78
          Various Stanza-forms
            abccb                                       91
            ababb                                       91
            aabbb                                       91
            aabcdd                                      91
            aaaabb                                      92
            ababab                                      92
            ababcc                                      92
            ababbcc (Rime royal)                        93
            ababcca                                     95
            ababccb                                     95
            abababab                                    96
            ababbaba                                    96
            ababbcbc                                    96
            ababccdd                                    97
            abababcc (ottava rima)                      98
            aabaabbab                                  101
            ababcccdd                                  101
            ababbcbcc (Spenserian stanza)              102
            abababccc                                  107
            aabaabcc                                   107
            ababbcbcdd                                 107
            aabbbcc                                    108
            ababababbcbc                               108
            aabccbddbeebffgggf                         109
            ababccdeed                                 111
            aabccbddbeeb                               111
            abcbdcdceccce                              112
    IV. TONE-QUALITY                                   113
          A.--As a Structural Element                  113
                i. Assonance                           113
               ii. Alliteration                        116
              iii. End-rime                            121
                    Double and triple rime             128
                    Broken rime                        131
                    Internal rime                      132
          B.--As a Sporadic Element (Tone-color)       135


    PART TWO

    I. FOUR-STRESS VERSE                               151
          A.--Non-syllable-counting                    151
          B.--Syllable-counting (Octosyllabic Couplet) 160
    II. FIVE-STRESS VERSE                              174
          A.---The Decasyllabic Couplet                174
          B.--Blank Verse                              213
    III. SIX-STRESS AND SEVEN-STRESS VERSE             252
          A.--The Alexandrine (Iambic Hexameter)       252
          B.--The Septenary                            259
          C.--The "Poulter's Measure"                  265
    IV. THE SONNET                                     267
          A.--The Regular (Italian) Sonnet             270
          B.--The English (Shaksperian) Sonnet         290
    V. THE ODE                                         298
          A.--Regular Pindaric                         299
          B.--Irregular (Cowleyan)                     307
          C.--Choral                                   323
    VI. IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES                 330
          A.--Lyrical Measures                         331
          B.--Dactylic Hexameter                       340
    VII. IMITATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL FRENCH LYRICAL FORMS 358
          A.--The Ballade                              360
          B.--The Rondeau and Rondel                   368
                i. "Rondel" type                       369
               ii. "Rondeau" type                      371
          C.--The Villanelle                           376
          D.--The Triolet                              381
          E.--The Sestina                              383


    PART THREE

    THE TIME-ELEMENT IN ENGLISH VERSE                  391


    PART FOUR

    THE PLACE AND FUNCTION OF THE METRICAL ELEMENT IN
        POETRY                                         413
          Aristotle                                    413
          Sir Philip Sidney                            416
          Samuel Johnson                               417
          Wordsworth                                   417
          Coleridge                                    420
          Shelley                                      422
          William Hazlitt                              423
          Leigh Hunt                                   425
          Theodore Watts                               426
          Edmund Gurney                                427
          W. J. Courthope                              429
          E. C. Stedman                                432
          F. B. Gummere                                433


    APPENDIX

    TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE HEROIC
        COUPLET                                        437




PART ONE

ENGLISH VERSE




I. ACCENT AND TIME


A.--KINDS OF ACCENT

The accents of English syllables as appearing in verse are commonly
classified in two ways: according to degree of intensity, and according
to cause or significance.

Obviously there can be no fixed limits to the number of degrees of
intensity recognized in syllabic accent or stress. It is common to speak
of three such degrees: syllables having accent (stressed), syllables
having secondary accent, and syllables without accent (unstressed).
Schipper makes four groups: Principal Accent (_Hauptaccent_ or
_Hochton_), Secondary Accent (_Nebenaccent_ or _Tiefton_), No Accent
(_Tonlosigkeit_), and Disappearance of Sound (_Stummheit_). In
illustration he gives the word _ponderous_, where the first syllable has
the chief accent, the last a secondary accent, the second no accent;
while in the verse

    "Most ponderous and substantial things"

the second syllable is suppressed or silent.

Mr. A. J. Ellis, in like manner, recognized three principal classes of
syllables: those stressed in the first degree, those stressed in the
second degree, and those unstressed.[1] In the following lines from
_Paradise Lost_ he indicated these three degrees, as he recognized them,
by the figures 2, 1, 0, written underneath.

      Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
       0   2      1   0 0 2    0     0   0   2

      Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
       0   1    0 2   0   1      0    2  0   2

      Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
         1      2    0 0  0    2     0    1  0   2

      With loss of Eden, till one greater man
        0    1   0 2  0    0   0    2   0  2

      Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
        0  2   0   0   0  2   0    2   0   2

      Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
        2     2    0  2      1    0  0   2  0   1

      Of Horeb or of Sinai, didst inspire
       0  2  0  0  0  2  0    1    0  2

      That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
        1    2   0    0    2     2     0   2  0   2

      In the beginning, how the heavens and earth
       0  0   0  2   0   1   0    2      0   2

      Rose out of chaos.[2]
       2    0   0  2  0

It is worthy of note that the secondary accent seems originally to have
been a more important factor in English verse than it is commonly
considered to be in modern periods. In Anglo-Saxon verse the combination
of a primary stress, a secondary stress, and an unstressed syllable, is
a recognized type. In modern verse the reader is likely to make an
effort to reduce all syllables to the type of either stress or
no-stress. In such a verse as the following, however (from Matthew
Arnold's _Forsaken Merman_),--

    "And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee,"--

we may find such a combination as that just referred to as familiar in
Anglo-Saxon rhythm. The syllables "_soul, Merman_" are respectively
cases of primary stress, secondary stress, and no-stress. On this matter
see further the remark of Luick, cited on p. 156, below.

     The element of Pitch is not ordinarily included in the treatment of
     versification, as it is not ordinarily recognized as having any
     significance peculiar to verse. According to Professor J. W.
     Bright, however, there is such a thing as a "pitch-accent" which
     plays an important part in verse where the word-accent conflicts
     with that of the regular metre. Under certain exigencies, he says,
     "_un-governed, pre-cisely, re-markable,_ and _Je-rusalem_ ... are
     naturally pronounced with a pitch-accent upon the first syllables,
     and with the undisturbed expiratory word-accent upon the second. It
     will of course be understood that when the word-accent is defined
     as expiratory this term does not exclude the inherent pitch of
     English stress. Force, quantity, and pitch are combined in our
     word-stress (or word-accent), both primary and secondary; but in
     the secondary stress used as ictus there is a noticeable change in
     the proportions of these elements, the pitch being relatively
     increased. An answer is thus won for the question: How do we
     naturally pronounce two stresses in juxtaposition on the same word,
     or on adjacent words closely joined grammatically? This is further
     illustrated in the specially emphasized words of such expressions
     as 'The idea!'" where Professor Bright marks the pitch-accent on
     the first syllable of "idea," retaining the stress-accent on the
     second syllable. In the line

        "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit"

     he marks a pitch-accent where the word-stress and metrical stress
     are in conflict, that is, on the syllables "dis-" and "and." "The
     rhythmic use of 'disobedience,'" he says, "illustrates with its
     four syllables (as here used) as many recognizable varieties of
     stress. The first syllable has a secondary word-accent, raised to a
     pitch-accent for ictus; the second is wholly unaccented; the third
     has the chief word-accent, employed as ictus (the accent of the
     preceding word, "first," is subordinate to the rhythm); the fourth
     has a secondary word-accent which remains unchanged in the thesis."
     The conclusion is that "ictus in conflict requires a pitch-accent."
     (All these quotations are from an article on 'Proper Names in Old
     English Verse,' in the _Publications of the Modern Language
     Association_, n.s. vol. vii. No. 3). Professor Bright's theory of
     pitch-accent is a part of his general theory of opposition to what
     he calls the "sense-doctrine" of the reading of verse,--that is,
     the accepted doctrine that the word and sentence accents must
     ordinarily take precedence of the metrical accent.

According to cause or significance, accents are commonly classed in
three groups: Etymological or Word Accent, Syntactical or Rhetorical
Accent, and Metrical Accent. Accents of the first class are due to the
original stress of the syllable in English speech; those of the second
class are due to the importance of the syllable in the sentence; those
of the third class are due to the place of the syllable in the metrical
scheme. In the verse

    "Mary had a little lamb,"

the first syllable may be said to be stressed primarily for etymological
reasons, the seventh primarily for syntactical or rhetorical reasons,
and the third (which would not be accented in prose) for metrical
reasons.

The general law of English verse is that only those syllables which bear
the accent of the first class (that is, which are stressed in common
speech), together with monosyllables which on occasion are stressed in
common speech, shall be placed so as to receive the metrical stress; and
that, if the word-stress and the metrical stress apparently conflict,
the metrical stress must yield. Less generally, the rhetorical or
syntactical accent in the same way takes precedence of the metrical. In
both cases exceptions are of course numerous.

The following are examples of verses showing a conflict between the
normal prose-accent and the normal verse-accent, where--as commonly
read--the prose- (word-) accent triumphs.

    The blessed damozel leaned out
    _From the gold bar_ of heaven.

(ROSSETTI: _The Blessed Damozel._)

    _Love is_ a smoke _raised with_ the fume of sighs;
    Being purged, a fire _sparkling_ in lover's eyes;
    Being vexed, a sea _nourished_ with lover's tears.

(SHAKSPERE: _Romeo and Juliet_, I. i. 196 ff.)

    Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
    And fear'st to die? _famine_ is in thy cheeks,
    _Need and_ oppression starveth in thine eyes.

(SHAKSPERE: _ib._ V. i. 68 ff.)

    _Till, at_ his second bidding, Darkness fled,
    _Light_ shone, and order from disorder sprung.
    _Swift to_ their several quarters hasted then
    The cumbrous elements--_Earth_, Flood, _Air_, Fire;
    And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven
    Flew upward, _spirited_ with various forms,
    That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars
    _Numberless_, as thou seest, and how they move.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, iii. 712 ff.)

    _She was_ a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
    Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
    _Striped like_ a zebra, freckled like a pard,
    _Eyed like_ a peacock, and all crimson barred.

(KEATS: _Lamia_, i. 47 ff.)

    _"Boys!"_ shriek'd the old king, but vainlier than a hen
    _To her_ false daughters in the pool; for none
    Regarded; neither seem'd there more to say.
    _Back_ rode we to my father's camp, and found
    He thrice had sent a herald to the gates.

(TENNYSON: _The Princess_, v. 318 ff.)

    Sequestered nest!--this kingdom, limited
    Alone by one old _populous green_ wall;
    _Tenanted_ by the ever-busy flies,
    _Gray crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders_;
    Each family of the silver-threaded moss--
    Which, look through near, this way, and it appears
    A stubble-field _or a cane-brake_, a marsh
    Of bulrush whitening _in the_ sun: _laugh now_!

(BROWNING: _Paracelsus_, i. 36 ff.)

On the other hand, we find verses showing a conflict between prose and
verse accent, where the verse-accent may be regarded as triumphing
wholly or in part. Where this triumph is complete, the accent is said to
be _wrenched_; as, for example, in old ballad endings like "north
countree."[3] Where there is a compromise effected in reading, the
accent is said to be _hovering_; as in one of Shakspere's songs,--

    "It was a lover and his lass ...
    That o'er the green _corn-field_ did pass."

    I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
    Leaning across the water, I and he;
    Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
    But touched his lute wherein was _audible_
    The certain secret thing he had to tell:
    Only our mirrored eyes met _silently_
    In the low wave; and that sound came to be
    The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
    And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
    And with his foot and with his _wing-feathers_
    He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
    Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
    And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
    Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

(ROSSETTI: _Willowwood. House of Life_, Sonnet xlix.)

    I wish my grave were growing green,
    A winding-sheet drawn ower my een,
    And I in Helen's arms _lying,_
        On fair Kirconnell lea.

(_Fair Helen_; old ballad.)

    For the stars and the winds are unto her
    As raiment, as songs of the _harp-player._

(SWINBURNE: Chorus in _Atalanta in Calydon._)

    Nothing is better, I well think,
      Than love; the hidden _well-water_
    Is not so delicate to drink:
      This was well seen of me and her.

(SWINBURNE: _The Leper._)

These wrenched accents are characteristic of one phase of the so-called
"pre-Raphaelite" poetry of the Victorian period; in part, no doubt, they
are due to the influence of the old ballads. My colleague Professor
Newcomer has suggested that they are partly due, also, to a dislike for
the combative accent which would occur where two heavy syllables came
together (accented as commonly) in a compound like "harp-player."

     Of special interest are the examples of wrenched and hovering
     accent found in the verse of Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of
     Surrey,--more especially in Wyatt. These mark the time when the
     syllable-counting principle was coming into prominence in English
     verse, under the new culture of the days of Henry VIII. The first
     conscious followers of this principle seem to have given it such
     prominence that a verse seemed good to them if it contained the
     requisite number of syllables, whether the accents conformed to any
     regular system or not. In the case of Wyatt we can also compare the
     original forms of many of his poems, as preserved in manuscript,
     with the revised forms as printed in Tottel's Miscellany (1557).
     (See Dr. Flügel's transcriptions from the Wyatt Mss., in _Anglia_,
     vol. xviii.) The following is the octave of one of the sonnets, as
     found in the Ms.:

        "Avysing the bright bemes of these fayer Iyes
        where he is that myn oft moisteth and wassheth
        the werid mynde streght from the hert departeth
        for to rest in his woroldly paradise
        And fynde the swete bitter under this gyse
        what webbes he hath wrought well he parceveth
        whereby with himselfe on love he playneth
        that spurreth with fyer: and bridillith with Ise."

     (_Anglia,_ xviii. 465.)

     Compare this with the revised form in Tottel's edition:

        "Avisyng the bright beames of those fayre eyes,
        Where he abides that mine oft moistes and washeth:
        The weried mynd streight from the hart departeth,
        To rest within hys worldly Paradise,
        And bitter findes the swete, under this gyse.
        What webbes there he hath wrought, well he preceaveth
        Whereby then with him self on love he playneth,
        That spurs wyth fire, and brydleth eke with yse."

     (Arber Reprint, p. 40.)

     It appears that this revision was the work of the editor, who had a
     better sense of true English rhythm than the poet himself. Alscher,
     however, in his work on Wyatt, contends that Wyatt doubtless
     revised his own verses so as to give them their finished form. (See
     _Sir Thomas Wyatt und Seine Stellung_, etc., p. 49.) Other lines in
     Wyatt's verse where the number of syllables is counted but where
     the accents are faulty, are these:

        "The long love that in my thought I harbour."

        "And there campeth displaying his banner."

        "And there him hideth and not appeareth."

        "For good is the life, ending faithfully."

     Another large group of hovering accents is that formed by French
     words with such terminations as _-our_, _-ance_, _-ace_, _-age_,
     _-ant_, _-ess_. In such cases the original tendency of the word was
     to accent the final syllable; but the general tendency of English
     accents being recessive, the words often passed through a
     transitional period when the accent was variable or "hovering." The
     first of the four lines just quoted shows us a word of this
     character.

     For an interesting presentation of certain phases of the laws of
     stress in English verse, see Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_
     (ed. 1901), Appendix J, "on the Rules of Stress Rhythms."


B.--TIME-INTERVALS

The fundamental principle of the rhythm of English verse (and indeed of
any rhythm) is that _the accents appear at regular time-intervals_. In
practice there is of course great freedom in departing from this
regularity, the equal time-intervals being at times only a standard of
rhythm to which the varying successions of accented and unaccented
syllables are mentally referred. Where the equal time-intervals are
observed with substantial regularity, two sorts of verse are still to
be clearly distinguished: that in which not only the intervals of time
but the numbers of syllables between the accents are substantially equal
and regular, and that in which the number of syllables varies. The
latter class is that of the native Germanic metres; the former is that
of the Romance metres, and of modern English verse as influenced by
them. With the development of regularity in the counting of syllables
there has perhaps also taken place a development of regularity in the
regular counting of the time-intervals. In other words, the modern
English reader, where the number of syllables between accents is
variable, makes the time-intervals as nearly equal as possible by
lengthening and shortening the syllables in the manner permitted by the
freedom of English speech; in early English verse, where the number of
syllables between accents varied very greatly, we cannot be sure that
the time-intervals were so accurately felt or preserved in recitation.


i. _Verse showing fairly regular intervals between accents_

    Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such
    Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.
    At every trifle scorn to take offence,
    That always shows great pride, or little sense:
    Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
    Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
    Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
    For fools admire, but men of sense approve:
    As things seem large which we through mist descry,
    Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, ll. 384-393.)

    Louder, louder chant the lay--
    Waken, lords and ladies gay!
    Tell them youth and mirth and glee
    Run a course as well as we;
    Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
    Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk;
    Think of this, and rise with day,
    Gentle lords and ladies gay!

(SCOTT: _Hunting Song_.)

    Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
    Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

(TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall_.)

    Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of
        the wildest of winds that blow,
    Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were
        laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow.

(SWINBURNE: _March_.)


ii. _Verse showing irregular intervals between accents_

    Gegrētte ðā    gumena gehwylcne,
    hwate helm-berend,    hindeman sīðe,
    swǣse gesīðas:    "Nolde ic sweord beran,
    wǣpen tō wyrme,    gif ic wiste hū
    wið ðām āglǣcean    elles meahte
    gylpe wiðgrīpan,    swā ic gīo wið Grendle dyde;
    ac ic ðǣr heaðu-fȳres    hātes wēne,
    oreðes ond attres;    forðon ic mē on hafu
    bord ond byrnan.    Nelle ic beorges weard
    oferflēon    fōtes trem,
    ac unc sceal weorðan æt wealle,    swā unc wyrd getēoð,
    Metod manna gehwæs.    Ic eom on mōde from,
    þæt ic wið þone gūð-flogan    gylp ofersitte.

(_Beowulf_, ll. 2516-2528. ab. 700.)

    Ich herde men upo mold make muche mon,
      hou he beþ itened of here tilyynge:
    gode yeres & corn boþe beþ agon,
      ne kepeþ here no sawe ne no song synge.
    Nou we mote worche, nis þer non oþer won,
      mai ich no lengore lyue wiþ mi lesinge.
    Yet þer is a bitterore bit to þe bon,
      for euer þe furþe peni mot to þe kynge.[4]

(_The Farmer's Complaint_, ab. 1300; in Böddeker's _Altenglische
Dichtungen_, p. 102, and Wright's _Political Songs_, p. 149.)

    I will speake out aloude, I care not who heare it:
    Sirs, see that my harnesse, my tergat and my shield
    Be made as bright now as when I was last in fielde,
    As white as I shoulde to warre againe to-morrowe;
    For sicke shall I be but I worke some folke sorow.
    Therefore see that all shine as bright as Sainct George,
    Or as doth a key newly come from the smiths forge.

(N. UDALL: _Ralph Roister Doister_, IV. iii. 13-19. 1566.)

    To this, this Oake cast him to replie
    Well as he couth; but his enemie
    Had kindled such coles of displeasure,
    That the good man noulde stay his leasure,
    But home him hasted with furious heate,
    Encreasing his wrath with many a threat:
    His harmefull Hatchet he hent in hand,
    (Alas! that it so ready should stand!)
    And to the field alone he speedeth,
    (Aye little helpe to harme there needeth!)
    Anger nould let him speake to the tree,
    Enaunter his rage mought cooled bee;
    But to the roote bent his sturdie stroake,
    And made many wounds in the waste Oake.

(SPENSER: _Shepherd's Calendar, February_. 1579.)

      Through many a dark and dreary vale
    They passed, and many a region dolorous,
    O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
    Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death--
    A universe of death, which God by curse
    Created evil, for evil only good;
    Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
    Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
    Abominable, inutterable, and worse
    Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, II. 618 ff. 1667.)

    The night is chill; the forest bare;
    Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
    There is not wind enough in the air
    To move away the ringlet curl
    From the lovely lady's cheek--
    There is not wind enough to twirl
    The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
    That dances as often as dance it can,
    Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
    On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

(COLERIDGE: _Christabel_, Part I. 1816.)

In his Preface to this poem Coleridge said: "The metre of the
_Christabel_ is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so
from its being founded on a new principle; namely, that of counting in
each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary
from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be
only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in number of syllables
is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in
correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or
passion." The verse is accurately described, but it has frequently been
pointed out as curious that Coleridge should have spoken of it as
"founded on a new principle," when the principle in question was that of
native English verse from the earliest times.[5]

For other specimens of verse showing irregularity in the number of
syllables between the accents, see Part Two, under Non-syllable-counting
Four-stress Verse.


iii. _Silent Time-intervals between Syllables (Pauses)_

(a) Pauses not filling the time of syllables.

Most English verses of more than eight syllables are divided not only
into the time-intervals between the accents, but also into two parts
(which Schipper calls "rhythmical series") by the _Cesura_. The Cesura
is a pause not counted out of the regular time of the rhythm, but
corresponding to the pauses between "phrases" in music, and nearly
always coinciding with syntactical or rhetorical divisions of the
sentence.

The medial cesura is the typical pause of this kind, dividing the verse
into two parts of approximately equal length. In much early English
verse, and in French verse, this medial cesura is almost universal; in
modern English verse (and in that of some early poets, notably Chaucer)
there is great freedom in the placing of the cesura, and also in
omitting it altogether. The importance of this matter in the history of
English decasyllabic verse will appear in Part Two.

     In the early Elizabethan period the impression was still general
     that there should be a regular medial cesura. Spenser seems to have
     been the first to imitate the greater freedom of Chaucer in this
     regard. See the Latin dissertation on Spenser's verse of E. Legouis
     (_Quomodo E. Spenserus_, etc., Paris, 1896), and the summary of its
     results by Mr. J. B. Fletcher in _Modern Language Notes_ for
     November, 1898. "Spenser," says Mr. Fletcher, "revived for 'heroic
     verse' the neglected variety in unity of his self-acknowledged
     master, Chaucer." In Gascoigne's _Notes of Instruction concerning
     the making of verse or ryme in English_ (1575), we find: "There are
     also certayne pauses or restes in a verse whiche may be called
     Ceasures.... In mine opinion in a verse of eight sillables, the
     pause will stand best in the middest, in a verse of tenne it will
     be placed at the ende of the first foure sillables; in a verse of
     twelve, in the midst.... In Rithme royall, it is at the wryters
     discretion, and forceth not where the pause be untill the ende of
     the line." This greater liberty allowed the rime royal is doubtless
     due to the influence of Chaucer on that form. For Gascoigne's
     practice in printing his verse with medial cesura, even without
     regard to rhetorical divisions, see the specimen given below.

     Another interesting Elizabethan account of the cesura is found in
     Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589), where the writer
     compares the verse-pause to a stop made by a traveler at an inn for
     rest and refreshment. (Arber's Reprint, p. 88.)

_Specimen of French alexandrine, showing the regular medial cesura:_

    Trois fois cinquante jours le général naufrage
    Dégasta l'univers; en fin d'un tel ravage
    L'immortel s'émouvant, n'eût pas sonné si tôt
    La retraite des eaux que soudain flot sur flot
    Elles gaignent au pied; tous les fleuves s'abaissant.
    Le mer rentre en prison; les montagnes renaissent.

(DU BARTAS: _La Première Semaine_. 1579.)

See further, on the character of the French alexandrine and its medial
cesura, in Part Two, under Six-stress Verse.

_Specimen of early blank verse printed with regular medial cesura:_

    O Knights, O Squires, O Gentle blouds yborne,
    You were not borne, al onely for your selves:
    Your countrie claymes, some part of al your paines.
    There should you live, and therein should you toyle,
    To hold up right, and banish cruel wrong,
    To helpe the pore, to bridle backe the riche,
    To punish vice, and vertue to advaunce,
    To see God servde, and Belzebub supprest.
    You should not trust, lieftenaunts in your rome,
    And let them sway, the scepter of your charge,
    Whiles you (meane while) know scarcely what is don,
    Nor yet can yeld, accompt if you were callde.

(GASCOIGNE: _The Steel Glass_, ll. 439 ff. 1576.)

For specimens of regular medial cesura, and of variable cesura, in
modern verse, see under the Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in
Part Two.

The Cesura is called _masculine_ when it follows an accented syllable.
(For examples, see previous specimen from Gascoigne.) It is called
_feminine_ when it follows an unaccented syllable. Two varieties of the
feminine cesura are also distinguished: the Lyric, when the pause occurs
inside a foot; _e.g._:

    "This wicked traitor, whom I thus accuse;"

the Epic, when the pause occurs after an extra (hypermetrical) light
syllable; _e.g._:

    "To Canterbury with ful devout corage."

    "But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives."

The "epic" cesura is quite as characteristic of dramatic blank verse as
of epic.

The pause occurring at the end of a line is equally regular with the
medial pause, and corresponds in the same way to a phrase-pause in
music. It is an element of the same character, then, as the cesura,
though not bearing the same name. It coincides less closely than the
cesura with syntactical and rhetorical pauses. When there is no
corresponding syntactical or rhetorical pause at the end of the line (in
other words, when the metrical pause marking the end of the verse cannot
be prominently represented in reading without interfering with the
expression of the sense), the line is said to be "run-on." Such an
ending is also called _enjambement_. The importance of this distinction
between "end-stopped" and "run-on" lines will appear in the notes on the
Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in Part Two.

(_b_) Pauses filling the time of syllables.

A second class of silent time-intervals, or pauses, is to be
distinguished from the cesural pause by the fact that in this case the
time of the pause is counted in the metrical scheme. Pauses of this
class correspond to rests in music; and as in the case of such rests,
their occurrence is exceptional.

    Of fustian he wered a gipoun
    ‸ Al bismotered with his habergeoun.

    For him was lever have at his beddes heed
    ‸ Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed.

(CHAUCER: Prologue to _Canterbury Tales_, 75 f. and 293 f.)

This omission of the first light syllable is characteristic of Chaucer's
couplet and of Middle English verse generally. (See Schipper, vol. i. p.
462, and ten Brink's _Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst_, p. 175.) In
modern verse it is not usually permitted.

    The time doth pass, ‸ yet shall not my love.

(WYATT: _The joy so short, alas!_)

The omitted syllable following the medial pause is closely parallel to
that at the beginning of the verse.

    Stay! ‸ The king hath thrown his warder down.

(_Richard II_, I. iii. 118.)

    Kneel thou down, Philip. ‸ But rise more great.

(_King John_, I. i. 161.)

    In drops of sorrow. ‸ Sons, kinsmen, thanes.

(_Macbeth_, I. iv. 35.)

    Than the soft myrtle. ‸ But man, proud man.

(_Measure for Measure_, II. ii. 117.)

These specimens of pauses in Shakspere's verse indicate the natural
varieties of dramatic form. In such cases the pause often occurs
between speeches, or where some action is to be understood as filling
the time; as in the second instance, where the accolade is given in the
middle of the line. (See Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_, pp. 413 ff.)

    ‸ Break, ‸ break, ‸ break,
      On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
    And I would that my tongue could utter
      The thoughts that arise in me.

(TENNYSON: _Break, Break, Break._)

In Lanier's _Science of English Verse_, p. 101, this stanza is
represented in musical notation, with rests, to show that rhythm "may be
dependent on silences."

    Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
      And never brought to mind?
    Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
      And auld ‸ lang ‸ syne?

(BURNS: _Auld Lang Syne._)

Here the syllables "auld" and "lang" may be regarded as lengthened so as
to fill the time of the missing light syllables. So in many cases there
is a choice between compensatory lengthening and compensatory pause.

    Thus ‸ said the Lord ‸ in the Vault above the Cherubim,
    Calling to the angels and the souls in their degree:
              "Lo! Earth has passed away
              On the smoke of Judgment Day.
    That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?"

    Loud ‸ sang the souls ‸ of the jolly, jolly mariners:
    "Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!
            But the war is done between us,
            In the deep the Lord hath seen us--
    Our bones we'll leave the barracout', and God may sink the sea!"

(KIPLING: _The Last Chantey._)

This is an instance of a pause forming a regular part of the
verse-rhythm. Thus in the first verse of each stanza the second and
sixth syllables are omitted, and the result gives the characteristic
effect of the rhythm. In measures where there is regular catalexis (that
is, where the last light syllable of the verse is regularly omitted) the
phenomenon is really of the same kind.

    These, these will give the world another heart,
      And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
    Of mighty workings?----
      Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

(Keats: _Sonnet to Haydon_.)

    Call her once before you go,--
    Call once yet!
    In a voice that she will know,--
    "Margaret! Margaret!"
    Children's voices should be dear
    (Call once more) to a mother's ear;
    Children's voices, wild with pain,--
    Surely she will come again!
    Call her once, and come away;
    This way, this way!...

    Come, dear children, come away down:
    Call no more!
    One last look at the white-walled town,
    And the little gray church on the windy shore;
    Then come down!
    She will not come, though you call all day;
    Come away, come away!

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _The Forsaken Merman_.)

In this specimen no attempt has been made to indicate the pauses, as
different readers would interpret the verse variously. It will be found
that this whole poem is a study in delicate changes and arrangements of
time-intervals. The four stresses characteristic of the rhythm can be
accounted for in such short lines as the second and tenth, properly
read.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Transactions of the Philological Society_, 1875-76.

[2] According to a more elaborate system Mr. Ellis recognized nine
varieties of force or stress, which he named in order as follows:
subweak, weak, superweak, submean, mean, supermean, substrong, strong,
superstrong. In like manner he named nine degrees each of length, pitch,
weight, and silence. Length and Silence are both terms of duration of
time. The meaning of Weight has not been generally understood, nor is
the term ordinarily recognized. Mr. Ellis described it as "due to
expression and mental conceptions of importance, resulting partly from
expression in delivery, produced by quality of tone and gliding pitch,
and partly from the mental effect of the constructional predominance of
conceptions." On this whole scheme of Mr. Ellis's, Mr. Mayor remarks
interestingly: "Whilst I admire, I with difficulty repress a shudder at
the elaborate apparatus he has provided for registering the minutest
variations of metrical stress. Not only does he distinguish nine
different degrees of force, but there are the same number of degrees of
length, pitch, silence, and weight, making altogether forty-five
varieties of stress at the disposal of the metrist ... If the analysis
of rhythm is so terribly complicated, let us rush into the arms of the
intuitivists and trust to our ears only, for life is not long enough to
admit of characterizing lines when there are forty-five expressions for
each syllable to be considered." (_Chapters on English Metre_, p. 69.)

[3] The term "wrenched" was used originally, it would seem, as one of
reprobation. Thus Puttenham, in his _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589),
said; "There can not be in a maker a fowler fault, than to falsifie his
accent to serve his cadence, or by untrue orthographie to wrench his
words to helpe his rime." (Arber ed., p. 94.)

[4] It is interesting to compare with these irregular lines another
stanza of similar form, of about the same date, from an Elegy on Edward
I., in Böddeker's Collection, p. 140, and Wright's _Political Songs_, p.
246.

Alle þat beoþ of huerte trewe, a stounde herkneþ to my song of duel, þat
deþ haþ diht vs newe (þat makeþ me syke ant sorewe among!) of a knyht,
þat wes so strong, of wham god haþ don ys wille; me þuncheþ þat deþ haþ
don vs wrong, þat he so sone shal ligge stille.

The comparatively great regularity of the measures in this second stanza
is due to the fact that it was under the syllable-counting influence of
the French, being in fact a translation of a French original.

[5] Leigh Hunt said that "Coleridge saw the mistake which had been made
with regard to this measure, and restored it to the beautiful freedom of
which it was capable, by calling to mind the liberties allowed its old
musical professors the minstrels, and dividing it by _time_ instead of
_syllables_." (See the entire passage on _Christabel_, in the
Introduction, on "What is Poetry?", to _Imagination and Fancy_. For a
criticism of the metrical structure of _Christabel_, see Robert
Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_ (ed. 1901, pp. 73-75).)




II. THE FOOT AND THE VERSE


English verse is commonly measured by feet, a determinate number of
which go to form a verse or line. The foot is determined by the distance
from one accented syllable to another in the regular scheme of the
metre. The usual metrical feet are either dissyllabic or trisyllabic.
The dissyllabic foot is commonly called an _iambus_ (or _iamb_) if the
unaccented syllable precedes the accented, and a _trochee_ if the
accented precedes the unaccented. The trisyllabic foot is commonly
called an _anapest_ if the two unaccented syllables precede the accented
syllable, and a _dactyl_ if they follow the accented syllable.[6] It
will be observed that the fundamental rhythm of both iambic and trochaic
verse is the same, as is also that of both anapestic and dactylic verse;
the distinction belonging only to the metre as measured into regular
lines. Iambic and anapestic verse (in which the light syllables commonly
open the verse) are sometimes called "ascending rhythm"; trochaic and
dactylic verse (in which the accented syllables commonly open the
verse) "descending rhythm." Ascending rhythm is very greatly in
predominance in English poetry.

The normal verse of any poem is therefore described by indicating the
name of the foot and the number of feet in the verse. The number of feet
is always indicated by the number of stresses or principal accents in
the normal verse. As the light or unaccented syllables may vary from the
typical number, it may also be necessary to indicate that the line is
longer than its name would imply, by reason of Feminine Ending (a light
syllable added at the end) or Anacrusis (a light syllable prefixed); or
that it is shorter than its name would indicate by reason of Catalexis
or Truncation (the light syllable at the end--or less frequently at the
beginning--being omitted).

In like manner, any particular verse or line is fully described by
indicating: (1) the typical foot; (2) the number of feet; (3) the place
of the cesura; (4) the presence or absence of a final pause
("end-stopped" or "run-on"); (5) the presence of such irregularities as

    (_a_) Anacrusis or feminine ending,
    (_b_) Catalexis (or truncation),
    (_c_) Substitution of exceptional feet for the typical foot,
    (_d_) Pauses other than the cesural.


_One-stress iambic_.

    Thus I
    Pass by
      And die
    As one
    Unknown
      And gone.

(HERRICK: _Upon his Departure Hence_. 1648.)

(In combination with two-stress and three-stress:)

    No more I'll vaunt,
    For now I see
    Thou only hast the power
          To find
          And bind
      A heart that's free,
    And slave it in an hour.

(HERRICK: _His Recantation._ 1648.)


_Two-stress iambic_.

    Most good, most fair,
    Or things as rare
    To call you 's lost;
    For all the cost
    Words can bestow
    So poorly show,...

(DRAYTON: _Amouret Anacreontic._ ab. 1600.)

    Because I do
    Begin to woo,
    Sweet singing Lark,
    Be thou the clerk,
    And know thy when
    To say Amen.

(HERRICK: _To the Lark._ 1648.)

    The raging rocks,
    And shivering shocks,
    Shall break the locks
      Of prison-gates;
    And Phibbus' car
    Shall shine from far,
    And make and mar
      The foolish Fates.

(SHAKSPERE: Bottom's song in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, I. ii. ab.
1595.)

(In combination with three-stress:)

    Only a little more
        I have to write;
        Then I'll give o'er,
    And bid the world good-night.

    'Tis but a flying minute
        That I must stay,
        Or linger in it;
    And then I must away.

(HERRICK: _His Poetry his Pillar._ 1648.)

In the second stanza we have the same measure with feminine ending.

(In combination with four-stress:)

    Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
    Thus unlamented let me die;
    Steal from the world, and not a stone
            Tell where I lie.

(POPE: _Ode on Solitude._ ab. 1700.)


_Two-stress trochaic_.

    Could I catch that
    Nimble traitor,
    Scornful Laura,
    Swift-foot Laura,
    Soon then would I
    Seek avengement.

(CAMPION: Anacreontics, in _Observations in the Art of English Poesie_.
1602.)

(In combination with four-stress:)

      Dust that covers
      Long dead lovers
    Song blows off with breath that brightens;
      At its flashes
      Their white ashes
    Burst in bloom that lives and lightens.

(SWINBURNE: _Song in Season._)

(Catalectic, and in combination with three-stress:)

    Summer's crest
    Red-gold tressed,
      Corn-flowers peeping under;--
    Idle noons,
    Lingering moons,
    Sudden cloud,
    Lightning's shroud,
    Sudden rain,
    Quick again
      Smiles where late was thunder.

(GEORGE ELIOT: Song from _The Spanish Gypsy_, Bk. i. 1868.)

The trochaic measures in _The Spanish Gypsy_ are in imitation of the
similar forms in Spanish poetry. See p. 114, below.


_Two-stress anapestic._

(In combination with three-stress:)

      Like a gloomy stain
      On the emerald main
    Alpheus rushed behind,--
      As an eagle pursuing
      A dove to its ruin
    Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

(SHELLEY: _Arethusa._ 1820.)

(With feminine ending:)

    He is gone on the mountain,
      He is lost to the forest,
    Like a summer-dried fountain,
      When our need was the sorest.
    The font, reappearing,
      From the raindrops shall borrow,
    But to us comes no cheering,
      To Duncan no morrow!

(SCOTT: Coronach, from _The Lady of the Lake_, Canto 3. 1810.)

(In combination with four-stress:)

    Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
        The mist in my face.
    When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
        I am nearing the place,
    The power of the night, the press of the storm,
        The post of the foe;
    Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
        Yet the strong man must go.

(BROWNING: _Prospice._ 1864.)

These specimens, as is usual in anapestic verse, show considerable
freedom in the treatment of the part of the foot containing the light
syllables, substituted iambi being very common. Note the iambi in the
Shelley stanza, line 1, second foot, and line 5, first foot. In the
latter case, however, the first light syllable of line 5 is really
supplied by the syllable added to make the feminine ending of line 4. In
like manner, in the Scott stanza, the first syllable of line 8 is really
supplied by the _-ing_ of line 7; and where we have both feminine ending
(in line 1) and a full anapest following, the effect is that of a
hypermetrical syllable which must be hurried over in the reading. In the
specimen from Browning we find an iambus in the opening foot in lines 2
and 6 (also, of course, in lines 1 and 5).


_Two-stress dactylic._

    One more Unfortunate,
    Weary of breath,
    Rashly importunate,
    Gone to her death!

    Take her up tenderly,
    Lift her with care;
    Fashioned so slenderly,
    Young, and so fair!

(THOMAS HOOD: _The Bridge of Sighs._ ab. 1830.)

Here the alternate lines are catalectic, both light syllables being
wanting.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon in front of them
      Volley'd and thunder'd;
    Storm'd at with shot and shell,
    Boldly they rode and well,
    Into the jaws of Death,
    Into the mouth of Hell
      Rode the six hundred.

(TENNYSON: _Charge of the Light Brigade._ 1854.)

Here the fourth and ninth lines are catalectic.

    Loudly the sailors cheered
    Svend of the Forked Beard,
    As with his fleet he steered
      Southward to Vendland;
    Where with their courses hauled
    All were together called,
    Under the Isle of Svald
      Near to the mainland.

(LONGFELLOW: _Saga of King Olaf_, xvii. 1863.)

In the reading of these stanzas from Tennyson and Longfellow there is so
marked a stress on the final syllable as to make the second dactyl
(except in the opening lines of the Tennyson stanza) more like a Cretic
(in the classical terminology); _i.e._ a foot made up of two heavy
syllables with a light syllable between them. But no such foot is
generally recognized in English verse.


_Two-stress irregular._

      On the ground
      Sleep sound:
      I'll apply
      To your eye,
    Gentle lover, remedy.
      When thou wak'st,
      Thou tak'st
      True delight
      In the sight
    Of thy former lady's eye.

(SHAKSPERE: Puck's Song in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, III. ii. ab.
1595.)

    What I hate,
    Be consecrate
    To celebrate
    Thee and Thy state,
    No mate
    For Thee;
    What see
    For envy
    In poor me?

(BROWNING: Song in _Caliban upon Setebos_. 1864.)

In the usual printing of _Caliban upon Setebos_ this song is brought
into the form of the five-accent lines. It is evidently intended,
however, to be read in two-accent groups. Professor Moulton has remarked
interestingly that Browning gives the unique figure of Caliban not only
a grammar but a prosody of his own.

    Though my rime be ragged,
    Tattered and jagged,
    Rudely raine-beaten,
    Rusty and moth-eaten;
    If ye take wel therewith,
    It hath in it some pith.

(JOHN SKELTON: _Colyn Cloute_. ab. 1510.)

This is a specimen of what Mr. Churton Collins calls "that headlong
voluble breathless doggrel which, rattling and clashing on through
quick-recurring rhymes, ... has taken from the name of its author the
title of Skeltonical verse." (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. i. p. 185.)
The number of accents, as well as the number of syllables, is irregular,
being quite as often (perhaps more often) three as two.


_Three-stress iambic._

    O let the solid ground
      Not fail beneath my feet
    Before my life has found
      What some have found so sweet;
    Then let come what come may,
    What matter if I go mad,
    I shall have had my day.

(TENNYSON: Song in _Maud_, xi. 1855.)

(In combination with verse of four, five, and six stresses:)

      The Oracles are dumb;
      No voice or hideous hum
    Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
      Apollo from his shrine
      Can no more divine,
    With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
      No nightly trance or breathed spell
      Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

(MILTON: _Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity_. 1629.)

Here, in line 5, we have an instance of a verse truncated at the
beginning,--rare in modern English poetry.

(With feminine ending:)

    The mountain sheep are sweeter,
    But the valley sheep are fatter;
    We therefore deemed it meeter
    To carry off the latter.
    We made an expedition;
    We met an host and quelled it;
    We forced a strong position,
    And killed the men who held it.

(THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK: War Song of Dinas Vawr, from _The Misfortunes of
Elphin_. 1829.)

In line 2 is an instance of anacrusis.


_Three-stress trochaic._

(In combination with iambic:)

    Go where glory waits thee,
    But, while fame elates thee,
      Oh! still remember me.
    When the praise thou meetest
    To thine ear is sweetest,
      Oh! then remember me.

(THOMAS MOORE: _Go Where Glory Waits Thee_. ab. 1820.)

(In combination with six-stress verses:)

      Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
        Bird thou never wert,
      That from heaven, or near it,
        Pourest thy full heart
    In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

      Higher still and higher
        From the earth thou springest,
      Like a cloud of fire
        The blue deep thou wingest,
    And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

(SHELLEY: _To a Skylark_. 1820.)

Here lines 2 and 4 are catalectic.


_Three-stress anapestic._

    I am monarch of all I survey;
    My right there is none to dispute;
    From the centre all round to the sea
    I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

(COWPER: _Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk._ 1782.)

In this specimen lines 2, 5, 6, and 8 show initial truncation, the first
light syllable being missing.

(With two-stress verse:)

    His desire is a dureless content,
      And a trustless joy;
    He is won with a world of despair
      And is lost with a toy....

    But true love is a durable fire,
      In the mind ever burning,
    Never sick, never old, never dead,
      From itself never turning.

(SIR WALTER RALEIGH (?): _Pilgrim to Pilgrim_. In MS. Rawl. 85; in
Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, p. 3.)

"The metres of the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign are so
overwhelmingly iambic," Professor Schelling observes, "that this
perfectly metrical, if somewhat irregular, anapæstic movement comes like
a surprise. Professor Gummere, of Haverford College, calls my attention
to three epigrams--printed among the poems of Raleigh, ed. Hannah, p.
55--all of them in more or less limping anapæsts, but not of this
measure. It is quite possible that the time to which these verses were
sung may have affected the measure." (Notes to _Elizabethan Lyrics_, pp.
211, 212.)

(With initial truncation:)

    She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,
    My path I could hardly discern;
    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
    I thought that she bade me return.

(SHENSTONE: _Pastoral Ballad._ 1743.)

Mr. Saintsbury praises highly the anapests of Shenstone (Ward's _English
Poets_, vol. iii. p. 272), saying that he "taught the metre to a greater
poet than himself, Cowper, and these two between them have written
almost everything that is worth reading in it, if we put avowed parody
and burlesque out of the question." But this is probably to be regarded
as overstating the case.

(With feminine ending:)

    If you go over desert and mountain,
      Far into the country of sorrow,
    To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
      And maybe for months and for years;
      You shall come, with a heart that is bursting
      For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
    You shall certainly come to the fountain
    At length,--to the Fountain of Tears.

(ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY: _The Fountain of Tears._ 1870.)

Here the extra light syllable at the end of the line is really the
initial light syllable of the following line, as in the specimen on p.
29, above.

    So this is a psalm of the waters,--
    The wavering, wandering waters:
    With languages learned in the forest,
    With secrets of earth's lonely caverns,
    The mystical waters go by me
    On errands of love and of beauty,
    On embassies friendly and gentle,
    With shimmer of brown and of silver.

(S. WEIR MITCHELL: _A Psalm of the Waters._ 1890.)

Here, also, the final light syllable might be said to take the place of
the missing initial syllable; but the structure of the verse, with the
fact that the initial anapest is always truncated and that the final
syllable is never accented, indicates that the verse as it stands is the
norm of the poem--three-stress anapestic, with initial truncation and
feminine ending.


_Three-stress dactylic._

(Catalectic:)

    This is a spray the Bird clung to,
      Making it blossom with pleasure,
    Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
      Fit for her nest and her treasure.

(BROWNING: _Misconceptions_. 1855.)


_Four-stress iambic._

(For specimens, see Part Two.)


_Four-stress trochaic._

    Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness,
      Lithe as panther forest-roaming,
    Long-armed naiad, when she dances,
      On a stream of ether floating.

(GEORGE ELIOT: Song from _The Spanish Gypsy_, Book i. 1868.)

    Westward, westward Hiawatha
    Sailed into the fiery sunset,
    Sailed into the purple vapors,
    Sailed into the dusk of evening.

(LONGFELLOW: _Hiawatha_. 1855.)

    Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
    Long continuance, and increasing,
    Hourly joys be still upon you!
    Juno sings her blessings on you.

(SHAKSPERE: Juno's Song in _The Tempest_, IV. i. ab. 1610.)

(Catalectic:)

    On a day, alack the day!
    Love, whose month is ever May,
    Spied a blossom passing fair
    Playing in the wanton air:
    Through the velvet leaves the wind,
    All unseen, can passage find;
    That the lover, sick to death,
    Wish himself the heaven's breath.

(SHAKSPERE: _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV. 3. ab. 1590.)

    Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
    Jest, and youthful jollity,
    Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
    Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
    Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
    And love to live in dimple sleek.

(MILTON: _L'Allegro_. 1634.)

    Souls of Poets dead and gone,
    What Elysium have ye known,
    Happy field or mossy cavern,
    Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
    Have ye tippled drink more fine
    Than mine host's Canary wine?
    Or are fruits of Paradise
    Sweeter than those dainty pies
    Of venison? O generous food!
    Drest as though bold Robin Hood
    Would, with his maid Marian,
    Sup and bowse from horn and can.

(KEATS: _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_. 1820.)


_Four-stress anapestic._

    What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
      The difference there is betwixt nature and art:
    I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
      And they have my whimsies; but thou hast my heart.

(PRIOR: _A Better Answer_. ab. 1710.)

Prior's anapests well illustrate the appropriateness of the measure for
light tripping effects, such as are sought _vers de société_. See also
the measure of Goldsmith's _Retaliation_, especially the passage
beginning--

    "Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can;
    An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man."

    The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
      The murmuring streamlet winds clear through the vale;
    The hawthorn trees blow in the dews of the morning,
      And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale.

(BURNS: _The Chevalier's Lament_. 1788.)

    The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
    And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
    And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
    When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

(BYRON: _The Destruction of Sennacherib_. 1815.)

(With three-stress:)

    Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
      Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
    Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
      Like fairy-gifts fading away,
    Thou wouldst still be ador'd, as this moment thou art,
      Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
    And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
      Would entwine itself verdantly still.

(THOMAS MOORE: _Believe me, if all those endearing young charms._ ab.
1825.)


_four-stress dactylic_.

    After the pangs of a desperate lover,
      When day and night I have sighed all in vain;
    Ah, what a pleasure it is to discover
      In her eyes pity, who causes my pain!

(DRYDEN: Song in _An Evening's Love_. 1668.)

Of this song Mr. Saintsbury says that it is "one of the rare examples of
a real dactylic metre in English, where the dactyls are not, as usual,
equally to be scanned as anapests." (_Life of Dryden_, Men of Letters
Series, p. 62.) Here, as almost always in English, the measure is
catalectic, a final dactyl being instinctively avoided, except in short
two-stress lines.

    Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword
    Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord,
    Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path:
    Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!

(BYRON: _Song of Saul before his Last Battle._ 1815.)

    Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
    Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
    And, pressing a troop, unable to stoop
    And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
    Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
    Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

(BROWNING: _Cavalier Tunes._ 1843.)

Here the metre is varied interestingly by pauses. Thus in lines 1 and 5
the light syllables of the second foot are wholly wanting.


_Five-stress iambic._

(For specimens, see Part Two.)


_Five-stress trochaic._

    What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
    Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
    Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
    All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),
    She would turn a new side to her mortal,
    Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
    Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
    Blind to Galileo on his turret,
    Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!

(BROWNING: _One Word More._ 1855.)

This is a rare specimen of unrimed verse in other than iambic rhythm.

(Catalectic:)

    Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
    Gathering up from all the lower ground;
    Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
    Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
    Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sighed,
    Panted, hand-in-hand with faces pale,
    Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
    Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
    Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail.

(TENNYSON: _The Vision of Sin._ 1842.)


_Five-stress anapestic._

    As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
    Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!
    He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most
        weak.
    'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, that  I seek
    In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
    A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
    Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
    Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!

(BROWNING: _Saul._ 1845.)

    Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
    We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
    And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;
    It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;
    I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
    I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.

(TENNYSON: _Maud_, III. vi. 1855.)

Here frequent iambi are substituted for anapests; as in line 1, second
and fourth feet; lines 2 and 3, fifth foot; line 5, third foot.


_Five-stress dactylic._

This form is almost unknown. In the following lines we find five-stress
catalectic verse of dactyls and trochees combined:

    Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
    Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
    Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

(SWINBURNE: _A Century of Roundels._)


_Six-stress iambic._

(For specimens, see Part Two.)


_Six-stress trochaic._

(With alternate lines catalectic:)

    Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,
      Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:
    King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;
      God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.

(SWINBURNE: _The Last Oracle._)


_Six-stress anapestic._

    For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,
    And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of
        the foam,
    That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter
        and till,
    And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand,
        home.

(TENNYSON: _Maud_, I. i. 1855.)

(See note on p. 41.)

    All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering: all over
        impends
    An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and
        descends,
    That exalts and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence
        of heart
    As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and
        hearkens apart.

(SWINBURNE: _The Garden of Cymodoce_, in _Songs of the Springtides_.)


_Six-stress dactylic._

(For this, see chiefly Part Two.)

(Catalectic:)

    Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
    Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
    Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an ass for thy paains:
    Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.

(TENNYSON: _Northern Farmer--new style._ ab. 1860.)

    Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
    Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a
        daughter
    Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.

(SWINBURNE: _Hesperia._)


_Seven-stress iambic._

    There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
    When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
    'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so
       fast,
    But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be  past.

(BYRON: _Stanzas for Music._ 1815.)

Here we have anacrusis in lines 2 and 4.

    Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter darkness
        hurled--
    Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled--
    Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our
        world.

(KIPLING: _Wolcott Balestier._)

(See also under Seven-stress Verse, in Part Two.)


_Seven-stress trochaic._

(Catalectic:)

    Clear the way, my lords and lackeys, you have had your day.
    Here you have your answer, England's yea against your nay;
    Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way!

(SWINBURNE: _Clear the Way._)


_Seven-stress anapestic._

(With feminine ending:)

    Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like  to the
        leaves' generations,
    That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and
        shadowlike nations,
    Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of
        creatures fast fleeing,
    Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date
        of our being.

(SWINBURNE: _The Birds_, from Aristophanes.)

Of this translation Mr. Swinburne says that it was undertaken from a
consideration of the fact that the "marvellous metrical invention of the
anapestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to
which all variations and combinations of anapestic, iambic, or trochaic
metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of
verse are unnatural and abhorrent." ... "I have not attempted," he says
further, "the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare
exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a
preponderance of heavy-footed spondees.... My main desire ... was to
renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and
triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who

          'dance as 'twere to the music
    Their own hoofs make.'"

(_Studies in Song_, p. 68.)


_Seven-stress dactylic._

This form of verse may be said to be wanting. Schipper quotes as
possible examples some lines which (as he remarks) seem to be made
merely for the metrical purpose:

    "Out of the kingdom of Christ shall be gathered, by angels o'er
        Satan victorious,
    All that offendeth, that lieth, that faileth to honor his name
        ever glorious."

(_Englische Metrik_, vol. ii. p. 419.)


_Eight-stress iambic._

This is almost unknown in English verse, because where conceivably
occurring it shows an irresistible tendency to break up into two halves
of four stresses each. William Webbe, in his _Discourse of English
Poetrie_ (1586), quoted these lines as "the longest verse in length
which I have seen used in English":

    "Where virtue wants and vice abounds, there wealth is but a baited
        hook,
    To make men swallow down their bane, before on danger deep they
        look."


_Eight-stress trochaic._

(Catalectic:)

    Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
    Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
    Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
        might;
    Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of
        sight.

(TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall._ 1842.)

    Open then I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and  flutter,
    In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
    Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,--
    Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door.

(POE: _The Raven._ 1845.)

    Night, in utmost noon forlorn and strong, with heart athirst and
        fasting,
    Hungers here, barred up forever, whence as one whom dreams affright,
    Day recoils before the low-browed lintel threatening doom and
        casting Night.

(SWINBURNE: _Night in Guernsey._)

In the last line of this specimen we have a nine-accent verse,--very
rare in English poetry.

The tendency of all eight-accent lines being to break up into halves of
four accents, the distinction between four-stress and eight-stress verse
may be at times only a question of printing. Thus, Thackeray's _Sorrows
of Werther_ might be regarded as eight-stress trochaic, though commonly
printed in short lines:

    "Werther had a love for Charlotte
      Such as words could never utter.
    Would you know how first he saw her?
      She was cutting bread and butter."


_Eight-stress anapestic._

    Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendor
        of winter had passed out of sight,
    The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that
        fulfil us in sleep with delight;
    The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and
        branches that glittered and swayed
    Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow, or of frost that
        out-lightens all flowers till it fade,
    That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night
        than the day, nor the day than the night,
    Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had
        the madness and might in thee made,
    March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that
        enkindle the season they smite.

(SWINBURNE: _March._)


_Eight-stress dactylic._

    Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently
         bearing
    Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing
         and daring.

(LONGFELLOW: _Golden Legend_, iv. 1851.)

The breathlessly continuous character of such long anapestic or
dactylic lines may of course be interrupted, by way of relief, by the
substitution of iambi or trochees. In the specimen from Swinburne such a
resting-place is found in line 3, where a light syllable is omitted
after _winds_. In the specimen from Longfellow the words _high-way_,
_distant_, _human_, of course, fill the places of complete dactyls.


COMBINATIONS AND SUBSTITUTIONS


i. _Verses in which different sorts of feet are more or less regularly
combined_.

    In the morning, O so early, my beloved, my beloved,
    All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease:
    'Twas a thrush sang in my garden, "Hear the story, hear the story!"
    And the lark sang "Give us glory!" and the dove said "Give us peace."

(JEAN INGELOW: _Give us Love and Give us Peace._)

    Fair is our lot--O goodly is our heritage!
    (Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!)
      For the Lord our God Most High
      He hath made the deep as dry,
    He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth!

(KIPLING: _A Song of the English._)

In both these specimens the full accent regularly recurs in only the
alternate feet. Thus while the first specimen is technically
eight-stress trochaic, there are in the normal reading of it only four
full accents to the line. In other words the first, third, fifth, and
seventh feet are regularly pyrrhics. (See p. 55.) The same thing appears
in the specimen from Kipling: _ye_, _and_, _in_ (in line 2) are accented
only in a distinctly secondary fashion. Some have suggested, for such
rhythms as these, the recognition of a foot made up of one stressed and
three unstressed syllables. Lanier represents such measures (in _The
Science of English Verse_) in four-eight time.

    Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
      The mist in my face,
    When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
      I am nearing the place,
    The power of the night, the press of the storm,
      The post of the foe;
    Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
      Yet the strong man must go.

(BROWNING: _Prospice._)

Here the tendency is to use iambi and anapests in alternate feet; see
especially lines 2, 3, and 5.

    All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;
      Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
    Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
      When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

    The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
      The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
    Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
      Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

(BROWNING: _Abt Vogler._)

Here we have a hexameter which is neither iambic nor anapestic, but a
combination of the two rhythms. So in the following specimens
dissyllabic and trisyllabic feet are used interchangeably.

    When the lamp is shatter'd
    The light in the dust lies dead--
    When the cloud is scatter'd
    The rainbow's glory is shed.
    When the lute is broken,
    Sweet tones are remember'd not;
    When the lips have spoken,
    Loved accents are soon forgot.

(SHELLEY: _The Flight of Love._)

    The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word
    Is soft at the least wave's lapse in a still small reach.
    From bay unto bay, on quest of a goal deferred,
    From headland ever to headland and breach to breach,
    Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach.

(SWINBURNE: _The Seaboard._)

    England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy
        glory, free,
    Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he
        worships thee;
    None may sing thee: the sea-bird's wing beats down our songs as it
        hails the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _The Armada_, vii.)

    This life of ours is a wild Æolian harp of many a joyous strain,
    But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls
        in pain.

(LONGFELLOW: _The Golden Legend_, iv.)

      Come away, come away, Death,
    And in sad cypress let me be laid;
      Fly away, fly away, breath;
    I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
    My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
              O prepare it!
    My part of death, no one so true
              Did share it.

(SHAKSPERE: _Twelfth Night_, II. iv.)

The characteristic irregularity in this stanza is the variation from
trochaic to iambic rhythm. In this case the variations are in part due,
no doubt, to the fact that the words were written for music.

    Maud with her exquisite face,
    And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,
    And feet like sunny gems on an English green,
    Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,
    Singing of Death, and of Honor that cannot die,
    Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean
    And myself so languid and base.

(TENNYSON: _Maud_, I. v.)

In this specimen the characteristic rhythm of lines 1, 4, and 5 is
dactylic, that of the remainder anapestic-iambic.

    The trumpet's loud clangor
      Excites us to arms
    With shrill notes of anger
      And mortal alarms.
    The double double double beat
      Of the thundering drum
      Cries, hark! the foes come;
    Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.
              The soft complaining flute
              In dying notes discovers
              The woes of helpless lovers,
    Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

(DRYDEN: _Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, 1687.)

In this famous stanza the rhythm changes for obvious purposes of
imitative representation.

    Children dear, was it yesterday
    (Call yet once) that she went away?
    Once she sate with you and me,
    On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
    And the youngest sate on her knee.
    She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well,
    When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
    She sighed, she looked up through the clear green sea;
    She said, "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
    In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
    'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
    And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
    I said, "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
    Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"
    She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.
    Children dear, was it yesterday?

    ... Down, down, down!
    Down to the depths of the sea!
    She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
    Singing most joyfully.
    Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
    For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
    For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
    For the wheel where I spun,
    And the blessed light of the sun!"
    And so she sings her fill,
    Singing most joyfully,
    Till the spindle drops from her hand,
    And the whizzing wheel stands still.
    She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
    And over the sand at the sea;
    And her eyes are set in a stare;
    And anon there breaks a sigh,
    And anon there drops a tear,
    From a sorrow-clouded eye,
    And a heart sorrow-laden,
    A long, long sigh,
    For the cold strange eyes of a little mermaiden,
    And the gleam of her golden hair.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _The Forsaken Merman._)

    Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
    Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
    Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
    Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
    As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
    The strong tempestuous treble throbbed and palpitated;
    Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
    Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
    Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
    Flung the torrent rainbow round:
    Then they started from their places,
    Moved with violence, changed in hue,
    Caught each other with wild grimaces,
    Half-invisible to the view,
    Wheeling with precipitate paces
    To the melody, till they flew,
    Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
    Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
    Like to Furies, like to Graces,
    Dash'd together in blinding dew.

(TENNYSON: _Vision of Sin._)


ii. _Verses in which individual feet are altered from the metrical
scheme._

Even in metre exhibiting no marked irregularities, it is of course
rather exceptional than otherwise to find all the feet in a verse
conforming to the type-foot of the metre. Departures from the typical
metre may be conveniently classified in five groups: Deficiency in
accent; excess of accent; inversion of accent; light syllable added to
dissyllabic foot; light syllable omitted in trisyllabic foot.

Deficiency of accent is the most common of all the variations, if we
understand by "accent" such syllabic stress as would be ordinarily
appreciable in the reading of the word in question. It would be safe to
say that in English five-stress iambic verse, read with only the
ordinary etymological and rhetorical accents, twenty-five per cent of
the verses lack the full five stresses characteristic of the type. In
many cases, too, a foot with deficiency in stress is compensated for by
another foot in the same verse showing excess of stress. Feet thus
deficient in stress may conveniently be called _pyrrhics_, the pyrrhic
being understood as made up of two unstressed syllables. This term has
never become fully domesticated in English prosody, and some object to
its use on the ground that we have no feet wholly without stress. Its
use in the sense just indicated, however, seems to be an unquestionable
convenience.

Excess of accent, while less common than deficiency of accent, is even
more easily recognizable. The foot containing two stressed syllables,
even though one of the stresses may be distinctly stronger than the
other, may conveniently be called a _spondee_.

Inversion of accent is exceedingly familiar, especially at the beginning
of the verse and after the medial pause. It consists, technically
speaking, in the substitution of a trochee for an iambus or an iambus
for a trochee (the latter very rarely).

A light syllable inserted in dissyllabic measure is not unusual, though
by no means so common as the variations previously enumerated. Such a
syllable is frequently spoken of as "hypermetrical"; or, the variation
may be considered as the substitution of an anapest for an iambus, in
iambic measure, or the substitution of a dactyl for a trochee, in
trochaic measure.

The omission of one of the two light syllables from the foot in
trisyllabic verse is so common as to make it difficult to find pure
anapestic or dactylic verse in English. This fact is due in part to
preference for dissyllabic measures, and in part to the usual
indifference, in all Germanic verse, to accuracy in the number of light
syllables. The variation may frequently be regarded as involving a
prolongation of the light syllable of the foot, or a pause equal to the
time of the omitted syllable; technically speaking, it consists in the
substitution of an iambus for an anapest, or a trochee for a dactyl.

Examples of all these variations may best be found in the specimens of
verse included in the preceding pages. A few specimens of detail are
added here, for the sake of greater clearness.


_Deficiency in accent (substituted pyrrhic)._

    To further this, Achit_ophel_ unites
    The malcontents of all the Israelites,
    Whose differing par_ties he_ could wisely join
    For several ends to serve the same design;
    The best (_and of_ the princes some were such)
    Who thought the power of mon_archy_ too much;
    Mistaken men and patr_iots in_ their hearts,
    Not wick_ed, but_ seduced by impious arts;
    By these the springs of prop_erty_ were bent,
    And wound so high they crack'd the gov_ernment_.

(DRYDEN: _Absalom and Achitophel_, I.)


_Excess of accent (substituted spondee)._

    And ten _low words_ oft creep in one _dull line_.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism._)

    _Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens_, and shades of death.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, II. 621.)

    _See, see_ where Christ's _blood streams_ in the firmament!

(MARLOWE: _Faustus_, sc. xvi.)

    O great, _just, good God! Mis_erable me!

(BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book_, VI.)

    A tree's _head snaps_--and there, _there, there, there, there_!

(BROWNING: _Caliban upon Setebos._)


_Inversion of accent (substituted trochee)._

    Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
    _Gorged with_ the dearest morsel of the earth.

(SHAKSPERE: _Romeo and Juliet_, V. iii. 45 f.)

    Finds tongues in trees, _books in_ the running brooks,
    _Sermons_ in stones, and good in every thing.

(_As You Like It_, II. i. 16 f.)

    The watery kingdom whose ambitious head
    _Spits in_ the face of heaven.

(_Merchant of Venice_, II. vii. 44 f.)

    Long lines of cliff _breaking_ have left a chasm.

(TENNYSON: _Enoch Arden._)

    There whirled her white robe like a blossomed branch
    _Rapt to_ the horrible fall: a glance I gave,
    No more; but woman-vested as I was
    _Plunged; and_ the flood _drew; yet_ I caught her; then
    _Oaring_ one arm,...

(TENNYSON: _The Princess._)

    _Stabbed through_ the heart's affections to the heart!
    _Seethed like_ a kid in its own mother's milk!
    _Killed with_ a word worse than a life of blows!

(TENNYSON: _Merlin and Vivien._)

                                        He flowed
    _Right for_ the polar star, past Orgunje,
    _Brimming_, and bright, and large; then sands begin,...

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _Sohrab and Rustum._)


_Hypermetrical syllable (substituted anapest)._

    _Let me see, let me see_, is not the leaf turn'd down?

(SHAKSPERE: _Julius Cæsar_, IV. iii. 271.)

    Leviathan, which God of all his works
    Created hug_est that swim_ the ocean stream.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, I. 201 f.)

This passage was one of those where Bentley made himself ridiculous in
his edition of Milton. "To smooth it" he changed the lines to read--

    "Leviathan, whom God the vastest made
    Of all the kinds that swim the ocean stream,"--

not perceiving, what Cowper pointed out, that Milton had designedly used
"the word _hugest_ where it may have the clumsiest effect....
Smoothness was not the thing to be consulted when the Leviathan was in
question."

    So he with diff_iculty_ and labour hard
    Moved on, with diff_iculty_ and labour he.

(_ib._ II. 1021 f.)

                            The sweep
    Of some precip_itous rivulet to_ the wave.

(TENNYSON: _Enoch Arden._)

    The sound of many a heav_ily galloping_ hoof.

(TENNYSON: _Geraint and Enid._)

    I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds,...
    Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her
    _The Abominable_, that uninvited came.

(TENNYSON: _Œnone._)

    _Do you see_ this square old yellow book I toss
    _I' the air_, and catch again, and twirl about
    _By the crumpl_ed vellum covers; pure crude fact--

(BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book_, I.)

                                   That plant
    Shall never wave its tangles light_ly and soft_ly
    As a queen's languid and imperial arm.

(BROWNING: _Paracelsus_, I.)

A distinction should be made between these hypermetrical syllables which
change the character of the foot from dissyllabic to trisyllabic, and
syllables (in a sense hypermetrical) which are slurred or elided in the
reading. The word _radiance_, for example, is regarded as trisyllabic in
prose, but in the verse--

    "Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned,"

it is made dissyllabic by instinctive compression, and in no proper
sense makes an anapest of the fifth foot. Of the same character are the
numerous cases where a vowel is elided before another vowel--especially
the vowel of the article _the_.[7] On the elisions of Milton's verse,
see Mr. Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_; on those of Shakspere's
verse, see Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_. In modern verse the use of
elision and slurring is ordinarily that found in common speech.


_Omitted syllable (substituted iambus)._

    As a vision of heaven from the hollows of ocean,
                          that none but a god _might see_,
    _Rose out_ of the silence _of things unknown_
                          of a presence, a form, _a might_,
    And we heard as a prophet that hears _God's mes_sage
                          against him, and may _not flee_.

(SWINBURNE: _Death of Richard Wagner._)

See also specimens on pp. 42, 43, 48, above.

Mr. Mayor considers the question as to how far substitution of other
than the typical foot may be carried in a verse, without destroying the
genuineness of the fundamental rhythm. His conclusions are these:

(1) The limit of trochaic substitution is three feet out of five, with
the final foot iambic; or two out of five, if the fifth foot is
inverted.

(2) A spondee is allowable in any position; the limit is four out of
five, with either the fourth or fifth foot remaining iambic.

(3) A pyrrhic may occur in any position; the limit is three out of five,
with the other feet preferably spondees.

(4) The limit for trisyllabic substitution is three out of five.

(_Chapters on English Metre_, chap. V.)

Professor Corson discusses the æsthetic effect of these changes from the
typical metre: "The true metrical artist ... never indulges in variety
for variety's sake.... All metrical effects are to a great extent
_relative_--and relativity of effect depends, of course, upon having a
standard in the mind or feelings.... Now the more closely the poet
adheres to his standard--to the even tenor (modulus) of his verse--so
long as there is no logical nor æsthetic motive for departing from it,
the more effective do his departures become when they are sufficiently
motived. All non-significant departures weaken the significant ones....
The normal tenor of the verse is presumed to represent the normal tenor
of the feeling which produces it. And departures from that normal tenor
represent, or should represent, variations in the normal tenor of the
feeling. Outside of the general law ... of the slurring or suppression
of extra light syllables, which do not go for anything in the
expression, an exceptional foot must result in emphasis, whether
intended or not, either logical or emotional.... A great poet is
presumed to have metrical skill; and where ripples occur in the stream
of his verse, they will generally be found to justify themselves as
organic; _i.e._ they are a part of the expression."

(_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 48-50.)

On the æsthetic symbolism of various metrical movements, see G. L.
Raymond's _Poetry as a Representative Art_, pp. 113 ff.


FOOTNOTES:

[6] The names of the several kinds of feet are of course borrowed from
classical prosody, where they are used to mark feet made up not of
accented and unaccented, but of long and short syllables. The different
significance of the terms as applied to the verse of different languages
has given rise to some confusion, and it is proposed by some to abandon
the classical terms; their use, however, seems to be too well
established in English to permit of change. Some would even abandon the
attempt to measure English verse by feet, contending that its rhythm is
too free to admit of any such measuring process; thus, see Mr. J. M.
Robertson, in the Appendix to _New Essays toward a Critical Method_, and
Mr. J. A. Symonds in his _Blank Verse_. See also in Mr. Robert Bridges's
_Milton's Prosody_, Appendix G "On the Use of Greek Terminology in
English Prosody." (1901 ed. p. 77.)

[7] On the historical problem of the distinction between elided and
genuinely hypermetrical syllables in the French and English decasyllabic
verse, see Motheré: _Les théories du vers héroique anglais et ses
relations avec la versification française_ (Havre, 1886).




III. THE STANZA


The stanza, or strophe, is the largest unit of verse-measure ordinarily
recognized. It is based not so much on rhythmical divisions as on
periods either rhetorical or melodic; that is, a short stanza will
roughly correspond to the period of a sentence, and a long one to that
of a paragraph, while in lyrical verse the original idea was to conform
the stanza to the melody for which it was written. Thus Schipper
observes: "The word strophe properly signifies a _turning_, and
originally indicated the return of the song, as sung, to the melody with
which it began." Schipper defines a stanza as a group of verses of a
certain number, so combined that all the stanzas of the same poem will
be identical in the number, the length, and the metre of the
corresponding verses; in rimed verse, also, the arrangement of the rimes
will be identical. (See _Grundriss_, p. 268.)

The form of a stanza, then, is determined and described (the fundamental
metre being assumed) by the number of verses, the length of verses, and
the arrangement of rimes. The usual and convenient method of indicating
these conditions is to represent all the verses that rime together by
the same letter, while the number of feet in the verse is written like
an algebraic exponent. Thus a quatrain in "common metre" (four-stress
and three-stress lines), riming alternately, is represented by the
formula _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_.

       *       *       *       *       *

The appearance of the stanza in English verse is always the sign of
foreign influence. The West Germanic verse, as far back as we have
specimens of it, is uniformly _stichic_ (that is, marked by no periods
save those of the individual verse), not _stanzaic_.[8] On the other
hand, we find the stanza in the Old Norse verse. Sievers's view is that
originally the two sorts of verse existed side by side, the stanzaic
being preferred for chorus delivery, the stichic for individual
recitation; one form at length crowding out the other.

The great organizer of the stanza is, of course, the element of rime.
While unrimed stanzas are familiar in classical verse, the two
innovations, rime and stanza, were introduced together into English
verse, under both Latin and French influences, and have almost
invariably been associated. For notes on the history of the beginnings
of stanza-forms in English, see therefore under Rime, in the following
section.


TERCETS

    Truth may seem, but cannot be;
    Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
    Truth and beauty buried be.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Phœnix and the Turtle._ 1601.)

    O praise the Lord, his wonders tell,
    Whose mercy shines in Israel,
    At length redeem'd from sin and hell.

(GEORGE SANDYS: _Paraphrase upon Luke i._ ab. 1630.)

    Love, making all things else his foes,
    Like a fierce torrent overflows
    Whatever doth his course oppose.

(SIR JNO. DENHAM: _Against Love._ ab. 1640.)

    Children, keep up that harmless play:
    Your kindred angels plainly say
    By God's authority ye may.

(LANDOR: _Children Playing in a Churchyard._ 1858.)

    Whoe'er she be,
    That not impossible She
    That shall command my heart and me;

    Where'er she lie,
    Lock'd up from mortal eye
    In shady leaves of destiny:...

    --Meet you her, my Wishes,
    Bespeak her to my blisses,
    And be ye call'd, my absent kisses.

(CRASHAW: _Wishes for the Supposed Mistress._ 1646.)

    I said, "I toil beneath the curse,
    But, knowing not the universe,
    I fear to slide from bad to worse.

    "And that, in seeking to undo
    One riddle, and to find the true,
    I knit a hundred others new."

(TENNYSON: _The Two Voices._ 1833.)

    Like the swell of some sweet tune,
    Morning rises into noon,
    May glides onward into June.

(LONGFELLOW: _Maidenhood._ 1842.)

    Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
    Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
    That liquefaction of her clothes.

(HERRICK: _To Julia._ 1648)

    The fear was on the cattle, for the gale was on the sea,
    An' the pens broke up on the lower deck an' let the creatures free--
    An' the lights went out on the lower deck, an' no one down but me.

(KIPLING: _Mulholland's Contract._)


_Terza rima_ (_aba_, _bcb_, etc.).

    A spending hand that alway poureth out
    Had need to have a bringer in as fast;
    And on the stone that still doth turn about

    There groweth no moss. These proverbs yet do last:
    Reason hath set them in so sure a place,
    That length of years their force can never waste.

    When I remember this, and eke the case
    Wherein thou stand'st, I thought forthwith to write,
    Bryan, to thee. Who knows how great a grace,...

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: _How to use the court and himself therein, written to
Sir Francis Bryan._ ab. 1542.)

The _terza rima_ is, strictly speaking, a scheme of continuous verse
rather than a stanza, each tercet being united by the rime-scheme to the
preceding. Its use in English has always been slight, and always due to
conscious imitation of the Italian. No successful attempt has been made
to use it for a long poem, as Dante did in the _Divina Commedia_.
Wyatt's specimen is the earliest in English; he chose the form for his
three satires imitating those of Alamanni.

    Once, O sweet once, I saw with dread oppressed
    Her whom I dread; so that with prostrate lying
    Her length the earth Love's chiefe clothing dressed.
    I saw that riches fall, and fell a crying:--
    Let not dead earth enjoy so deare a cover,
    But decke therewith my soule for your sake dying;
    Lay all your feare upon your fearfull lover:
    Shine, eyes, on me, that both our lives be guarded:
    So I your sight, you shall your selves recover.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Thyrsis and Dorus_, in the _Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

    Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations
    Muse a vain thing, the kings of earth upstand
    With power, and princes in their congregations

    Lay deep their plots together through each land
    Against the Lord and his Messiah dear?
    "Let us break off," say they, "by strength of hand

    Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
    Their twisted cords." He who in Heaven doth dwell
    Shall laugh.

(MILTON: _Psalm II._ 1653.)

    O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
    Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
    Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
    Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
    Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
    Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
    The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
    Each like a corpse within its grave, until
    Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
    Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
    (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
    With living hues and odors plain and hill:
    Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
    Destroyer and Preserver; hear, oh hear!

(SHELLEY: _Ode to the West Wind._ 1819.)

In this case the tercets are united in groups of three to form a strophe
of fourteen lines together with a final couplet riming with the middle
line of the preceding tercet.

    The true has no value beyond the sham:
    As well the counter as coin, I submit,
    When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

    Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
    Venture as warily, use the same skill,
    Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

    If you choose to play!--is my principle.
    Let a man contend to the uttermost
    For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

(BROWNING: _The Statue and the Bust._ 1855.)

The effort to translate Dante in the original metre is especially
interesting, and marked by great difficulties; to furnish the necessary
rimes, without introducing expletive words that mar the simplicity of
the original, being a serious problem. The following are interesting
specimens of translations where this problem is grappled with; the first
is a well-known fragment, the second a portion of a still unpublished
translation of the _Inferno_, reproduced here by the courtesy of the
author.

    Then she to me: "The greatest of all woes
      Is to remind us of our happy days
      In misery, and that thy teacher knows.
    But if to learn our passion's first root preys
      Upon thy spirit with such sympathy,
      I will do even as he who weeps and says.
    We read one day for pastime, seated nigh,
      Of Lancelot, how love enchained him too.
      We were alone, quite unsuspiciously.
    But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hue
      All o'er discolored by that reading were;
      But one point only wholly us o'erthrew;
    When we read the long-sighed-for smile of her,
      To be thus kissed by such devoted lover,
      He who from me can be divided ne'er
    Kissed my mouth, trembling in the act all over.
      Accursed was the book and he who wrote!
      That day no further leaf did we uncover."

(BYRON: _Francesca of Rimini_, from Dante's _Inferno_, Canto V. 1820.)

    "Wherefore for thee I think and deem it well
      Thou follow me, and I will bring about
      Thy passage thither where the eternal dwell.
    There shalt thou hearken the despairing shout,
      Shalt see the ancient spirits with woe opprest,
      Who craving for the second death cry out.
    Then shalt thou those behold who are at rest
      Amid the flame, because their hopes aspire
      To come, when it may be, among the blest.
    If to ascend to these be thy desire,
      Thereto shall be a soul of worthier strain;
      Thee shall I leave with her when I retire:
    Because the Emperor who there doth reign,
      For I rebellious was to his decree,
      Wills that his city none by me attain.
    In all parts ruleth, and there reigneth he,--
      There is his city and his lofty throne:
      O happy they who thereto chosen be!"

(MELVILLE B. ANDERSON: _Dante's Inferno_, Canto i. ll. 112-129.)


QUATRAINS


_aaaa_

    Suete iesu, king of blysse,
    Myn huerte love, min huerte lisse,
    Þou art suete myd ywisse,
    Wo is him þat þe shal misse!

(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253--12th century, Böddeker's _Altenglische
Dichtungen_, p. 191.)


_aabb_

    O Lord, that rul'st our mortal line,
    How through the world Thy name doth shine;
    Thou hast of Thy unmatched glory
    Upon the heavens engrav'd Thy story.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Psalm viii._ ab. 1580.)

    A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
    And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
    And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
    And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

(SHELLEY: _The Sensitive Plant._ 1820.)


_abcb_

    In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
      And leves be large and long,
    Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
      To here the foulys song.

(Ballad of _Robin Hood and the Monk_. In Gummere's _English Ballads_, p.
77.)

This is the familiar stanza of the early ballads. The omission of rime
in the third line signalizes the fact that the stanza could be (and was)
regarded indifferently as made up either of two long lines or four short
ones. Thus the famous Chevy Chase ballad is found (Ashmole Ms., of about
1560) written in long lines:

    "The yngglyshe men hade ther bowys ybent yer hartes wer good ynoughe
    The first off arros that the shote off seven skore spear-men the
        sloughe."

(See in Flügel's _Neuenglisches Lesebuch_, vol. i. p. 199.)

The same thing occurs also where there are two rimes to the stanza.
Originally, the extra internal rime was no doubt the cause of the
breaking up of the long couplet into two short lines. (See examples in
Part Two, in the case of the septenary.)

    Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,
      How can ye bloom sae fair!
    How can ye chant, ye little birds,
      And I sae fu' o' care!

(BURNS: _Bonnie Doon._ ab. 1790.)


_abab_

    Þe grace of god ful of miȝt
    Þat is king and ever was,
    Mote among us aliȝt
    And ȝive us alle is swet grace.

(From the Harleian Ms. 913. In Mätzner's _Altenglische Sprachproben_,
vol. i. p. 125.)

Furnivall prints this in long lines with internal rime, which of itself
seems to form the short-line stanza from the long lines.

    Of al this world the wyde compas
      Hit wol not in myn armes tweyne.--
    Who-so mochel wol embrace
      Litel thereof he shal distreyne.

(CHAUCER: _Proverb._ ab. 1380.)

    When youth had led me half the race,
    That Cupid's scourge me caus'd to run,
    I looked back to meet the place
    From whence my weary course begun.

(EARL OF SURREY: _Description of the restless state of a lover._ ab.
1545.)

    Weep with me, all you that read
      This little story;
    And know, for whom a tear you shed
      Death's self is sorry.

(BEN JONSON: _Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy._ 1616.)

    And now the weary world's great medicine, Sleep,
      This learned host dispensed to every guest,
    Which shuts those wounds where injured lovers weep,
      And flies oppressors to relieve the opprest.

(SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT: _Gondibert_, Bk. i. Canto 6. 1651)

    Now like a maiden queen she will behold
      From her high turrets hourly suitors come;
    The East with incense and the West with gold
      Will stand like suppliants to receive her doom.

(DRYDEN: _Annus Mirabilis_, stanza 297. 1667.)

    The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
      And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
    Await alike the inevitable hour.
      The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

(GRAY: _Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard._ 1751.)

To Davenant's _Gondibert_ is usually traced the use of this "heroic"
stanza (_abab_ in iambic five-stress lines) in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. In his preface the author said: "I believed it
would be more pleasant to the reader, in a work of length, to give this
respite or pause, between every stanza, ... than to run him out of
breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rime by any lowliness
of cadence make the sound less heroic, but rather adapt it to a plain
and stately composing of music." Dryden followed Davenant in using the
stanza for his _Annus Mirabilis_, saying in his preface: "I have chosen
to write my poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme,
because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both
for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us.... I
have always found the couplet verse most easy (though not so proper for
this occasion), for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines
concluding the labor of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it
further on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the
troublesome sense of four lines together." Dryden did not use the stanza
again, however, and it is obviously unsuited to a long narrative poem.
Saintsbury says: "With regard to the nobility and dignity of this
stanza, it may safely be said that _Annus Mirabilis_ itself, the best
poem ever written therein, killed it by exposing its faults.... It is
chargeable with more than the disjointedness of the couplet, without the
possibility of relief; while, on the other hand, the quatrains have not,
like the Spenserian stave or the _ottava rima_, sufficient bulk to form
units in themselves." (_Life of Dryden_, Men of Letters Series, p. 34.)

It is hard to say what Mr. Saintsbury means in speaking of the _Annus
Mirabilis_ as the best poem ever written in the heroic quatrain, when we
remember that it is the quatrain of Gray's _Elegy_. On the possible
sources of his use of it, see Gosse's _Life of Gray_, in the Men of
Letters Series, p. 98 (also his _From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 140). Mr.
Gosse refers to the use of the quatrain by Sir John Davies in the _Nosce
Teipsum_ (1599), with which Gray was familiar, and (in addition to
Davenant, Dryden, and Hobbes's _Homer_) to the _Love Elegies_ of James
Hammond, published 1743. "It is believed that the printing of Hammond's
verses incited Gray to begin his _Churchyard Elegy_, and to make the
four-line stanza the basis of most of his harmonies.... The measure
itself, from first to last, is an attempt to render in English the
solemn alternation of passion and reserve, the interchange of imploring
and desponding tones, that is found in the Latin elegiac; and Gray gave
his poem, when he first published it, an outward resemblance to the text
of Tibullus by printing it without any stanzaic pauses." Mr. Gosse
neglects the elegies of William Shenstone, which were also in the
quatrain, and some of which had apparently been published before the
_Churchyard Elegy_. On this matter see Beers's _Romanticism in the
Eighteenth Century_, p. 137, where Shenstone is said to have borrowed
the stanza from Hammond, and Gray from Shenstone. Shenstone, in his
_Prefatory Essay on Elegy_, defended the metrical form and referred to
the elegies of Hammond. "Heroic metre, with alternate rhyme, seems well
enough adapted to this species of poetry; and, however exceptionable
upon other occasions, its inconveniencies appear to lose their weight in
shorter elegies, and its advantages seem to acquire an additional
importance. The world has an admirable example of its beauty in a
collection of elegies not long since published." (Chalmers's _English
Poets_, vol. xiii. p. 264.)

    For there was Milton like a seraph strong,
      Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;
    And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song,
        And somewhat grimly smiled.

(TENNYSON: _The Palace of Art._ 1833.)


_abba_

    Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling,
      Do invite a stealing Kiss.
      Now will I but venture this;
    Who will read, must first learn spelling.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, Song ii. ab. 1580.)

    Let the bird of loudest lay,
      On the sole Arabian tree,
      Herald sad and trumpet be,
    To whose sound chaste wings obey.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Phœnix and the Turtle_, 1601.)

    Though beauty be the mark of praise,
      And yours of whom I sing, be such
      As not the world can praise too much,
    Yet is't your virtue now I raise.

(BEN JONSON: _Elegy_, in _Underwoods_. 1616.)

    Lord, in thine anger do not reprehend me,
      Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
      Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject,
    And very weak and faint; heal and amend me.

(MILTON: _Psalm vi._ 1653.)

    Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh,
      The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!
      Nor meanly thus complain of fortune's power,
    When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.

(COLERIDGE: _To a Friend._ ab. 1795.)

    Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
      Heard in each hour, crept off; and then
      The ruffled silence spread again,
    Like water that a pebble stirs.

(ROSSETTI: _My Sister's Sleep._ 1850.)

    I hold it true, whate'er befall;
      I feel it when I sorrow most;
      'Tis better to have loved and lost
    Than never to have loved at all.

(TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_, xxvii. 1850.)

    Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
      That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
      Of evening over brake and bloom
    And meadow, slowly breathing bare

    The round of space, and rapt below
      Thro' all the dewy-tasselled wood,
      And shadowing down the horned flood
    In ripples, fan my brows and blow

    The fever from my cheek, and sigh
      The full new life that feeds thy breath
      Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
    Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

    From belt to belt of crimson seas
      On leagues of odor streaming far,
      To where in yonder orient star
    A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."

(TENNYSON: _ibid._, lxxxiv.)

This stanza (_abba_ in four-stress iambics) is commonly known as the
"_In Memoriam_ stanza," from its familiar use by Tennyson. Tennyson is
indeed said to have invented it for his own use, not knowing of its
earlier appearance in the works of Jonson and Rossetti. Professor Corson
has an interesting passage on the poetic quality of the stanza: "By the
rhyme-scheme of the quatrain, the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza
is reduced, the second and third verses being most closely braced by the
rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to that sweet continuity of
flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow
which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire
change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read,
aloud of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and
fourth, verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By
such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding
rhymes more emphatic." Compare the stanza quoted above from section
xxvii. with the transposed form:

    "I feel it when I sorrow most;
      I hold it true, whate'er befall;
    'Tis better to have loved and lost
      Than never to have loved at all."

On the passage quoted from section lxxxiv. Professor Corson also
observes: "The four stanzas of which it is composed constitute but one
period, the sense being suspended till the close. The rhyme-emphasis is
so distributed that any one, hearing the poem read, would hardly be
sensible of any of the slightest checks in the continuous and even
movement of the verse.... There is no other section of _In Memoriam_ in
which the artistic motive of the stanza is so evident." (_Primer of
English Verse_, pp. 70-77.)


_aaba_

    Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes entendeth,
    Which now my breast, surcharg'd, to music lendeth!
      To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
    Only in you my song begins and endeth.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella._ Song i, ab. 1580.)

Here the third line (the same in all the stanzas) has an additional
internal rime.

    Oh, make the most of what we yet may spend,
    Before we too into the dust descend;
      Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,
    Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and--sans end!

(EDW. FITZGERALD: _Paraphrase of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam._ 1859.)

    For groves of pine on either hand,
    To break the blast of winter, stand;
     And further on, the hoary Channel
    Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand.

(Tennyson: _To the Rev. F. D. Maurice._ 1854.)

This delightful stanza (used also by Tennyson in _The Daisy_) seems to
be an imitation of the well-known Alcaic stanza of Horace:

    "Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum
    Soracte, nec jam sustineant onus
      Silvae laborantes, geluque
        Flumina constiterint acuto."

    Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
    Where air would wash and long leaves cover me,
      Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
    Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _Laus Veneris._)


REFRAIN STANZAS

In this group of refrain stanzas there is no attempt to make the range
of illustrations complete, but only to suggest how the refrain idea has
been variously used in forming the structure of the stanza. In some
cases, for example, it will be seen that the refrain is a mere appendage
or _coda_ to the stanza; in others it is made by rime a part of the
organized structure.

    Blow, northerne wynd,
    Sent þou my suetyng!
    Blow, norþern wynd,
      Blou! blou! blou!

(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253; Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p.
168.)

    I that in heill wes and glaidness,
    Am trublit now with gret seikness,
    And feblit with infirmitie;
     _Timor Mortis conturbat me._

(WILLIAM DUNBAR: _Lament for the Makaris._ ab. 1500.)

    Now Simmer blinks on flowery braes,
    And o'er the crystal streamlets plays;
    Come, let us spend the lightsome days
      In the birks of Aberfeldy.

(BURNS: _The Birks of Aberfeldy._ 1787.)

    I wish I were where Helen lies;
    Night and day on me she cries;
    O that I were where Helen lies
      On fair Kirconnell lea!

(_Fair Helen_; old ballad.)

    O sing unto my roundelay,
      O drop the briny tear with me,
    Dance no more at holy-day,
      Like a running river be.
        My love is dead,
        Gone to his death-bed,
          All under the willow tree.

(CHATTERTON: Minstrel's Roundelay from _Ælla_. ab. 1770.)

    The twentieth year is well-nigh past,
    Since first our sky was overcast;
    Ah, would that this might be the last!
                                  My Mary!

(COWPER: _My Mary._ 1793.)

    Duncan Gray cam' here to woo--
      Ha, ha, the wooing o't!
    On blithe Yule night, when we were fou--
      Ha, ha, the wooing o't!
    Maggie coost her head fu' heigh,
    Looked asklent and unco skeigh,
    Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh;
      Ha, ha, the wooing o't!

(BURNS: _Duncan Gray._ ab. 1790.)

    My heart is wasted with my woe,
             Oriana.
    There is no rest for me below,
             Oriana.
    When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow,
    And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,
             Oriana,
    Alone I wander to and fro,
             Oriana.

(TENNYSON: _Ballad of Oriana._ ab. 1830.)

    Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
                    (Toll slowly)
    And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness--
            Round our restlessness His rest.

(ELIZABETH B. BROWNING: _Rhyme of the Duchess May._ ab. 1845.)

    "Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
                           Sister Helen?
    Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
    "A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
                           Little brother!"
                   (O Mother, Mary Mother,
         Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

(ROSSETTI: _Sister Helen._ 1870.)

    Laetabundus
    Exultet fidelis chorus,
                    Alleluia!
    Egidio psallat coetus
    Iste laetus,
                    Alleluia!

(ST. BERNARD: _De Nativitate Domini._)

    Sermone Marcus Tullius,
    Fortuna Cesar Julius
      Tibi non equantur.
    Tibi summa prudentia,
    Prefulgens et potentia
      Celesti dono dantur.

(From a 12th c. MS.: _Regulae de Rhythmis._ In Schipper's _Englische
Metrik_, vol. i. p. 354.)

    Quant li solleiz conviset en leon
    En icel tens qu'est ortus pliadon
                 Perunt matin,
    Une pulcellet odit molt gent plorer
    Et son ami dolcement regreter,
                 Ex si lli dis.

(Early French version of the _Song of Songs_, quoted in LEWIS's _Foreign
Sources of Modern English Versification_, p. 89.)

The special form of refrain stanza appearing in the first of these
foreign specimens (the Alleluia hymn form) is generally thought to have
been the source of the "tail-rime stanza" illustrated in the other two
specimens, and in the several pages which follow. The characteristic
feature of this stanza is the presence of two short lines riming
together and serving as "tails" to the first and second parts of the
body of the stanza. The same name appears in all the languages: "versus
caudati" in the mediæval Latin, "rime couée" in the French, and
"Schweifreim" in modern German. It is easy to see, what the following
specimens illustrate, how stanzas constructed on this fundamental
principle might be varied greatly in particular forms, according to the
number, length, and rime-arrangement of the longer lines.

    Men may merci have, traytour not to save, for luf ne for awe,
    Atteynt of traytorie, suld haf no mercie, wiþ no maner lawe.

(ROBERT MANNING of Brunne: _Chronicle._ ab. 1330.)

    For Edward gode dede
    Þe Baliol did him mede
             a wikked bounte.
    Turne we ageyn to rede
    and on our geste to spede
             a Maddok þer left we.  (_Ibid._)

Manning's chronicle was a translation of the French chronicle of Pierre
de Langtoft. Although the translator designed to avoid the various
complicated measures used in the original, and kept pretty closely to
alexandrines (see p. 254, below), in the passages here represented he
followed the tail-rime of the original. In the first case the stanza
form is not represented in the manuscript, though of course implicit in
the rimes. The name of the stanza, "rime couée," appears very early in
Manning's Prologue, in the famous passage in which he expressed his
preference for metrical simplicity:

    Als þai haf wrytenn and sayd
    Haf I alle in myn Inglis layd,
    In symple speche as I couthe,
    That is lightest in mannes mouthe.
    I mad noght for no disours,
    Ne for no seggers no harpours,
    Bot for þe luf of symple menn
    That strange Inglis cann not kenn.
    For many it ere that strange Inglis
    In ryme wate never what it is,
    And bot þai wist what it mente
    Ellis me thoght it were alle shente.

    I made it not for to be praysed,
    Bot at þe lewed menn were aysed.
    If it were made in ryme couwee,
    Or in strangere or entrelace,
    Þat rede Inglis it ere inowe
    Þat couthe not haf coppled a kowe,
    Þat outhere in couwee or in baston
    Som suld haf ben fordon,
    So þat fele men þat it herde
    Suld not witte howe þat it ferde.

    ... And forsoth I couth noght
    So strange Inglis as þai wroght,
    And menn besoght me many a tyme
    To turne it bot in light ryme.
    þai sayd, if I in strange it turne,
    To here it manyon suld skurne.
    For it ere names fulle selcouthe,
    þat ere not used now in mouthe.
    And therfore for the comonalte,
    þat blythely wild listen to me,
    On light lange I it begann,
    For luf of the lewed mann.

(Hearne ed., vol. i. pp. xcix, c.)

Lines 15-22 may be paraphrased thus: "If it were made in _rime couée_,
in _rime strangere_, or _rime entrelacée_, there are plenty of those who
read English who could not have put the tail-verses together; so that
either in the tail-verse or the _baston_ some would have been confused,
and many men that heard it would not know how it went." The "interlaced"
(alternate) rime was a familiar form. _Baston_ seems usually to be an
equivalent for "stanza" or "stave." It seems uncertain whether by _rime
strangere_ Manning had in mind any particular form of stanza or
rime-arrangement.

    Stand wel, moder, under rode,
    Byholt þy sone wiþ glade mode;
      Blyþe, moder, myht þou be!
    Sone, hou shulde y blyþe stonde?
    Y se þin fet, y se þin honde
      Nayled to þe harde tre.

(Song from Harleian MS. 3253; Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p.
206.)

    Listeth, lordes, in good entent,
    And I wol telle verrayment
      Of mirthe and of solas;
    Al of a knyght was fair and gent
    In bataille and in tourneyment,
      His name was sir Thopas ...

    An elf-queen wol I love, y-wis,
    For in this world no womman is
      Worthy to be my make
      In toune;
    Alle othere wommen I forsake,
    And to an elf-queen I me take
      By dale and eek by doune!

(CHAUCER: _Sir Thopas_, from _Canterbury Tales_. ab. 1385.)

The tail-rime stanza had become a favorite for the metrical romances of
the fourteenth century; but Chaucer evidently saw its inappropriateness
for long narrative poems, and ridiculed it--with certain other elements
of the romances--in this _Rime of Sir Thopas_. The Host is made to
interrupt the story:

    "'Myn eres aken of thy drasty speche;
    Now swiche a rym the devel I beteche!
    This may wel be rym dogerel', quod he."

    My patent pardouns, ye may se,
    Cum fra the Cane of Tartarei,
      Weill seald with oster schellis;
    Thocht ye have na contritioun,
    Ye sall have full remissioun,
      With help of buiks and bellis.

(SIR DAVID LINDSAY: _Ane Satyre of the Three Estates._ ab. 1540.)

    Seinte Marie! levedi briht,
    Moder thou art of muchel miht,
      Quene in hevene of feire ble;
    Gabriel to the he lihte,
    Tho he brouhte al wid rihte
      Then holi gost to lihten in the.
    Godes word ful wel thou cnewe;
    Ful mildeliche thereto thou bewe,
      And saidest, "So it mote be!"
    Thi thone was studevast ant trewe;
    For the joye that to was newe,
      Levedi, thou have merci of me!

(_Quinque Gaudia._ In Mätzner's _Altenglische Sprachproben_, vol. i. p.
51.)

Here the principle of the tail-rime is extended to four tail-verses. See
also the specimen on p. 111, below.

    All, dear Nature's children sweet,
    Lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet,
        Blessing their sense!
    Not an angel of the air,
    Bird melodious or bird fair,
        Be absent hence.

(Song from _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, by Shakspere and Fletcher. pub.
1634.)

    Fair stood the wind for France,
    When we our sails advance,
    Nor now to prove our chance
        Longer not tarry;
    But put unto to the main,
    At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
    With all his martial train,
        Landed King Harry.

(DRAYTON: _Agincourt._ ab. 1600.)

    I am a man of war and might,
    And know thus much, that I can fight,
    Whether I am i' th' wrong or right,
        Devoutly.
    No woman under heaven I fear,
    New oaths I can exactly swear,
    And forty healths my brains will bear
        Most stoutly.

(SIR JOHN SUCKLING: _A Soldier._ ab. 1635.)

The stanzas that follow show various combinations and applications of
the same principle--the use of shorter verses in connection with longer.

    A wayle whyte ase whalles bon,
    A grein in golde þat goldly shon,
    A tortle þat min herte is on,
            In toune trewe;
    Hire gladshipe nes never gon,
            Whil y may glewe.

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253; Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p.
161.)

    Of on that is so fayr and briȝt,
                           _velut maris stella_,
    Briȝter than the day is liȝt,
                           _parens et puella_;
    Ic crie to the, thou se to me,
    Levedy, preye thi sone for me,
                           _tam pia_,
    That ic mote come to the
                           _Maria_.

(_Hymn to the Virgin_, from Egerton MS. 613. In Mätzner's _Altenglische
Sprachproben_, vol. i. p. 53.)

    Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
    To see oursel's as ithers see us!
    It wad frae monie a blunder free us
                                 An' foolish notion:
    What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
                                 An' e'en devotion!

(BURNS: _To a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet._ 1786.)

       O goodly hand,
       Wherein doth stand
    My heart distract in pain;
       Dear hand, alas!
       In little space
    My life thou dost restrain.

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: In Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets._ pub. 1557.)

       Old Ocean's praise
       Demands my lays;
    A truly British theme I sing;

       A theme so great,
       I dare compete,
    And join with Ocean, Ocean's king.

(EDWARD YOUNG: _Ocean, an Ode._ 1728.)

       No more, no more
       This worldly shore
    Upbraids me with its loud uproar!
       With dreamful eyes
       My spirit lies
    Under the walls of Paradise!

(THOMAS BUCHANAN READ: _Drifting._ ab. 1850.)

In these stanzas a pair of long lines bind together the first and second
parts of the composition, just as the short lines do in the original
_rime couée_.

Young was and is universally condemned for choosing this form of stanza
for his odes. He was led to do so by his admiration for the passage in
Dryden's _Ode for St. Cecilia's Day_, running:

       "Assumes the god,
        Affects to nod,
    And seems to shake the spheres."

Here, said Young, Dryden was expressing "majesty"; hence, since he
wished his odes to be majestic, he used the short, choppy measure
throughout. (See his Introductory Essay to his Odes, in Chalmers's
_English Poets_, vol. xiii.) On the other hand, the stanza as used by
Read has been almost universally admired.

    Hail, old Patrician Trees, so great and good!
    Hail, ye Plebeian Underwood!
      Where the poetic birds rejoice,
    And for their quiet nests and plenteous food
      Pay with their grateful voice.

(COWLEY: _Of Solitude._ ab. 1650.)

    To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings
      Cleaving the western sky;
    Winged too with wind it is, and winnowings
    Of birds; as if the day's last hour in rings
      Of strenuous flight must die.

(ROSSETTI: _Sunset Wings._ 1881.)

    Ye dainty Nymphs, that in this blessed brook
      Do bathe your breast,
    Forsake your watery bowers, and hither look
      At my request:
    And eke you Virgins that on Parnasse dwell,
    Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well,
      Help me to blaze
      Her worthy praise,
    Which in her sex doth all excel.

(SPENSER: _The Shepherd's Calendar, April._ 1579.)

    You, that will a wonder know,
      Go with me,
    Two suns in a heaven of snow
      Both burning be;
    All they fire, that do but eye them,
    But the snow's unmelted by them.

(CAREW: _In Praise of his Mistress._ ab. 1635.)

      Go, lovely Rose!
    Tell her, that wastes her time and me,
      That now she knows,
    When I resemble her to thee,
    How sweet and fair she seems to be.

(WALLER: _Go, lovely Rose._ ab. 1650.)

The use of short lines somewhat intricately introduced among longer
ones, is characteristic of the stanzas of the lyrical poets of the
first part of the seventeenth century. It may perhaps be traced in part
to the influence of Donne.

    Where the quiet- end of evening smiles
      Miles and miles
    On the solitary pastures where our sheep
      Half-asleep
    Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
      As they crop.

(BROWNING: _Love among the Ruins._ 1855.)

Compare with this (although it is not divided into stanzas) Herrick's
_Thanksgiving to God_:

    Lord, thou hast given me a cell
      Wherein to dwell;
    A little house, whose humble roof
      Is weatherproof;
    Under the spars of which I lie
      Both soft and dry.

        When God at first made Man,
    Having a glass of blessings standing by,
    Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
    Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
        Contract into a span.

(GEORGE HERBERT: _The Gifts of God._ 1631.)

The following specimens illustrate various forms of stanzas
distinguished by arrangement of rime, without reference to the length of
lines:


_abccb_

    In vain, through every changeful year
    Did Nature lead him as before;
    A primrose by a river's brim
    A yellow primrose was to him,
    And it was nothing more.

(WORDSWORTH: _Peter Bell._ 1798.)


_ababb_

    Survival of the fittest, adaptation,
    And all their other evolution terms,
    Seem to omit one small consideration,
    To wit, that tumblebugs and angleworms
    Have souls: there's soul in everything that squirms.

(WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY: _The Menagerie._ 1901.)


_aabbb_

    Mary mine that art Mary's Rose,
    Come in to me from the garden-close.
    The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,
    And we marked not how the faint moon grew;
    But the hidden stars are calling you.

(ROSSETTI: _Rose Mary._ 1881.)


_aabcdd_

    Hail seint michel, with the lange sper!
    Fair beth thi winges: up thi scholder
    Thou hast a rede kirtil a non to thi fote.
    Thou ert best angle that ever god makid.
            This vers is ful wel i-wrogȝt;
            Hit is of wel furre y-brogȝt.

(_Satire on the People of Kildare_, from Harleian Ms. 913, in Guest's
_English Rhythms_, Skeat ed., p. 616.)


_aaaabb_

    What beauty would have lovely styled,
    What manners pretty, nature mild,
    What wonder perfect, all were filed
    Upon record in this blest child.
    And till the coming of the soul
    To fetch the flesh, we keep the roll.

(BEN JONSON: _Epitaph; Underwoods, liii._ 1616.)


_ababab_

    She walks in beauty, like the night
      Of cloudless climes and starry skies:
    And all that's best of dark or bright
      Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
    Thus mellowed to that tender light
      Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

(BYRON: _She Walks in Beauty._ 1815.)


_ababcc_

    I wandered lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
    When all at once I saw a crowd,
    A host, of golden daffodils;
    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

(WORDSWORTH: _I wandered lonely as a cloud._ 1804.)

    O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!
    Her eyes seen in her tears, tears in her eye;
    Both crystals, where they view'd each other's sorrow,--
    Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;
      But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
      Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

(SHAKSPERE: _Venus and Adonis_, st. 161. 1593.)


_ababbcc_ ("_Rime royal_")

    Humblest of herte, hyest of reverence,
    Benigne flour, coroune of vertues alle,
    Sheweth unto your rial excellence
    Your servaunt, if I durste me so calle,
    His mortal harm, in which he is y-falle,
    And noght al only for his evel fare,
    But for your renoun, as he shal declare.

(CHAUCER: _Compleynte unto Pite._ ab. 1370.)

    And on the smale grene twistis sat
    The lytil suete nyghtingale, and song
    So loud and clere, the ympnis consecrat
    Of luvis use, now soft now lowd among,
    That all the gardynis and the wallis rong
    Ryght of thaire song, and on the copill next
    Of thaire suete armony, and lo the text.

(JAMES I. of Scotland: _The King's Quhair_, st. 33. ab. 1425.)

    For men have marble, women waxen, minds,
    And therefore are they form'd as marble will;
    The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds
    Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
    Then call them not the authors of their ill,
      No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
      Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Rape of Lucrece_, st. 178. 1594.)

    In a far country that I cannot name,
    And on a year long ages past away,
    A King there dwelt in rest and ease and fame,
    And richer than the Emperor is to-day:
    The very thought of what this man might say
    From dusk to dawn kept many a lord awake,
    For fear of him did many a great man quake.

(WILLIAM MORRIS: _The Earthly Paradise; The Proud King._ 1868.)

The "rime royal" stanza is one of Chaucer's contributions to English
verse, and about 14,000 lines of his poetry are in this form. Its use by
King James in the _King's Quhair_ was formerly thought to be the source
of the name; but it seems more likely that the name, like the form, was
of French origin, and is to be connected with such terms as _chant
royal_ and _ballat royal_, familiar in the nomenclature of courtly
poetry (see Schipper, vol. i. p. 426). The stanza was used by Chaucer
with marvellous skill for purposes of continuous narrative, and was a
general favorite among his imitators in the fifteenth century, being
used by Lydgate, Occleve, Hawes, Dunbar, then by Skelton, and by Barclay
in the _Ship of Fooles_. It appears popular as late as the time of
Sackville's part of the _Mirror for Magistrates_ (1563).[9] Later than
Shakspere's _Rape of Lucrece_ it is rarely found. (But see Milton's
unfinished poem on _The Passion_, where he used a form of the rime royal
with concluding alexandrine.)

Strictly speaking, the "rime royal" is always in five-stress verse, but
in the following specimen the same rime-scheme appears in the irregular
six-or-seven-stress verse of one of the Mysteries.

    The story sheweth further, that, after man was blyste,
      The Lord did create woman owte of a ribbe of man,
    Which woman was deceyvyd with the Serpentes darkned myste;
      By whose synn ower nature is so weake no good we can;
      Wherfor they were dejectyd and caste from thence than
    Unto dolloure and myseri and to traveyle and payne,
    Untyll Godes spryght renuid; and so we ende certayne.

(Prologue to Norwich Whitsun Play of the Creation and Fall. In Manly's
_Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_, vol. i p. 5.)


_ababcca_

    Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
      That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
    Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
      Shall find performed thy special ministry,
    And time come for departure, thou, suspending
    Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending,
      Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

(BROWNING: _The Guardian Angel._ 1855.)


_ababccb_

    The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
      But certainly of Night; for never there
    Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
      After the dewy dawning's cold grey air;
    The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity;
    The sun has never visited that city,
      For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

(JAMES THOMSON: _The City of Dreadful Night._ 1874.)

_abababab_

    Trew king, that sittes in trone,
      Unto the I tell my tale,
    And unto the I bid a bone,
      For thou ert bute of all my bale:
    Als thou made midelerd and the mone,
      And bestes and fowles grete and smale.
    Unto me send thi socore sone,
      And dresce my dedes in this dale.

(LAURENCE MINOT: _Battle of Halidon Hill._ 1352.)

On Minot's lyrics see ten Brink's _History of English Literature_,
Kennedy translation, vol. i. p. 323.


_ababbaba_

    Since love is such that as ye wot
      Cannot always be wisely used,
    I say, therefore, then blame me not,
      Though I therein have been abused.
      For as with cause I am accused,
    Guilty I grant such was my lot;
      And though it cannot be excused,
    Yet let such folly be forgot.

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: _That the power of love excuseth the folly of
loving_, ab. 1550.)


_ababbcbc_

    In a chirche þer i con knel
    Þis ender day in on morwenynge,
    Me lyked þe servise wonder wel,
    For þi þe lengore con i lynge.
    I seiȝ a clerk a book forþ bringe,
    Þat prikked was in mony a plas;
    Faste he souȝte what he schulde synge,
    And al was _Deo gracias_!

(From the Vernon and Simeon MSS.; in _Anglia_, vii. 287.)

    This Julius to the Capitolie wente
    Upon a day, as he was wont to goon,
    And in the Capitolie anon him hente
    This false Brutus, and his othere foon,
    And stikede him with boydekins anoon
    With many a wounde, and thus they lete him lye;
    But never gronte he at no strook but oon,
    Or elles at two, but if his storie lye.

(CHAUCER: _The Monk's Tale_, ll. 713-720. ab. 1375.)

This stanza is sometimes called the "_Monk's Tale_ stanza," from its use
by Chaucer in that single tale of the Canterbury group. Although it has
been little used by later poets, it may have given Spenser a suggestion
for his characteristic stanza (see below, p. 102).

    Farewell! if ever fondest prayer
      For other's weal availed on high,
    Mine will not all be lost in air,
      But waft thy name beyond the sky.
    'Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh:
      Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
    When rung from guilt's expiring eye,
      Are in that word--Farewell!--Farewell!

(BYRON: _Farewell, if ever fondest prayer._ 1808.)


_ababccdd_

    Will no one tell me what she sings?
    Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
    For old, unhappy, far-off things,
    And battles long ago:
    Or is it some more humble lay,
    Familiar matter of to-day?
    Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
    That has been, and may be again!

(WORDSWORTH: _The Solitary Reaper._ 1803.)


_abababcc_ (_ottava rima_)

    She sat, and sewed, that hath done me the wrong
    Whereof I plain, and have done many a day;
    And, whilst she heard my plaint in piteous song,
    She wished my heart the sampler, that it lay.
    The blind master, whom I have served so long,
    Grudging to hear that he did hear her say,
    Made her own weapon do her finger bleed,
    To feel if pricking were so good in deed.

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: _Of his love that pricked her finger with a needle_,
in Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_. pub. 1557.)

This _ottava rima_ is a familiar Italian stanza made classic by Ariosto
and Tasso, and introduced into England by Wyatt, together with the
sonnet and other Italian forms. Professor Corson says, "Such a
rhyme-scheme, especially in the Italian, with its great similarity of
endings, is too 'monotonously iterative'; and the rhyming couplet at the
close seems, as James Russell Lowell expresses it, 'to put on the brakes
with a jar.'" (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 89 f.)

    O! who can lead, then, a more happie life
    Than he that with cleane minde, and heart sincere,
    No greedy riches knowes nor bloudie strife,
    No deadly fight of warlick fleete doth feare;
    Ne runs in perill of foes cruell knife,
    That in the sacred temples he may reare
    A trophee of his glittering spoyles and treasure,
    Or may abound in riches above measure.

(SPENSER: _Virgil's Gnat_, ll. 121-128. 1591.)

    For as with equal rage, and equal might,
    Two adverse winds combat, with billows proud,
    And neither yield (seas, skies maintain like fight,
    Wave against wave oppos'd, and cloud to cloud);
    So war both sides with obstinate despite,
    With like revenge; and neither party bow'd:
    Fronting each other with confounding blows,
    No wound one sword unto the other owes.

(DANIEL: _History of the Civil War_, bk. vi. ab. 1600.)

    Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
    While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
    He touch'd the tender stops of various quills,
    With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
    And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
    And now was dropt into the western bay:
    At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue:
    To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

(MILTON: _Lycidas_; Epilogue. 1638.)

This is a single stave of the _ottava rima_, at the close of the varying
metrical forms of _Lycidas_. Professor Corson says: "The Elegy having
come to an end, the _ottava rima_ is employed, with an admirable
artistic effect, to mark off the Epilogue in which Milton ... speaks in
his own person."

    They looked a manly, generous generation;
    Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick,
    Their accents firm and loud in conversation,
    Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,
    Showed them prepared, on proper provocation,
    To give the lie, pull noses, stab and kick;
    And for that very reason, it is said,
    They were so very courteous and well-bred.

(JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE: _The Monks and the Giants._ 1817.)

    With every morn their love grew tenderer,
    With every eve deeper and tenderer still;
    He might not in house, field, or garden stir,
    But her full shape would all his seeing fill;
    And his continual voice was pleasanter
    To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
    Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
    She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

(KEATS: _Isabella._ 1820.)

    As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,
    And wished that others held the same opinion;
    They took it up when my days grew more mellow,
    And other minds acknowledged my dominion:
    Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow
    Leaf," and Imagination droops her pinion,
    And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
    Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

(BYRON: _Don Juan_, canto iv. st. 3. 1821.)

Of the _ottava rima_, as used by Frere and Byron, Austin Dobson says:
"It had already been used by Harrington, Drayton, Fairfax, and (as we
have seen) in later times by Gay; it had even been used by Frere's
contemporary, William Tennant; but to Frere belongs the honor of giving
it the special characteristics which Byron afterward popularised in
_Beppo_ and _Don Juan_. Structurally the _ottava rima_ of Frere
singularly resembles that of Byron, who admitted that _Whistlecraft_ was
his 'immediate model.' ... Byron, taking up the stanza with equal skill
and greater genius, filled it with the vigor of his personality, and
made it a measure of his own, which it has ever since been hazardous for
inferior poets to attempt." (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. iv. p. 240.)
Byron may indeed be said--in the words of the present specimen--to have
turned what was commonly a romantic stanza "to burlesque."


_aabaabbab_

    O hie honour, sweit hevinlie flour degest,
    Gem verteous, maist precious, gudliest.
    For hie renoun thow art guerdoun conding,
    Of worschip kend the glorious end and rest,
    But quhome in richt na worthie wicht may lest.
    Thy greit puissance may maist avance all thing,
    And poverall to mekill availl sone bring.
    I the require sen thow but peir art best,
    That efter this in thy hie blis we ring.

(GAWAIN DOUGLAS: _The Palace of Honour._ ab. 1500.)


_ababcccdd_

    My love is like unto th' eternal fire,
      And I as those which therein do remain;
    Whose grievous pains is but their great desire
      To see the sight which they may not attain:
    So in hell's heat myself I feel to be,
    That am restrained by great extremity,
    The sight of her which is so dear to me.
    O! puissant love! and power of great avail!
    By whom hell may be felt e'er death assail!

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: _Of the extreme torment endured by the unhappy
lover._ ab. 1550.)


_ababbcbcc_ ("_Spenserian stanza_")

      By this the Northerne wagoner had set
      His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre
      That was in Ocean waves yet never wet,
      But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
      To all that in the wide deepe wandring arre;
      And chearefull Chaunticlere with his note shrill
      Had warned once, that Phœbus fiery carre
      In hast was climbing up the Easterne hill,
    Full envious that night so long his roome did fill.

(SPENSER: _The Faerie Queene_, bk. i. canto 2, st. 1. 1590.)

      And more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
      A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
      And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,
      Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
      Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne.
      No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
      As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,
      Might there be heard; but carelesse Quiet lyes
    Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes.

(SPENSER: _ib._ bk. i. canto 1, st. 41.)

This stanza, which Spenser invented for his own use and to which his
name is always given, was apparently formed by adding an alexandrine to
the _ababbcbc_ stanza of Chaucer. In it Spenser wrote the greater part
of his poetry, and its use marks the Spenserian influence wherever
found, especially among the poets of the eighteenth century,--Thomson,
Shenstone, Beattie, and the like.

James Russell Lowell, in his Essay on Spenser, comments as follows: "He
found the _ottava rima_ ... not roomy enough, so first ran it over into
another line, and then ran that added line over into an alexandrine, in
which the melody of one stanza seems forever longing and feeling forward
after that which is to follow.... Wave follows wave with equable
gainings and recessions, the one sliding back in fluent music to be
mingled with and carried forward by the next. In all this there is
soothingness, indeed, but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no
mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses--now at
the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of
the fourth--he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it
certainly is to become languorous." (_Works_, vol. iv. pp. 328, 329.)

See also the chapters on the Spenserian stanza in Corson's _Primer of
English Verse_, where its use for pictorial effects is interestingly
discussed.

      A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,
      Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
      And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
      Forever flushing round a summer sky:
      There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
      Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
      And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;
      But whate'er smacked of noyaunce, or unrest,
    Was far far off expelled from this delicious nest.

(THOMSON: _The Castle of Indolence_, canto i. 1748.)

      Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
      Emblem right meet of decency does yield:
      Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trowe,
      As is the hare-bell that adorns the field:
      And in her hand, for sceptre, she does wield
      Tway birchen sprays, with anxious fear entwined,
      With dark distrust and sad repentance filled,
      And stedfast hate, and sharp affliction joined,
    And fury uncontrolled and chastisement unkind.

(SHENSTONE: _The Schoolmistress._ 1742.)

Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_, although not published till 1748, seems
to have been written and circulated before Shenstone's _Schoolmistress_.
Thomson caught the spirit of Spenser and his stanza better than any
other imitator until the days of Keats. On the revival of the stanza at
this period, see Beers's _English Romanticism in the Eighteenth
Century_, chap. iii., on "the Spenserians." Earliest of the group,
according to Mr. Gosse, was Akenside's _Virtuoso_ (1737. See _Eighteenth
Century Literature_, p. 311).

      O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
      For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,
      Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
      Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
      And oh, may Heaven their simple lives prevent
      From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
      Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
      A virtuous populace may rise the while,
    And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved Isle.

(BURNS: _The Cotter's Saturday Night._ 1785.)

      I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
      A palace and a prison on each hand:
      I saw from out the wave her structures rise
      As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
      A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
      Around me, and a dying glory smiles
      O'er the far times, when many a subject land
      Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
    Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

(BYRON: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, canto iv, st. i. 1818.)

      A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
      All garlanded with carven imag'ries
      Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
      And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
      Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
      As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
      And in the midst, '<DW41> thousand heraldries,
      And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
    A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

(KEATS: _Eve of St. Agnes._ 1820.)

Professor Corson remarks: "Probably no English poet who has used the
Spenserian stanza, first assimilated so fully the spirit of Spenser, ...
as did Keats; and to this fact may be partly attributed his effective
use of it as an organ for his imagination in its 'lingering, loving,
particularizing mood.'" (_Primer of English Verse_, p. 124.)

      The splendors of the firmament of time
      May be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not;
      Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
      And death is a low mist which cannot blot
      The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
      Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
      And love and life contend in it for what
      Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
    And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

(SHELLEY: _Adonais_, st. 44. 1821.)

With reference to his use of this stanza Shelley remarked, in the
Preface to _The Revolt of Islam_: "I have adopted the stanza of Spenser
(a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer
model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and
Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity:
you must either succeed or fail.... But I was enticed also by the
brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been
nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious
arrangement of the pauses of this measure." Professor Corson (_Primer of
English Verse_, p. 112) quotes Mr. Todhunter as saying: "Compare the
impetuous rapidity and pale intensity of Shelley's verse with the
lulling harmony, the lingering cadence, the voluptuous color of
Spenser's, or with the grandiose majesty of Byron's.... In _Adonais_,
indeed, a poem on which he bestowed much labor, he handles the stanza in
a masterly manner, and endows it with an individual music beautiful and
new."

      "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
      "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
      In the afternoon they came unto a land
      In which it seemed always afternoon.
      All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
      Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
      Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
      And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
    Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

(TENNYSON: _The Lotos-Eaters._ 1833.)


_abababccc_

      A fisher boy, that never knew his peer
        In dainty songs, the gentle Thomalin,
      With folded arms, deep sighs, and heavy cheer,
        Where hundred nymphs, and hundred muses in,
      Sunk down by Chamus' brinks; with him his dear
         Dear Thyrsil lay; oft times would he begin
      To cure his grief, and better way advise;
      But still his words, when his sad friend he spies,
    Forsook his silent tongue, to speak in watry eyes.

(PHINEAS FLETCHER: _Piscatory Eclogues._ ab. 1630.)

Fletcher was an imitator of Spenser, and here devises a stanza differing
little from his master's. The final alexandrine is used with the same
effect. For other instances of final alexandrines, doubtless used under
the general influence of the Spenserian stanza, see the following
specimens.


_aabaabcc_

              Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
              Once bless our human ears,
        If ye have power to touch our senses so;
              And let your silver chime
              Move in melodious time;
        And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
      And with your ninefold harmony,
    Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

(MILTON: _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity._ 1629.)


_ababbcbcdd_

      What? Ælla dead? and Bertha dying too?
      So fall the fairest flowrets of the plain.
      Who can unfold the works that heaven can do,
      Or who untwist the roll of fate in twain?
      Ælla, thy glory was thy only gain;
      For that, thy pleasure and thy joy was lost.
      Thy countrymen shall rear thee on the plain
      A pile of stones, as any grave can boast.
      Further, a just reward to thee to be,
    In heaven thou sing of God, on earth we'll sing of thee.

(CHATTERTON: _Ælla,_ st. 147. 1768.)

This is the ten-line "Chatterton stanza," a variant of the Spenserian
stanza, devised by Chatterton, which he claimed ante-dated Spenser by
one or two centuries. His claim for it was of course purely fictitious.


_aabbbcc_

      Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
              As the swift seasons roll!
              Leave thy low-vaulted past!
      Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
      Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
              Till thou at length art free,
    Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

(OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: _The Chambered Nautilus._ 1858.)

See also the notable use of the alexandrine in Shelley's _Skylark_, p.
34, above.


_ababababbcbc_

      The dubbement dere of doun and dalez,
      Of wod and water and wlonke playnez,
      Bylde in me blys, abated my balez,
      Fordidde my stresse, dystryed my paynez.
      Doun after a strem that dryghly halez,
      I bowed in blys, bred-ful my braynez;
    The fyrre I folghed those floty valez,
    The more strenghthe of joye myn herte straynez,
      As fortune fares theras ho fraynez,
      Whether solace ho sende other ellez sore,
      The wygh, to wham her wylle ho waynez,
      Hyttez to have ay more and more.

(_The Pearl_, st. xi. Fourteenth century.)

Mr. Israel Gollancz says, in his Introduction to this poem: "I can point
to no direct source to which the poet of _Pearl_ was indebted for his
measure; that it ultimately belongs to Romance poetry I have little
doubt. These twelve-line verses seem to me to resemble the earliest form
of the sonnet more than anything else I have as yet discovered.... Be
this as it may, all will, I hope, recognize that there is a distinct
gain in giving to the 101 stanzas of the poem the appearance of a sonnet
sequence, marking clearly the break between the initial octave and the
closing quatrain.... The refrain, the repetition of the catch-word of
each verse, the trammels of alliteration, all seem to have offered no
difficulty to our poet; and if power over technical difficulties
constitutes in any way a poet's greatness, the author of _Pearl_, from
this point of view alone, must take high rank among English poets."
(Introduction, pp. xxiv, xxv.)

Other examples of intricate stanza structure are found in _Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight_, supposed to be by the author of _Pearl_. See in
Part Two, p. 156.


_aabccbddbeebffgggf_

      Ne mai no lewed lued libben in londe,
      be he never in hyrt so haver of honde,
              So lerede us biledes.
    ȝef ich on molde mote wiþ a mai,
    y shal falle hem byfore & lurnen huere lay,
              ant rewen alle huere redes.
    ah bote y be þe furme day on folde hem byfore,
    ne shaly nout so skere scapen of huere score;
            so grimly he on me gredes,
    þat y ne mot me lede þer wiþ mi lawe;
    on alle maner oþes [þat] heo me wulleþ awe,
            heore boc ase on bredes.
        heo wendeþ bokes on brad,
        ant makeþ men a moneþ a mad;
            of scaþe y wol me skere,
            ant fleo from my fere;
            ne rohte hem whet yt were,
         boten heo hit had.[10]

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253. Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p.
109.)

This and the two following specimens, together with some included
earlier under the head of Tail-Rime, illustrate the interest in complex
lyrical measures characteristic of the period of French influence in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In 1152 Henry of Normandy (who
ascended the throne in 1154) married Eleanor of Poitou, and in her train
there came to England the great troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn. On the
poems of this troubadour and others of the same school, see ten Brink's
_English Literature_, Kennedy translation, vol. i. pp. 159-164. Other
troubadours followed, and found a home in the court of Richard the
Lion-Hearted, who himself entered the ranks of the poets. The result was
a great mass of Norman French lyrical poetry, often in intricate forms,
and a smaller mass of imitative lyrics in Middle English. As Schipper
observes, the elaborate lyrical forms were inconsistent with English
taste, and it was only the simpler ones which were widely adopted. On
the general character of the Romance stanza-forms, and their influence
in England, see Schipper, vol. i. pp. 309 ff.


_ababccdeed_

    Iesu, for þi muchele miht
        þou ȝef us of þi grace,
    þat we mowe dai & nyht
        þenken o þi face.
    in myn herte hit doþ me god,
    when y þenke on iesu blod,
        þat ran doun bi ys syde,
    from is herte doun to is fot;
    for ous he spradde is herte blod,
        his wondes were so wyde.

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253; in Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_,
p. 208.)


_aabccbddbeeb_

    Lenten ys come wiþ love to toune,
    wiþ blosmen & wiþ briddes roune,
        þat al þis blisse bryngeþ;
    dayes eȝes in þis dales,
    notes suete of nyhtegales,
        uch foul song singeþ.
    þe þrestelcoc him þreteþ oo;
    away is huere wynter woo,
        when woderove springeþ.
    þis foules singeþ ferly fele,
    ant wlyteþ on huere wynter wele,
        þat al þe wode ryngeþ.

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253; Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p.
164.)


_abcbdcdceccce_

    Trowe ȝe, sores, and God sent an angell
         And commawndyd ȝow ȝowr chyld to slayn,
    Be ȝowr trowthe ys ther ony of ȝow
         That eyther wold groche or stryve ther-ageyn?
    How thyngke ȝe now, sorys, ther-by?
         I trow ther be iii or iiii or moo.
    And thys women that wepe so sorowfully
         Whan that hyr chyldryn dey them froo,
             As nater woll and kynd,--
         Yt ys but folly, I may well awooe,
         To groche a-ȝens God or to greve ȝow,
         For ȝe schall never se hym myschevyd, wyll I know,
              Be lond nor watyr, have thys in mynd.

(Epilogue of Brome Play of Abraham and Isaac. In Manly's _Specimens of
the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_, vol. i. p. 56.)

This verse of the early Mystery Plays and connected forms of the drama
shows an extraordinary variety of measures. In general, the effort of
the writers seems to have been to show some artistic ingenuity of
structure, and at the same time keep to the free popular dialogue verse
which was associated with the plays. We find, therefore, tumbling verse,
alexandrines, septenaries, and intricate strophic forms, all commonly
written with slight regard for syllable-counting principles.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] There is a single well-known exception: the Anglo-Saxon poem known
as _Deor's Lament_, which is divided into irregularly varying strophes,
all ending with the same refrain. (See ten Brink's _English Literature_,
Kennedy translation, vol. i, p. 60.) See also on the strophic formation
of the First Riddle of Cynewulf, an article by W. W. Lawrence, in
_Publications of the Mod. Lang. Assoc._, N.S. vol. x. p. 247.

[9] Gascoigne, in his _Notes of Instruction_ (1575), mentions this form
of stanza as "a royall kinde of verse, serving best for grave
discourses," a statement in which he is followed by King James in his
_Reulis and Cautelis_ (1585). Puttenham, in the _Arte of English Poesie_
(1589), speaks of the stanza as "the chiefe of our ancient proportions
used by any rimer writing any thing of historical or grave poeme, as ye
may see in Chaucer and Lidgate." (Arber Reprint, p. 80.)

[10] The appendage to a stanza, based on one or more short lines, is
sometimes called a "bob-wheel." See Guest's _History of English
Rhythms_, Skeat ed., pp. 621 ff., for an account of various forms of
these "wheels."




IV. TONE-QUALITY


The quality of the sounds of the words used in verse, although in no way
concerned in the rhythm, is an element of some importance. The
sound-quality may be used in either of two ways: as a regular
coördinating element in the structure of the verse, or as a sporadic
element in the beauty or melody of the verse.


A. AS A STRUCTURAL ELEMENT

In this capacity, similar qualities of sound indicate coördinated parts
of the verse-structure, thus emphasizing the idea of similarity
(corresponding to that of symmetry in arts expressed in space) which is
at the very basis of rhythmical composition.

Obviously, the similarity may exist between vowel sounds, consonant
sounds, or both; more specifically, it is found either in initial
consonants, in accented vowels, or in accented vowels plus final
consonants. Properly speaking, the term Rime is applicable to all three
cases; the first being distinguished as initial rime or Alliteration
(German _Anreim_ or _Stabreim_); the second as Assonance (_Stimmreim_),
the third as complete Rime (_Vollreim_). English usage commonly reserves
the term Rime for the third class.


i. _Assonance_

Assonance was the characteristic coördinating element in the verse of
the early Romance languages, the Provençal, Old French, and Spanish.
Thus in the _Chanson de Roland_ (eleventh century) we find the verses of
each _laisse_, or strophe, bound together by assonance. Frequently this
develops into full rime by chance or convenience. The following is a
characteristic group of verses from the _Roland_:

    Li reis Marsilies esteit en Sarragoce.
    Alez en est un vergier soz l'ombre;
    Sor un pedron de marbre bloi se colchet:
    Environ lui at plus de vint milie homes.
    Il en apelet et ses dus et ses contes:
    "Odez, seignor, quels pechiez nos encombret.
    Li emperedre Charles de France dolce
    En cest pais nos est venuz confondre."

The following specimen of Old Spanish verse shows the nature of
assonance as regularly used in that language:

    Fablo myo Çid bien e tan mesurado:
    "Grado a ti, señor padre, que estas en alto!
    Esto me han buelto myos enemigos malos."
    Alli pieussan de aguijar, alli sueltan las rriendas.
    A la exida de Bivar ovieron la corneja diestra,
    E entrando a Burgos ovieron la siniestra.
    Meçio myo Çid los ombros e engrameo la tiesta:
    "Albricia, Albarffanez, ca echados somos de tierra!"

(_Poema del Cid._ Twelfth century.)

    Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness,
      Lithe as panther forest-roaming,
    Long-armed naiad, when she dances,
      On a stream of ether floating,--
            Bright, O bright Fedalma!

    Form all curves like softness drifted,
      Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling,
    Far-off music slowly winged,
        Gently rising, gently sinking,--
            Bright, O bright Fedalma!

(GEORGE ELIOT: Song from _The Spanish Gypsy_, book i.)

This song was written in avowed imitation of the Spanish verse,
illustrating its prevailingly trochaic rhythm as well as alliteration.
Elsewhere verse bound together only by assonance is almost unknown in
English poetry. In the _Contemporary Review_ for November, 1894, Mr.
William Larminie has an interesting article giving a favorable account
of the use of assonance in Celtic (Irish) verse, and proposing its
larger use in English poetry, as a relief from the--to him--almost
cloying elaborateness of rime.

In the following specimen, assonance seems in some measure to take the
place of rime.

    Haply, the river of Time--
    As it grows, as the towns on its marge
    Fling their wavering lights
    On a wider, statelier stream--
    May acquire, if not the calm
    Of its early mountainous shore,
    Yet a solemn peace of its own.

    And the width of the waters, the hush
    Of the gray expanse where he floats,
    Freshening its current and spotted with foam
    As it draws to the ocean, may strike
    Peace to the soul of the man on its breast,--
    As the pale waste widens around him,
    As the banks fade dimmer away,
    As the stars come out, and the night-wind
    Brings up the stream
    Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _The Future._)


ii. _Alliteration_

Alliteration appears sporadically in the verse of all literary
languages, but as a means for the coördination of verse it is
characteristic of the primitive Germanic tongues.

    Hwæt! we nu gehyrdan, hu þæt hælubearn
    Þurh his hydercyme hals eft forgeaf,
    Gefreode ond gefreoþade folc under wolcnum
    Mære meotudes sunu, þæt nu monna gehwylc,
    Cwic þendan her wunað, geceosan mot
    Swa helle hienþu swa heofones mærþu,
    Swa þæt leohte leoht swa ða laþan niht,
    Swa þrymmes þræce swa þystra wræce,
    Swa mid dryhten dream swa mid deoflum hream,
    Swa wite mid wraþum swa wuldor mid arum,
    Swa lif swa deað, swa him leofre bið
    To gefremmanne, þenden flæsc ond gæst
    Wuniað in worulde. Wuldor þæs age
    Þrynysse þrym, þonc butan ende!

(CYNEWULF: _Crist._ ll. 586-599. Eighth century.)

This specimen represents the use of alliteration in the most regularly
constructed Anglo-Saxon verse. The two half-lines are united into the
long line by the same initial consonant in the important syllables. In
the first half-line the alliteration is on the two principally stressed
syllables, or on one of them alone (most frequently the first); in the
second half-line it is commonly found only on the first. Alliterating
unstressed syllables are usually regarded as merely accidental. Any
initial vowel sound alliterates with any other vowel sound.

The most regular verse appears in Anglo-Saxon poetry of what may be
called the classical period,--700 A.D. and for a century
following,--represented by _Beowulf_ and the poems of Cynewulf. By the
time of Ælfric, who wrote about 1000 A.D., there appear signs of a
breaking in the regular verse-form. (See Schipper, vol. i. pp. 60 ff.)
For example, two alliterative syllables often appear in the second
half-line; one half-line may be without alliteration; alliteration may
bind different long-lines together; or alliteration may be altogether
wanting. There are also additions of many light syllables, resulting
almost, as Schipper observes, in rhythmical prose. These tendencies
resulted in the wholly irregular use of alliteration appearing in much
of the verse of the early Middle English period, illustrated in the
specimens that follow.

       *       *       *       *       *

The origins of alliteration in Germanic verse are lost in the general
mass of Germanic origins. It is almost universally regarded as a purely
native development, although M. Kawczynski (_Essai Comparatif sur
l'Origine et l'Histoire des Rythmes_; Paris, 1889) sets forth the
remarkable opinion that the Germans derived their alliteration from the
Romans. "We must remember," he says, "the schools of rhetoric existing
in Gaul in the sixth and seventh centuries, where alliteration seems to
have been held in esteem.... It became more and more frequent in the
Latin poetry of the Carlovingian period, and it will suffice to cite
here the following verses from Milo of Saint Amand:

    'Pastores pecum primi pressique pavore
    Conspicuos cives carmen caeleste canentes
    Audivere astris arrectis auribus; auctor
    Ad terras ...'

It early passed to Ireland, and the Irish made use of it in their Latin
poetry and in their national poetry. The example of the Irish was
followed by the Anglo-Saxons, although these last had derived the same
rules from the Latin writers.... The Anglo-Saxons, who sent the second
series of apostles to the Germans, taught them the use of alliteration
in poetry. The Scandinavians, on their side, learned it also from the
Anglo-Saxons." This theory has found no adherents among scholars, and M.
Kawczynski's illustrations are probably most useful in emphasizing the
natural pleasure in similarity of sound found among all peoples. See
below, on the related question of the origin of end-rime.

    ðe leun stant on hille,      and he man hunten here,
    oðer ðurg his nese smel,      smake that he negge,
    bi wilc weie so he wile      to dele niðer wenden,
    alle hise fet steppes      after him he filleð,
    drageð dust wið his stert      ðer he steppeð,
    oðer dust oðer deu,      ðat he ne cunne is finden,
    driveð dun to his den      ðar he him bergen wille.

(_The Bestiary_, from MS. Arundel. In Mätzner's _Altenglische
Sprachproben_, vol. i. p. 57.)

See also the specimen from Böddeker, p. 14, above.

    Cristes milde moder, seynte Marie,
    mines lives leome, mi leove lefdi,
    to þe ich buwe and mine kneon ich beie,
    and al min heorte blod to ðe ich offrie.

(_On God Ureisun of ure Lefdi._ In Morris's _Old English Homilies_,
first series, p. 191. Zupitza's _Alt-und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch_,
p. 76.)

    Kaer Leir hehte þe burh:      leof heo wes þan kinge.
    þa we an ure leod-quide:       Leirchestre cleþiað.
    ȝeare a þan holde dawen:      heo wes swiðe aðel burh.
    & seoððen þer seh toward:     swiðe muchel seorwe.
    þat heo wes al for-faren:      þurh þere leodene væl.
    Sixti winter hefde Leir:     þis lond al to welden.
    þe king hefde þreo dohtren:      bi his drihliche quen.
    nefde he nenne sune:      þer fore he warð sari.
    his manscipe to holden:      buten þa þreo dohtren.
    þa ældeste dohter haihte Gornoille:      þa oðer Ragau.
    þa þridde Cordoille.

(LAYAMON: _Brut_, ll. 2912-2931. Madden ed., vol. i. p. 123. ab. 1200.)

The _Brut_ of Layamon represents typically the transition period, when
alliteration and end-rime were struggling for the mastery in English
verse. Schipper points out that we find in the poem four kinds of lines:

1. Simple alliterative lines in more or less strict adherence to the old
rules.

2. Lines combining alliteration and rime or alliteration and assonance.

3. Lines showing rime or assonance, without alliteration.

4. Four-stress lines with neither rime nor alliteration.

The present specimen shows the preference for alliteration; that on p.
127, below, represents the introduction of rime.

    In a somer seson . whan soft was the sonne,
    I shope me in shroudes . as I a shepe were,
    In habite as an heremite . unholy of workes,
    Went wyde in this world . wondres to here.
    Ac on a May mornynge . on Malverne hulles
    Me byfel a ferly . of fairy me thouȝte;
    I was wery forwandred . and went me to reste
    Under a brode banke . bi a bornes side,
    And as I lay and lened . and loked in the wateres,
    I slombred in a slepyng . it sweyved so merye.

(WILLIAM LANGLAND (?): _Piers the Plowman_, Prologue, ll. 1-10. B-text.
Fourteenth century.)

_Piers the Plowman_ represents the revival of the alliterative long
line, with fairly strict adherence to the old rules, by contemporaries
of Chaucer, in the fourteenth century. For this verse, see further in
Part Two, pp. 155, 156.

    Apon the Midsumer evin, mirrest of nichtis,
    I muvit furth allane, neir as midnicht wes past,
    Besyd ane gudlie grene garth, full of gay flouris,
    Hegeit, of ane huge hicht, with hawthorne treis;
    Quhairon ane bird, on ane bransche, so birst out hir notis
    That never ane blythfullar bird was on the beuche harde:
    Quhat throw the sugarat sound of hir sang glaid,
    And throw the savar sanative of the sueit flouris;
    I drew in derne to the dyk to dirkin eftir myrthis;
    The dew donkit the daill, and dynarit the foulis.

(WILLIAM DUNBAR: _The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo_, ll. 1-10. Ed.
Scottish Text Society, vol ii. p. 30.)

     See notes on Dunbar as a metrist, in this edition, vol. i. pp.
     cxlix and clxxii, and T. F. Henderson's _Scottish Vernacular
     Literature_, pp. 153-164.

Alliteration as an organic element of verse was especially favored in
the North country, and its popularity in Scotland--illustrated in the
present specimen from Dunbar--considerably outlasted its use in England.
The famous words of Chaucer's Parson will be recalled:

    "But trusteth wel, I am a Southren man,
    I can nat geste--rum, ram, ruf--by lettre."

We find King James, as late as 1585 (_Reulis and Cautelis_), giving the
following instructions: "Let all your verse be Literall, sa far as may
be, ... bot speciallie Tumbling verse for flyting. By Literall I meane,
that the maist part of your lyne sall rynne upon a letter, as this
tumbling lyne rynnis upon F:

    _Fetching fude for to feid it fast furth of the Farie._"

The following specimen is one of the latest examples of fairly regular
alliterative verse, written in England, that has come down to us. It is
from a ballad of the battle of Flodden Field (1513).

    Archers uttered out their arrowes, and egerlie they shotten.
    They proched us with speares, and put many over,
    That the blood outbrast at there broken harnish.
    There was swinging out of swords, and swapping of headds;
    We blanked them with bills through all their bright armor,
    That all the dale dunned of their derfe strokes.

(_Scotishe Ffielde_, from Percy's Folio MS. In FLÜGEL'S _Neuenglisches
Lesebuch_, vol. i. p. 156.)


iii. _Rime_ (_i.e. end-rime_)

Full rime, or end-rime, involves the principally stressed vowel in the
riming word, and all that follows that vowel. When there is an entire
unstressed syllable following, the rime is called double, or feminine.
Triple rime is also recognized, though rare.[11] End-rime being a
stranger to the early Germanic languages, its appearance in any of them
may commonly be taken as a sign of foreign influence. In general, of
course, rime and the stanza were introduced together into English verse,
under the influence of Latin hymns and French lyrics.

The functions of rime in English verse may perhaps be grouped under
three heads: the function of emphasis, the function of forming beautiful
or pleasurable sounds, and the function of combining or organizing the
verses. It is with reference to the first of these that Professor Corson
speaks of rime as "an enforcing agency of the individual verse." Under
the second head rime is considered simply as a form of tone-color, and
as furnishing a part of the melody of verse. The third function, by
which individual verses are bound into stanzas, is, in a sense, the most
important.

On the subject of the æsthetic values of rime, see the chapter on
"poetic unities" in Corson's _Primer of English Verse_, and Ehrenfeld's
_Studien zur Theorie des Reims_ (Zürich, 1897). The problem of the
relative values of rimed and unrimed verse will come up in connection
with the history of the heroic couplet and of blank verse. The objection
always urged against rime is that its demands are likely to turn the
poet aside from the normal order of his ideas. Herder, as Ehrenfeld
points out, thought that this was particularly true of English verse,
the uninflected language not providing so naturally for cases where
thought and sound are parallel. A recent protest against the tyranny of
rime is found in the article by Mr. Larminie, cited on page 115, where
it is claimed that undue attention to form is thinning out the substance
of modern poetry, and that the demands of rime should be relaxed. See
also Ben Jonson's "Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme," for a humorous complaint
against the requirements of rime upon the poet.

     The origin of rime has been a subject of prolonged controversy. See
     the monograph by Ehrenfeld already cited; Meyer's _Anfang und
     Ursprung der rythmischen Dichtung_ (Munich, 1884); W. Grimm's
     _Geschichte des Reims_ (1851); Norden's _Antike Kunstprosa_
     (Leipzig, 1898; _Anhang ueber die Geschichte des Reims_); Kluge's
     article, _Zur Geschichte des Reimes im Altgermanischen_, in Paul u.
     Braune's _Beiträge_, vol. ix. p. 422; and Schipper, vol. i. pp. 34
     ff. Meyer's work is an exposition of the theory that rime was an
     importation from the Orient. In like manner, it has been held by
     many that the poetry of Otfried (the first regularly rimed German
     verse) was produced under Latin influence wholly, and that rime was
     introduced by him to the Germans (see the work by Kawczynski, cited
     p. 117). Herder (see Ehrenfeld's monograph) regarded rime as a
     natural growth of the instinct for symmetry in all human taste,
     closely connected with dance-rhythms, all forms of parallelism, and
     the like. Similarity of inflectional endings in similar clauses, he
     pointed out, would naturally develop rime in any inflected
     language. This view is in line with the tendency of recent opinion.
     Schipper says, in effect: "Is rime to be regarded as the invention
     of a special people, like the Arabian, or is it a form of art which
     developed in the poetic language of the Aryan peoples, separately
     in the several nations? In the opinion of the principal scholars
     the latter opinion is the correct one. The chief support of this
     opinion is the fact that traces of rime, in greater or less number,
     appear in the oldest poetry of almost all the partially civilized
     peoples. 'It is,' says C. F. Meyer, 'something inborn, original,
     universally human, like poetry and music, and no more than these
     the special invention of a single people or a particular time.' In
     fact, traces of rime may be noticed in the poetry of the Greeks, in
     Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, as also in the poetry of
     the Romans; in a more developed form it appears in the late middle
     Latin clerical poetry. In the Celtic languages, moreover, rime is
     the indispensable mark of the poetic form, even in the oldest
     extant specimens. The Latin poetry just referred to gives
     interesting evidence that rime is a characteristic sign of popular
     poetry. While the quantitative system became dominant, with the
     artistic verse-forms of the Greeks, in the Golden Age of Roman
     literature, the early Saturnian verses, written in free rhythms,
     already showed the popular taste for similarity of sound in the
     form of alliteration; and in the post-classical time, with the fall
     of the quantitative metres, rime again came to the front in songs
     intended for the people. The same element was made so essential a
     characteristic in the organization of verse in the mediæval Latin,
     that 'carmen rhythmicum' came to signify a rimed poem, and the
     later Latinists used the word 'rhythmus' precisely in the sense of
     'rime.'"

     Schipper goes on to inquire whether this mediæval Latin poetry was
     the means of introducing rime to the Germanic peoples. Wackernagel
     held it as certain that Otfried learned his rimes from Latin poems;
     but as Otfried declares that his poetry is intended to take the
     place of useless popular songs, it seems probable that he was not
     using an innovation, and that rime was already popular in Old High
     German. Indeed, it appears sporadically in the _Hildebrandslied_
     and the _Heliand_. Grimm observes that it is theoretically unlikely
     that alliteration should have vanished suddenly and rime as
     suddenly have taken its place. The gradual development of rime from
     assonance among the Romance peoples suggests the same thing. The
     early appearance of rime by the side of alliteration is illustrated
     by C. F. Meyer (_Historische Studien_, Leipzig, 1851) from the
     Norse _Edda_, from _Beowulf_, Cædmon, etc. In the later Anglo-Saxon
     period rime was evidently securing a considerable though uncertain
     hold. The Riming Poem suggests what development rime might have had
     in English without the incoming of Romance influences. Grimm
     observes that, while to his mind alliteration was a finer and
     nobler quality than rime, there was need of a stronger
     sound-likeness which should hold the attention more firmly by its
     unchanging place at the end of the line. Schipper remarks, finally,
     that the fact that the use of rime in connection with alliteration
     was especially popular in the southern half of England, where the
     Romance influence was strongest, may suggest why in the more purely
     Germanic northern half alliteration remained the single support of
     the poetic form well into the fifteenth century.

     The appendix to the work of Norden, cited above, is a fuller
     development of ideas frequently suggested by the sporadic
     appearance of rime in early Greek and Latin literature. Norden
     gives many examples of this "rhetorical rime," as well as of rime
     arising naturally from parallelism of sentence structure found in
     primitive charms, incantations, and the like. In particular he
     emphasizes the influence of the figure of _homœoteleuton_ as
     used in the literary prose of the classical languages. His
     conclusion is as follows: "Rime, then, was potentially as truly
     present in the Greek and Latin languages, from the earliest times,
     as in every other language; but in the metrical (quantitative)
     poetry it had no regular place, and appeared there in general only
     sporadically and by chance, being used by only a few poets as a
     rhetorical ornament. It became actual by the transition from the
     metrical poetry to the rhythmical (that is, the syllable-counting,
     in which--in the Latin--the chief consideration is still for the
     word-accent); and this transition was consummated by the aid of the
     highly poetic prose, already used for centuries, which was
     constructed according to the laws of rhythm, and in which the
     rhetorical homœoteleuton had gained an ever-increasing
     significance. In particular, rime found an entrance through sermons
     composed in such prose, and delivered in a voice closely
     approaching that of singing, into the hymn-poetry which was
     intimately related to such sermons. From the Latin hymn-poetry it
     was carried into other languages, from the ninth century onward. It
     is self-evident that in these languages also rime was potentially
     present before it became actual through the influence of foreign
     poetry; for in this region also there operates the highest immanent
     law of every being and every form of development,--that in the
     whole field of life nothing absolutely new is invented, but merely
     slumbering germs are awakened to active life." (_Antike
     Kunstprosa_, vol. ii. pp. 867 ff.)

    Me lifes onlah.      se þis leoht onwrah.
    and þæt torhte geteoh.      tillice onwrah.
    glæd wæs ic gliwum.      glenged hiwum.
    blissa bleoum.      blostma hiwum.
    Secgas mec segon.      symbel ne alegon.
    feorh-gife gefegon.      frætwed wægon.
    wic ofer wongum.      wennan gongum.
    lisse mid longum.      leoma getongum.

(From the "Riming Poem" of the _Codex Exoniensis_.)

This puzzlingly early appearance of rime in Anglo-Saxon verse, in
conjunction with fairly regular alliteration, is of especial
interest.[12] "It is supposed," says Schipper, "that this new form has
for its foundation the Scandinavian _Runhenda_, and that this was known
to the Anglo-Saxons through the Old Norse poet, Egil Skalagrimsson, who
was living in England in the tenth century, and who stayed twice in
England at Athelstan's court, writing a poem in Northumbria in the same
form." He also observes that the attempt to attain something like
equality of feet and half-lines suggests the Norse models.

    Sainte Marie, Cristes bur,
    Maidenes clenhad, moderes flur,
    Dilie mine sinne, rixe in min mod,
    Bring me to winne with self god.

(Verses attributed to St. Godric. ab. 1100.)

Godric, the hermit of Norfolk, lived about 1065-1170. These verses seem
to give the earliest extant appearance of end-rime in Middle English.
The Romance words in the hymn indicate the presence of French influence.
(On this hymn see article in _Englische Studien_, vol. xi. p. 401.)

    Woden hehde þa hæhste laȝe:      an ure ælderne dæȝen.
    he heom wes leof:      æfne al swa heore lif.
    he wes heore walden:      and heom wurðscipe duden.
    þene feorðe dæi i þere wike:      heo ȝiven him to wurðscipe.
    þa Þunre heo ȝiven þures dæi:      for þi þat heo heom helpen mæi.
    Freon heore læfdi:      heo ȝiven hire fridæi.
    Saturnus heo ȝiven sætterdæi:      þene Sunne heo ȝiven sonedæi.
    Monenen heo ȝivenen monedæi:      Tidea heo ȝeven tisdæi.
    þus seide Hængest:      cnihten alre hendest.

(LAYAMON: _Brut_, ll. 13921-13938. Madden ed., vol. ii. p. 158. ab.
1200.)

On the verse of the _Brut_ see above, p. 119.

    Ich æm elder þen ich wes · a wintre and alore.
    Ic wælde more þaune ic dude · mi wit ah to ben more.
    Wel lange ic habbe child ibeon · a weorde end ech adede.
    Þeh ic beo awintre eald · tu ȝyng i eom a rede....
    Mest al þat ic habbe ydon · ys idelnesse and chilce.
    Wel late ic habbe me bi þoht · bute me god do milce.

(_Poema Morale_, ll. 1-4, 7, 8. In Zupitza's _Alt-und Mittelenglisches
Übungsbuch_, p. 58. ab. 1200.)

The _Poema Morale_, evidently one of the most popular poems of the early
Middle English period, seems to be the earliest one of any considerable
length in which end-rime was used regularly.

For other early examples of rime introduced into English under foreign
influence, see above, in the section on the Stanza.


_Double and triple rime._

    To our theme.--The man who has stood on the Acropolis,
      And looked down over Attica; or he
    Who has sailed where picturesque Constantinople is,
      Or seen Timbuctoo, or hath taken tea
    In small-eyed China's crockery-ware metropolis,
      Or sat amidst the bricks of Nineveh,
    May not think much of London's first appearance--
    But ask him what he thinks of it a year hence?

(BYRON: _Don Juan_, canto xi. st. vii.)

        'Tis pity learned virgins ever wed,
            With persons of no sort of education,
        Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
          Grow tired of scientific conversation;
    I don't choose to say much upon this head,
      I'm a plain man, and in a single station,
    But--oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
      Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?

(_Ib._, canto i. st. xxii.)

    So the painter Pacchiarotto
    Constructed himself a grotto
    In the quarter of Stalloreggi--
    As authors of note allege ye.
    And on each of the whitewashed sides of it
    He painted--(none far and wide so fit
    As he to perform in fresco)--
    He painted nor cried _quiesco_
    Till he peopled its every square foot
    With Man--from the Beggar barefoot
    To the Noble in cap and feather;
    All sorts and conditions together.
    The Soldier in breastplate and helmet
    Stood frowningly--hail fellow well met--
    By the Priest armed with bell, book, and candle.
    Nor did he omit to handle
    The Fair Sex, our brave distemperer:
    Not merely King, Clown, Pope, Emperor--
    He diversified too his Hades
    Of all forms, pinched Labor and paid Ease,
    With as mixed an assemblage of Ladies.

(BROWNING: _Pacchiarotto_, v.)

    What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
    Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:
    When we mind labor, then only, we're too old--
    What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
    And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees
    (Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil),
    I hope to get safely out of the turmoil
    And arrive one day at the land of the Gypsies,
    And find my lady, or hear the last news of her
    From some old thief and son of Lucifer,
    His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
    Sunburned all over like an Æthiop.

(BROWNING: _The Flight of the Duchess_, xvii.)

These passages illustrate sufficiently the grotesque effects of double
and triple rime in English verse,--effects of which Byron and Browning
are the unquestioned masters. Professor Corson observes that the double
rime is to be regarded as the means of "some special emphasis," whether
serious or humorous. More commonly the effect is humorous, of course, as
in _Don Juan_, where the rimes indicate "the lowering of the poetic
key--the reduction of true poetic seriousness." The rimes in the _Flight
of the Duchess_ Mr. Edmund Gurney has said sometimes "produce the
effect of jokes made during the performance of a symphony." The specimen
which follows illustrates the use of these double and triple rimes for a
wholly serious purpose. Professor Corson remarks that in this case the
rime serves "as a most effective foil to the melancholy theme. It is not
unlike the laughter of frenzied grief." It is interesting to note that
in the Italian language, where double rimes are almost constant,
masculine rimes are sometimes used for grotesque effect in the same way
that English poets use the feminine.

    Perishing gloomily,
    Spurred by contumely,
    Cold inhumanity,
    Burning insanity,
    Into her rest.--
    Cross her hands humbly,
    As if praying dumbly,
    Over her breast.
    Owning her weakness,
    Her evil behaviour,
    And leaving, with meekness,
    Her sins to her Saviour!

(THOMAS HOOD: _The Bridge of Sighs._)

      Roll the strong stream of it
      Up, till the scream of it
      Wake from a dream of it
        Children that sleep,
      Seamen that fare for them
      Forth, with a prayer for them;
      Shall not God care for them,
        Angels not keep?
      Spare not the surges
      Thy stormy scourges;
      Spare us the dirges
        Of wives that weep.
      Turn back the waves for us:
      Dig no fresh graves for us,
    Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep.

(SWINBURNE: _Winter in Northumberland_, xiv.)

    Into the woods my Master went,
    Clean forspent, forspent.
    Into the woods my Master came,
    Forspent with love and shame.
    But the olives they were not blind to Him,
    The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
    The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
    When into the woods he came.

(SIDNEY LANIER: _A Ballad of Trees and the Master._)


_Broken rime._

    There first for thee my passion grew,
      Sweet, sweet Matilda Pottingen!
    Thou wast the daughter of my tu-
      tor, law-professor at the U-
        niversity of Gottingen.

    Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu!
      That kings and priests are plotting in;
    Here doomed to starve on water gru-
      el, never shall I see the U-
        niversity of Gottingen.

(GEORGE CANNING: Song in _The Rovers; Anti-Jacobin_, June 4, 1798.[13])


    Winter and summer, night and morn,
      I languish at this table dark;
    My office-window has a corn-
      er looks into St. James's Park.

(THACKERAY: Ballads, _What Makes my Heart to Thrill and Glow?_)


_Internal rime._

Internal rime may be regarded on the one side as only a matter of the
division of the verse, since if it occurs regularly at the medial
cesura, it practically breaks the verse into two parts. On the other
side, if used only sporadically, it is a matter of tone-color. It
sometimes appears, however, in forms which entitle it to recognition by
itself. The earliest of these forms is the "Leonine rime," which is said
to have taken its name from Leoninus of St. Victor, who in the twelfth
century wrote elegiacs (hexameters and pentameters) in which the
syllable preceding the cesura regularly rimed with the final syllable.
Obviously lines of this kind would easily break up into riming
half-lines. Similarly, in septenary verse internal rime was often used
together with end-rime, with a resulting resolution into short-line
stanzas riming either _aabb_ or _abab_.[14] The following specimen from
a celebrated ballad shows the popular use of a somewhat complex system
of internal rime.

    Be it right or wrong, these men among on women do complaine,
    Affirming this, how that it is a labour spent in vaine,
    To love them wele, for never a dele they love a man agayne.
    For lete a man do what he can, ther favour to attayne,
    Yet yf a newe to them pursue, ther furst trew lover than
    Laboureth for nought, and from her thought he is a bannisshed man.

(_Ye Nutbrowne Maide._ From Arnold's Chronicle, printed ab. 1502. In
Flügel's _Neuenglisches Lesebuch_, vol. i. p. 167.)

    Haill rois maist chois till clois thy fois greit micht,
    Haill stone quhilk schone upon the throne of licht,
    Vertew, quhais trew sweit dew ouirthrew al vice,
    Was ay ilk day gar say the way of licht;
    Amend, offend, and send our end ay richt.
    Thow stant, ordant as sanct, of grant maist wise,
    Till be supplie, and the hie gre of price.
    Delite the tite me quite of site to dicht,
    For I apply schortlie to thy devise.

(GAWAIN DOUGLAS: _A ballade in the commendation of honour and verteu_;
at the end of the _Palace of Honor_.)

Douglas, like his countryman Dunbar, was something of a metrical
virtuoso, and his use of internal rime in this ballade is one of his
most remarkable achievements. In the first stanza there are two internal
rimes in each line, in the second three, and in the third (here quoted)
four.

    I cannot eat but little meat,
      My stomach is not good,
    But sure I think that I can drink
      With him that wears a hood.
    Though I go bare, take ye no care,
      I nothing am a-cold,
    I stuff my skin so full within
      Of jolly good ale and old.

(Drinking Song in _Gammer Gurton's Needle_.)

    The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
    The furrow stream'd off free;
    We were the first that ever burst
    Into that silent sea.

(COLERIDGE: _Rime of the Ancient Mariner._)

    The splendor falls on castle walls,
      And snowy summits old in story;
    The long light shakes across the lakes,
      And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

(TENNYSON: Song in _The Princess_, iv.)

    England, queen of the waves whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee
        round,
    Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found?
    Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims
        thee crowned ....
    England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy glory,
        free,
    Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he worships
        thee;
    None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails
        the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _The Armada_, vii.)

Here the third and eighth syllables of each verse rime, giving the
effect of a separate melody only half heard under that of the main
rime-scheme. This is especially subtle where there is no possible pause
after the riming word, as in the "sing" of the last line quoted.

    Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
    Let the bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
    And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?--weep now or nevermore!
    See on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
    Come, let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung:
    An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,
    A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

(POE: _Lenore._)

    I did not take her by the hand,
    (Though little was to understand
    From touch of hand all friends might take,)
    Because it should not prove a flake
    Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.

    I did not listen to her voice,
    (Though none had noted, where at choice
    All might rejoice in listening,)
    Because no such a thing should cling
    In the wood's moan at evening.

(ROSSETTI: _Penumbra._)

(See also _Love's Nocturn_, p. 146, below.)


B. AS A SPORADIC ELEMENT (TONE-COLOR)

This division includes the use made of the qualities of sound for the
purpose of adding to the melodiousness of verse, or of expressing in
some measure the ideas to be conveyed by means of the very sounds
employed. Sometimes this takes the form of alliteration, differing from
that of early English verse only in that it follows no regular
structural laws. On the other hand, it may take the form of
_onomatopœia_, the figure of speech in which sound and sense are
closely related,--as in descriptive words like _buzz_, _hiss_, _murmur_,
_splash_, and the like. The term Tone-color is formed by analogy with
the German _Klangfarbe_, an expression apparently due to the feeling
that the sound-qualities of speech have somewhat the same function as
the various colors in a picture. It is unquestionably true that the
selection of sounds, whether vowel or consonantal, has much to do with
the melodious effect of very much poetry. The poet may choose the
different sound-qualities (so far as the sense permits) just as the
musician may choose the varying qualities of the different instruments
in the orchestra or the different stops in the organ.

Strictly speaking, this matter of Tone-color is not a part of verse-form
in the same sense as matters of rhythm, rime, and the like; for it may
appear in prose as well as in verse, and is not in any case reducible to
formal principles or laws. Yet its use in actual verse is so important,
and it is so closely related to the use of sound-quality in the form of
rime and alliteration, that it seems well to include it here.[15]

     Dr. Guest treats sounds as having in themselves the suggestion of
     more or less definite ideas, this suggestiveness being explainable
     by physical causes. Thus the trembling character of _l_ suggests
     trepidation, as in "Double, double, toil and trouble." _R_ suggests
     harsh, grating, or rattling noises; the sibilants are appropriate
     to the expression of shrieks, screams, and the like; _b_ and _p_,
     because of the compression of the lips, suggest muscular effort;
     _st_, from a sudden stopping of the _s_, suggests fear or surprise;
     _f_ and _h_ also fear, because of their whispering quality. Hollow
     sounds (_au_, _ow_, _o_, and the like) suggest depth and fulness.
     Guest quotes in this connection an interesting passage from Bacon's
     _Natural History_ (ii. 200): "There is found a similitude between
     the sound that is made by inanimate bodies, or by animate bodies
     that have no voice articulate, and divers letters of articulate
     voices; and commonly men have given such names to those sounds as
     do allude unto the articulate letters; as trembling of hot water
     hath resemblance unto the letter _l_; quenching of hot metals with
     the letter _z_; snarling of dogs with the letter _r_; the noise of
     screech-owls with the letter _sh_; voice of cats with the diphthong
     _eu_; voice of cuckoos with the diphthong _ou_; sounds of strings
     with the diphthong _ng_.

A. W. Schlegel went even farther in suggesting a subtle symbolism in
sounds apart from descriptive qualities. Thus he regarded _a_ as
suggestive of bright red, and as symbolizing youth, joy, or brightness
(as in the words _Strahl_, _Klang_, _Glans_); _i_ as suggestive of
sky-blue, symbolic of intimacy or love; and so with other vowel sounds.
(See Ehrenfeld's monograph, p. 57.) In general it may be said that it is
dangerous to attempt to explain the special effects of tone-color in
verse, except where it is obviously descriptive, the appreciation of
such effects being a subtle and a more or less individual matter. On
this subject Mr. Gurney makes some interesting observations, in the
essays cited above. He believes that the pleasurable effect of the
sound-qualities in verse can never be dissociated from the sense of the
words; that the most melodious verse cannot be appreciated if in a
foreign language, unless read with particular expressiveness; and that
the pleasure derived from what we roughly call melodious or harmonious
verses is always due to the mystical combination of the appropriate
sound with the poetic content.

Dr. Johnson ridiculed the idea of tone-color, as appearing in Pope's
teaching that the sound should be "an echo to the sense." See his _Life
of Pope_, and especially the _Idler_ for June 9, 1759, in which he
describes Minim the critic as reading "all our poets with particular
attention to this delicacy of versification." Such a critic discovers
wonders in these lines from _Hudibras_:

    "Honor is like the glossy bubble,
    Which cost philosophers such trouble;
    Where, one part crack'd, the whole does fly,
    And wits are crack'd to find out why."

"In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking accommodations of the
sound to the sense. It is impossible to utter the first two lines
emphatically without an act like that which they describe; _bubble_ and
_trouble_ causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention
of the breath, which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice
of _blowing bubbles_. But the greatest excellence is in the third line,
which is _crack'd_ in the middle to express a crack, and then shivers
into monosyllables."

In an article on "Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature"
(originally published in the _Contemporary Review_, April, 1885;
reprinted in the Scribner edition of Stevenson's Works, vol. xxii. p.
243) Robert Louis Stevenson discussed some of the more subtle effects of
vowel and consonant color, as appearing in both prose and verse. The
combination and repetition of the consonants PVF he found to be
particularly frequent. The pervading sound-elements in the two following
passages he analyzed by means of the key-letters in the margin:

    "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan                 (KANDL)
      A stately pleasure-dome decree,         (KDLSR)
    Where Alph the sacred river ran           (KANDLSR)
    Through caverns measureless to man,       (KANLSR)
      Down to a sunless sea."                 (NDLS)

(COLERIDGE.)

    "But in the wind and tempest of her frown,       W.P.V.F. (st) (ow)
    Distinction with a loud and powerful fan,        W.P.F. (st) (ow) L.
    Puffing at all, winnows the light away;          W.P.F.L.
    And what hath mass and matter by itself          W.F.L.M.A.
    Lies rich in virtue and unmingled."              V.L.M.

(SHAKSPERE: _Troilus and Cressida._)

No attempt has been made to classify the specimens that follow. Nor does
comment seem necessary, in order to make clear the particular qualities
of the sounds of the verse.

    The heraudes lefte hir priking up and doun;
    Now ringen trompes loude and clarioun;
    There is namore to seyn, but west and est
    In goon the speres ful sadly in arest;
    In goth the sharpe spore in-to the syde.
    Ther seen men who can juste, and who can ryde;
    Ther shiveren shaftes up-on sheeldes thikke;
    He feeleth thurgh the herte-spoon the prikke.
    Up springen speres twenty foot on highte;
    Out goon the swerdes as the silver brighte.
    The helmes they to-hewen and to-shrede;
    Out brest the blood, with sterne stremes rede.
    With mighty maces the bones they to-breste.
    He thurgh the thikkeste of the throng gan threste.
    Ther stomblen stedes stronge, and doun goth al.

(CHAUCER: _Knight's Tale_, ll. 1741-1755.)

    And in his house heap pearls like pebble-stones,
    Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;
    Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
    Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
    Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
    And seld-seen costly stones of so great price,
    As one of them indifferently rated,
    And of a carat of this quantity,
    May serve in peril of calamity.

(MARLOWE: _The Jew of Malta_, I. i.)

    Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
    Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
    Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
    With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries;
    The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
    And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,
    And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
    To have my love to bed and to arise;
    And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
    To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:
    Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

(SHAKSPERE: _Midsummer Night's Dream_, III. i. 167-177.)

    Now entertain conjecture of a time
    When creeping murmur and the poring dark
    Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
    From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,
    The hum of either army stilly sounds,
    That the fix'd sentinels almost receive
    The secret whispers of each other's watch:
    Fire answers fire; and through their paly flames
    Each battle sees the other's umber'd face:
    Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs
    Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents
    The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
    With busy hammers closing rivets up,
    Give dreadful note of preparation.
    The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,
    And the third hour of drowsy morning name.

(SHAKSPERE: _Henry V._, Chorus to Act IV.)

    Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay,
    With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals
    Of fish that, with their fins and shining scales,
    Glide under the green wave in sculls that oft
    Bank the mid-sea. Part, single or with mate,
    Graze the sea-weed, their pasture, and through groves
    Of coral stray, or, sporting with quick glance,
    Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropt with gold,
    Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend
    Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food
    In jointed armor watch; on smooth the seal
    And bended dolphins play: part, huge of bulk,
    Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
    Tempest the ocean.  There leviathan,
    Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
    Stretch'd like a promontory, sleeps or swims,
    And seems a moving land, and at his gills
    Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, VII. 399-416.)

              Then in the key-hole turns
    The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar
    Of massy iron or solid rock with ease
    Unfastens. On a sudden open fly,
    With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
    The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
    Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
    Of Erebus.

(_Ib._, II. 876-883.)

    Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
    Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
    Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
    When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
    Forget not: in thy book record their groans
    Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
    Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled
    Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
    The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
    To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
    O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
    The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
    A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
    Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

(MILTON: _Sonnet on the Late Massacre in Piedmont._)

    And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
    Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
    The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
    But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
    Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
    Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
    Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

(MILTON: _Lycidas_, ll. 123-129.)

        The soft complaining flute
        In dying notes discovers
        The woes of helpless lovers,
    Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.
          Sharp violins proclaim
      Their jealous pangs and desperation,
      Fury, frantic indignation,
      Depth of pains and height of passion,
          For the fair, disdainful dame.

(DRYDEN: _Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, 1687.)

    Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
    And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
    But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
    The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
    When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
    The line too labors, and the words move slow;
    Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
    Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, ll. 366-373.)

    Was nought around but images of rest:
    Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between;
    And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest,
    From poppies breath'd: and beds of pleasant green,
    Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
    Meantime unnumber'd glittering streamlets played,
    And hurled everywhere their waters' sheen;
    That, as they bickered through the sunny shade,
    Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

(THOMSON: _Castle of Indolence_, canto i. st. 3.)

    Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
      In some untrodden region of my mind,
    Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
      Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
    Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
      Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
    And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
      The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
    And in the midst of this wide quietness
      A rosy sanctuary will I dress
    With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
      With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
    With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
      Who breeding flowers will never breed the same.

(KEATS: _Ode to Psyche._)

    Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,
    The King is King, and ever wills the highest.
    Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

(TENNYSON: _The Coming of Arthur._)

    He could not see the kindly human face,
    Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
    The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
    The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
    The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
    And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep
    Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
    As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
    Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
    A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail:
    No sail from day to day, but every day
    The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
    Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
    The blaze upon the waters to the east;
    The blaze upon his island overhead;
    The blaze upon the waters to the west;
    Then the great stars that globed themselves in heaven,
    The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
    The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail.

(TENNYSON: _Enoch Arden_, ll. 577-595.)

    But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
    To find him in the valley; let the wild
    Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave
    The monstrous ledges there to <DW72>, and spill
    Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
    That like a broken purpose waste in air:
    So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
    Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
    Arise to thee; the children call, and I
    Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
    Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
    Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
    The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
    And murmurings of innumerable bees.

(TENNYSON: _The Princess_, VII.)

    Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
      Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
    Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
      From out her hair: such balsam falls
      Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
    From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
    Spent with the vast and howling main,
    To treasure half their island-gain.

(BROWNING: _Paracelsus_, IV.)

    Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith;
      Billets that blaze substantial and slow;
    Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith;
      Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow;
    Then up they hoist me John in a chafe,
      Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,
    Spit in his face, then leap back safe,
      Sing 'Laudes' and bid clap-to the torch.

(BROWNING: _The Heretic's Tragedy._)

    'Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
    Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
    With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
    And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
    And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
    Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:...
    He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross
    And recross till they weave a spider-web.

(BROWNING: _Caliban upon Setebos._)

    Master of the murmuring courts
      Where the shapes of sleep convene!
    Lo! my spirit here exhorts
      All the powers of thy demesne
      For their aid to move my queen.
            What reports
      Yield thy jealous courts unseen?

    Vaporous, unaccountable,
      Dreamland lies forlorn of light,
    Hollow like a breathing shell.
      Ah! that from all dreams I might
      Choose one dream and guide its flight!
            I know well
      What her sleep should tell to-night.

(ROSSETTI: _Love's Nocturn._)

    When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
      The mother of months, in meadow or plain,
    Fills the shadows and windy places
      With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

(SWINBURNE: Chorus in _Atalanta in Calydon._)

                    Till, as with clamor
                    Of axe and hammer,
    Chained streams that stammer and struggle in straits,
                    Burst bonds that shiver,
                    And thaws deliver
    The roaring river in stormy spates.

(SWINBURNE: _Winter in Northumberland._)

    But, oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
    Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
    A savage place! as holy and enchanted
    As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
    And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
    As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
    A mighty fountain momently was forced:
    Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
    Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
    Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail;
    And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
    It flung up momently the sacred river.
    Five miles meandering, with a mazy motion,
    Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
    Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
    And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

(COLERIDGE: _Kubla Khan._)


FOOTNOTES:

[11] "Perfect rime" is a term applied to rimes between two words
identical in form, but different in meaning. It is inadmissible in
modern English verse, although it was considered entirely proper in
Middle English times (compare Chaucer's--

"The holy blisful martir for to _seke_, That hem hath holpen, whan that
they were _seke_."),

and is still common in French verse.

Schipper gives a separate paragraph also to "unaccented rime," where the
similarity of sound belongs wholly to final, unstressed syllables.
Generally speaking, this is inadmissible in English verse. Schipper
quotes from Thomas Moore:

"Down in yon summervale Where the rill flows, Thus said the Nightingale
To his loved Rose."

It might be said, however, that the final syllables of "summervale" and
"nightingale" are not wholly unstressed; moreover, they are in the first
and third verses of the stanza, where rime is not indispensable.
Unaccented rime is most noticeable in some of the verse of the
transition period in the sixteenth century, when the syllable-counting
principle was so emphasized as to admit any license of accent so long as
the proper number of syllables was observed. Thus, in the verse of Wyatt
we find such rimes as "dreadeth" and "seeketh," "beginning" and
"eclipsing," etc. See p. 10, above.

Imperfect rime, occurring where the vowel sounds are only similar, not
identical, or where the consonants following them are not identical, is
commonly regarded as an imperfection in verse form. The most common of
these imperfect rimes are in cases where the spelling would indicate
perfect rime (hence where, in many cases, the words rimed originally,
but have separated in the changes of pronunciation), such as _love_ and
_move_, _broad_ and _load_, and the like. For a defence of these "rimes
to the eye," and other imperfect rimes, with a study of their use by
English poets, see articles by Prof. A. G. Newcomer in the _Nation_ for
January 26 and February 2, 1899.

[12] Rime also appears in a short passage in Cynewulf's _Elene_. Some
have thought it a later interpolation, but Schipper thinks it indicates
that Cynewulf was a Northumbrian. Grein believes him to have been the
author also of the Riming Poem, but, as Rieger points out, the rimes of
Cynewulf are of a much less systematic character. (On this see Wülcker's
_Grundriss zur Geschichte der Angelsächsischen Literatur_, pp. 216,
217.)

[13] The second of these stanzas is said to have been added to Canning's
song by Willian Pitt.

[14] See notes on the Septenary, in Part Two, p. 259.

[15] On the subject of Tone-color in English verse, see Guest's _English
Rhythms_, chap. ii.; Lanier's _Science of English Verse_, part iii.
("Colors of English Verse"); Corson's _Primer of English Verse_ (chapter
on "Poetic Unities"); Edmund Gurney's _Tertium Quid_ (essays on "Poets,
Critics, and Class-Lists" and "The Appreciation of Poetry"); Professor
J. J. Sylvester's _Laws of Verse_ (London, 1870); G. L. Raymond's
_Poetry as a Representative Art_ and _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and
Music_; and Ehrenfeld's _Studien zur Theorie des Reims_.




PART TWO




I. FOUR-STRESS VERSE


English verse of four stresses is chiefly to be divided into two groups:
that representing the primitive Germanic tendency to emphasize the
element of accent rather than the counting of syllables, and that
produced under foreign influence, showing comparative regularity in the
number of syllables to the verse. The first group is made up of the
various descendants of the original "long line," sometimes rimed and
sometimes unrimed; the second group of forms of the familiar
octosyllabic couplet. (Of modern verse only iambic measures are included
here.)


A.--NON-SYLLABLE-COUNTING

The earliest English verse, like early Germanic verse generally, is
based on the recurrence of strong accents, and is composed of a long
line made up of two short lines, or half-lines, which are bound together
by alliteration. As to the number of accents to be counted in the line,
there are two theories, the "two-accent" and the "four-accent."
According to the first, we should count two accents to the half-line,
and four to the long line; according to the second, we should count four
to the half-line and eight to the long line. The distinction is not so
marked, however, as would appear at first thought; for the two-accent
theorists recognize a considerable number of secondary accents in
addition to the principal ones, while the four-accent theorists
recognize half the accents as being commonly weaker than the other half.

     The four-accent theory is that of Lachmann, represented chiefly in
     more recent scholarship by ten Brink and Kaluza. Lachmann took, as
     the typical Germanic line, such a verse as this from the
     _Hildebrandlied_,--

        "Garutun se iro guðhama:    gurtun sih iro suert ana;"

     but admitted that the Anglo-Saxon line was a departure from the
     type in the direction of fewer accents. Ten Brink, however, found
     the full number of accents in the typical Anglo-Saxon line. "It is
     based upon a measure which belonged to the antiquity of all
     Germanic races, namely, the line with eight emphatic syllables,
     divided into equal parts by the cesura." (_English Literature_,
     trans. Kennedy, vol. i. pp. 21, 22.) The principal representative
     of the two-accent theory is Sievers, whose conclusions have been
     pretty generally accepted by English and American scholars. He
     admits that very many, perhaps most, Anglo-Saxon lines can be read
     with eight accents, but shows that there is still a large
     proportion (some eleven hundred in _Beowulf_) which cannot be so
     read without wrenching the natural reading. On this subject, see
     Westphal's _Allgemeine Metrik_, Sievers's _Altgermanische Metrik_,
     Kaluza's _Der Altenglische Vers_, and the articles by Sievers,
     Luick, and ten Brink in Paul's _Grundriss der Germanische
     Philologie_.

Aside from the two-part structure of the long line, the number of
accents, and the alliteration, Anglo-Saxon verse is marked by the usual
coincidence of the principal accents with long syllables. The unaccented
parts of the line vary in both the number and length of the syllables.
In general, each half-line is divided into two feet, or measures; and,
according to the structure of these feet, the ordinary half-lines of
Anglo-Saxon verse have been reduced by Sievers to five fundamental
types.

Type A is represented by such a half-line as "stiðum wordum."

Type B inverts the rhythm of A, as in the half-line "nē
winterscūr."

Type C is characterized by the juxtaposition of the two accents, as in
the half-line "and forð gangan."

Type D commonly has only the accented syllable in the first foot, while
the second foot is characterized by a sort of dactylic rhythm, as in the
half-lines "sǣlīðende" and "flet innanweard."

Type E inverts the rhythm of D, as in the half-line "gylp-wordum
spræc."[16]

In all the types many variations are found. The beginning of the line
may show anacrusis, and two short syllables may take the place of a long
syllable; while an indeterminate number of light syllables may often be
introduced before or after the principal accents.

    Hafað ūs ālȳfed     _lucis auctor_,
    þæt wē mōtun hēr    _merueri_
    gōddǣdum begietan      _gaudia in celo_,
    þǣr wē mōtun        _maxima regna_
    sēcan and gesittan        _sedibus altis_,
    lifgan in lisse              _lucis et pacis_,
    āgan eardinga             _almæ letitæ_,
    brūcan blǣddaga        _blandem et mitem_
    gesēon sigora Frēan    _sine fine_,
    and him lof singan           _laude perenne_
    ēadge mid englum          _Alleluia_.

(From the Anglo-Saxon _Phœnix_. ab. 700 A.D.)

These closing lines of the poem furnish an important opportunity to
compare the Latin half-lines with those in Anglo-Saxon. Each half seems
to be influenced by the metrical nature of the other; the Anglo-Saxon
being a little more regular in the number of syllables than usual, the
Latin less regular. Since, to the ear of the writer, the two halves of
each verse were doubtless fairly equivalent, metrically, and since each
of the Latin half-lines appears to have two accents, these combination
verses have been thought to be an argument for the "two-accent" theory
of Anglo-Saxon verse. On the other hand, the advocates of the
four-accent theory would read the Latin half-lines with four stresses
each, on the ground that nearly every syllable was stressed in the
chanting of such religious verse (_lú-cís aúc-tór_, etc.).

See also the specimens on pp. 13 and 14, above.

    Alle beon he bliþe   Þat to my song lyþe:
    A song ihc schal ȝou singe   Of Mury þe kinge.
    King he was bi weste   So longe so hit laste.
    Godhild het his quen,   Fairer ne miȝte non ben.
    He hadde a sone þat het Horn,   Fairer ne miȝte non beo born,
    Ne no rein upon birine,   Ne sunne upon bischine.

(_King Horn_, ll. 1-12. ab. 1200-1250.)

The metre of _King Horn_ is very irregular, and has proved somewhat
puzzling to scholars. It seems to be the direct result of the primitive
"long line" broken into two halves by internal rime. The number of
accents varies greatly: we may have verses which are easily read with
two, such as--

    "Into schupes borde
    At the furst worde."

Yet these it is evident might also be read with three accents, as in the
following couplet also:

    "The se bigan to flowe,
    And Horn child to rowe."

According as one reads the Anglo-Saxon verse with two or four accents to
the half-line, he will regard the typical half-line of _King Horn_ as
made up of two or four accents. If the fundamental number was two, the
additional accented syllables were doubtless introduced under the
influence of the French eight-syllable couplet. It is not difficult to
see how the more regular (Latin or French) and the less regular (native)
measures might have been confused, and soon have coalesced in popular
use. Ten Brink, reading the _King Horn_ lines with four accents, speaks
of them as "formed entirely on the Teutonic principle, with two accents
upon the sonorous close of the verse, so that it appears to be an
organic continuation of the chief form in Layamon and in Ælfred's
_Proverbs_. This circumstance makes the poem exceptional among the early
English romances." He also speaks of "an unmistakably strophic
construction in the text as we have it." (_English Literature_, Kennedy
translation, vol. i. p. 227.)

    Anon out of þe north est þe noys bigynes:
    When boþe breþes con blowe upon blo watteres,
    Roȝ rakkes per ros with rudnyng anunder,
    Þe see souȝed ful sore, gret selly to here,
    Þe wyndes on þe wonne water so wrastel togeder,
    Þat þe wawes ful wode waltered so hiȝe
    And efte busched to þe abyme, þat breed fysches,
    Durst nowhere for roȝ arest at þe bothem.
    When þe breth and þe brok and þe bote metten,
    Hit watz a ioyles gyn, þat Ionas watz inne;
    For hit reled on roun upon þe roȝe yþes.

(_Patience_, ll. 137-147. ab. 1375.)

    Til þe knyȝt com hym-self, kachande his blonk,
    Syȝ hym byde at þe bay, his burneȝ bysyde,
    He lyȝtes luflych adoun, leveȝ his corsour,
    Braydeȝ out a bryȝt bront, & bigly forth strydeȝ,
    Foundeȝ fast þurȝ the forþ, þer þe felle byde,
    Þe wylde watȝ war of þe wyȝe with weppen in honde.
    Hef hyȝly þe here, so hetterly he fnast,
    Þat fele ferde for þe frekeȝ, lest felle hym þe worre
    Þe swyn setteȝ hym out on þe segge even,
    Þat þe burne & þe bor were boþe upon hepeȝ,
    In þe wyȝt-est of þe water, þe worre had þat oþer;
    For þe mon merkkeȝ hym wel, as þay mette fyrst,
    Set sadly þe scharp in þe slot even,
    Hit hym up to þe hult, þat þe hert schyndered,
    & he ȝarrande hym ȝelde, & ȝedoun þe water, ful tyt;
                      A hundreth houndeȝ hym hent,
                      Þat bremely con hym bite,
                      Burneȝ him broȝt to bent,
                      & doggeȝ to dethe endite.

(_Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, strophe xviii. ab. 1375.)

These two specimens, both doubtless the work of the same author (to whom
are also attributed the _Pearl_ and _Cleanness_), represent the
patriotic revival of the alliterative long line by contemporaries of
Chaucer in the latter half of the fourteenth century. In _Sir Gawayne_
the rimeless long line is gathered into strophes, each of which
concludes with four riming lines. (See above, p. 109.)

     For analysis of this revived alliterative verse, see a valuable
     article by Dr. Luick, _Die Englische Stabreimzeile im 14n, 15n, und
     16n Jahrhundert_, in _Anglia_, vol. xi. pp. 392 and 553. Luick
     analyzes not only the poems of the "Pearl poet," but also the _Troy
     Book_, the _Alexander Fragments_, _William of Palerne_, _Joseph of
     Arimathea_, _Morte Arthure_, and minor poems. He finds the _Troy
     Book_ the most regular alliterative poem of Middle English, but in
     all of the group a general tendency to preserve not only the early
     laws of alliteration but also the "five types" of Sievers's
     Anglo-Saxon metrics. Dr. Luick attributes the final decline of the
     old measure in large degree to the falling away of the final
     syllables in _-e_, etc.; without these numerous feminine endings
     the primitive "long line" was impossible. This he regards as
     regrettable, since the old alliterative verse, "growing up on
     native soil with the language itself," represented the natural
     accent-relations of the Germanic languages, especially the
     recognition of two principal degrees of accent; whereas the modern
     rimed verse requires the reduction of this to a uniform "tick-tack"
     of alternating stress and non-stress.

    He put on his back a good plate-jack,
      And on his head a cap of steel,
    With sword and buckler by his side;
      O gin he did not become them weel!

(_Ballad of Bewick and Grahame_. In GUMMERE'S _English Ballads_, p.
176.)

The regular stanza of the old ballads was of this four-stress type, with
extra light syllables admitted anywhere yet not in great numbers. More
commonly, however, the fourth stress was lost from the second and fourth
lines. (See p. 264, below.)

    I thanke hym full thraly, and sir, I saie hym the same,
    But what marvelous materes dyd this myron ther mell?
    For all the lordis langage his lipps, sir, wer lame,
    For any spirringes in that space no speche walde he spell.

(_York Mystery Plays: The Trial before Pilate_. Ed. L. T. SMITH, p.
322.)

    As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche,
    Sat pesynge and patching of Hodg her mans briche,
    By chance or misfortune, as shee her geare tost,
    In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost.

(_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, Prologue. 1566.)

In these specimens we have the later descendant of the long line as used
in the early drama of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,--the
"tumbling verse," regular in rhythm and rime, but indifferent to the
number of syllables.[17] Sometimes, where most regular, as in lines 2-4
of the second specimen, the measure approximates closely to regular
four-stress anapestic.

    The time was once, and may againe retorne,
    (For ought may happen that hath bene beforne),
    When shepheards had none inheritaunce,
    Ne of land, nor fee in sufferaunce,
    But what might arise of the bare sheepe,
    (Were it more or lesse) which they did keepe.
    Well ywis was it with shepheards thoe:
    Nought having, nought feared they to forgoe;
    For Pan himselfe was their inheritaunce,
    And little them served for their mayntenaunce.
    The shepheards God so wel them guided,
    That of nought they were unprovided;
    Butter enough, honye, milke, and whay,
    And their flockes' fleeces them to araye.

(SPENSER: _The Shepherd's Calendar, May._ 1579.)

Spenser's use of the tumbling verse in the _Shepherd's Calendar_ was a
part of his imitation of older forms for the sake of an uncultivated,
bucolic effect. In his hands the irregular measure showed a tendency to
reduce itself to regular ten-syllable lines, like the first two of the
present specimen, which, by themselves, might easily be read as
decasyllabic iambics. On this, see further under Five-Stress Verse.
Spenser was perhaps the last cultivated poet to use the irregular
measure, until we come to modern imitators of the early popular poetry.
The following specimen is of this class.

    It was up in the morn we rose betimes
    From the hall-floor hard by the row of limes.
    It was but John the Red and I,
    And we were the brethren of Gregory;
    And Gregory the Wright was one
    Of the valiant men beneath the sun,
    And what he bade us that we did,
    For ne'er he kept his counsel hid.
    So out we went, and the clattering latch
    Woke up the swallows under the thatch.
    It was dark in the porch, but our scythes we felt,
    And thrust the whetstone under the belt.
    Through the cold garden boughs we went
    Where the tumbling roses shed their scent.
    Then out a-gates and away we strode
    O'er the dewy straws on the dusty road,
    And there was the mead by the town-reeve's close
    Where the hedge was sweet with the wilding rose.

(WILLIAM MORRIS: _The Folk-Mote by the River._ In _Poems by the Way_.
1896.)


B.--SYLLABLE-COUNTING (OCTOSYLLABIC COUPLET)

The more regular four-stress verse, in rimed couplets showing a tendency
to be octosyllabic, we have seen to be generally attributed to the
influence of the French octosyllabics, which were in common use in late
mediæval French poetry, such as that of Wace and Chrestien de Troyes.

     According to Stengel (in Gröber's _Grundriss der Romanischen
     Philologie_), this octosyllabic French verse goes back to a lost
     vulgar Latin verse; this view is opposed by Dr. C. M. Lewis, in his
     _Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification_ (Yale Studies in
     English, 1898), who finds its origin in the tetrameter of the Latin
     hymns. Dr. Lewis also attributes to this Latin verse more direct
     influence on English verse than is commonly assumed. Thus he finds
     in it, rather than in the French octosyllabics, the model of the
     verse of the _Pater Noster_, quoted below. The argument is briefly
     this: the Latin verse was both accentual and syllabic; the French
     verse was syllabic but not accentual; that of the _Pater Noster_ is
     accentual but not syllabic; hence it is more nearly like the Latin
     than the French. A stanza of the Latin tetrameter, cited by Dr.
     Lewis from the hymn _Aurora lucis rutilat_, is as follows:

        "Tristes erat apostoli
        de nece sui Domini,
        quem pœna mortis crudeli
        servi damnarunt impii."

     Compare these lines from the _Brut_ of Wace:

        "Adunt apela Cordeille
        qui esteit sa plus joes ne fille;
        pur ce que il l'aveit plus chiere
        que Ragaü ne la premiere
        quida que el e cuneüst
        que plus chier des al tres l'eüst.
        Cordeil le out bien escuté
        et bien out en sun cuer noté
        cument ses deus sorurs parloënt,
        cument lur pere losengoënt."

     The last four verses of this passage are cited by Schipper as
     illustrating the regular iambic character of the French
     octosyllabics; but Dr. Lewis regards the measure as purely
     syllabic, with no regard for alternation of accents, and instances
     the earlier lines of the passage as being quite as nearly anapestic
     as iambic. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 107, and Lewis's monograph, as
     cited above, pp. 73 ff. See also Crow: _Zur Geschichte des Kurzen
     Reimpaares in Mittel Englisch._) Dr. Lewis's conclusion is: "We may
     therefore sum up the whole history of our octosyllabic verse in
     this way: we borrowed its number of accents from the Latin, but
     owing to the vitality of our own native traditions we at first
     borrowed nothing further; the syllabic character of the verse (so
     far as it has been imported at all), came in only gradually,
     against stubborn resistance; and it came not directly from the
     Latin, but indirectly, through the French" (pp. 97, 98). Some of
     these statements are open to question; but however we may interpret
     the French verse of Wace and his contemporaries, it is obvious that
     in English the influence of the Latin and the French poetry would
     very naturally be fused, with no necessarily clear conception of
     definite verse-structure. Whether under French or Latin influence,
     however, the new tendency was for the more accurate counting of
     syllables. We may see some suggestion of this in the verses of St.
     Godric, quoted on p. 126, above, although they are not regularly
     iambic. The poem on the "Eleven Pains of Hell" (in the _Old English
     Miscellany_) shows the French influence clearly marked by the
     language of its opening verses:

        "Ici comencent les unze peynes
        De enfern, les queus seynt pool v[ist]."

    Ure feder þet in heovene is,
    Þet is al soþ ful iwis!
    Weo moten to theor weordes iseon,
    Þet to live and to saule gode beon,
    Þet weo beon swa his sunes iborene,
    Þet he beo feder and we him icorene,
    Þet we don alle his ibeden
    And his wille for to reden.

(_The Pater Noster_, ab. 1175. In Morris's _Old English Homilies_, p.
55.)

This poem is sometimes said to show the first appearance of the
octosyllabic couplet in English. It suggests the struggle between native
indifference to syllable-counting and imitation of the greater
regularity of its models. As Dr. Morris says of the next specimen: "The
essence of the system of versification which the poet has adopted is,
briefly, that every line shall have four accented syllables in it, the
unaccented syllables being left in some measure, as it were, to take
care of themselves." But this does not altogether do justice to the new
regularity. Schipper says that of the first 100 lines of the poem 20 are
perfectly regular. (See his notes in vol. i. p. 109.) In the following
specimens we may trace the gradual growth of skill and accuracy.

    ðo herde Abraham stevene fro gode,
    newe tiding and selkuð bode:
    'tac ðin sune Ysaac in hond
    and far wið him to siðhinges lond.
    and ðor ða salt him offren me,
    on an hil, ðor ic sal taunen ðe.

(_Genesis and Exodus_, ll. 1285-1290. ab. 1250-1300.)

    "Abid! abid!" the ule seide.
    "Thu gest al to mid swikelede;
    All thine wordes thu bi-leist,
    That hit thincth soth al that thu seist;
    Alle thine wordes both i-sliked,
    An so bi-semed and bi-liked,
    That alle tho that hi avoth,
    Hi weneth that thu segge soth."

(_The Owl and the Nightingale_, ll. 835-842. Thirteenth century.)

    Quhen þis wes said, þai went þare way,
    and till þe toun soyn cumin ar thai
    sa prevely bot noys making,
    þat nane persavit þair cummyng.
    þai scalit throu þe toune in hy
    and brak up dures sturdely
    and slew all, þat þai mycht ourtak;
    and þai, þat na defens mycht mak,
    fall pitwisly couth rair and cry,
    and þai slew þame dispitwisly.

(BARBOUR: _Bruce_, v. 89-98. ab. 1375.)

    Ȝyf þou ever þurghe folye
    Dydyst ouȝt do nygromauncye.
    Or to the devyl dedyst sacryfyse
    þurghe wychcraftys asyse,
    Or any man ȝaf þe mede
    For to reyse þe devyl yn dede,
    For to telle, or for to wrey,
    þynge þat was don awey;
    ȝyf þou have do any of þys,
    þou hast synnede and do a mys,
    And þou art wurþy to be shent
    þurghe þys yche commaundement.[18]

(ROBERT MANNING of Brunne: _Handlyng Synne_, ll. 339-350. ab. 1300.)

    Herknet to me, gode men,
    Wives, maydnes, and alle men,
    Of a tale þat ich you wile telle,
    Wo so it wile here, and þer-to duelle.
    Þe tale is of Havelok i-maked;
    Wil he was litel he yede ful naked:
    Havelok was a ful god gome,
    He was ful god in everi trome,
    He was þe wicteste man at nede,
    Þat þurte riden on ani stede.
    Þat ye mowen nou y-here,
    And þe tale ye mowen y-lere.
    At the beginning of ure tale,
    Fil me a cuppe of ful god ale;
    And y wile drinken her y spelle,
    Þat Crist us shilde alle fro helle!

(_Lay of Havelok the Dane._ ll. 1-16. ab. 1300.)

For lays and romances, both French and English, the four-stress couplet
was an easy and favorite form. Compare the remarks of ten Brink: "We see
how the short couplet, which is the standing form of the court-romance,
was not only transmitted to it from the legendary, didactic, and
historical poems, but was also suggested to it by those songs to which
it was indebted for its own subject-matter. Other tokens indicate that a
short strophe composed of eight-syllabled lines, with single or
alternating rhymes, was a favorite form for many subjects in this
_jongleur_ poetry.... The simple form of the short couplet offered to
the romance-poet no scope to compete in metrical technique with the
skilled court-lyrists. He could prove his art only within a limited
portion of this field: in the treatment of the _enjambement_ and
particularly of rhyme. The poet strove not only to form pure rhymes, but
often to carry them forward with more syllables than were essential, and
he was fond of all sorts of grammatical devices in rhyme." (_English
Literature_, Kennedy trans., vol. i. pp. 174, 175.)

    The world stant ever upon debate,
    So may be siker none estate;
    Now here, now there, now to, now fro,
    Now up, now down, the world goth so,
    And ever hath done and ever shal;
    Wherof I finde in special
    A tale writen in the bible,
    Which must nedes be credible,
    And that as in conclusion
    Saith, that upon division
    Stant, why no worldes thing may laste,
    Til it be drive to the laste,
    And fro the firste regne of all
    Unto this day how so befall
    Of that the regnes be mevable,
    The man him self hath be coupable,
    Whiche of his propre governaunce
    Fortuneth al the worldes chaunce.

(JOHN GOWER: Prologue to _Confessio Amantis_. Ed. PAULI, vol. i. pp. 22,
23. ab. 1390.)

    O god of science and of light,
    Apollo, through thy grete might,
    This litel laste bok thou gye!
    Nat that I wilne, for maistrye,
    Here art poetical be shewed;
    But, for the rym is light and lewed,
    Yit make hit sumwhat agreable,
    Though som vers faile in a sillable;
    And that I do no diligence
    To shewe craft, but o sentence.
    And if, divyne vertu, thou
    Wilt helpe me to shewe now
    That in myn hede y-marked is--
    Lo, that is for to menen this,
    The Hous of Fame to descryve--
    Thou shalt see me go, as blyve,
    Unto the nexte laure I see,
    And kisse hit, for hit is thy tree.

(CHAUCER: _House of Fame_, ll. 1091-1108. ab. 1385.)

It was Gower and Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, who brought the use
of the eight-syllable couplet to the point of accuracy and perfection.
Gower made it the vehicle of the interminable narrative of the
_Confessio Amantis_, using it with regularity but with great monotony.
Chaucer transformed it into a much more flexible form (with freedom of
cesura, _enjambement_, and inversions), using it in about 3500 lines of
his poetry (excluding the translation of the _Roman de la Rose_), but
early leaving it for the decasyllabic verse. In modern English poetry
this short couplet has rarely been used for continuous narrative of a
serious character, except by Byron and Wordsworth.

    But let my due feet never fail
    To walk the studious cloister's pale,
    And love the high embowed roof,
    With antique pillars massy proof,
    And storied windows richly dight,
    Casting a dim religious light.
    There let the pealing organ blow,
    To the full-voiced choir below,
    In service high, and anthems clear,
    As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
    Dissolve me into ecstasies,
    And bring all heaven before my eyes.

(MILTON: _Il Penseroso_, ll. 155-166. 1634.)

    A sect whose chief devotion lies
    In odd, perverse antipathies,
    In falling out with that or this
    And finding something still amiss;
    More peevish, cross, and splenetic
    Than dog distract or monkey sick:
    That with more care keep holyday
    The wrong, than others the right way;
    Compound for sins they are inclined to
    By damning those they have no mind to....
    Rather than fail they will defy
    That which they love most tenderly;
    Quarrel with mince-pies, and disparage
    Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge,
    Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
    And blaspheme custard through the nose.

(SAMUEL BUTLER: _Hudibras_, Part I. 1663.)

Butler made the octosyllabic couplet so entirely his own, for the
purposes of his jogging satiric verse, that ever since it has frequently
been called "Hudibrastic." The ingenuity of his rimes added not a little
to its effectiveness. In the _Spectator_ (No. 249) Addison said that
burlesque poetry runs best "in doggrel like that of _Hudibras_, ... when
a hero is to be pulled down and degraded;" otherwise in the heroic
measure. He speaks also of "the generality" of Butler's readers as being
"wonderfully pleased with the double rhymes."

    How deep yon azure dyes the sky,
    Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,
    While through their ranks in silver pride
    The nether crescent seems to glide!
    The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,
    The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
    Where once again the spangled show
    Descends to meet our eyes below.
    The grounds which on the right aspire,
    In dimness from the view retire:
    The left presents a place of graves,
    Whose wall the silent water laves.
    That steeple guides thy doubtful sight
    Among the livid gleams of night.
    There pass, with melancholy state,
    By all the solemn heaps of fate,
    And think, as softly-sad you tread
    Above the venerable dead,
    'Time was, like thee they life possest,
    And time shalt be, that thou shalt rest.'

(THOMAS PARNELL: _A Night-Piece on Death_, ab. 1715.)

Mr. Gosse speaks of Parnell's employment of the octosyllabic couplet in
this poem as "wonderfully subtle and harmonious." (_Eighteenth Century
Literature_, p. 137.)

    A Hare who, in a civil way,
    Complied with everything, like Gay,
    Was known by all the bestial train
    Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain.
    Her care was never to offend,
    And every creature was her friend.
    As forth she went at early dawn,
    To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,
    Behind she hears the hunter's cries,
    And from the deep-mouthed thunder flies:
    She starts, she stops, she pants for breath;
    She hears the near advance of death;
    She doubles, to mislead the hound,
    And measures back her mazy round:
    Till, fainting in the public way,
    Half dead with fear she gasping lay.

(JOHN GAY: _The Hare and Many Friends_, in _Fables_. 1727.)

Gay's use of the short couplet in his _Fables_ sometimes shows it at its
best for narrative purposes.

    My female friends, whose tender hearts
    Have better learned to act their parts,
    Receive the news in doleful dumps:
    'The Dean is dead: (Pray what is trumps?)
    Then, Lord have mercy on his soul!
    (Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
    Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall:
    (I wish I knew what king to call).
    Madam, your husband will attend
    The funeral of so good a friend?
    No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight:
    And he's engaged to-morrow night:
    My Lady Club will take it ill,
    If he should fail her at quadrille.
    He loved the Dean--(I lead a heart)
    But dearest friends, they say, must part.
    His time was come: he ran his race;
    We hope he's in a better place.'

(SWIFT: _On the Death of Dr. Swift._ 1731.)

Swift made use of the octosyllabic couplet in nearly all his verse, and
with no little vigor and originality. Mr. Gosse remarks: "His lines fall
like well-directed blows of the flail, and he gives the octosyllabic
measure, which he is accustomed to choose on account of the Hudibrastic
opportunities it offers, a character which is entirely his own."
(_Eighteenth Century Literature_, p. 153.)

    Ye forms divine, ye laureat band,
    That near her inmost altar stand!
    Now soothe her to her blissful train
    Blithe concord's social form to gain;
    Concord, whose myrtle wand can steep
    Even anger's bloodshot eyes in sleep;
    Before whose breathing bosom's balm
    Rage drops his steel, and storms grow calm;
    Her let our sires and matrons hoar
    Welcome to Britain's ravaged shore;
    Our youths, enamored of the fair,
    Play with the tangles of her hair,
    Till, in one loud applauding sound,
    The nations shout to her around,--
    O how supremely thou art blest,
    Thou, lady, thou shalt rule the West!

(COLLINS: _Ode to Liberty._ 1746.)

    When chapman billies leave the street,
    And drouthy neibors, neibors meet;
    As market days are wearing late,
    And folk begin to tak the gate,
    While we sit bousing at the nappy,
    An' getting fou and unco happy,
    We think na on the lang Scots miles,
    The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
    That lie between us and our hame,
    Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
    Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
    Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

(BURNS: _Tam O'Shanter_, ll. 1-12. 1790.)

    They chain'd us each to a column stone,
    And we were three--yet, each alone;
    We could not move a single pace,
    We could not see each other's face,
    But with that pale and livid light
    That made us strangers in our sight:
    And thus together--yet apart,
    Fetter'd in hand, but joined in heart,
    'Twas still some solace, in the dearth
    Of the pure elements of earth,
    To hearken to each other's speech,
    And each turn comforter to each,
    With some new hope, or legend old,
    Or song heroically bold.

(BYRON: _The Prisoner of Chillon_, iii. 1816.)

    A mortal song we sing, by dower
    Encouraged of celestial power;
    Power which the viewless Spirit shed
    By whom we first were visited;
    Whose voice we heard, whose hand and wings
    Swept like a breeze the conscious strings,
    When, left in solitude, erewhile
    We stood before this ruined Pile,
    And, quitting unsubstantial dreams,
    Sang in this Presence kindred themes.

(WORDSWORTH: _White Doe of Rylstone_, canto vii. ll. 282-291. 1815.)

    Ill fared it then with Roderick Dhu,
    That on the field his targe he threw,
    Whose brazen studs and tough bull-hide
    Had death so often dash'd aside;
    For, train'd abroad his arms to wield,
    Fitz-James's blade was sword and shield....
    Three times in closing strife they stood,
    And thrice the Saxon blade drank blood;
    No stinted draught, no scanty tide,
    The gushing flood the tartans dyed.
    Fierce Roderick felt the fatal drain,
    And shower'd his blows like wintry rain;
    And, as firm rock, or castle-roof,
    Against the winter shower is proof,
    The foe, invulnerable still,
    Foil'd his wild rage by steady skill;
    Till, at advantage ta'en, his brand
    Forced Roderick's weapon from his hand,
    And backward borne upon the lea,
    Brought the proud Chieftain to his knee.

(SCOTT: _The Lady of the Lake_, canto v. st. xv. 1810.)

    How this their joy fulfilled might move
    The world around I know not well;
    But yet this idle dream doth tell
    That no more silent was the place,
    That new joy lit up every face,
    That joyous lovers kissed and clung,
    E'en as these twain, that songs were sung
    From mouth to mouth in rose-bowers,
    Where hand in hand and crowned with flowers,
    Folk praised the Lover and Beloved
    That such long years, such pain had proved;
    But soft, they say, their joyance was
    When midst them soon the twain did pass,
    Hand locked in hand, heart kissing heart,
    No more this side of death to part--
    No more, no more--full soft I say
    Their greetings were that happy day,
    As though in pensive semblance clad;
    For fear their faces over-glad
    This certain thing should seem to hide,
    That love can ne'er be satisfied.

(WILLIAM MORRIS: _The Earthly Paradise_; _The Land East of the Sun_.
1870.)


FOOTNOTES:

[16] For Sievers's analysis of Anglo-Saxon verse into these types, see
his articles in Paul and Braune's _Beiträge_, vols. x. and xii.; and the
brief statement in the Appendix to Bright's _Anglo-Saxon Reader_, from
which the examples just quoted are taken.

[17] The term "tumbling verse," used for obvious reasons, appears at
least as early as 1585, when King James, in his _Reulis and Cautelis_
for Scotch Poetry, said: "For flyting, or Invectives, use this kynde of
verse following, callit Rouncefallis, or Tumbling verse:

'In the hinder end of harvest upon Alhallow ene, Quhen our gude
nichtbors rydis (nou gif I reid richt) Some bucklit on a benwod, and
some on a bene, Ay trott and into troupes fra the twylicht.'"

And again: "Ye man observe that thir Tumbling verse flowis not on that
fassoun, as utheris dois. For all utheris keipis the reule quhilk I gave
before, To wit, the first fute short the secound lang, and sa furth.
Quhair as thir hes twa short, and ane lang throuch all the lyne, quhen
they keip ordour: albeit the maist part of thame be out of ordour, and
keipis na kynde nor reule of Flowing, and for that cause are callit
Tumbling verse."

(Arber Reprint, pp. 68, 63, 64.)

See further on the persistent use of this rough measure in English, side
by side with the more regular syllable-counting verse, Schipper's
observations and examples in the _Grundriss der Englische Metrik_, pp.
109 ff. As a modern example Schipper cites one of Thackeray's ballads:

"This Mary was pore and in misery once, And she came to Mrs. Roney it's
more than twelve monce. She adn't got no bed, nor no dinner nor no tea,
And kind Mrs. Roney gave Mary all three."



[18] This poem of Robert Manning's was a translation of a Norman French
work, Waddington's _Manuel des Pechiez_. The following is the original
of the passage here reproduced:

"Si vus unques par folye Entremeissez de nigremancie, Ou feites al
deable sacrifise, Ou enchantement par fol aprise; Ou, a gent de tiel
mester Ren donastes pur lur jugler, Ou pur demander la verite De chose
qe vous fut a dire,-- Fet avez apertement Encuntre ceo commandement; Ceo
est grant mescreaunceie, Duter de ceo, ne devez mie."

(Furnivall ed. of Manning, p. 12. ll. 1078-1089.)




II. FIVE-STRESS VERSE


The five-stress or decasyllabic verse (iambic pentameter) is so much
more widely used in modern English poetry than any other verse-form,
that its history is of special interest. It is curious that a form so
completely adopted as the favorite of English verse should be borrowed
rather than native; but, the syllable-counting principle once being
admitted, there is nothing in five-stress verse inconsistent with native
English tendencies. A very great part of such verse has really only four
full accents, and this we have seen to be the number of accents in the
native English verse. On this point, see further remarks in connection
with the specimen from Spenser, p. 180 below.

This verse appears in two great divisions, rimed (the decasyllabic
couplet) and unrimed (blank verse). The rimed form was the earlier, the
unrimed being merely a modification of it under the influence of other
unrimed metres.


A.--THE DECASYLLABIC COUPLET

        Lutel wot hit anymon,
          hou love hym haveþ ybounde,
        Þat for us oþe rode ron,
          ant boht us wiþ is wounde.
          Þe love of hym us haveþ ymaked sounde,
          ant ycast þe grimly gost to grounde.
    Ever & oo, nyht & day, he haveþ us in is þohte,
    He nul nout leose þat he so deore bohte.


       *       *       *       *       *

    His deope wounde bledeþ fast,
      of hem we ohte munne!
    He haþ ous out of helle ycast,
      ybroht us out of sunne;
      ffor love of us his wonges waxeþ þunne,
      His herte blod he ȝaf for al mon kunne.
    Ever & oo, etc.

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253. In BÖDDEKER'S _Altenglische Dichtungen_,
p. 231.)

This early religious lyric is of interest as containing the first known
use of the five-stress couplet in English. Here it is only in a few
lines that the couplet occurs, and so sporadic an occurrence should
perhaps be regarded as due to nothing more than chance. See Schipper,
vol. i. p. 439, and ten Brink's _Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst_, p.
173 f. Ten Brink calls attention to another fairly regular five-stress
verse, found on p. 253 of Wright's _Political Songs_:

    "For miht is riht, the loud is laweless."[19]

    And, as for me, though that my wit be lyte,
    On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
    And in myn herte have hem in reverence;
    And to hem yeve swich lust and swich credence,
    That ther is wel unethe game noon
    That from my bokes make me too goon,
    But hit be other up-on the haly-day,
    Or elles in the joly tyme of May;
    Whan that I here the smale foules singe,
    And that the floures ginne for to springe,
    Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun!
    Now have I therto this condicioun
    That, of alle the floures in the mede,
    Than love I most these floures whyte and rede,
    Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun.
    To them have I so greet affeccioun.

(CHAUCER: _Legend of Good Women_, Prologue, ll. 29-44. Text A. ab.
1385.)

    A good man was ther of religioun,
    And was a povre Persoun of a toun;
    But riche he was of holy thoght and werk.
    He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
    That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche;
    His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche.
    Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,
    And in adversitee ful pacient;...
    He wayted after no pompe and reverence,
    Ne maked him a spyced conscience,
    But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
    He taughte, and first he folwed it himselve.

(CHAUCER: Prologue to _Canterbury Tales_, ll. 477-484, 525-528. ab.
1385.)

With Chaucer we have the first deliberate use of the five-stress
couplet, in continuous verse, known to English poetry. His earliest use
of the pentameter line was in the _Compleynt to Pitee_ (perhaps written
about 1371), in the "rime royal" stanza; his earliest use of the
pentameter couplet was in the _Legend of Good Women_, usually dated
1385. From that time the measure became almost his only instrument, and
we find altogether in his poetry some 16,000 lines in the couplet,
besides some 14,000 more in rime royal. Too much praise cannot be given
Chaucer's use of the couplet. Although it was an experiment in English
verse, it has perhaps hardly been used since his time with greater
skill. He used a variety of cesuras (see ten Brink's monograph for the
enumeration of them), a very large number of feminine endings (such as
the still pronounced final-_e_ and similar syllables easily provided),
free inversions in the first foot and elsewhere, and many run-on lines
(in a typical 100 lines some 16 run-on lines and 7 run-on couplets
appearing). The total effect is one of combined freedom and mastery, of
fluent conversational style yet within the limits of guarded artistic
form. "Much more regularly than the French and Provençals, and yet
without pedantic stiffness, he made his verse advance with a sort of
iambic gait, and he was therefore able to give up and exchange for a
freer arrangement the immovable cesura, which these poets had always
made to coincide with a foot-ending." (Ten Brink, in _English
Literature_, Kennedy trans., vol. ii. p. 48.) On Chaucer's verse, see,
besides the monograph of ten Brink already cited, Lounsbury's _Studies
in Chaucer_, vol. iii. pp. 297 ff., and Schipper, vol. i. pp. 442 ff.

    The common assumption is, that Chaucer borrowed the pentameter
    couplet directly from French poetry. On the history of this in
    France, see Stengel, in Gröber's _Grundriss der Romanischen
    Philologie_.[20] The decasyllabic verse was fairly common in France
    in the fourteenth century (being called "_vers commun_" according to
    Stengel); but in the form of the couplet it was not. Professor
    Skeat says: "To say that it [Chaucer's couplet] was derived from the
    French ten-syllable verse is not a complete solution of the mystery;
    for nearly all such verse is commonly either in stanzas, or else a
    great number of successive lines are rimed together; and these, I
    believe, are rather scarce. After some search I have, however,
    fortunately lighted upon a very interesting specimen, among the
    poems of Guillaume de Machault, a French writer whom Chaucer is
    known to have imitated, and who died in 1377. In the edition of
    Machault's poems edited by Tarbé, Reims and Paris, 1849, p. 89,
    there is a poem of exactly this character, of no great length, but
    fortunately dated; for its title is 'Complainte écrite après la
    bataille de Poitiers et avant le siège de Reims par les Anglais'
    (1356-1358). The first four lines run thus:

        "'A toy, Henry, dous amis, me complain,
        Pour ce que ne cueur ne mont ne plein;
        Car a piet suy, sans cheval et sans selle,
        Et si n'ay mais esmeraude, ne belle.'

     ... Now as Chaucer was taken prisoner in France in 1359, he had an
     excellent opportunity for making himself acquainted with this poem,
     and with others, possibly, in a similar metre, which have not come
     down to us." (_The Prioress's Tale_, Introduction, pp. xix, xx.)
     Paris has shown that the real date of the poem in question was
     1340; the title quoted by Skeat is Tarbé's modern French caption.
     Professor Kittredge has called my attention to the fact that there
     is another poem of Machault's in the same metre (P. Paris's edition
     of _Voir-Dit_, p. 56), and also a poem by Froissart, the "Orloge
     Amoureus."

     Ten Brink calls attention to the possibility of the influence upon
     Chaucer's couplet of the Italian hendecasyllabic verse. The
     _Compleynte to Pitee_, it is true, was written probably before the
     Italian journey of 1372-1373; but in Italy the "full significance"
     of the metre may have become clear to Chaucer. "After that journey
     the heroic verse appears almost exclusively as his poetic
     instrument.... Of still greater significance is the fact that
     Chaucer's heroic verse differs from the French decasyllabic in all
     the particulars in which the Italian hendecasyllabic departs from
     the common source, and approaches the verse of Dante and Boccaccio
     as closely as the metre of a Germanic language can approach a
     Romance metre. It may be added also that the heroic verse in the
     _Compleynte to Pitee_ stands nearer the French decasyllabic than
     that of the _Troilus_ or the _Canterbury Tales_."

     Dr. Lewis, on the other hand, in _The Foreign Sources of English
     Versification_, would minimize the foreign sources of Chaucer's
     couplet. Not only the unaccentual character of the French verse is
     opposed to the theory of the French source, but also, he believes,
     the fixed cesura. "In the English verse there is no such thing:
     indeed there is no cesura at all, in the French sense of the
     word.... Schipper relegates to a foot-note the suggestion that our
     heroic verse may have originated in a different way, either through
     an abridgment of the alexandrine or through an extension of the
     four-foot line. This is of course more nearly the true view, but it
     is entirely immaterial which of the last two explanations we hit
     upon. Accentual verses of four, six, and seven feet were already
     familiar long before Chaucer's time. They exhibited a more or less
     regular alternation of arsis and thesis. To devise a verse which
     should be essentially the same in principle, but should have five
     accents instead of four, six, or seven, was a task that Chaucer's
     genius might well achieve unaided" (pp. 98, 99).

     It is quite possible that a combination of all these views may be
     nearest the truth. The objection to the French influence on the
     ground of the syllabic (non-accentual) quality of the French verse
     does not seem to be serious, since any imitation of French verse by
     an Englishman would be likely to take on the accentual form; and,
     that once done, the need for the fixed cesura would vanish. But it
     is worth while to emphasize the fact that the genius of English
     verse was not so averse to the formation of a decasyllabic
     five-stress line as to make it a serious innovation. This view is
     further emphasized by the next specimen.

    Is not thilke the mery moneth of May,
    When love-lads masken in fresh aray?
    How falles it, then, we no merrier bene,
    Ylike as others, girt in gawdy greene?
    Our bloncket liveryes bene all to sadde
    For thilke same season, when all is ycladd
    With pleasaunce: the grownd with grasse, the Woods
    With greene leaves, the bushes with bloosming buds.
    ... Tho to the greene Wood they speeden hem all,
    To fetchen home May with their musicall:
    And home they bringen in a royall throne,
    Crowned as king: and his Queene attone
    Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend
    A fayre flocke of Faeries, and a fresh bend
    Of lovely Nymphs. (O that I were there,
    To helpen the Ladyes their Maybush beare!)
    Ah! Piers, bene not thy teeth on edge, to thinke

(SPENSER: _The Shepherd's Calendar, May_. 1579.)

This specimen is properly not in five-stress verse, but in irregular
four-stress ("tumbling verse"); compare the specimen on p. 158, above.
We have a close approach, however, to the regular five-stress verse, in
such lines as the fourth, fifth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth.
On this and similar passages in the _Shepherd's Calendar_, as
illustrating the close relation between the native measure and the newer
one, see an article by Professor Gummere, in the _American Journal of
Philology_, vol. vii. pp. 53ff. Other verses cited by Dr. Gummere are:

    "Whose way is wildernesse, whose ynne Penaunce."

    "And dirks the beauty of my blossomes rownd."

    "That oft the blood springeth from woundes wyde."

    "There at the dore he cast me downe hys pack."

It is pointed out that the regular five-stress line, when having--as
very frequently--only four full stresses (two or three light syllables
coming together, especially at the pause), can hardly be distinguished
from certain forms of the native four-stress verse. See also the
Eclogues for February and August, in the _Shepherd's Calendar_. Dr.
Gummere's conclusion is, that "practically all the elements of
Anglo-Saxon verse are preserved in our modern poetry, though in
different combinations, with changed proportional importance."

    But the false Fox most kindly played his part;
    For whatsoever mother-wit or art
    Could work, he put in proof: no practice sly,
    No counterpoint of cunning policy,
    No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring,
    But he the same did to his purpose wring....
    He fed his cubs with fat of all the soil,
    And with the sweet of others' sweating toil;
    He crammed them with crumbs of benefices,
    And fill'd their mouths with meeds of malefices.
    ... No statute so established might be,
    Nor ordinance so needful, but that he
    Would violate, though not with violence,
    Yet under color of the confidence
    The which the Ape repos'd in him alone,
    And reckon'd him the kingdom's corner-stone.

(SPENSER: _Mother Hubbard's Tale_, ll. 1137-1166. 1591.)

Spenser's use of the heroic couplet for the _Mother Hubbard's Tale_ is
the earliest instance of its adoption in English for satirical verse,--a
purpose for which its later history showed it to be peculiarly well
fitted.

    Upon her head she wore a myrtle wreath,
    From whence her veil reach'd to the ground beneath:
    Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,
    Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives:
    Many would praise the sweet smell as she past,
    When 'twas the odor which her breath forth cast;
    And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
    And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.
    About her neck hung chains of pebble-stone,
    Which, lighten'd by her neck, like diamonds shone.

(MARLOWE: _Hero and Leander_, ll. 17-26. ab. 1590, pub. 1598.)

    Too popular is tragic poesy,
    Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee,
    And doth beside on rimeless numbers tread;
    Unbid iambics flow from careless head.
    Some braver brain in high heroic rhymes
    Compileth worm-eat stories of old times:
    And he, like some imperious Maronist,
    Conjures the Muses that they him assist.
    Then strives he to bombast his feeble lines
    With far-fetch'd phrase.-- ...
    Painters and poets, hold your ancient right:
    Write what you will, and write not what you might:
    Their limits be their list, their reason will.
    But if some painter in presuming skill
    Should paint the stars in centre of the earth,
    Could ye forbear some smiles, and taunting mirth?

(JOSEPH HALL: _Virgidemiarum Libri VI._, bk. i. satire 4. 1597.)

Joseph Hall was the most vigorous satirist of the group of Elizabethans
who, in the last decade of the sixteenth century, were imitating the
satires of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius. Hall's satires have a curiously
eighteenth-century flavor, and his couplets are frequently very similar
to those of the age of Pope. Thus Thomas Warton (in his _History of
English Poetry_) observed of Hall that "the fabric of the couplets
approaches to the modern standard;" and Anderson, who edited the
_British Poets_ in 1795, said: "Many of his lines would do honor to the
most harmonious of our modern poets. The sense has generally such a
pause, and will admit of such a punctuation at the close of the second
line, as if it were calculated for a modern ear." On the verse of these
Elizabethan satirists in general, see _The Rise of Formal Satire in
England_, by the present editor (_Publications of the Univ. of Penna_.).

On the other hand, the verse of the satires of John Donne, from which
the following specimen is taken, is the roughest and most difficult of
all the satires of the group. The reputation of Donne's satires for
metrical ruggedness has affected unjustly that of his other poetry and
that of the Elizabethan satires in general. Dryden said: "Would not
Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if
he had taken care of his words and of his numbers?" (_Essay on Satire._)
And Pope "versified" two of them, so as to bring them into a form
pleasing to the ear of his age.

    Therefore I suffered this: towards me did run
    A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun
    E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came:
    A thing which would have posed Adam to name;
    Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies,
    Than Afric's monsters, Guiana's rarities;...
    Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been
    Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seen)
    Become tufftaffaty; and our children shall
    See it plain rash awhile, then nought at all.
    This thing hath travelled, and faith, speaks all tongues,
    And only knoweth what to all states belongs.

(JOHN DONNE: _Satire iv._ ll. 17 ff. ab. 1593.)

    This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas,
    And utters it again when God doth please.
    He is wit's pedlar, and retails his wares
    At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
    And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
    Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
    This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve.
    Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.
    He can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he
    That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy;
    This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
    That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice
    In honorable terms: nay, he can sing
    A mean most meanly, and, in ushering,
    Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;
    The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

(SHAKSPERE: _Love's Labor's Lost_, V. ii. 315-330. ab. 1590.)

The use of rimed couplets in Shakspere's dramas is especially
characteristic of his earlier work. In this play, _Love's Labor's Lost_,
Dowden says, "there are about two rhymed lines to every one of blank
verse" (_Shakspere Primer_, p. 44). In the late plays, on the other
hand, rime disappears almost altogether. It will be observed that while
Shakspere's heroic verse is usually fairly regular, with not very many
run-on lines, it yet differs in quality from that of satires. The
dramatic use moulds it into different cadences, and the single couplet
is, perhaps, less noticeably the unit of the verse.

    Shepherd, I pray thee stay. Where hast thou been?
    Or whither goest thou? Here be woods as green
    As any; air likewise as fresh and sweet
    As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
    Face of the curled streams; with flowers as many
    As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
    Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
    Arbors o'ergrown with woodbines, caves, and dells;
    Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
    Or gather rushes, to make many a ring
    For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,--
    How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
    First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
    She took eternal fire that never dies;
    How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,
    His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
    Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,
    Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
    To kiss her sweetest.

(FLETCHER: _The Faithful Shepherdess_, I. iii. ab. 1610.)

Fletcher uses the couplet in this drama with a freedom hardly found
elsewhere until the time of Keats; see the remark of Symonds, quoted p.
210, below.

    If Rome so great, and in her wisest age,
    Fear'd not to boast the glories of her stage,
    As skilful Roscius, and grave Æsop, men,
    Yet crown'd with honors, as with riches, then;
    Who had no less a trumpet of their name
    Than Cicero, whose every breath was fame:
    How can so great example die in me,
    That, Allen, I should pause to publish thee?
    Who both their graces in thyself hast more
    Outstript, than they did all that went before:
    And present worth in all dost so contract,
    As others speak, but only thou dost act.
    Wear this renown. 'Tis just, that who did give
    So many poets life, by one should live.

(BEN JONSON: _Epigram LXXXIX, to Edward Allen._ 1616.)

Jonson is thought by some to have been the founder of the classical
school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made the
heroic couplet peculiarly its own. See on this subject an article by
Prof. F. E. Schelling, "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," in the
_Publications of the Modern Language Association_, n. s. vol. vi. p.
221. Professor Schelling finds in Jonson's verse all the characteristics
of the later couplet of Waller and Dryden: end-stopped lines and
couplets, a preference for medial cesura, and an antithetical structure
of the verse. "No better specimen of Jonson's antithetical manner could
be found," he says further, than the Epigram here quoted. So far as this
antithetical quality of Jonson's verse is concerned, Professor
Schelling's view cannot be questioned; but that Jonson shows any
singular preference for end-stopped lines and couplets may be seriously
questioned.

    These mighty peers placed in the gilded barge,
    Proud with the burden of so brave a charge,
    With painted oars the youths begin to sweep
    Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep;
    Which soon becomes the seat of sudden war
    Between the wind and tide that fiercely jar.
    As when a sort of lusty shepherds try
    Their force at football, care of victory
    Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast,
    That their encounters seem too rough for jest;
    They ply their feet, and still the restless ball,
    Tossed to and fro, is urged by them all:
    So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds,
    And like effect of their contention finds.

(WALLER: _Of the Danger his Majesty [being Prince] escaped in the Road
at St. Andrews._ 1623?)

    Such is the mould that the blest tenant feeds
    On precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds;
    With candied plantains, and the juicy pine,
    On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine,
    And with potatoes fat their wanton swine;
    Nature these cates with such a lavish hand
    Pours out among them, that our coarser land
    Tastes of that bounty, and does cloth return,
    Which not for warmth but ornament is worn;
    For the kind spring, which but salutes us here,
    Inhabits there and courts them all the year;
    Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live,
    At once they promise what at once they give;
    So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
    None sickly lives, or dies before his time....
      O how I long my careless limbs to lay
    Under the plantain's shade, and all the day
    With amorous airs my fancy entertain,
    Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!

(WALLER: _The Battle of the Summer Islands_, canto i. 1638.)

Edmund Waller is the chief representative of the early classical poetry
of the seventeenth century, and of the polishing and regulating of the
couplet which prepared the way for the verse of Dryden and Pope. The
dominant characteristic of this verse is its avoidance of _enjambement_,
or run-on lines, still more of run-on couplets. The growing precision of
French verse at the same time was perhaps influential in England.
Malherbe, who was at the French court after 1605, set rules for more
regular verse, and forbade, among other things, the use of run-on
lines--a precept which held good in French poetry until the nineteenth
century. The influence of Waller in England was, for a considerable
period, hardly less than that of Malherbe in France. Dryden said that
"the excellence and dignity" of rime "were never known till Mr. Waller
taught it; he first made writing easily an art; first showed us to
conclude the sense most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse of
those before him, runs on for so many lines together that the reader is
out of breath to overtake it. This sweetness of Mr. Waller's lyric poesy
was afterward followed, in the epic, by Sir John Denham, in his
_Cooper's Hill_." (Epistle Dedicatory of _The Rival Ladies_.) In another
place Dryden observed that only Waller, in English, had surpassed
Spenser in the harmony of his verse. Dryden's view was later echoed by
Pope, who exhorted his readers to

             "praise the easy vigor of a line
    Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join."

(_Essay on Criticism_, l. 360.)

But the most remarkable praise of Waller is found in the Preface to his
posthumous poems, 1690, generally attributed to Bishop Atterbury. "He
was indeed the parent of English verse, and the first that shewed us our
tongue had beauty and numbers in it.... The tongue came into his hands
like a rough diamond; he polished it first, and to that degree that all
artists since him have admired the workmanship, without pretending to
mend it.... He undoubtedly stands first in the list of refiners, and for
aught I know, last, too; for I question whether in Charles the Second's
reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has
not had its Augustan Age, as well as the Latin.... We are no less
beholding to him for the new turn of verse, which he brought in, and the
improvement he made in our numbers. Before his time men rhymed, indeed,
and that was all: as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words
which good ears are so much pleased with, they knew nothing of it. Their
poetry then was made up almost entirely of monosyllables, which, when
they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh,
untunable things in the world. If any man doubts of this, let him read
ten lines in Donne, and he'll quickly be convinced. Besides, their
verses ran all into one another, and hung together, throughout a whole
copy, like the _hook't atoms_ that compose a body in Des Cartes. There
was no distinction of parts, no regular stops, nothing for the ear to
rest upon. But as soon as the copy began, down it went like a larum,
incessantly; and the reader was sure to be out of breath before he got
to the end of it. So that really verse in those days was but downright
prose, tagged with rhymes. Mr. Waller removed all these faults, brought
in more polysyllables and smoother measures, bound up his thoughts
better and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verse he
wrote in: so that wherever the natural stops of that were, he contrived
the little breakings of his sense so as to fall in with 'em. And for
that reason, since the stress of our verse lies commonly upon the last
syllable, you'll hardly ever find him using a word of no force
there."[21] Waller's editor thus clearly discerns the very
characteristics of his verse which are avoided by the master-poets--the
coincidence of phrase-pauses and verse-pauses, and regularity in the
placing of stress.

The most important discussion of the influence of Waller on English
poetry, and on the heroic couplet in particular, is found in Mr. Gosse's
book, _From Shakespeare to Pope_. Mr. Gosse regards Waller as inventing
for himself the couplet of the classical school; "master," in 1623, of
such verse as "was not imitated by a single poet for nearly twenty
years" (p. 50). This view is criticised in an interesting article by Dr.
Henry Wood, in the _American Journal of Philology_, vol. xi. p. 55.
While Mr. Gosse places Waller's earliest couplets in 1621 and 1623, Dr.
Wood would date them as late as 1626, and shows that Waller wrote
nothing else until 1635. Meantime had appeared (the first volume at
least as early as 1623) the translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, by
George Sandys, in which, says Wood, all the characteristics of Waller's
verse appear. "At all events," is his conclusion, "it was Sandys, and
not Waller, who at the beginning of the third decade of the century,
first of all Englishmen, made a uniform practice of writing in heroic
couplets, which are, on the whole, in accord with the French rule, and
which, for exactness of construction, and for harmonious sification, go
far towards satisfying the demands of the later 'classical' school in
England." Dr. Wood emphasizes the probable influence of the French poets
on these early heroic couplets, calling attention to the fact that
Sandys was in France in 1610. There is no evidence, however, that he was
there for more than a few days, _en route_ to more eastern countries.
Waller was not in France till 1643. The whole question of the influence
of French poetry in England before the Restoration still remains to be
carefully investigated. Meantime, the cautious student will hesitate to
put too much stress on any single point of departure for the new style
of versification. Many influences must have combined to make it popular.
We have seen Professor Schelling emphasizing the influence of Jonson; he
also very justly points out "that it is a mistake to consider that the
Elizabethans often practised the couplet with the freedom, not to say
license, that characterizes its nineteenth century use in the hands of
such poets as Keats." Compare the couplets of even so romantic a poet as
Marlowe, in the specimen given above from _Hero and Leander_. And even
Mr. Gosse, in partial divergence from the doctrines of _From Shakespeare
to Pope_, says of the satiric verse of the Elizabethan Rowlands: "There
are lines in this passage which Pope would not have disdained to use. It
might, indeed, be employed as against that old heresy, not even yet
entirely discarded, that smoothness of heroic verse was the invention of
Waller. As a matter of fact, this, as well as all other branches of the
universal art of poetry, was understood by the great Elizabethan
masters; and if they did not frequently employ it, it was because they
left to such humbler writers as Rowlands an instrument incapable of
those noble and audacious harmonies on which they chiefly prided
themselves." (Introduction to the _Works of Rowlands_, Hunterian Club
ed., p. 16.)

A tribute to the incoming influence of the couplet is cited by Dr. Wood
from the poems of Sir John Beaumont (1582-1627). In his verses _To His
Late Majesty, concerning the True Forme of English Poetry_, Beaumont
said:

    "In every language now in Europe spoke
    By nations which the Roman empire broke,
    The rellish of the Muse consists in rime,
    One verse must meete another like a chime....
    In many changes these may be exprest,
    But those that joyne most simply run the best:
    Their forme surpassing farre the fetter'd staves,
    Vaine care, and needlesse repetition saves."

(CHALMER'S _English Poets_, vol. vi. p. 31.)[22]

    Rough Boreas in Æolian prison laid,
    And those dry blasts which gathered clouds invade,
    Outflies the South with dropping wings; who shrouds
    His terrible aspect in pitchy clouds.
    His white hair streams, his swol'n beard big with showers;
    Mists bind his brows, rain from his bosom pours.
    As with his hands the hanging clouds he crushed,
    They roared, and down in showers together rushed.
    All- Iris, Juno's messenger,
    To weeping clouds doth nourishment confer.
    The corn is lodged, the husbandmen despair,
    Their long year's labor lost, with all their care.
    Jove, not content with his ethereal rages,
    His brother's auxiliaric floods engages.

(GEORGE SANDYS: _Ovid's Metamorphoses_, bk. i. 1621.)

On the significance of Sandys's verse, see preceding notes on Waller,
and the note on its possible relation to Pope, p. 201 below.

    My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
    Where Thames amongst the wanton valleys strays;
    Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sons
    By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
    Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
    Like mortal life to meet eternity....
    No unexpected inundations spoil
    The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil,
    But godlike his unwearied bounty flows,
    First loves to do, then loves the good he does;
    Nor are his blessings to his banks confined,
    But free and common as the sea or wind....
      O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
    My great example, as it is my theme!
    Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
    Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

(SIR JOHN DENHAM: _Cooper's Hill_. 1642.)

"Denham," says Mr. Gosse, "was the first writer to adopt the precise
manner of versification introduced by Waller." (Ward's _English Poets_,
vol. ii. p. 279.) On his praise by Dryden and Pope, see notes on p. 188
above. The last four lines of the specimen here given have been
universally admired.

    But say, what is't that binds your hands? does fear
    From such a glorious action you deter?
    Or is't religion? But you sure disclaim
    That frivolous pretence, that empty name;
    Mere bugbear word, devis'd by us to scare
    The senseless rout to slavishness and fear,
    Ne'er known to awe the brave, and those that dare.
    Such weak and feeble things may serve for checks
    To rein and curb base-mettled heretics, ...
    Such whom fond in-bred honesty befools,
    Or that old musty piece, the Bible, gulls.

(JOHN OLDHAM: _Satires upon the Jesuits_, Sat. i. 1679.)

"Oldham was the first," says Mr. Gosse, "to liberate himself, in the use
of the distich, from this under-current of a stanza, and to write heroic
verse straight on, couplet by couplet, ascending by steady strides and
not by irregular leaps. (Any one who will venture to read Oldham's
disagreeable _Satire upon the Jesuits_, written in 1679, will see the
truth of this remark, and note the effect that its versification had
upon that series of Dryden's satires which immediately followed it.) In
Pope's best satires we see this art carried to its final perfection;
after his time the connecting link between couplet and couplet became
lost, and at last in the decline poems became, as some one has said,
mere cases of lancets lying side by side. But in Dryden's day the
connection was still only too obvious, and it strikes me that it may
have been from a consciousness of this defect, that Dryden adopted that
triplet, with a final alexandrine, which he is so fond of introducing."
(_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 201.)

    Of these the false Achitophel was first,
    A name to all succeeding ages curst:
    For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
    Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
    Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
    In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
    A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
    Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
    And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
    A daring pilot in extremity,
    Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,
    He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
    Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
    Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
    And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
    Else, why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
    Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
    Punish a body which he could not please,
    Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?...
    In friendship false, implacable in hate,
    Resolved to ruin or to rule the state;
    To compass this the triple bond he broke,
    The pillars of the public safety shook,
    And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;
    Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
    Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.

(DRYDEN: _Absalom and Achitophel_, part I. ll. 150-179. 1681.)

Dryden was the first great English poet after Chaucer to make the heroic
couplet his chief vehicle of expression, and he put far more variety and
vigor into it than had been achieved by his nearer predecessors. As Pope
said:

    "Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join
    The varying verse, the full resounding line,
    The long majestic march, the energy divine."

(_Epistle ii._, 267.)

And Gray, some years later, symbolized Dryden's couplet in these fine
lines of the _Progress of Poesy_:

    "Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
        Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
        Two coursers of ethereal race,
    With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace."

On Dryden's development of the couplet, see especially Saintsbury's
_Life of Dryden_ (English Men of Letters Series), pp. 17, 171. "The
whole structure of the decasyllabic line before the middle of the
seventeenth century was ill calculated for the perfecting of the
couplet. Accustomed either to the stately plainness of blank verse, or
to the elaborate intricacies of the stanza, writers had got into the
habit of communicating to their verse a slow and somewhat languid
movement." (p. 17.) "In versification the great achievement of Dryden
was the alteration of what may be called the balance of the line,
causing it to run more quickly, and to strike its rhymes with a sharper
and less prolonged sound. One obvious means of obtaining this was, as a
matter of course, the isolation of the couplet, and the avoidance of
overlapping the different lines one upon the other. The effect of this
overlapping, by depriving the eye and voice of the expectation of rest
at the end of each couplet, is always one of two things. Either the
lines are converted into a sort of rhythmic prose, made musical by the
rhymes rather than divided by them, or else a considerable pause is
invited at the end of each, or of most lines, and the cadence of the
whole becomes comparatively slow and languid. Both these forms, as may
be seen in the works of Mr. Morris, as well as in the older writers, are
excellently suited for narration of some considerable length. They are
less well suited for satire, for argument, and for the moral reflections
which the age of Dryden loved. He therefore set himself to elaborate the
couplet with its sharp point, its quick delivery, and the pistol-like
detonation of its rhyme. But there is an obvious objection, or rather
there are several obvious objections which present themselves to the
couplet. It was natural that to one accustomed to the more varied range
of the older rhythm and metre, there might seem to be a danger of the
snip-snap monotony into which, as we know, it did actually fall when it
passed out of the hands of its first great practitioners. There might
also be a fear that it would not always be possible to compress the
sense of a complete clause within the narrow limits of twenty syllables.
To meet these difficulties Dryden resorted to three mechanical
devices--the hemistich, the alexandrine, and the triplet, all three of
which could be used indifferently to eke out the space or to give
variety of sound.... In poetry proper the hemistich is anything but
pleasing, and Dryden, becoming convinced of the fact, almost discarded
it. The alexandrine and the triplet he always continued to use." (pp.
171, 172.)

    Do you remember, when their tasks were done,
    How all the youth did to our cottage run?
    While winter winds were whistling loud without,
    Our cheerful hearth was circled round about:
    With strokes in ashes, maids their lovers drew;
    And still you fell to me, and I to you....
     I know too well when first my love began,
    When at our wake you for the chaplet ran:
    Then I was made the lady of the May,
    And, with the garland, at the goal did stay:
    Still, as you ran, I kept you full in view;
    I hoped, and wished, and ran, methought, for you.
    As you came near, I hastily did rise,
    And stretched my arm outright, that held the prize.
    The custom was to kiss whom I should crown;
    You kneeled, and in my lap your head laid down:
    I blushed, and blushed, and did the kiss delay;
    At last my subjects forced me to obey:
    But, when I gave the crown, and then the kiss,
    I scarce had breath to say, Take that,--and this.

(DRYDEN: _Marriage à la Mode_, II, i. 1672.)

The use of the heroic couplet in the drama marks its effort to conquer
the last citadel of English poetry; an attempt which, under the
leadership of Dryden, seemed to succeed, but soon gave way to better
judgment. Dryden favored the experiment in the Preface to _The Rival
Ladies_ (1663), and inserted a few couplets in that play. Etheredge
accepted the suggestion, and put the serious parts of _The Comical
Revenge_ (largely prose) into couplets, in 1664. In the same year _The
Indian Queen_ (by Dryden and Sir Robert Howard) appeared in heroic
verse, and the fashion soon became so general that in the _Essay on
Heroic Plays_, prefixed to _The Conquest of Granada_ (1672), Dryden
could say: "Whether Heroic Verse ought to be admitted into serious
plays, is not now to be disputed: 'tis already in possession of the
stage; and I dare confidently affirm, that very few tragedies, in this
age, shall be received without it." Only six years later, however, in
1678, he returned to blank verse in _All for Love_, saying: "I have
disencumbered myself from rhyme. Not that I condemn my former way, but
that this is more proper to my present purpose." In all about five
plays of Dryden's are in couplets; after 1678 he rarely returned to rime
for the drama. As Atterbury said in his Preface to Waller's poems:
"'Twas the strength of his genius that first brought it into credit in
plays; and 'tis the force of his example that has thrown it out again."
"The fashion of rhyme in the drama, then, to be exact," says Mr. Gosse,
"flourished from 1664 until ... 1678." Some justification for its use is
to be found in the wretched condition into which blank verse had fallen.
"The blank iambics of the romantic dramatists had become so execrably
weak and distended, the whole movement of dramatic verse had grown so
flaccid, that a little restraint in the severe limits of rhyme was
absolutely necessary." (Gosse, in _Seventeenth Century Studies_, p.
264.)

The present specimen is from a play in which the couplet was used but
slightly; but it shows Dryden's use of it at its best. In the drama, as
already remarked, the couplet is naturally less epigrammatic and pointed
than in didactic and satiric verse.

     For the arguments with which Dryden defended the use of rime in the
     drama, see the Preface to _The Rival Ladies_, the _Essay of Heroic
     Plays_, the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, and the _Defence of an Essay
     of Dramatic Poesy_. "In the quickness of reparties (which in
     discoursive scenes fall very often), it has so particular a grace,
     and is so aptly suited to them, that the sudden smartness of the
     answer, and the sweetness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each
     other. But that benefit which I consider most in it, because I have
     not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the
     fancy." (_Essays of Dryden_, ed. W. P. Ker, vol. i. p. 8.) In the
     _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, Crites, representing Sir Robert Howard,
     opposes the use of rime on the ground of Aristotle's dictum that
     tragedy is best written in the kind of verse which is nearest
     prose. A play being an imitation of Nature, "the nearer anything
     comes to the imitation of it, the more it pleases." Neander,
     representing Dryden, answers that this line of argument will
     equally forbid blank verse. Blank verse is "properly but measured
     prose"; and rime may be "made as natural as blank verse, by the
     well placing of the words, etc." "But I need not go so far to prove
     that rhyme, as it succeeds to all other offices of Greek and Latin
     verse, so especially to this of plays, since the custom of all
     nations at this day confirms it, all the French, Italian, and
     Spanish tragedies are generally writ in it; and sure the universal
     consent of the most civilized parts of the world ought in this, as
     it doth in other customs, to include the rest." (_Ibid._ p. 98.)
     Again, while a play is a representation of Nature, it is "Nature
     wrought up to an higher pitch"; and for this purpose "heroic rhyme
     is nearest Nature, as being the noblest kind of modern verse." (pp.
     100, 101.) In the _Essay of Heroic Plays_ Dryden again summarizes
     the case for the other side by saying that "all the arguments which
     are formed against it can amount to no more than this, that it is
     not so near conversation as prose, and therefore not so natural.
     But it is very clear to all who understand Poetry, that serious
     plays ought not to imitate conversation too nearly." If, therefore,
     we begin to leave the mere "imitation of ordinary converse," we
     should go on consistently to "the last perfection of Art. It was
     only custom which cozened us so long; we thought, because
     Shakespeare and Fletcher went no farther, that there the pillars of
     poetry were to be erected; that, because they excellently described
     passion without rhyme, therefore rhyme was not capable of
     describing it. But time has now convinced most men of that error."
     (_Ibid._ pp. 148, 149.)

     Dryden was of course quite right in objecting to the claim that
     imaginative poetry ought to seek the form closest to the language
     of real life. The real question is whether rimed verse is a more
     imaginative and highly poetic form than blank verse; modern opinion
     would unanimously answer in the negative.

     It strikes a modern reader as curious that Dryden and his
     contemporaries should have advocated the use of rime in tragedy
     rather than in comedy; but we have the clew to their feeling in the
     saying that "_serious plays_ ought not to imitate conversation too
     nearly." In the Restoration period the comedy was thought of as a
     realistic representation of life; hence its characters should speak
     in natural prose, as they have continued to do, for the most part,
     ever since. The tragedy or heroic play, on the other hand, was in
     the region of artistic convention, much farther removed from
     reality; hence its language was to be "raised above the life." This
     distinction between the range of comedy and that of tragedy, which
     would have seemed strange to the Elizabethans, explains the widely
     diverging lines which we find the two forms of the drama following
     from the time of the Restoration.

     On the verse of Dryden's rimed plays, see Schipper, vol. ii. p.
     214, and O. Speerschneider's _Metrische Untersuchungen über den
     heroischen Vers in John Drydens Dramen_ (Halle, 1897).

    But O, my muse, what numbers wilt thou find
    To sing the furious troops in battle join'd!
    Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound,
    The victor's shouts and dying groans confound,
    The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies,
    And all the thunder of the battle rise.
    'Twas then great Marlbro's mighty soul was prov'd,
    That, in the shock of charging hosts unmov'd,
    Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
    Examin'd all the dreadful scenes of war....
    So, when an angel by divine command
    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
    And pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
    Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

(ADDISON: _The Campaign_. 1704.)

    But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
    And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
    In the bright Muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,
    Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
    Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
    Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
    Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
    These equal syllables alone require,
    Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;
    While expletives their feeble aid do join;
    And ten low words oft creep in one dull line;
    While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
    With sure return of still expected rhymes;
    Where'er you find 'the cooling western breeze,'
    In the next line, it 'whispers through the trees';
    If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,'
    The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with 'sleep':
    Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
    With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
    A needless alexandrine ends the song,
    That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
    Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
    What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
    And praise the easy vigor of a line
    Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, ll. 337-361. 1711.)

    Why boast we, Glaucus, our extended reign
    Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain,
    Our numerous herds that range the fruitful field,
    And hills where vines their purple harvest yield,
    Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crowned,
    Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound?
    Why on those shores are we with joy surveyed,
    Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed;
    Unless great acts superior merit prove,
    And vindicate the bounteous powers above?
    'Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace;
    The first in valor, as the first in place:
    That when with wondering eyes our martial bands
    Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
    Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,
    Whom those that envy dare not imitate!
    Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
    Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
    For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
    In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war.
    But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
    Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
    The life which others pay let us bestow,
    And give to fame what we to nature owe;
    Brave though we fall, and honored if we live,
    Or let us glory gain, or glory give!

(POPE: _Iliad_, bk. xii.)

Pope's couplet, while less vigorous and varied than Dryden's, has been
generally considered the most perfect development of the typical measure
of the classical school. Mr. Courthope thinks that in this speech from
the _Iliad_, Pope "perhaps attains the highest level of which the heroic
couplet is capable." (_Works of Pope_, vol. v. p. 167.)

     "What he learned from Dryden," Mr. Courthope says in another place,
     "was the art of expressing the social and conversational idiom of
     the language in a metrical form. His conception of metrical harmony
     was, however, altogether different from his professed master's, and
     rather resembled that of Sandys, whose translation of Ovid's
     _Metamorphoses_ he told Spence he had read when very young, and
     with the greatest delight. He explains the system in a letter to
     Cromwell, dated November 25, 1710.

     "'(1) As to the hiatus, it is certainly to be avoided as often as
     possible; but on the other hand, since the reason of it is only for
     the sake of the numbers, so if, to avoid it, we incur another fault
     against their smoothness, methinks the very end of that nicety is
     destroyed....

     "'(2) I would except against the use of all expletives in verse, as
     _do_ before verbs plural, or even the frequent use of _did_ or
     _does_ to change the termination of the rhyme....

     "'(3) Monosyllable lines, unless very artfully managed, are stiff,
     languishing, and hard.

     "'(4) The repeating the same rhymes within four or six lines of
     each other, which tire the ear with too much of the like sound.

     "'(5) The too frequent use of alexandrines, which are never
     graceful, but where there is some majesty added to the verse by
     them, or when there cannot be found a word in them but what is
     absolutely needful.

     "'(6) Every nice ear must, I believe, have observed that in any
     smooth English verse of ten syllables, there is naturally a pause
     either at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllables.... Now I fancy
     that, to preserve an exact harmony and variety, none of these
     pauses should be continued above three lines together, without the
     interposition of another; else it will be apt to weary the ear with
     one continued tone.'"

     (_Ibid._ pp. 20, 21.)

     Here are implied all the characteristics of the Popean couplet. The
     cesura is to vary, but not from a fundamentally medial position.
     The avoidance of _enjambement_ is not mentioned, doubtless because
     it is assumed as an essential of couplets professing any degree of
     correctness.

Mr. Andrew Lang protests against the monotony of the verse of Pope's
_Iliad_ in some lines which cleverly adopt the same sort of measure:

    My childhood fled your couplet's clarion tone,
    And sought for Homer in the prose of Bohn.
    Still through the dust of that dim prose appears
    The flight of arrows and the sheen of spears;
    Still we may trace what hearts heroic feel,
    And hear the bronze that hurtles on the steel!
    But ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence,
    Where wits, not heroes, prove their skill in fence,
    And great Achilles' eloquence doth show
    As if no centaur trained him, but Boileau!
    Again, your verse is orderly,--and more,--
    "The waves behind impel the waves before";
    Monotonously musical they glide,
    Till couplet unto couplet hath replied.
    But turn to Homer! How his verses sweep!
    Surge answers surge and deep doth call on deep;
    This line in foam and thunder issues forth,
    Spurred by the West or smitten by the North,
    Sombre in all its sullen deeps, and all
    Clear at the crest, and foaming to the fall;
    The next with silver murmur dies away,
    Like tides that falter to Calypso's Bay!

(ANDREW LANG: _Letters to Dead Authors; Pope_.)

Compare with this the equally clever defence of Pope's verse by Mr.
Dobson:

    Suppose you say your Worst of Pope, declare
    His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre,
    His Art but Artifice--I ask once more
    Where have you seen such Artifice before?
    Where have you seen a Parterre better grac'd,
    Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste?
    Where can you show, among your Names of Note,
    So much to copy and so much to quote?
    And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse,
    A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?
    So I, that love the old Augustan Days
    Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase;
    That like along the finish'd line to feel
    The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel;
    That like my Couplet as compact as clear;
    That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe,
    Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by Trope,
    I fling my Cap for Polish--and for POPE![23]

(AUSTIN DOBSON: _Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope_.)

    Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close
    Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
    There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
    The mingling notes came softened from below;
    The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
    The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;
    The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
    The playful children just let loose from school;
    The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
    And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;
    These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
    And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
    But now the sounds of population fail,
    No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
    No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
    For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.

(GOLDSMITH: _The Deserted Village_. 1770.)

"The heroic couplet," says Mr. Gosse, "was never employed, even by Pope
himself, with more melody than by Goldsmith in this poem." (_Eighteenth
Century Literature_, p. 320.) Its use at this time, when the revival of
blank verse by Thomson and others had seriously affected the prestige of
the couplet, was a sign of Goldsmith's reactionary tendency toward the
school of Pope. His dislike of blank verse he expressed in his early
work on the _Present State of Polite Learning_, saying that it might be
reckoned among "several disagreeable instances of pedantry" lately
proceeding "from a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of
ancient languages upon the English." (_Works_, Globe ed., p. 439.) This
opinion was of course shared by Goldsmith's friend, Dr. Johnson, whose
two important poems (_London_ and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_) stand
with the two of Goldsmith as the last notable pieces of English poetry
of the classical school. While Johnson admitted that he could not "wish
that Milton had been a rhymer," yet he never lost an opportunity to
speak contemptuously of blank verse as a poetic form, and quoted
approvingly the saying of a critic that it "seems to be verse only to
the eye." (_Life of Milton._)

      In front of these came Addison. In him
    Humor, in holiday and sightly trim,
    Sublimity and Attic taste combined
    To polish, furnish, and delight the mind.
    Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,
    In verse well-disciplined, complete, compact,
    Gave virtue and morality a grace
    That, quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face,
    Levied a tax of wonder and applause,
    Even on the fools that trampled on their laws.
    But he (his musical finesse was such,
    So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)
    Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
    And every warbler has his tune by heart.
    Nature imparting her satiric gift,
    Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift,
    With droll sobriety they raised a smile
    At folly's cost, themselves unmoved the while.
    That constellation set, the world in vain
    Must hope to look upon their like again.

(COWPER: _Table Talk_. 1782.)

    Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
    For notice eager, pass in long review:
    Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
    And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race;
    Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
    And tales of terror jostle on the road;
    Immeasurable measures move along;
    For simpering folly loves a varied song,
    To strange mysterious dulness still the friend,
    Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
    Thus Lays of Minstrels--may they be the last!--
    On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast;
    While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
    That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
    And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,
    Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,
    And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
    And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why.

(BYRON: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. 1809.)

    View now the winter storm! above, one cloud,
    Black and unbroken, all the skies o'ershroud:
    The unwieldy porpoise through the day before
    Had rolled in view of boding men on shore;
    And sometimes hid and sometimes showed his form,
    Dark as the cloud and furious as the storm.
    All where the eye delights yet dreads to roam,
    The breaking billows cast the flying foam
    Upon the billows rising--all the deep
    Is restless change; the waves so swelled and steep,
    Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells,
    Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells....
      Darkness begins to reign; the louder wind
    Appals the weak and awes the firmer mind;
    But frights not him whom evening and the spray
    In part conceal--yon prowler on his way.
    Lo, he has something seen; he runs apace,
    As if he feared companion in the chase;
    He sees his prize, and now he turns again,
    Slowly and sorrowing--"Was your search in vain?"
    Gruffly he answers, "'Tis a sorry sight!
    A seaman's body: there'll be more to-night!"

(CRABBE: _The Borough_, letter i. 1810.)

Crabbe's poems are the latest to use the strict Popean couplet for
narrative and descriptive purposes, and his couplets have a certain
characteristic reticence and vigor. Professor Woodberry praises them in
an interesting passage on "the old heroic rhymed couplet, that simplest
form of English verse music, which could rise, nevertheless, to the
almost lyric loftiness of the last lines of the _Dunciad_; so supple and
flexible; made for easy simile and compact metaphor; lending itself so
perfectly to the sudden flash of wit or turn of humor; the natural shell
of an epigram; compelling the poet to practice all the virtues of
brevity; checking the wandering fancy, and repressing the secondary
thought; requiring in a masterly use of it the employment of more mental
powers than any other metrical form; despised and neglected now because
the literature which is embodied in it is despised and neglected, yet
the best metrical form which intelligence, as distinct from poetical
feeling, can employ." (_Makers of Literature_, p. 104.)

    The flower-beds all were liberal of delight:
    Roses in heaps were there, both red and white,
    Lilies angelical, and gorgeous glooms
    Of wall-flowers, and blue hyacinths, and blooms
    Hanging thick clusters from light boughs; in short,
    All the sweet cups to which the bees resort;
    With plots of grass, and leafier walks between
    Of red geraniums, and of jessamine,
    And orange, whose warm leaves so finely suit,
    And look as if they shade a golden fruit;
    And midst the flowers, turfed round beneath a shade
    Of darksome pines, a babbling fountain played,
    And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright,
    Which through the tops glimmered with showering light.

(LEIGH HUNT: _The Story of Rimini_. 1816.)

Of this poem Mr. C. H. Herford says: "_The Story of Rimini_ is the
starting-point of that free or Chaucerian treatment of the heroic
couplet, and of the colloquial style, eschewing epigram and full of
familiar turns, which Shelley in _Julian and Maddalo_ and Keats in
_Lamia_ made classical." (_Age of Wordsworth_, p. 83.) The treatment of
the couplet is still characterized by but slight use of run-on lines,
and a preference for the medial cesura; but on the other hand there is a
large degree of freedom in the inversion of accents and other
alterations of the regular stress. Compare the last line of the present
specimen, and such other lines as

    "Of crimson cloths hanging a hand of snow."
    "Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's crest."
    "'Who's there?' said that sweet voice, kindly and clear."
    "The other with the tears streaming down both his cheeks."

The last of these lines, an alexandrine, is also characteristic. Hunt
imitated Dryden in the use of both alexandrine and triplet. Of the
latter he said: "I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the
triplet to the reader's eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It
has a look like the bridge of a lute." (Preface to _Works_, 1832.) Mr.
A. J. Kent, in an article in the _Fortnightly Review_, says of Leigh
Hunt that "he became the greatest master since the days of Dryden" of
the heroic couplet. (1881, p. 224.)

    A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
    Its loveliness increases; it will never
    Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
    A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
    Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
    Therefore, on every morrow are we wreathing
    A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
    Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
    Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
    Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
    Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
    Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
    From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
    Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
    For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
    With the green world they live in; and clear rills
    That for themselves a cooling covert make
    'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
    Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
    And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
    We have imagined for the mighty dead;
    All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
    An endless fountain of immortal drink,
    Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

(KEATS: _Endymion_, ll. 1-24. 1818.)

In the couplet of Keats, and of a number of his successors, we have a
really different measure from the "heroic couplet" proper. The
individual line and the couplet alike cease to be prominent units of
the verse. The effect is therefore closely allied to that of blank
verse; the rimes, not being emphasized by marked pauses, serving rather
as means of tone color than as organizers of the verse. See Mr.
Saintsbury's remarks (quoted in the notes on Dryden, p. 195, above), on
"lines made musical by the rhymes rather than divided by them." In like
manner Mr. Symonds says that "the couplets of Marlowe, Fletcher,
Shelley, and Keats follow the laws of blank verse, and add rhyme--that
is to say, their periods and pauses are entirely determined by the
sense." (_Blank Verse_, p. 66.) This is true of the couplets of Shelley
and Keats, and to a less degree of those of Fletcher's _Faithful
Shepherdess_, but will hardly apply to Marlowe, nor, as we have seen, to
the Elizabethans in general.[24]

    There was a Being whom my spirit oft
    Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
    In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn.
    Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
    Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
    Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
    Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
    Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore,
    Under the gray beak of some promontory
    She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
    That I beheld her not.

(SHELLEY: _Epipsychidion_, ll. 190-200. 1821.)

Shelley carries the free treatment of this measure to the utmost limit.
The couplet is not felt to be of significance, and many lines are so
irregular in stress as to make scansion difficult. Compare this
passage:

    "The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet
    Keeps up her love-lament; and the owls flit
    Round the evening tower; and the young stars glance
    Between the quick bats in their twilight dance."[25]

    The woods were long austere with snow: at last
    Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast
    Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes,
    Brightened, 'as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods
    Our buried year, a witch, grew young again
    To placid incantations, and that stain
    About were from her caldron, green smoke blent
    With those black pines'--so Eglamor gave vent
    To a chance fancy. When a just rebuke
    From his companion; brother Naddo shook
    The solemnest of brows; 'Beware,' he said,
    'Of setting up conceits in nature's stead.'

(BROWNING: _Sordello_, ii. 1-12. 1840.)

    Above the stem a gilded swallow shone,
    Wrought with straight wings and eyes of glittering stone
    As flying sunward oversea, to bear
    Green summer with it through the singing air.
    And on the deck between the rowers at dawn,
    As the bright sail with brightening wind was drawn,
    Sat with full face against the strengthening light
    Iseult, more fair than foam or dawn was white.
    Her gaze was glad past love's own singing of,
    And her face lovely past desire of love.
    Past thought and speech her maiden motions were,
    And a more golden sunrise was her hair.
    The very veil of her bright flesh was made
    As of light woven and moonbeam- shade
    More fine than moonbeams; white her eyelids shone
    As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun,
    And through their curled and  clouds of deep
    Luminous lashes, thick as dreams in sleep,
    Shone as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's
    The springs of unimaginable eyes.

(SWINBURNE: _Tristram of Lyonesse; the Sailing of the Swallow_.)

    The huge high presence, red as earth's first race,
    Reared like a reed the might up of his mace,
    And smote: but lightly Tristram swerved, and drove
    Right in on him, whose void stroke only clove
    Air, and fell wide, thundering athwart: and he
    Sent forth a stormier cry than wind or sea
    When midnight takes the tempest for her lord;
    And all the glen's throat seemed as hell's that roared;
    But high like heaven's light over hell shone Tristram's sword,
    Falling, and bright as storm shows God's bare brand
    Flashed, as it shore sheer off the huge right hand
    Whose strength was as the shadow of death on all that land.

(_Ibid._: _The Last Pilgrimage_.)

It will be noticed that in Swinburne's use of the couplet the single
line is even less the unit of measure than in Keats and Shelley; the
periods correspond closely to those in the blank verse of Milton and
Tennyson. Compare the specimens of blank verse on pp. 230 and 245. The
second specimen shows the occasional use of the triplet and
alexandrine.

    So stood she murmuring, till a rippling sound
    She heard, that grew until she turned her round
    And saw her other sisters of the deep
    Her song had called while Hylas yet did sleep,
    Come swimming in a long line up the stream,
    And their white dripping arms and shoulders gleam
    Above the dark grey water as they went,
    And still before them a great ripple sent.
    But when they saw her, toward the bank they drew,
    And landing, felt the grass and flowers blue
    Against their unused feet; then in a ring
    Stood gazing with wide eyes, and wondering
    At all his beauty they desired so much.
    And then with gentle hands began to touch
    His hair, his hands, his closed eyes; and at last
    Their eager naked arms about him cast,
    And bore him, sleeping still, as by some spell,
    Unto the depths where they were wont to dwell;
    Then softly down the reedy bank they slid,
    And with small noise the gurgling river hid
    The flushed nymphs and the heedless sleeping man.

(WILLIAM MORRIS: _Life and Death of Jason_, iv. 621-641. 1867.)


B.--BLANK VERSE

Unrimed five-stress verse early became the accepted form for English
dramatic poetry, and in the modern English period has become the
favorite form for long continuous poems, narrative and reflective as
well. In general, as will appear from the specimens, it is marked not
only by the absence of rime but by a prevalent freedom of structure
rarely found in the couplet.

The impetus toward the writing of blank verse seems to have been given
by the influence of classical humanism, the representatives of which
grew sceptical as to the use of rime, on the ground that it was not
found in classical poetry. In Italy Giovanni Trissino wrote his
_Sophonisbe_ and _Italia Liberata_ (1515-1548) in rimeless verses, and
was looked upon as the inventor of _versi sciolti_, _i.e._ verses
"freed" from rime. (See Schipper, vol. ii. p. 4.) See also below, in the
notes on Surrey, and later under Imitations of Classical Verse, for
notes on the same movement.

On the nature of English blank verse, see J. A. Symonds's _Blank Verse_
(1895), a reprint of essays in the Appendix to his _Sketches and Studies
in Southern Europe_. In his _Chapters on English Metre_ (chap. iv.), Mr.
J. B. Mayor criticises what he calls Mr. Symonds's "æsthetic
intuitivism."

On the early history of English blank verse, see the article by Schröer,
_Anfänge des Blankverses in England, Anglia_, vol. iv. p. 1, and Mr. G.
C. Macaulay's _Francis Beaumont_, pp. 39-49.

Of Mr. Symonds's remarks on the general nature of blank verse the
following are especially interesting: "English blank verse is perhaps
more various and plastic than any other national metre. It is capable of
being used for the most commonplace and the most sublime utterances....
Originally instituted for the drama, it received in Milton's hands an
epical treatment, and has by authors of our own day been used for
idyllic and even for lyrical compositions. Plato mentions a Greek
musical instrument called _panharmonion_, which was adapted to express
the different modes and systems of melodious utterance. This name might
be applied to our blank verse; there is no harmony of sound, no dignity
of movement, no swiftness, no subtlety of languid sweetness, no brevity,
no force of emphasis, beyond its scope." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 16, 17.)

"It seems adapted specially for thought in evolution; it requires
progression and sustained effort. As a consequence of this, its melody
is determined by the sense which it contains, and depends more upon
proportion and harmony of sounds than upon recurrences and regularities
of structure.... Another point about blank verse is that it admits of no
mediocrity; it must be either clay or gold.... Hence, we find that blank
verse has been the metre of genius, that it is only used successfully
by indubitable poets, and that it is no favorite in a mean, contracted,
and unimaginative age. The freedom of the renaissance created it in
England. The freedom of our century has reproduced it. Blank verse is a
type and symbol of our national literary spirit--uncontrolled by
precedent or rule, inclined to extravagance, yet reaching perfection at
intervals by an inner force and _vivida vis_ of native inspiration."
(_Ibid._ pp. 70-72.)

The earliest use of the term "blank verse," noted in the _New English
Dictionary_, is in Nash's Preface to Greene's _Menaphon_, 1589: "the
swelling bumbast of bragging blanke verse." Some ten years later
Shakspere used it in _Much Ado about Nothing_, V. ii., where Benedick
speaks of those heroes "whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of
blank verse," but will not rime easily. In Chapman's _All Fools_ (1605)
the young gallant, in describing his manifold accomplishments, says he
could write

    "Sonnets in Dozens, or your Quatorzains
    In any rhyme, Masculine, Feminine,
    Or Sdruciolla, or couplets, or Blank Verse."

_Sdruciolla_ is the Italian term for triple-rimed endings.

    Forthwith Fame flieth through the great Libyan towns:
    A mischief Fame, there is none else so swift;
    That moving grows, and flitting gathers force:
    First small for dread, soon after climbs the skies,
    Stayeth on earth, and hides her head in clouds.
    Whom our mother the Earth, tempted by wrath
    Of gods, begat: the last sister, they write,
    To Cœus, and to Enceladus eke:
    Speedy of foot, of wing likewise as swift,
    A monster huge, and dreadful to descrive.
    In every plume that on her body sticks,--
    A thing in deed much marvelous to hear,--
    As many waker eyes lurk underneath,
    So many mouths to speak, and listening ears.
    By night she flies amid the cloudy sky,
    Shrieking, by the dark shadow of the earth,
    Ne doth decline to the sweet sleep her eyes:
    By day she sits to mark on the house top,
    Or turrets high, and the great towns affrays;
    As mindful of ill and lies as blazing truth.

(EARL OF SURREY: _Æneid_, book IV. 223-242. ab. 1540. pub. 1557.)

Surrey's translation of two books of the _Æneid_ may have been suggested
by the translation (1541) made by Francesco Maria Molza, attributed at
the time to Cardinal Ippolito de Medici. This was in Italian unrimed
verse. (See Henry Morley's _First Sketch of English Literature_, p. 294,
and his _English Writers_, vol. viii. p. 61.) The verse of Surrey, like
Wyatt's, shows a somewhat mechanical adherence to the syllable-counting
principle, in contrast to regard for accents.[26] Thus we find such
lines as:

    "Each palace, and sacred porch of the gods."
    "By the divine science of Minerva."

There is a fairly free use of run-on lines; according to Schipper, 35 in
the first 250 of the translation. Nevertheless, the general effect is
monotonous and lacking in flexibility.

    O Jove, how are these people's hearts abused!
    What blind fury thus headlong carries them,
    That, though so many books, so many rolls
    Of ancient time record what grievous plagues
    Light on these rebels aye, and though so oft
    Their ears have heard their aged fathers tell
    What just reward these traitors still receive,--
    Yea, though themselves have seen deep death and blood
    By strangling cord and slaughter of the sword
    To such assigned, yet can they not beware,
    Yet cannot stay their lewd rebellious hands,
    But, suff'ring too foul reason to distain
    Their wretched minds, forget their loyal heart,
    Reject all truth, and rise against their prince?

(SACKVILLE and NORTON: _Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex_, V. ii. 1-14.
1565.)

This tragedy, although Dryden curiously instanced it in defence of the
use of rime on the stage, was the earliest English drama in blank verse.
The metre is decidedly more monotonous than Surrey's, and gives little
hint of the possibilities of the measure for dramatic expression. In
general, the early experiments in blank verse suggest--what they must
often have seemed to their writers--the mere use of the decasyllabic
couplet deprived of its rime. Nevertheless, as Mr. Symonds remarks of a
passage in _Gorboduc_, "we yet may trace variety and emphasis in the
pauses of these lines beyond what would at that epoch have been possible
in sequences of rhymed couplets." (_Blank Verse_, p. 20.)

For a specimen of the blank verse of Gascoigne's _Steel Glass_ (1576,
the earliest didactic poem in English blank verse), see p. 18, above.

    Paris, King Priam's son, thou art arraigned of partiality,
    Of sentence partial and unjust, for that without indifferency,
    Beyond desert or merit far, as thine accusers say,
    From them, to Lady Venus here, thou gavest the prize away:
    What is thine answer?

_Paris's oration to the Council of the Gods:_

    Sacred and just, thou great and dreadful Jove,
    And you thrice-reverend powers, whom love nor hate
    May wrest awry; if this, to me a man,
    This fortune fatal be, that I must plead
    For safe excusal of my guiltless thought,
    The honor more makes my mishap the less,
    That I a man must plead before the gods,
    Gracious forbearers of the world's amiss,
    For her, whose beauty how it hath enticed,
    This heavenly senate may with me aver.

(GEORGE PEELE: _The Arraignment of Paris_, IV. i. 61-75. 1584.)

This specimen shows the new measure introduced into the drama in
connection with the earlier rimed septenary. Peele's verse in general is
characterized by sweetness and fluency, but there is still no hint of
the possibilities of the unrimed decasyllabics.

Schröer, in the article cited from _Anglia_, enumerates the following
additional specimens of blank verse before the appearance of Marlowe's
_Tamburlaine_; Grimald's _Death of Zoroas_ and _Death of Cicero_, in
Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_, 1557; _Jocasta_, by Gascoigne and
Kinwelmarshe, 1566; Turberville's translation of Ovid's _Heroical
Epistles_, 1567; Spenser's unrimed sonnets, in Van der Noodt's _Theatre
for Worldlings_, 1569; Barnaby Rich's _Don Simonides_, 1584; parts of
Lyly's _Woman in the Moon_, 1584; Greene's "Description of Silvestro's
Lady," in _Morando_, 1587; _The Misfortunes of Arthur_, 1587;--the last
two appearing probably in the same year with _Tamburlaine_, whether
earlier or later is uncertain. Most of these specimens are short, and
all are comparatively unimportant.

    Now clear the triple region of the air,
    And let the Majesty of Heaven behold
    Their scourge and terror tread on emperors.
    Smile stars, that reigned at my nativity,
    And dim the brightness of your neighbor lamps!
    Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia!
    For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth,
    First rising in the East with mild aspect,
    But fixed now in the Meridian line,
    Will send up fire to your turning spheres,
    And cause the sun to borrow light of you.
    My sword struck fire from his coat of steel
    Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk;
    As when a fiery exhalation,
    Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud
    Fighting for passage, makes the welkin crack,
    And casts a flash of lightning to the earth.

(MARLOWE: _Tamburlaine_, Part I, IV. ii. 30-46. pub. 1590.)

                          Ah, Faustus,
    Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
    And then thou must be damned perpetually!
    Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,
    That time may cease, and midnight never come;
    Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
    Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
    A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
    That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
    _O lente, lente, currite noctis equi!_
    The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
    The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
    O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
    See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
    One drop would save my soul--half a drop: ah, my Christ!
    Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ![27]
    Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer!

(MARLOWE: _Doctor Faustus_, sc. xvi. ll. 65-81. Printed 1604; written
before 1593.)

Marlowe is universally and rightly regarded as the first English poet
who used blank verse with the hand of a master, and showed its
possibilities. With him it became practically a new measure. Mr. Symonds
says: "He found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic,
and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and
long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a
syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and
changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one
line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after
the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an
internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words
to dominate their form.... Used in this fashion, blank verse became a
Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm;
but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to
rise above the common and despotic beat of time.... It is true that,
like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that
his metre is marked by an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity,
and height of coloring." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 22-27.) In the earlier
verse of _Tamburlaine_, while showing these new qualities of a metrical
master, Marlowe yet kept pretty closely to the individual, end-stopped
line; in his later verse, as illustrated in the fragmentary text of
_Faustus_, he seems to have attained much more freedom, resembling that
of the later plays of Shakspere.[28]

    Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise,
    Her true perfection, or my false transgression,
    That makes me, reasonless, to reason thus?
    She's fair, and so is Julia that I love,--
    That I did love, for now my love is thawed,
    Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire,
    Bears no impression of the thing it was.
    Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,
    And that I love him not, as I was wont:
    O! but I love his lady too too much;
    And that's the reason I love him so little.
    How shall I dote on her with more advice,
    That thus without advice begin to love her?...
    If I can check my erring love, I will;
    If not, to compass her I'll use my skill.

(SHAKSPERE: _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. iv. 196-208; 213, 214. ab.
1590.)

    Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
    To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
    This sensible warm motion to become
    A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
    To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
    In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
    To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
    And blown with restless violence about
    The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
    Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
    Imagine howling,--'tis too horrible!
    The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
    That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
    Can lay on nature, is a paradise
    To what we fear of death.

(SHAKSPERE: _Measure for Measure_, III. i. 118-132. ab. 1603.)

This Mr. Symonds cites as "a single instance of the elasticity,
self-restraint, and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse; of its
freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's
involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigor.... It illustrates the
freedom from adventitious ornament and the organic continuity of
Shakspere's versification, while it also exhibits his power of varying
his cadences and suiting them to the dramatic utterance of his
characters." (_Blank Verse_, p. 31.)

    Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;
    And ye that on the sands with printless foot
    Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
    When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that
    By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
    Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
    Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice
    To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
    (Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimm'd
    The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
    And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
    Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
    Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
    With his own bolt: the strong-bas'd promontory
    Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
    The pine and cedar: graves, at my command,
    Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth
    By my so potent art.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Tempest_, V. i. 33-50. ab. 1610.)

No attempt can be made to represent adequately the blank verse of
Shakspere. The specimens, chosen respectively from his earlier, middle,
and later periods, illustrate the trend of development of his verse. In
the earlier period it was characterized by the slight use of feminine
endings and _enjambement_; in the later by marked preference for both,
and by general freedom and flexibility. In other words, Shakspere's own
development represents, in a sort of miniature, that of the history of
dramatic blank verse. According to Furnivall's tables, the proportion of
run-on lines to end-stopped lines in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ is
one in ten, while in _The Tempest_ it is one in three. The increased use
of "light" and "weak" endings is closely analogous. Professor Wendell
says of the verse of _Cymbeline_: "End-stopped lines are so deliberately
avoided that one feels a sense of relief when a speech and a line end
together. Such a phrase as

    'How slow his soul sail'd on, how swift his ship'

is deliberately made, not a single line, but two half-lines. Several
times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the syllables
before the metrical regularity of the verse appears.... Clearly this
puzzling style is decadent; the distinction between verse and prose is
breaking down." (_William Shakspere_, p. 357.)[29]

                                  I, that did help
    To fell the lofty cedar of the world
    Germanicus; that at one stroke cut down
    Drusus, that upright elm; withered his vine;
    Laid Silius and Sabinus, two strong oaks,
    Flat on the earth; besides those other shrubs,
    Cordus and Sosia, Claudia Pulchra,
    Furnius and Gallus, which I have grubbed up;
    And since, have set my axe so strong and deep
    Into the root of spreading Agrippine;
    Lopt off and scattered her proud branches, Nero,
    Drusus; and Caius too, although replanted.
    If you will, Destinies, that after all,
    I faint now ere I touch my period,
    You are but cruel; and I already have done
    Things great enough. All Rome hath been my slave;
    The senate sate an idle looker-on,
    And witness of my power; when I have blushed
    More to command than it to suffer: all
    The fathers have sat ready and prepared,
    To give me empire, temples, or their throats,
    When I would ask 'em; and, what crowns the top,
    Rome, senate, people, all the world have seen
    Jove but my equal; Cæsar but my second.
    'Tis then your malice, Fates, who, but your own,
    Envy and fear to have any power long known.

(BEN JONSON: _Sejanus_, V. iv. 1603.)

Jonson's blank verse, says Mr. Symonds, is that "of a scholar--pointed,
polished, and free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and
is often labored; but vigorous and solid it never fails to be." He also
instances the opening lines of the _Sad Shepherd_ as exceptional in
their "delicate music." Beaumont's verse is in many ways similar in
structure to Jonson's, yet commonly more melodious.

                                  "He is all
    (As he stands now) but the mere name of Cæsar,
    And should the Emperor enforce him lesser,
    Not coming from himself, it were more dangerous:
    He is honest, and will hear you. Doubts are scattered,
    And almost come to growth in every household;
    Yet, in my foolish judgment, were this mastered,
    The people, that are now but rage, and his,
    Might be again obedience. You shall know me
    When Rome is fair again; till when, I love you."
    No name! This may be cunning; yet it seems not,
    For there is nothing in it but is certain,
    Besides my safety. Had not good Germanicus,
    That was as loyal and as straight as he is,
    If not prevented by Tiberius,
    Been by the soldiers forced their emperor?
    He had, and 'tis my wisdom to remember it:
    And was not Corbulo (even that Corbulo,
    That ever fortunate and living Roman,
    That broke the heart-strings of the Parthians,
    And brought Arsaces' line upon their knees,
    Chained to the awe of Rome), because he was thought
    (And but in wine once) fit to make a Cæsar,
    Cut off by Nero? I must seek my safety;
    For 'tis the same again, if not beyond it.

(FLETCHER: _Valentinian_, IV. i. ab. 1615.)

                   I can but grieve my ignorance:
    Repentance, some say too, is the best sacrifice;
    For sure, sir, if my chance had been so happy
    (As I confess I was mine own destroyer)
    As to have arrived at you, I will not prophesy,
    But certain, as I think, I should have pleased you;
    Have made you as much wonder at my courtesy,
    My love and duty, as I have disheartened you.
    Some hours we have of youth, and some of folly;
    And being free-born maids, we take a liberty,
    And, to maintain that, sometimes we strain highly....
    A sullen woman fear, that talks not to you;
    She has a sad and darkened soul, loves dully;
    A merry and a free wench, give her liberty,
    Believe her, in the lightest form she appears to you,
    Believe her excellent, though she despise you;
    Let but these fits and flashes pass, she will show to you
    As jewels rubbed from dust, or gold new burnished.

(FLETCHER: _The Wild-Goose Chase_, IV. i. 1621.)

The verse of Fletcher is highly individual among the Jacobean
dramatists, though in a sense typical of the breaking down of blank
verse, in the direction of prose, which was going on at this period. The
distinguishing feature of Fletcher's verse is the constant use of
feminine endings, and the extension of these to triple and even
quadruple endings, by the addition of one or more syllables.
Twelve-syllable lines (not alexandrines, but ordinary lines with triple
endings) are not at all uncommon; and the additional syllable or
syllables may even be emphatic. In general the tendency was in the
direction of the freedom of conversational prose. Such a line as

    "Methinks you are infinitely bound to her for her journey"

would not be recognized, standing by itself, as a five-stress iambic
verse; properly read, however, it takes its place without difficulty in
the scheme of the metre.[30]

    Whatever ails me, now a-late especially,
    I can as well be hanged as refrain seeing her;
    Some twenty times a day, nay, not so little,
    Do I force errands, frame ways and excuses,
    To come into her sight; and I've small reason for't,
    And less encouragement, for she baits me still
    Every time worse than other; does profess herself
    The cruellest enemy to my face in town;
    At no hand can abide the sight of me,
    As if danger or ill luck hung in my looks.
    I must confess my face is bad enough,
    But I know far worse has better fortune,
    And not endur'd alone, but doted on;
    And yet such pick-hair'd faces, chins like witches',
    Here and there five hairs whispering in a corner,
    As if they grew in fear of one another,
    Wrinkles like troughs, where swine-deformity swills
    The tears of perjury, that lie there like wash
    Fallen from the slimy and dishonest eye;
    Yet such a one plucks sweets without restraint.

(THOMAS MIDDLETON: _The Changeling_, II. i. ab. 1623.)

Middleton carried on the work of fitting blank verse for plausibly
conversational, as distinguished from poetic, effects. Often his lines
are more difficult to scan than Fletcher's, and still less seek
melodiousness for its own sake. Characteristic specimens are verses like
these:

    "I doubt I'm too quick of apprehension now."
    "With which one gentleman, far in debt, has courted her."
    "To call for, 'fore me, and thou look'st half ill indeed."

    What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
    With diamonds? or to be smothered
    With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
    I know death hath ten thousand several doors
    For men to take their exits; and 'tis found
    They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
    You may open them both ways; any way, for Heaven sake,
    So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers
    That I perceive death, now I am well awake,
    Best gift is they can give or I can take....
    --Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength
    Must pull down Heaven upon me:--
    Yet stay; Heaven-gates are not so highly arched
    As princes' palaces; they that enter there
    Must go upon their knees.--Come, violent death,
    Serve for mandragora to make me sleep!--
    Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
    They then may feed in quiet.

(JOHN WEBSTER: _The Duchess of Malfi_, IV. ii. 1623.)

"Webster," says Mr. Symonds, "used his metre as the most delicate and
responsive instrument for all varieties of dramatic expression....
Scansion in the verse of Webster is subordinate to the purpose of the
speaker." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 45-47.) He also calls attention to such
remarkable lines as--

    "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young."
    "Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out."

    Are you not frightened with the imprecations
    And curses of whole families, made wretched
    By your sinister practices?--
                                  --Yes, as rocks are,
    When foamy billows split themselves against
    Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved,
    When wolves, with hunger pined, howl at her brightness.
    I am of a solid temper, and, like these,
    Steer on, a constant course: with mine own sword,
    If called into the field, I can make that right
    Which fearful enemies murmured at as wrong.
    Now, for these other piddling complaints
    Breathed out in bitterness; as when they call me
    Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder
    On my poor neighbor's right, or grand incloser
    Of what was common, to my private use;
    Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries,
    And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold,
    I only think what 'tis to have my daughter
    Right honorable; and 'tis a powerful charm
    Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity,
    Or the least sting of conscience.

(PHILIP MASSINGER: _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, IV. i. 1633.)

Massinger's verse is more regular than that of Fletcher and others, in
the matter of extra final syllables and the like, but free and flexible
in the use of run-on lines and generally progressive movement.[31] It is
an error to assume that there was no good blank verse written in this
period when the drama in general is said to have been in a state of
"decadence." The verse of Ford, for example, is noticeably strong and
restrained (compare the remark of Mr. Symonds, on its "glittering
regularity"). On the other hand, one may see the dramas of Richard Brome
for specimens of the decadent metre at its worst. Brome wrote comedies
both in prose and verse, and there is little difference between the two
forms in his hands. See also the crude and lax verse of some of the
early plays of Dryden, illustrated on p. 234 below. It was verse of this
kind which, as Mr. Gosse observes, justified the introduction of the
heroic couplet in all its strictness.

    All in a moment through the gloom were seen
    Ten thousand banners rise into the air
    With orient colors waving: with them rose
    A forest huge of spears: and thronging helms
    Appear'd, and serried shields in thick array
    Of depth immeasurable: anon they move
    In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
    Of flutes and soft recorders; such as rais'd
    To height of noblest temper heroes old
    Arming to battle, and in stead of rage
    Deliberate valor breath'd, firm and unmov'd
    With dread of death to flight or foul retreat,
    Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage
    With solemn touches, troubl'd thoughts, and chase
    Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain
    From mortal or immortal minds....
                           ... And now his heart
    Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength
    Glories: for never since created man
    Met such embodied force, as nam'd with these
    Could merit more than that small infantry
    Warr'd on by cranes: though all the giant brood
    Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joined
    That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side
    Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds
    In fable or romance of Uther's son
    Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
    And all who since, baptiz'd or infidel,
    Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
    Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebizond,
    Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
    When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell
    By Fontarabbia.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, Book I. ll. 544-559; 571-587. 1667.)

                     With head a while inclined,
    And eyes fast fixed, he stood, as one who prayed,
    Or some great matter in his mind revolved:
    At last, with head erect, thus cried aloud:--
    "Hitherto, Lords, what your commands imposed
    I have performed, as reason was, obeying,
    Not without wonder or delight beheld;
    Now, of my own accord, such other trial
    I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,
    As with amaze shall strike all who behold."
    This uttered, straining all his nerves he bowed;
    As with the force of winds and waters pent
    When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars,
    With horrible convulsion to and fro
    He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
    The whole roof after them with burst of thunder
    Upon the heads of all who sat beneath.

(MILTON: _Samson Agonistes_, ll. 1636-1652. 1671.)

The blank verse of Milton is characterized by greater freedom and
flexibility than that of any earlier poet. The single line practically
ceases to be the unit of the verse, which is divided rather into
metrical paragraphs, or, as some would even call them, stanzas.
Professor Corson quotes an interesting passage from a letter of
Coleridge, giving an account of a conversation in which Wordsworth
expressed his view of this sort of blank verse. "My friend gave his
definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted (the
English iambic blank verse above all) in the apt arrangement of pauses
and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,

             with many a winding bout
    Of linked sweetness long drawn out,

and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic
vigor of single lines, which were indeed injurious to the total effect,
except where they were introduced for some specific purpose." (Corson's
_Primer of English Verse_, p. 218.) In like manner Mr. Symonds says:
"The most sonorous passages begin and end with interrupted lines,
including in one organic structure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphs
of fluent melody.... In these structures there are many pauses which
enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are perfect, none
satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, until the final and
deliberate close is reached." (_Blank Verse_ pp. 56, 57.)

In Milton's own prefatory note to _Paradise Lost_, he called his blank
verse "English heroic verse without rime." Rime he spoke of as "the
invention of a barbarous age, ... graced indeed since by the use of some
famous modern poets,"--not least among them, he might have said, being
John Milton himself. He described also the special character of his
verse in saying that "true musical delight ... consists only in apt
numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out
from one verse into another,"--that is, by _enjambement_. "This neglect
then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, ... that it rather
is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient
liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage
of riming."[32]

It appears from this note that Milton regarded his heroic blank verse as
a different measure from the familiar dramatic blank verse. The latter
he used in _Samson Agonistes_, the verse-structure of which will be seen
to differ from that of _Paradise Lost_; the most salient distinction is
the more frequent use of feminine endings. Mr. Symonds remarks
interestingly on the "difference between Shaksperian and Miltonic,
between dramatic and epical blank verse. The one is simple in
construction and progressive, the other is complex and stationary....
The one exhibits a thought, in the process of formation, developing
itself from the excited fancy of the speaker. The other presents to us
an image crystallized and perfect in the poet's mind; the one is in
time, the other in space--the one is a growing and the other a complete
organism.... The one, if we may play upon a fancy, resembles Music, and
the other Architecture." (_Blank Verse_, p. 58.)

                 Methinks I do not want
    That huge long train of fawning followers,
    That swept a furlong after me.
    'Tis true I am alone;
    So was the godhead, ere he made the world,
    And better served himself than served by nature.
    And yet I have a soul
    Above this humble fate. I could command,
    Love to do good, give largely to true merit,
    All that a king should do; but though these are not
    My province, I have scene enough within
    To exercise my virtue.
    All that a heart, so fixed as mine, can move,
    Is, that my niggard fortune starves my love.

(DRYDEN: _Marriage à la Mode_, III. i. 1672.)

    She lay, and leaned her cheek upon her hand,
    And cast a look so languishingly sweet,
    As if, secure of all beholders' hearts,
    Neglecting, she could take them: boys, like Cupids,
    Stood fanning, with their painted wings, the winds
    That played about her face: but if she smiled,
    A darting glory seemed to blaze abroad,
    That men's desiring eyes were never wearied,
    But hung upon the object. To soft flutes
    The silver oars kept time; and while they played,
    The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight,
    And both to thought. 'Twas heaven, or somewhat more;

(DRYDEN: _All for Love_, III. i. 1678.)

The first of these specimens of Dryden's blank verse illustrates the
loose form of it found in many of the comedies, ill distinguished from
prose and used interchangeably with prose, as in the case of the late
Jacobean dramatists. It was with _All for Love_ that Dryden dropped the
use of the rimed couplet in tragedy, and turned his hand toward the
construction of really noble blank verse. This play was professedly an
imitation of Shakspere, and the passage here quoted is a paraphrase of
one in _Antony and Cleopatra_, II. ii. Shakspere's blank verse doubtless
exerted a good influence on the quality of Dryden's. "From this time
on," says Mr. Gosse, "Dryden's blank verse was more severe than any
which had been used, except by Milton, since Ben Jonson." (_Eighteenth
Century Literature_, p. 14.)

            Then hear me, bounteous Heaven!
    Pour down your blessings on this beauteous head,
    Where everlasting sweets are always springing:
    With a continual-giving hand, let peace,
    Honor, and safety always hover round her;
    Feed her with plenty; let her eyes ne'er see
    A sight of sorrow, nor her heart know mourning:
    Crown all her days with joy, her nights with rest
    Harmless as her own thoughts, and prop her virtue
    To bear the loss of one that too much loved;
    And comfort her with patience in our parting....
                  --Then hear me too, just Heaven!
    Pour down your curses on this wretched head,
    With never-ceasing vengeance; let despair,
    Danger, or infamy, nay, all surround me.
    Starve me with wantings; let my eyes ne'er see
    A sight of comfort, nor my heart know peace;
    But dash my days with sorrow, nights with horrors
    Wild as my own thoughts now, and let loose fury
    To make me mad enough for what I lose,
    If I must lose him--if I must! I will not.

(THOMAS OTWAY: _Venice Preserved_, V. ii. 1682.)

This play was one of those marking the return of the serious drama to
blank verse, after the brief domination of the couplet on the stage.
While Otway's verse is not as good as Dryden's best, it is of fairly
even merit, and shows that something had been learned from the practice
of the couplet.

    Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!
    Through what variety of untried being,
    Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
    The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;
    But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
    Here will I hold. If there's a power above us
    (And that there is all nature cries aloud
    Through all her works), he must delight in virtue;
    And that which he delights in must be happy....
    ... The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
    At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
    The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
    Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,
    But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
    Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,
    The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

(ADDISON: _Cato_, V. i. ll. 10-18; 25-31. 1713.)

    Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
    To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
    Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
    What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be.
    I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
    Forewarn'd men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
    To knock, and give the alarum. But what means
    This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
    That does its work by halves. Why might you not
    Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
    Of your society forbid your speaking
    Upon a point so nice? I'll ask no more:
    Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
    Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
    A very little time will clear up all
    And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.

(ROBERT BLAIR: _The Grave_. 1743.)

This poem was one of those connected with the revival of blank verse,
for didactic poetry, near the middle of the eighteenth century. Of
Blair's verse Mr. Saintsbury says that it "is by no means to be
despised. Technically its only fault is the use and abuse of the
redundant syllable. The quality ... is in every respect rather moulded
upon dramatic than upon purely poetical models, and he shows little
trace of imitation either of Milton, or of his contemporary, Thomson."
(Ward's _English Poets_, vol. iii. p. 217.)

    Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
    At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes
    Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day
    With a continual flow. The cherished fields
    Put on their winter-robe of purest white.
    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
    Along the mazy current. Low the woods
    Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun
    Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
    Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
    Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
    The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
    Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
    The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
    Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
    The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
    Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
    The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
    Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
    In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
    His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
    His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first
    Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
    On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
    Eyes all the smiling family askance,
    And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is--
    Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
    Attract his slender feet.

(THOMSON: _The Seasons; Winter_. 1726.)

Thomson's _Seasons_ was undoubtedly the most influential of the poems of
the blank-verse revival of this period. Saintsbury says: "His blank
verse in especial cannot receive too much commendation. With that of
Milton, and that of the present Poet Laureate [Tennyson], it must rank
as one of the chief original models of the metre to be found in English
poetry." (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. iii. p. 169.)

Other influential poems of the same period, written in blank verse, were
Glover's _Leonidas_ (1737), Young's _Night Thoughts_ (1742-1744), and
Akenside's _Pleasures of the Imagination_ (1744). Much earlier than
these had come the curious poem of John Philips on _Cider_ (1708).
Philips is praised by Thomson as the successor of Milton in some lines
of _Autumn_:

    "Philips, Pomona's bard, the second thou
    Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse
    With British freedom sing the British song."

In general, the blank verse of all these poets shows the influence of
the couplet and lacks flexibility. Thus Mr. Symonds says: "The use of
the couplet had unfitted poets for its composition. Their acquired
canons of regularity, when applied to loose and flowing metre, led them
astray.... Hence it followed, that when blank verse began again to be
written, it found itself very much at the point where it had stood
before the appearance of Marlowe. Even Thomson ... wrote stiff and
languid blank verse with monosyllabic terminations and monotonous
cadences--a pedestrian style." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 61, 62.)[33]

    Here unmolested, through whatever sign
    The sun proceeds, I wander; neither mist,
    Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me,
    Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.
    Even in the spring and playtime of the year,
    That calls the unwonted villager abroad
    With all her little ones, a sportive train,
    To gather kingcups in the yellow mead,
    And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick
    A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook,
    These shades are all my own. The timorous hare,
    Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
    Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove unalarmed
    Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends
    His long love-ditty for my near approach.
    Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm
    That age or injury has hollowed deep,
    Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves
    He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
    To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun,
    The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play.
    He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
    Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush,
    And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud,
    With all the prettiness of feigned alarm,
    And anger insignificantly fierce.

(COWPER: _The Task_, book VI. ll. 295-320. 1785.)

"The blank verse of Cowper's _Task_ is admirably adapted to the theme,"
says Professor Corson. "Cowper saw farther than any one before him had
seen, into the secrets of the elaborate music of Milton's blank verse,
and availed himself of those secrets to some extent--to as far an extent
as the simplicity of his themes demanded." (_Primer of English Verse_,
p. 221.) Professor Ward speaks, however, of the "lumbering movement" of
Cowper's blank verse as being in contrast to "the neatness and ease of
his rhymed couplets." (_English Poets_, vol. iii. p. 432.) Cowper prided
himself, not without reason, on the individuality of his blank verse. In
a letter to the Rev. John Newton (Dec. 11, 1784) he said: "Milton's
manner was peculiar. So is Thomson's. He that should write like either
of them, would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not
of a poet.... Blank verse is susceptible of a much greater
diversification of manner than verse in rhyme: and why the modern
writers of it have all thought proper to cast their numbers alike, I
know not." In another letter (to Lady Hesketh, March 20, 1786) Cowper
reveals his careful study of Milton's verse: "When the sense requires
it, or when for the sake of avoiding a monotonous cadence of the lines,
of which there is always danger in so long a work, it shall appear to be
prudent, I still leave a verse behind me that has some uneasiness in its
formation. It is not possible to read _Paradise Lost_, with an ear for
harmony, without being sensible of the great advantage which Milton drew
from such a management.... Uncritical readers find that they perform a
long journey through several hundred pages perhaps without weariness;
they find the numbers harmonious, but are not aware of the art by which
that harmony is brought to pass, much less suspect that a violation of
all harmony on some occasions is the very thing to which they are not a
little indebted for their gratification."

    Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
    Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
    Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
    Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast--
    Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
    That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
    In adoration, upward from thy base
    Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
    Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
    To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
    Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
    Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
    Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
    Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
    And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
    Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

(COLERIDGE: _Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni_, ll. 70-85.
1802.)

    It was a den where no insulting light
    Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans
    They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar
    Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,
    Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.
    Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd
    Ever as if just rising from a sleep,
    Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;
    And thus in thousand hugest phantasies
    Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe.
    Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon,
    Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge
    Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled:
    Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering.
    Cœus, and Gyges, and Briareus,
    Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion,
    With many more, the brawniest in assault,
    Were pent in regions of laborious breath;
    Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep
    Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs
    Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd;
    Without a motion, save of their big hearts
    Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd
    With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.

(KEATS: _Hyperion_, book II. 1820.)

"In Keats at last," says Mr. Symonds, "we find again that inner music
which is the soul of true blank verse.... His _Hyperion_ is sung, not
written.... Its music is fluid, bound by no external measurement of
feet, but determined by the sense and intonation of the poet's thought,
while like the crotalos of the Athenian flute-player, the decasyllabic
beat maintains an uninterrupted undercurrent of regular pulsations."
(_Blank Verse_, p. 64.)

                              I have learned
    To look on nature, not as in the hour
    Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
    The still, sad music of humanity,
    Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
    To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
    A presence that disturbs me with the joy
    Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
    Of something far more deeply interfused,
    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
    And the round ocean and the living air,
    And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
    A motion and a spirit, that impels
    All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
    And rolls through all things.

(WORDSWORTH: _Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_. 1798.)

    Let not high verse, mourning the memory
    Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
    Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
    Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
    And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
    To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
    It is a woe 'too deep for tears,' when all
    Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
    Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
    Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
    The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
    But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
    Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
    Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

(SHELLEY: _Alastor_, ll. 707-720. 1815.)

    The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
    And God fulfils himself in many ways,
    Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
    Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
    I have lived my life, and that which I have done
    May He within himself make pure! but thou,
    If thou shouldst never see my face again,
    Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
    Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
    Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
    For what are men better than sheep or goats
    That nourish a blind life within the brain,
    If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
    Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
    For so the whole round earth is every way
    Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
    But now farewell. I am going a long way
    With these thou seest--if indeed I go
    (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
    To the island-valley of Avilion;
    Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
    Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
    Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
    And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
    Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.

(TENNYSON: _Idylls of the King; The Passing of Arthur_. 1869.)

                           But that large-moulded man,
    His visage all agrin as at a wake,
    Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back
    With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came
    As comes a pillar of electric cloud,
    Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains,
    And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes
    On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits,
    And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth
    Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for everything
    Gave way before him: only Florian, he
    That loved me closer than his own right eye,
    Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down:
    And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince,
    With Psyche's color round his helmet, tough,
    Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms;
    But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote
    And threw him: last I spurr'd; I felt my veins
    Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand,
    And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung,
    Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanc'd;
    I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth
    Flow'd from me; darkness closed me; and I fell.

(TENNYSON: _The Princess_, v. 1847.)

    She knew me, and acknowledg'd me her heir,
    Pray'd me to keep her debts, and keep the Faith;
    Then claspt the cross, and pass'd away in peace.
    I left her lying still and beautiful,
    More beautiful than in life. Why would you vex yourself,
    Poor sister? Sir, I swear I have no heart
    To be your queen. To reign is restless fence,
    Tierce, quart, and trickery. Peace is with the dead.
    Her life was winter, for her spring was nipt;
    And she loved much: pray God she be forgiven.

(TENNYSON: _Queen Mary_, V. v. 1875.)

    Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
    That brings our friends up from the underworld,
    Sad as the last which reddens over one
    That sinks with all we love below the verge;
    So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

    Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
    The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
    To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
    The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
    So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

(TENNYSON: _The Princess_, iv.; "Tears, Idle Tears." 1847.)

The blank verse of Tennyson is probably to be regarded as the most
masterly found among modern poets.[34] Its flexibility is almost
infinite, yet never unmelodious. The last of the specimens just quoted
illustrates his use of blank verse for short lyrical poems,--an unusual
and notable achievement. Perhaps only Collins's _Ode to Evening_ can be
compared with his success in this direction, and Collins used a more
elaborate strophe to fill, in part, the place of rime. Of the unrimed
lyrics in _The Princess_, Mr. Symonds says that they "are perfect
specimens of most melodious and complete minstrelsy in words." In the
"Tears, Idle Tears," he goes on to say, the verse "is divided into
periods of five lines, each of which terminates with the words 'days
that are no more.' This recurrence of sound and meaning is a substitute
for rhyme, and suggests rhyme so persuasively that it is impossible to
call the poem mere blank verse." See also the specimens on p. 144 above.

In the case of both Tennyson and Browning the student should compare the
form of the narrative blank verse on the one hand with that of the
dramatic on the other. Yet in a sense all Browning's blank verse is
dramatic. It is no less flexible than Tennyson's, but (as in most of
Browning's poetry) sacrifices more of melody in adapting itself to the
thought.

    To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,
    Out of the low obscure and petty world--
    Or only see one purpose and one will
    Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right:
    To have to do with nothing but the true,
    The good, the eternal--and these, not alone,
    In the main current of the general life,
    But small experiences of every day,
    Concerns of the particular hearth and home:
    To learn not only by a comet's rush
    But a rose's birth,--not by the grandeur, God,
    But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far away!
    Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!--
    Just as a drudging student trims his lamp,
    Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place
    Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patch'd gown close,
    Dreams, "Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!"
    Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes
    To the old solitary nothingness.
    So I, from such communion, pass content.--
    O great, just, good God! Miserable me!

(BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book; Caponsacchi_. 1868.)

_The Ring and the Book_ Professor Corson calls "the greatest achievement
of the century ... in the effective use of blank verse in the treatment
of a great subject.... Its blank verse, while having a most complex
variety of character, is the most dramatic blank verse since the
Elizabethan era.... One reads it without a sense almost of there being
anything artificial in the construction of the language; ... one gets
the impression that the poet thought and felt spontaneously in blank
verse." (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 224, 225.)

                          This eve's the time,
    This eve intense with yon first trembling star
    We seem to pant and reach; scarce aught between
    The earth that rises and the heaven that bends;
    All nature self-abandoned, every tree
    Flung as it will, pursuing its own thoughts
    And fixed so, every flower and every weed,
    No pride, no shame, no victory, no defeat;
    All under God, each measured by itself.
    These statues round us stand abrupt, distinct,
    The strong in strength, the weak in weakness fixed,
    The Muse forever wedded to her lyre,
    Nymph to her fawn, and Silence to her rose:
    See God's approval on his universe!
    Let us do so--aspire to live as these
    In harmony with truth, ourselves being true!
    Take the first way, and let the second come!

(BROWNING: _In a Balcony_. 1855.)

    The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
    So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too--
    So, through the thunder comes a human voice
    Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
    Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
    Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
    But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
    And thou must love me who have died for thee."
    The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

(BROWNING: _Epistle of Karshish_. 1855.)

    God's works--paint any one, and count it crime
    To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His works
    Are here already; nature is complete:
    Suppose you reproduce her--(which you can't)
    There's no advantage! you must beat her, then."
    For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love
    First when we see them painted, things we have passed
    Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
    And so they are better, painted--better to us,
    Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
    God uses us to help each other so,
    Lending our minds out.

(BROWNING: _Fra Lippo Lippi_. 1855.)

Of some of Browning's blank verse Mr. Mayor observes: "The extreme
harshness of many of these lines is almost a match for anything in
Surrey, only what in Surrey is helplessness seems the perversity of
strength in Browning.... The Aristophanic vein in Browning is
continually leading him to trample under foot the dignity of verse and
to shock the uninitiated reader by colloquial familiarities, 'thumps
upon the back,' such as the poet Cowper resented; yet no one can be more
impressive than he is when he surrenders himself to the pure spirit of
poetry, and flows onward in a stream of glorious music, such as that in
which Balaustion pictures Athens overwhelmed by an advance of the sea
(_Aristophanes' Apology_, p. 2)." (_Chapters on English Metre_, 2d ed.,
pp. 216, 217.)

    But the majestic river floated on,
    Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
    Into the frosty starlight, and there mov'd,
    Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste,
    Under the solitary moon: he flow'd
    Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunje,
    Brimming, and bright, and large: then sands begin
    To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
    And split his currents; that for many a league
    The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along
    Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles--
    Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
    In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,
    A foil'd, circuitous wanderer:--till at last
    The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
    His luminous home of waters opens, bright
    And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bath'd stars
    Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _Sohrab and Rustum_. 1853.)

    Here is the place: but read it low and sweet.
    Put out the lamp!
                      --The glimmering page is clear.
    "Now on that day it chanced that Launcelot,
    Thinking to find the King, found Guenevere
    Alone; and when he saw her whom he loved,
    Whom he had met too late, yet loved the more;
    Such was the tumult at his heart that he
    Could speak not, for her husband was his friend,
    His dear familiar friend: and they two held
    No secret from each other until now;
    But were like brothers born"--my voice breaks off.
    Read you a little on.
                          --"And Guenevere,
    Turning, beheld him suddenly whom she
    Loved in her thought, and even from that hour
    When first she saw him; for by day, by night,
    Though lying by her husband's side, did she
    Weary for Launcelot, and knew full well
    How ill that love, and yet that love how deep!"
    I cannot see--the page is dim: read you.
      --"Now they two were alone, yet could not speak;
    But heard the beating of each other's hearts.
    He knew himself a traitor but to stay,
    Yet could not stir: she pale and yet more pale
    Grew till she could no more, but smiled on him.
    Then when he saw that wished smile, he came
    Near to her and still near, and trembled; then
    Her lips all trembling kissed."
                                    --Ah, Launcelot!

(STEPHEN PHILLIPS: _Paolo and Francesca_, III. iii. 1901.)

The blank verse of Stephen Phillips is the most important--one may say
perhaps the only important--that has been written since Tennyson's; and
it is of especial interest as forming an actual revival of the form on
the English stage. Aside from the dramas, it is seen at its best in
_Marpessa_. Imitating Milton, and at the same time handling the measure
with original force, Mr. Phillips introduces unusual cadences, for which
he has been severely reproached by the critics. Such lines as the
following are typical of these variations from the normal rhythm:

    "O all fresh out of beautiful sunlight."
    "Agamemnon bowed over, and from his wheel."
    "And to dispel shadows and shadowy fear."
    "My bloom faded, and waning light of eyes."

For a criticism of Mr. Phillips's verse, see Mr. William Archer's _Poets
of the Younger Generation_, pp. 313-327.


FOOTNOTES:

[19] One may easily find other instances of the sporadic appearance of
the same measure in the midst of irregular "long lines" or rough
alexandrines and septenaries. Compare, for example, the following, from
early plays in Manly's _Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_:

"To be alone, nor very convenyent." "Ye shall not touche yt, for that I
forbede." "But ye shuld be as godes resydent." "And many a chaumbyr thou
xalt have therinne." "In this flood spylt is many a mannys blood."
"Therfore be we now cast in ryght grett care."

The context of many of these lines shows that they were intended to be
read as four-stress rather than five-stress; but such examples serve to
make clear how easily English rhythm would fall into the decasyllabic
line.

[20] See also an account of Zarncke's monograph (1865) _Ueber den
fünffussiger Iambus_, in Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_,
Postscript.

[21] See the entire Preface in Chalmers's _English Poets_, vol. viii. p.
32, and in the Appendix to Gosse's _From Shakespeare to Pope_. For an
analysis of Waller's verse with reference to this Preface, see "A Note
upon Waller's Distich," by H. C. Beeching, in the Furnivall _Miscellany_
(1901), p. 4.

[22] Beaumont's own verse is of no little interest, and Mr. Gosse, in a
recent letter to the present editor, observes that he finds in Beaumont,
"far more definitely than in George Sandys, the principal precursor of
Waller."

[23] See also the verses of Oliver Wendell Holmes on _The Strong Heroic
Line_ (in Stedman's _American Anthology_, p. 161), where he says:

"Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride The straight-backed measure
with its stately stride: It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope; It
sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope; In Goldsmith's verse it
learned a sweeter strain; Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain; I
smile to listen while the critic's scorn Flouts the proud purple kings
have nobly worn."



[24] On the verse of Keats in general, see the remarks of Mr. Robert
Bridges in his Introduction to the Muses' Library edition of Keats.

[25] On Shelley's metres, see Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_, 2d
ed., chap. xiv.

[26] On the verse of Surrey in general, see W. J. Courthope, in his
_History of English Poetry_, vol. ii. pp. 92-96. Mr. Courthope speaks
highly of Surrey as a metrist, in particular attributing to him certain
reforms in the handling of English verse: the attempt to use five
perfect iambic feet to the line, the harmonious placing of the cesura,
the avoidance of rime on weak syllables, the preservation of the accent
on the even-numbered syllables. (To some of these reforms, as has been
indicated, there are not a few exceptions.) In like manner ten Brink
observes that Surrey "is more successful than Wyatt in adapting foreign
rules to the rhythmical accent of the English language, and thus he is
in reality the founder of the New-English metrical system." (_English
Literature_, Kennedy trans., vol. iii. p. 243.)

On the blank verse of Surrey, see also an article by Prof. O. J.
Emerson, in _Modern Language Notes_, vol. iv. col. 466, and Mayor's
_Chapters on English Metre_, 2d ed., chap. x.

[27] The edition of 1616 has:

"One drop of blood will save me: O my Christ! Rend not my heart for
naming of my Christ!"

and omits the preceding line.

(See Bullen ed., vol. i. pp. 279, 280.)

[28] On Marlowe's verse see also Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_, 2d
ed., chap. x.

[29] On the technical problems of Shakspere's verse, see Fleay's
_Shakspere Manual_; Abbott's _Shakespearean Grammar_; G. Browne's _Notes
on Shakspere's Versification_; and Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_.

[30] "In a play of 2500 lines Massinger might possibly have as many as
1200 double or triple endings, Shakspere in his last period might have
as many as 850, while Fletcher would normally have at least 1700, and
might not improbably give as many as 2000." (G. C. Macaulay, in _Francis
Beaumont_, pp. 43, 44. See the entire passage on Fletcher's metre as a
test of authorship. Mr. Macaulay also remarks interestingly that
Fletcher's metrical style is an outgrowth of his general use of the
loose or disjointed, as opposed to the periodic or rounded, style of
speech. To this "Shakspere worked his way slowly," while Fletcher "seems
to have at once and naturally adopted" it.) See also Fleay's
_Shakespeare Manual_, p. 153.

[31] On Massinger's verse see also Fleay's _Shakespeare Manual_, p. 154.

[32] On Milton's verse, see, besides the entire third essay in Mr.
Symonds's book, Masson's edition of Milton, vol. iii. pp. 107-133;
Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_; Mayor's _Chapters on English
Metre_, 2d ed., pp. 71-77 and 96-105; chapter xii. of Corson's _Primer
of English Verse_; and a passage in De Quincey's essay on "Milton v.
Southey and Landor," in his works, ed. Masson, vol. xi. pp. 463 ff. Says
De Quincey: "You might as well tax Mozart with harshness in the divinest
passages of _Don Giovanni_ as Milton with any such offence against
metrical science. Be assured it is yourself that do not read with
understanding, not Milton that by possibility can be found deaf to the
demands of perfect harmony."

[33] Aaron Hill (1685-1750), an admirer of Thomson, wrote a "Poem in
Praise of Blank Verse," opening:

"Up from Rhyme's poppied vale! and ride the storm That thunders in blank
verse!"

On the other hand, there were not wanting protestants against the form,
like Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith (see above, p. 205). Robert Lloyd
(1733-1764) wrote:

"Some Milton-mad (an affectation Glean'd up from college-education)
Approve no verse, but that which flows In epithetic measur'd prose;...
the metre which they call Blank, classic blank, their all in all."

(Quoted in Perry's _English Literature in the Eighteenth Century_, p.
385.)

[34] On its analysis, see Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_, 2d ed.,
chap. xiii.




III. SIX-STRESS AND SEVEN-STRESS VERSE


A.--THE ALEXANDRINE (IAMBIC HEXAMETER)

The alexandrine was introduced into English from French verse, as early
(according to Schipper) as the early part of the thirteenth century.
Early poems in this metre alone, however, are almost wholly wanting, if
they ever existed. The early alexandrines usually appear in conjunction
with the septenary (seven-stress verse). The French alexandrine has
almost always been characterized by a regular and strongly marked medial
cesura, and this very commonly appears in the English form, but by no
means universally.

The French alexandrine is of uncertain origin. Kawczynski would trace it
to the classical Asclepiadean verse, as in

    "Mæcenas atavis edite regibus,"

which at least has the requisite number of syllables. It appeared in
France as early as the first part of the twelfth century, and in
four-line stanzas was the favorite for didactic poetry as late as the
beginning of the fifteenth century; otherwise, in the close of the
fourteenth century, it was supplanted by the decasyllabic. In the middle
of the sixteenth century it again won precedence over the
decasyllabic--in part through the influence of Ronsard--and is of course
the standard measure of modern French poetry. The name "alexandrine"
seems to have been applied in the fifteenth century, from the familiar
use of the measure in the Alexander romance. The earliest known mention
of the term is in Herenc's _Doctrinal de la secunde Retorique_. (See
Stengel's article in Gröber's _Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie_,
from which these statements are taken.)

The French alexandrine is in a sense a quite different measure from the
English form. Accent is an element of so comparatively slight importance
in the French language and French rhythm, that its place seems partly to
be filled by regularity of cesural pause and regularity in the counting
of syllables. The French alexandrine, therefore, may often be described
as a verse of twelve syllables, divided into two equal parts by a pause,
with marked accents on the sixth and twelfth syllables, but with the
other accents irregularly disposed. Often it seems to an English reader
to have an anapestic effect, and to be best described as anapestic
tetrameter. In English, however, while the regularity in the number of
syllables is followed, and very commonly the medial pause, there is also
observed the regularity of alternate accents which gives the verse the
characteristic form indicated by the term "six-stress."

    'Ye nuten hwat ye biddeþ, þat of gode nabbeþ imone;
    for al eure bileve is on stokke oþer on stone:
    ac þeo, þat god iknoweþ, heo wyten myd iwisse,
    þat hele is icume to monne of folke judaysse.'
    'Loverd,' heo seyde, 'nu quiddeþ men, þat cumen is Messyas,
    þe king, þat wurþ and nuþen is and ever yete was.
    hwenne he cumeþ, he wyle us alle ryhtleche;
    for he nule ne he ne con nenne mon bipeche.'

(_De Muliere Samaritana_, ll. 51-58. In Morris's _Old English
Miscellany_, p. 84; and Zupitza's _Alt- und Mittelenglisches
Übungsbuch_, p. 83. ab. 1250.)

This early poem illustrates the irregular use of alexandrines near the
time of their introduction into English. The poem opens with a
septenary--

    "Tho Iesu Crist an eorthe was, mylde weren his dede;"

and septenaries and alexandrines are used interchangeably. Dr. Triggs
says, in his notes on the poem in McLean's edition of Zupitza's
_Übungsbuch_, that lines 5, 6, 9-18, 25-28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 49-54, 57,
58, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70-72, 74, 75 are alexandrines. (Introduction, p.
lxii.) The English tendency toward indifference to regularity in the
counting of syllables is also noticeable. In the same way the early poem
called "The Passion of our Lord" (ed. Morris, E.E.T.S. xlix. 37), which
is thought from the heading--"_Ici cumence la passyun ihesu crist en
engleys_"--to be a translation from the French, shows a preponderance of
alexandrines, although it opens in septenary. See also such poems as the
"Death," "Doomsday," etc., in the _Old English Miscellany_. The
alexandrine was easily confused by the Middle English writers, not only
with the septenary, but with the native "long line," and it is often
difficult to say just what rhythm was in the writer's mind. Thus a line
like

    "Be stille, leve soster, thin herte the to-breke,"

from the _Judas_, may be regarded either as an alexandrine or a long
four-stress line.

    In Westsex was þan a kyng, his [name] was Sir Ine.
    Whan he wist of the Bretons, of werre ne wild he fine.
    Messengers he sent thorghout Inglond
    Unto þe Inglis kynges, þat had it in þer hond,
    And teld how þe Bretons, men of mykelle myght,
    Þe lond wild wynne ageyn þorh force and fyght.
    Hastisly ilkone þe kynges com fulle suythe,
    Bolde men and stoute, þer hardinesse to kiþe.
    In a grete Daneis felde þer þei samned alle,
    Þat ever siþen hiderward Kampedene men kalle.

(ROBERT MANNING of Brunne: _Chronicle of Peter de Langtoft_. Hearne ed.,
vol. i. p. 2. ab. 1325.)

This poem is one of the very few representatives of distinctly
alexandrine verse in Middle English. The original poem being in
alexandrines, Manning followed it closely. In the first part, however,
he put rimes only at the ends of the verses, whereas later he introduced
internal rime, thus resolving the verse into short lines of three
stresses. Schipper observes that the four following lines are each
representative of a familiar type of the French alexandrine:

    "Messengers he sent þorghout Inglond
    Unto the Inglis kynges, þat had it in þer hond."

    "After Ethelbert com Elfrith his broþer,
    Þat was Egbrihtes sonne and ȝit þer was an oþer."

(_Englische Metrik_, vol. i. p. 252.)

The so-called _Legend-Cycle_ is also marked by a sort of alexandrine
couplet. (See ten Brink's _English Literature_, Kennedy trans., vol. i.
p. 274.)

    O! think I, had I wings like to the simple dove,
    This peril might I fly, and seek some place of rest
    In wilder woods, where I might dwell far from these cares.
    What speedy way of wing my plaints should they lay on,
    To 'scape the stormy blast that threatened is to me?
    Rein those unbridled tongues! break that conjured league!
    For I decipher'd have amid our town the strife.

    (EARL OF SURREY: _Psalm. LV_. ab. 1540.)

This is a not very successful experiment in unrimed alexandrines. Others
of Surrey's Psalms are in rimed "Poulter's Measure" (alexandrines
alternating with septenary).

    O, let me breathe a while, and hold thy heavy hand,
    My grievous faults with Shame enough I understand.
    Take ruth and pity on my plaint, or else I am forlorn;
    Let not the world continue thus in laughing me to scorn.
    Madam, if I be he, to whom you once were bent,
    With whom to spend your time sometime you were content:
    If any hope be left, if any recompense
    Be able to recover this forepassed negligence,
    O, help me now, poor wretch, in this most heavy plight,
    And furnish me yet once again with Tediousness to fight.

(_The Marriage of Wit and Science_, V. ii., in Dodsley's _Old English
Plays_, ed. Hazlitt, vol. ii. p. 386. ab. 1570.)

In this play the alexandrine is the dominant measure, though mingled
with occasional septenaries still. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 256.)

    While favor fed my hope, delight with hope was brought,
    Thought waited on delight, and speech did follow thought;
    Then grew my tongue and pen records unto thy glory,
    I thought all words were lost that were not spent of thee,
    I thought each place was dark but where thy lights would be,
    And all ears worse than deaf that heard not out thy story.

(SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, Fifth Song. [In stanzas _aabccb_.] ab.
1580.)

See also Sidney's sonnet in alexandrines, p. 272, below.

    Of Albion's glorious isle the wonders whilst I write,
    The sundry varying soils, the pleasures infinite,
    (Where heat kills not the cold, nor cold expels the heat,
    The calms too mildly small, nor winds too roughly great,
    Nor night doth hinder day, nor day the night doth wrong,
    The summer not too short, the winter not too long)
    What help shall I invoke to aid my Muse the while?
    Thou Genius of the place (this most renowned isle)
    Which livedst long before the all-earth-drowning flood,
    Whilst yet the world did swarm with her gigantic brood,
    Go thou before me still thy circling shores about,
    And in this wand'ring maze help to conduct me out.

(DRAYTON: _Polyolbion_, ll. 1-12. 1613.)

This is by all odds the longest Modern English poem in alexandrines, and
while the verse is often agreeable, it illustrates the unfitness of the
measure--to English ears--for long, continuous poems.

    The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink;
    I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
    And looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied
    A snow-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its side.

(WORDSWORTH: _The Pet Lamb_. 1800.)

    If hunger, proverbs say, allures the wolf from wood,
    Much more the bird must dare a dash at something good:
    Must snatch up, bear away in beak, the trifle-treasure
    To wood and wild, and then--O how enjoy at leisure!
    Was never tree-built nest, you climbed and took, of bird,
    (Rare city-visitant, talked of, scarce seen or heard,)
    But, when you would dissect the structure, piece by piece,
    You found, enwreathed amid the country-product--fleece
    And feather, thistle-fluffs and bearded windlestraws--
    Some shred of foreign silk, unravelling of gauze,
    Bit, maybe, of brocade, mid fur and blow-bell-down:
    Filched plainly from mankind, dear tribute paid by town,
    Which proved how oft the bird had plucked up heart of grace,
    Swooped down at waif and stray, made furtively our place
    Pay tax and toll, then borne the booty to enrich
    Her paradise i' the waste; the how and why of which,
    That is the secret, there the mystery that stings!

(BROWNING: _Fifine at the Fair_, ix. 1872.)

Browning has made of the alexandrine in this poem an almost new measure,
hardly more like the alexandrine couplet of earlier days than the
measure of _Sordello_ is like the "heroic couplet" proper. In general,
the modern use of the alexandrine is characterized by increased freedom
in the placing of the cesura. It is also distinguished from the early
French and Middle English forms by the fact that the cesura and the
ending are commonly masculine.

By far the most frequent use of the alexandrine in English poetry is as
a variant from the five-stress line. For instances of this, see the
section on the Spenserian stanza, pp. 102-108, above, and Corson's
chapters on the Spenserian stanza and its influence, in his _Primer of
English Verse_. In connection with Dryden's use of the alexandrine as a
variant from the heroic couplet, Mr. Saintsbury makes some interesting
observations on the measure: "The metre, though a well-known English
critic has maltreated it of late, is a very fine one; and some of
Dryden's own lines are unmatched examples of that 'energy divine' which
has been attributed to him. In an essay on the alexandrine in English
poetry, which yet remains to be written, and which would be not the
least valuable of contributions to poetical criticism, this use of the
verse would have to be considered, as well as its regular recurrent
employment at the close of the Spenserian stanza, and its continuous
use.... An examination of the _Polyolbion_ and of _Fifine at the Fair_,
side by side, would, I think, reveal capacities, somewhat unexpected
even in this form of arrangement. But so far as the occasional
alexandrine is concerned, it is not a hyperbole to say that a number,
out of all proportion, of the best lines in English poetry may be found
in the closing verses of the Spenserian stave as used by Spenser
himself, by Shelley, and by the present Laureate, and in the occasional
alexandrines of Dryden. The only thing to be said against this latter
use is, that it demands a very skilful ear and hand to adjust the
cadence." (_Life of Dryden_, in Men of Letters Series, pp. 172, 173.)


B.--THE SEPTENARY

The septenary, or seven-stress verse (sometimes called the
_septenarius_, from the Latin form of the word) was a familiar measure
of mediæval Latin poetry. There it was more commonly trochaic than
iambic, as in the famous drinking song of the Goliards:

    "Meum est propositum in taberna mori:
    Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,
    Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori,
    'Deus sit propitius huic potatori!'"

(See the "Confessio Goliae," in _Latin Poems attributed to Walter
Mapes_, ed. Wright, p. 71.)

Another form of the measure is illustrated by some verses quoted by
Schipper:

    "Fortunae rota volvitur, descendo minoratus,
    Alter in altum tollitur, nimis exaltatus."

In English, naturally enough, the measure always tended to be iambic. In
both Latin and English there was considerable freedom as to the number
of light syllables. It will be noticed that in the specimens just quoted
from the Latin there is rime not only between the ends of the verses but
between the syllables just preceding the cesura. Where this was the case
there was a tendency toward the breaking up of the verse into a quatrain
of verses in four and three stresses, riming _abab_; such septenaries,
indeed, were written at pleasure either in couplets or quatrains. We
shall see the same phenomena in the English forms of the measure. But
the seven-stress rhythm is not easily lost or mistaken, in whatever form
it appears, and has a certain charm which at one time appealed very
widely to metrical taste.

The earliest appearance of the septenary in English is in the _Poema
Morale_, dated about 1170 by Zupitza, by others somewhat later. For a
specimen of this, see p. 127, above. Here there is only end-rime, and
the individuality of the long line is well preserved. There is some
freedom, however, as to the number of light syllables, and some
variation between the iambic and trochaic rhythm.

    Blessed beo thu, lavedi, ful of hovene blisse,
    Swete flur of parais, moder of miltenisse;
    Thu praye Jhesu Crist thi sone that he me i-wisse,
    Thare a londe al swo ihc beo, that he me ne i-misse.

(_Hymn to the Virgin_, in Mätzner's _Altenglische Sprachproben_, vol. i.
p. 54.)

Mätzner prints this poem in short lines of four and three stresses, the
cesura making such a division natural enough. The next specimen is also
frequently printed with the same division.

    Þiss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum, forr þi þatt Orrm itt wrohhte,
    annd itt iss wrohht off quaþþrigan, off goddspellbokess fowwre,
    off quaþþrigan Amminadab, off Cristess goddspellbokess;
    forr Crist maȝȝ þurh Amminadab rihht full wel ben bitacnedd;
    forr Crist toc dæþ o rodetre all wiþþ hiss fulle wille;
    annd forrþi þatt Amminadab o latin spæche iss nemmnedd
    o latin boc spontaneus annd onn ennglisshe spæche
    þatt weppmann, þatt summ dede doþ wiþþ all hiss fulle wille,
    forþi maȝȝ Crist full wel ben þurrh Amminadab bitacnedd.

(_The Ormulum_, ll. 1-9. ab. 1200.)

In this specimen we have the septenary without rime, a rare form. Orm's
septenaries are also the most regular of the Middle English period,
preserving an almost painful accuracy throughout the 20,000 extant
lines of the poem. In general the measure appears in this period in
combination with alexandrines and other measures, and with much
irregularity. Like the alexandrine, it was sometimes confused with the
long four-stress line. In the well-known poem called "A Little Soth
Sermun" the first line is an unquestionable septenary ("Herkneth alle
gode men and stylle sitteth a-dun"), but presently we find verse of six
stresses, and even short four-stress couplets.

    Torne we aȝen in tour sawes, and speke we atte frome
    of erld Olyver and his felawes, þat Sarazyns habbeþ ynome.
    þe Sarazyns prykaþ faste away, as harde as þay may hye,
    and ledeþ wiþ hymen þat riche pray, þe flour of chyvalrye.

(_Sir Fyrumbras_, ll. 1104-1107. In Zupitza'S _Alt- und Mittelenglisches
Übungsbuch_, p. 107. ab. 1380.)

In this specimen--from a popular romance--we have the use of cesural
rime as well as end-rime, just as in the Latin specimens cited above.

    I tell of things done long ago,
      Of many things in few:
    And chiefly of this clime of ours
      The accidents pursue.
    Thou high director of the same,
      Assist mine artless pen,
    To write the gests of Britons stout,
      And acts of English men.

(WILLIAM WARNER: _Albion's England_, ll. 1-8. 1586.)

Here we have the measure in its "resolved" or divided form, printed as
short four-stress and three-stress lines, although with rime only at the
seventh stress. Compare the "common metre" of modern hymns:

    "Must I be carried to the skies
      On flowery beds of ease,
    While others fought to win the prize
      And sailed through bloody seas?"

    As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,
    And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high prospects, and the
        brows
    Of all steep hills and pinnacles, thrust up themselves for shows,
    And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight,
    When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,
    And all the signs in heaven are seen, that glad the shepherd's heart;
    So many fires disclosed their beams, made by the Trojan part,
    Before the face of Ilion, and her bright turrets show'd.
    A thousand courts of guard kept fires, and every guard allow'd
    Fifty stout men, by whom their horse eat oats and hard white corn,
    And all did wishfully expect the silver-throned morn.

(CHAPMAN: _Iliad_, book VIII. 1610.)

Chapman's translation of _Iliad_ is the longest modern English poem in
septenaries. Professor Newman, however (whose translation gave rise to
Matthew Arnold's lectures _On Translating Homer_), used the same measure
unrimed and with feminine endings; thus,--

    "He spake, and yelling, held afront the single-hoofed horses."

Arnold objected to Chapman's measure that "it has a jogging rapidity
rather than a flowing rapidity, and a movement familiar rather than
nobly easy."

    Rejoice, oh, English hearts, rejoice! rejoice, oh, lovers dear!
    Rejoice, oh, city, town and country! rejoice, eke every shire!
    For now the fragrant flowers do spring and sprout in seemly sort,
    The little birds do sit and sing, the lambs do make fine sport;
    And now the birchen-tree doth bud, that makes the schoolboy cry;
    The morris rings, while hobby-horse doth foot it feateously;
    The lords and ladies now abroad, for their disport and play,
    Do kiss sometimes upon the grass, and sometimes in the hay.

(BEAUMONT: _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, IV. v. ab. 1610.)

Here the septenary is introduced in the May-day song of Ralph, the
London apprentice, doubtless because of its popularity for such
unliterary verse.

    In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
      And leves be large and long,
    Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
      To here the foulys song.

(_Ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk_, in Gummere's _English Ballads_, p.
77.)

    It is an ancient Mariner,
    And he stoppeth one of three.
    "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
    Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?" ...

    ... He prayeth best, who loveth best
    All things both great and small;
    For the dear God who loveth us,
    He made and loveth all.

(COLERIDGE: _The Ancient Mariner_, ll. 1-4, 614-617. 1798.)

These specimens show the ballad stanza, which is made of a sort of
septenary resolved into short lines of four and three accents. It is
often assumed that the measure was derived from the Latin septenary; but
owing to the difficulty of supposing that a foreign metre should have
been adopted for the most popular of all forms of poetry, some scholars
prefer to think that the ballad stanza of this form is the same as that
in which all lines have four accents (see specimen on p. 157, above),
the last accent of the second and fourth lines having dropped off by
natural processes. On the ballad stanzas in general, see Gummere's
_English Ballads_, Appendix II. p. 303. Compare with the present
specimens the metre of Cowper's _John Gilpin_.

    That cross he now was fastening there, as the surest power and best
    For supplying all deficiencies, all wants of the rude nest
    In which, from burning heat, or tempest driving far and wide,
    The innocent boy, else shelterless, his lonely head must hide.

(WORDSWORTH: _The Norman Boy_. 1842.)

This is a rare instance of the use of the long septenary in
nineteenth-century poetry. Certainly in Wordsworth's verses the metrical
effect cannot be called happy; the measure is made especially clumsy by
the introduction of hypermetrical light syllables. In the succeeding
specimen the same measure is used with feminine ending.

    O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!
    O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!
    O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
    Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling!

(ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: _Cowper's Grave_. 1833.)


C.--THE "POULTER'S MEASURE."

In the Elizabethan age the alexandrine and the septenary were each used
chiefly in conjunction with the other, in alternation of six-stress and
seven-stress verses. The name commonly applied to the combination is
taken from Gascoigne's _Notes of Instruction_ (1575), where he says:
"The commonest sort of verse which we use now adayes (viz. the long
verse of twelve and fourtene sillables) I know not certainly howe to
name it, unlesse I should say that it doth consist of Poulters measure,
which giveth xii. for one dozen and xiiii. for another." (Arber's
Reprint, p. 39.) It strikes the reader with surprise to find the measure
thus spoken of as "the commonest sort of verse," but a glance at any of
the early Elizabethan anthologies will show the justness of Gascoigne's
words. Yet the measure, while exceedingly popular, seems to have been
instinctively avoided by the best poets (after the days of Surrey and
Sidney); hence it is unfamiliar to modern readers.

The use of alexandrines and septenaries together, we have seen, was
common even in the Middle English period, but not in regular
alternation. The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (about 1300) mingles
both measures, but with alexandrines predominating. In some of the early
Mystery Plays they are found in alternation; for example, where Jacob,
in one of the Towneley plays, is relating his hunger to Esau:

    "Meat or drink, save my life, or bread, I reck not what:
    If there be nothing else, some man give me a cat."

See also the specimen from _The Marriage of Wit and Science_, p. 256,
above.

Schipper says that he does not know who first brought the two measures
together in alternate use for lyrical poetry. Guest says that the
Poulter's Measure came into fashion soon after 1500 (_History of English
Rhythms_), but gives no examples so early. The history of the measure
should be further investigated.

After the Elizabethan period the Poulter's Measure practically
disappears from English poetry. A curious suggestion of it may be found
in a little poem of Leigh Hunt's (_Wealth and Womanhood_), cited by
Schipper, who calls the verse "Poulter's Measure in trochaics":

    "Have you seen an heiress in her jewels mounted,
    Till her wealth and she seemed one, and she might be counted?"

    Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were,
    I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear:
    And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes,
    That now I sighed, and then I smiled, as cause of thought doth rise.

(EARL OF SURREY: _How no Age is Content with his Own Estate_, in
Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_. Arber's Reprint, p. 30. Pub. 1557.)

    Her forehead jacinth like, her cheeks of opal hue,
    Her twinkling eyes bedeck'd with pearl, her lips as sapphire blue;
    Her hair like crapal stone, her mouth O heavenly wide;
    Her skin like burnish'd gold, her hands like silver ore untried.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Mopsa_, in the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)




IV. THE SONNET


The sonnet is an Italian verse-form, in fourteen five-stress lines,
introduced into England at the time of the Italian literary influences
of the sixteenth century. Almost from the first, the English sonnet has
been divided into two classes: one based on more or less strict
imitation of the structure of the Italian form, and variously called the
Italian, the regular, or the legitimate sonnet; the other taking the
Italian sonnet as the point of departure, but constructed according to
more familiar English rime-schemes, and commonly called the Shaksperian
or the English sonnet.

The origin of the sonnet in southern Europe is a matter of some
disagreement. Some scholars trace it to the _canzone_ strophe (_e.g._
Gaspary, in his _Geschichte der Italienischen Literatur_), others to the
combination of the _ottava rima_ with a six-line stanza (Welti, in his
_Geschichte des Sonettes in der deutschen Dichtung_), others to
Provençal and even German influence. (See Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 835
ff., and Lentzner's _Das Sonett und seine Gestaltung in der englischen
Dichtung_, p. 1.) It seems first to have been a recognized form in Italy
in the latter part of the thirteenth century (see Tomlinson's _The
Sonnet: its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry_); and was made
glorious by Dante, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Ariosto, and--above
all--Petrarch. On the different forms of the Italian sonnet, see
Tomlinson's essay, just cited.

"The object of the regular or legitimate Italian sonnet," says Mr.
Tomlinson, "is to express one, and only one, idea, mood, sentiment, or
proposition, and this must be introduced ... in the first quatrain, and
so far explained in the second, that this may end in a full point; while
the office of the first tercet is to prepare the leading idea of the
quatrains for the conclusion, which conclusion is to be perfectly
carried out in the second tercet, so that it may contain the fundamental
idea of the poem." (pp. 27, 28.)

The Italian form is always marked by the division into octave and
sestet, although English usage has been very irregular in marking this
division by a full pause. The octave is based on only two rimes
(_abbaabba_); the sestet on either two or three, the most common
arrangements being _cdecde, cdcdcd, cdedce_, and _cddcee_.

With regard to the pause at the point of division Lentzner says: "It
should not be a full pause, because this would produce the effect of a
gap or breaking-off, ...--not like the speaker who has reached the end
of what he has to say, but like one who reflects on what has already
been said, and then takes fresh breath to complete his theme."[35]

Most critics prefer those forms of sestet which avoid a final riming
couplet. This Mr. Courthope explains as follows: "The reason for the
avoidance of the couplet in the second portion of the sonnet is, I
think, plain. In the first eight lines the thought ascends to a climax;
this part of the sonnet may be said to contain the premises of the
poetical syllogism. In the last six lines the idea descends to a
conclusion, and as the two divisions are of unequal length it is
necessary that the lesser should be the more individualised. Hence
while, in the first part, the expression of the thought is massed and
condensed by reduplications of sound, and the general movement is
limited by quatrains; in the second part the clauses are separated by
the alternation of the rhymes, the movement is measured by tercets, and
the whole weight of the rhetorical emphasis is thrown into the last
line." (_History of English Poetry_, vol. ii. p. 91.)

The sonnet has remained, since its introduction into English poetry, a
favorite form among poets and critics, but has never become genuinely
popular. It is suited, of course, only for the expression of dignified
and careful thinking; and the difficulty of giving it unity and
confining the content to the precise limit of fourteen lines has made
perfect success in the form a rare attainment. Furthermore, the
complexity of the rime-scheme--the distance at which one rime responds
to another--makes the appreciation of the form a matter of some
delicacy, less suited to the prevailingly simple taste of the English
ear than to the more complex taste of the Italian.

The following specimens are classified only in the two principal groups
of the Italian and the English form. The common test of the Italian form
is that the rime-scheme shall separate the first eight lines from the
rest, these eight lines ordinarily showing "inclusive rime" of the
_abba_ type; the test of the English form is that the rime-scheme shall
separate the first twelve lines from the last two, the twelve lines
ordinarily showing alternate rime.

Schipper groups English sonnets in five classes: (1) the strict Italian
form, with pause between octave and sestet; (2) the Surrey-Shakspere or
English form; (3) the Spenserian form; (4) the Miltonic form, with
correct rime-arrangement but general neglect of the bipartite structure;
(5) the modern Italian or Wordsworthian form, following the regular
rime-scheme in general, but often with a third or even a fourth rime in
the octave, and treated as a single strophe. (_Englische Metrik_, vol.
ii. p. 878.)[36]


A.--THE REGULAR (ITALIAN) SONNET

In this group the student of the subject should note the detailed
variations of the rime-scheme of the sestet, and the varying practice of
the poets as to the division between octave and sestet.

In view of the connection of Petrarch's sonnets with Wyatt's
introduction of the form into England, the first of them is reproduced
as a typical specimen of the strict Italian form.

    Voi ch' ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
    Di quei sospiri ond' io nudriva 'l core
    In su 'l mio primo giovenile errore,
    Quand' era in parte altr' uom da quel ch' i' sono,
    Del vario stile, in ch' io piango e ragiono
    Fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
    Ove sia chi per prova intenda amore
    Spero trovar pietà, non che perdono.
    Ma ben veggi' or sí come al popol tutto
    Favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
    Di me medesmo meco mi vergogno;
    E del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
    E 'l pentirsi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
    Che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.

(PETRARCA: _Sonetto_ i.)

    The longe love that in my thought I harber,
    And in my heart doth kepe his residence,
    Into my face preaseth with bold pretence,
    And there campeth, displaying his banner.
    She that me learns to love, and to suffer,
    And willes that my trust, and lustes negligence
    Be reined by reason, shame, and reverence,
    With his hardinesse takes displeasure.
    Wherwith love to the hartes forest he fleeth,
    Leavyng his enterprise with paine and crye,
    And there him hideth and not appeareth.
    What may I do? when my maister feareth,
    But in the field with him to live and dye,
    For good is the life, endyng faithfully.

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: _The lover hideth his desire_, etc., in Tottel's
_Songs and Sonnets_, p. 33. pub. 1557.)

It was Wyatt who introduced the sonnet into England. Thirty-one of his
sonnets were published in Tottel's Miscellany, of which about a third
are said to be translations or paraphrases of Petrarch's. Wyatt
followed, of course, the regular Italian structure, but used
unhesitatingly the form of sestet with the concluding couplet
(_cddcee_). On this point Mr. Courthope says: "Wyatt was evidently
unaware of the secret principle underlying the extremely complex
structure of the Italian sonnet; ... and being unfortunately misled by
his admiration for the _Strambotti_ of Serafino, which sum up the
conclusion in a couplet, he endeavored to construct his sonnets on the
same principle, thereby leading all sonnet writers before Milton on a
wrong path." (_History of English Poetry_, vol. ii. p. 91.)

    Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
    That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
    Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
    Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
    I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
    Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
    Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
    Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn'd brain.
    But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
    Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
    And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
    Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
    Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,--
    'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'Look in thy heart, and write.'

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, i. ab. 1580.)

    With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
    How silently, and with how wan a face!
    What, may it be that e'en in heavenly place
    That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!
    Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
    Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case,
    I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace,
    To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
    Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
    Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
    Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
    Do they above love to be loved, and yet
    Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
    Do they call virtue, there, ungratefulness?

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, xxxi. ab. 1580.)

Sidney's favorite form for the sonnet sestet was that shown in these
specimens (_cdcdee_), a form that suggests the influence of the Surrey
or English sonnet rather than the Italian. The first of the sonnets is
of course exceptional in being written in alexandrines, but is among the
finest in the sequence. See also Sidney's sonnet of the English type, p.
291, below.

The _Astrophel and Stella_ (containing 110 sonnets) is the earliest of
the great sonnet-sequences or sonnet-cycles of English poetry, those of
Spenser, Shakspere, Rossetti, and Mrs. Browning being later
representatives. In the Elizabethan age the fashion of writing sonnets,
and sonnet-sequences in particular, was at its height, especially in the
last decade of the century (1590-1600). On this subject, see the
Introduction to Professor Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, in the
Athenæum Press Series, and Mr. Sidney Lee's _Life of Shakspere_. Other
noteworthy sonnet-sequences besides those of Sidney, Spenser, and
Shakspere were Constable's _Diana_, Daniel's _Delia_, Lodge's _Phyllis_,
Watson's _Tears of Fancy_, Barnes's _Parthenophil_, Giles Fletcher's
_Lycia_, and Drayton's _Idea_,--all published in the years 1592-1594. A
now forgotten poet by the name of Lok produced more than four hundred
sonnets, proving himself an Elizabethan rival to Wordsworth.

    I know that all beneath the moon decays,
    And what by mortals in this world is brought
    In time's great periods shall return to naught;
    That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
    I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,
    With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought,
    As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;
    And that naught lighter is than airy praise.
    I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
    To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
    That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
    Where sense and will invassall reason's power.
    Know what I list, this all can not me move,
    But that, O me! I both must write and love.

(WILLIAM DRUMMOND of Hawthornden: _Sense of the Fragility of All
Things_, etc. 1616.)

Drummond was a sonneteer of great skill, and used many original
combinations of rime-schemes,--some forty in all,--yet usually
approximating to the Italian type. Leigh Hunt says: "Drummond's sonnets,
for the most part, are not only of the legitimate order, but they are
the earliest in the language that breathe what may be called the habit
of mind observable in the best Italian writers of sonnets; that is to
say, a mixture of tenderness, elegance, love of country, seclusion, and
conscious sweetness of verse." (Essay on the Sonnet, in _The Book of the
Sonnet_, vol. i. pp. 78, 79.)

    Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
    Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
    For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
    Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
    From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
    Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow;
    And soonest our best men do with thee go--
    Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery.
    Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
    And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
    And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
    And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?
    One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
    And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

(JOHN DONNE: _Holy Sonnets_, X. 1635.)

Donne's series of "Holy Sonnets" was one of the few Elizabethan
sequences, or cycles, which dealt with other than amatory subjects. The
seven sonnets of the series called _La Corona_ are bound together into a
"crown of sonnets,"--an Italian fashion, according to which the first
line of each sonnet is the same as the last of the sonnet preceding, and
the last line of the last sonnet the same as the first line of the
first.

    When I consider how my light is spent
    Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
    And that one talent which is death to hide
    Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
    To serve therewith my Maker, and present
    My true account, lest He returning chide,--
    Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?
    I fondly ask:--But patience, to prevent
    That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need
    Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best
    Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
    Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed
    And post o'er land and ocean without rest:--
    They also serve who only stand and wait.

(MILTON: _On his Blindness_. ab. 1655.)

Milton learned the sonnet direct from the Italian, and wrote five in
that language. While following the Italian rime-schemes, however, he was
not careful to observe any division between octave and sestet. Like
Donne, he turned the sonnet to other subjects than that of love, or--in
Landor's words--

    "He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand
    Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave
    The notes to Glory."

(_To Lamartine._)

Compare, also, Wordsworth's saying that in Milton's hand

    "The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
    Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!"

Besides the eighteen English sonnets in regular form, Milton wrote a
"tailed," or "caudated," sonnet, following an Italian fashion,--"On the
New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament." "He intended it,"
says Masson, "to be what may be called an Anti-Presbyterian and
Pro-Toleration Sonnet; but by going beyond fourteen lines, converted it
into what the Italians called a 'sonnet with a tail.'" (Globe ed., p.
440.) The "tail" rimes _cfffgg_.

    Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,
    By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,
    Of painful pedantry the poring child,
    Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page,
    Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage.
    Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiled
    On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage
    His thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styled,
    Intent. While cloistered Piety displays
    Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
    New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
    Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.
    Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways
    Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.

(THOMAS WARTON: _In a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's 'Monasticon.'_ ab. 1775.)

After Milton, the sonnet fell into disuse for a century. "Walsh," says
Mr. Gosse, "is the author of the only sonnet written in English between
Milton's, in 1658, and Warton's, about 1750." (Ward's _English Poets_,
vol. iii. p. 7.) See, however, that of Gray on West, written in 1742,
quoted p. 295, below. To the Warton brothers, pioneers in so many ways
of the romantic revival, chief credit is given for the revival of the
sonnet in the eighteenth century. Other sonneteers of the period were
William Mason, Thomas Edwards, Benjamin Stillingfleet, and Thomas
Russell (see Seccombe's _Age of Johnson_, pp. 254, 255, and Beers's
_English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_, pp. 160, 161).

    O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay
    Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence
    (Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)
    The faint pang stealest, unperceived, away;
    On thee I rest my only hope at last,
    And think when thou hast dried the bitter tear
    That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,
    I may look back on every sorrow past,
    And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile.
    As some lone bird, at day's departing hour,
    Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower
    Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:
    Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure
    Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

(WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES: _To Time_. 1789.)

Bowles (1762-1850) wrote numerous sonnets, and was influential in
carrying on the movement begun by the Wartons. His sonnets were admired,
in particular, by Coleridge and Wordsworth, the former poet dedicating
to him a sonnet beginning:

    "My heart has thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strains
    Whose sadness soothes me."

His sonnets were, however, neglectful of the regular Italian structure,
so that under his influence, as Leigh Hunt observed, "the illegitimate
order ... became such a favorite with lovers of easy writing who could
string fourteen lines together, that ... it continued to fill the press
with heaps of bad verses, till the genius of Wordsworth succeeded in
restoring the right system." (_Essay on the Sonnet_, p. 85.) But see the
notes on Wordsworth's sonnets, p. 280, below.

    Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,
    Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew,
    An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new
    And undebased by praise of meaner things,
    That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings,
    I may record thy worth with honor due,
    In verse as musical as thou art true,
    And that immortalizes whom it sings.
    But thou hast little need. There is a book
    By Seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,
    On which the eyes of God not rarely look,
    A chronicle of actions just and bright:
    There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine,
    And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.

(COWPER: _To Mrs. Unwin_. 1793.)

    Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
    And hermits are contented with their cells;
    And students with their pensive citadels;
    Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
    Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
    High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,
    Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.
    In truth the prison unto which we doom
    Ourselves no prison is; and hence to me,
    In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
    Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground,
    Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)
    Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
    Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

(WORDSWORTH: _The Sonnet_. 1806.)

    Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
    Mindless of its just honors; with this key
    Shakspere unlocked his heart; the melody
    Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
    A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
    With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
    The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
    Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
    His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
    It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
    To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
    Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
    The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
    Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!

(WORDSWORTH: _Scorn not the Sonnet_. 1827.)

    The World is too much with us; late and soon,
    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
    Little we see in Nature that is ours;
    We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
    This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
    The winds that will be howling at all hours
    And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
    For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
    It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
    A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,--
    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
    Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

(WORDSWORTH: _The World is too much with us_. 1806.)

Wordsworth's complaint as to the number of Milton's sonnets ("alas, too
few!") certainly cannot be applied to his own. They number about five
hundred, ranking him as the most prolific English sonneteer. These
include some of the finest sonnets in the language, and very many of
admittedly indifferent quality. Mr. Swinburne regards his sonnets as on
the whole "the best out of sight" in our poetry. In general he followed
the Italian model, but with very great liberty. He not only practised
great variety of rime-arrangement in the sestet, but frequently altered
the scheme of the octave to such forms as _abbaacca_; see, for example,
the specimen beginning "Scorn not the Sonnet." Wordsworth also showed no
regard for the careful division of thought between octave and sestet.
Indeed in a letter to Dyce, in 1833, he said that he regarded the sonnet
not as a piece of architecture, but as "an orbicular body,--a sphere or
a dew-drop." (_Works_, ed. Knight, vol. xi. p. 232.) Its excellence
seemed to him to consist mainly in a "pervading sense of intense unity."
Nevertheless, he admitted that "a sonnet will often be found excellent,
where the beginning, the middle, and the end are distinctly marked, and
also where it is distinctly separated into _two_ parts, to which, as I
before observed, the strict Italian model, as they write it, is
favorable."

    Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
    Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
    Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
    This glorious canopy of light and blue?
    Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
    Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
    Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
    And lo! creation widened in man's view.
    Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
    Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
    Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
    That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
    Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?
    If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

(JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE: _To Night_. ab. 1825. In _The Book of the Sonnet_,
i. 258.)

This famous sonnet was called by Coleridge "the best in the English
language." He seems, however, to have been led to this opinion rather by
the thought than the form.

    I met a traveler from an antique land,
    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(SHELLEY: _Ozymandias of Egypt_. 1817.)

Shelley wrote but few sonnets, and all but one (_To the Nile_) are
irregular in structure. The rime-scheme of the present specimen is, of
course, wholly eccentric.

    The poetry of earth is never dead:
    When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
    And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
    From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
    That is the Grasshopper's; he takes the lead
    In summer luxury; he has never done
    With his delights, for, when tired out with fun,
    He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
    The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
    On a lone winter evening, when the frost
    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
    The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
    And seems to one in drowsiness half lost
    The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

(KEATS: _The Grasshopper and Cricket_. 1817.)

Keats's sonnets are for the most part regular in both rime-scheme and
bipartite structure; but a number of the posthumous sonnets are in the
English form. The present specimen (which competes with the more
familiar sonnet on _Chapman's Homer_ for the chief place among those of
Keats) is a particularly good example of the bipartite structure and its
organic relation to the thought of the sonnet.

    Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
    With the first sight of thee didst make our race
    Forever stare! O flat and shocking face,
    Grimly divided from the breast below!
    Thou that on dry land horribly dost go
    With a split body and most ridiculous pace,
    Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
    Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!
    O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,
    How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry
    And dreary sloth! What particle canst thou share
    Of the only blessed life, the watery?
    I sometimes see of ye an actual _pair_
    Go by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.

(LEIGH HUNT: _The Fish to the Man_. 1836.)

    If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
    And be all to me? Shall I never miss
    Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss
    That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
    When I look up, to drop on a new range
    Of walls and floors,--another home than this?
    Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
    Fill'd by dead eyes, too tender to know change?
    That's hardest! If to conquer love, has tried,
    To conquer grief tries more, as all things prove:
    For grief indeed is love, and grief beside.
    Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love--
    Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
    And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

(ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, xxxv.
1850.)

The forty-four _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ (the title, of course,
being purely fanciful) constitute one of the chief sonnet-sequences of
the modern period. While true to the Italian rime-structure, Mrs.
Browning cannot be said to have treated the sonnet either as a two-part
poem or as a unit. Only three of the series, says Professor Corson (the
first, fourth, and thirteenth), "can be said to realize with any
distinctness the idea and the peculiar artistic effect of the sonnet
proper." Hence while calling them "the most beautiful love-poems in the
language," he thinks "they cannot be classed as sonnets." (_Primer of
English Verse_, pp. 175, 176.)

    A Sonnet is a moment's monument,--
    Memorial from the Soul's eternity
    To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
    Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
    Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
    Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
    As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
    Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
    A sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
    The soul,--its converse, to what Power 'tis due:--
    Whether for tribute to the august appeals
    Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
    It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
    In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

(ROSSETTI: Sonnet preceding _The House of Life_. 1881.)

    When do I see thee most, beloved one?
    When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
    Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
    The worship of that Love through thee made known?
    Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
    Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
    Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
    And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
    O love, my love! if I no more should see
    Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
    Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,--
    How then should sound upon Life's darkening <DW72>
    The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
    The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

(ROSSETTI: _The House of Life_: Sonnet iv. _Lovesight_. 1870.)

The sonnets of Rossetti are undoubtedly the most perfect representatives
of the Italian form in English poetry of the nineteenth century, and
_The House of Life_ (in 101 sonnets) is probably to be regarded as the
most important sonnet-sequence since the Elizabethan age. The bipartite
character of Rossetti's sonnets is marked, in editions of his poems, by
the printing of the octave and sestet with a space between them.

    They rose to where their sovran eagle sails,
    They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
    Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night
    Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales
    Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,
    And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight
    Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight
    By thousands down the crags and through the vales.
    O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
    Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
    Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
    Great Tsernagora! never since thine own
    Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm
    Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.

(TENNYSON: _Montenegro_. 1877.)

It is curious that the two chief representatives of English poetry of
the Victorian period, Tennyson and Browning, should neither of them have
given much attention to the sonnet nor have achieved any notable success
in the form. Among Tennyson's poems there are some seventeen sonnets, of
which the present specimen was considered by the poet to be the best. It
represents a common form of the bipartite structure, where the octave is
a narrative, and the sestet a comment upon what has been narrated. In
the following specimen, from Matthew Arnold, the structure is similar.
Lentzner quotes the _East London_, in his monograph on the English
sonnet, as a case where the octave represents the thought in particular,
the sestet in the abstract; in other cases the order is the reverse.

    'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
    Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
    And the pale weaver, through his window seen
    In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.
    I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
    'Ill and o'er-worked, how fare you in this scene?'
    'Bravely!' said he, 'for I of late have been
    Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread!'
    O human soul! so long as thou canst so
    Set up a mark of everlasting light
    Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
    To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam,
    Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!
    Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _East London_. 1867.)

    "Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
    All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
    Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
    Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
    These shall I bid men--each in his degree
    Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?
    But little do or can the best of us:
    That little is achieved through Liberty.
    Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus--
    His fellow shall continue bound? Not I.
    Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
    A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."

(BROWNING: _Why I am a Liberal_. 1885.)

Browning's sonnets are few in number, mostly occasional, and none of
them can be considered notable. For a study of them, see the article by
Lentzner in _Anglia_, vol. xi. p. 500. Dr. Lentzner includes nine in his
list, not all of which are included in Browning's collected poems. Three
are so closely connected as practically to form a poem in three stanzas
(appended to _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, 1883).

    One saith: the whole world is a Comedy
    Played for the mirth of God upon his throne,
    Whereof the hidden meanings will be known
    When Michael's trumpet thrills through earth and sea.
    Fate is the dramaturge; Necessity
    Allots the parts; the scenes, by Nature shown,
    Embrace each element and every zone,
    Ordered with infinite variety.Another
    saith: no calm-eyed Sophocles
    Indites the tragedy of human doom,
    But some cold scornful Aristophanes,
    Whose zanies gape and gibber in thick gloom,
    While nightingales, shrill 'mid the shivering trees,
    Jar on the silence of the neighboring tomb.

(JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS: from _Sonnets on the Thought of Death_. ab.
1880.)

    Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach
    Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear,
    The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear
    A restless lore like that the billows teach;
    For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach
    From its own depths, and rest within you, dear,
    As, through the billowy voices yearning here,
    Great Nature strives to find a human speech.
    A sonnet is a wave of melody:
    From heaving waters of the impassioned soul
    A billow of tidal music one and whole
    Flows in the octave; then, returning free,
    Its ebbing surges in the sestet roll
    Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.

(THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON: _The Sonnet's Voice; a Metrical Lesson by the
Sea-shore_. _Athenæum_, Sept. 17, 1881.)

The "sonnet on the sonnet" has become so familiar in recent times that a
volume of such sonnets has been compiled, and a writer of humorous verse
has satirized the fashion in a "Sonnet on the Sonnet on the Sonnet."
Doubtless the two specimens quoted from Wordsworth lead all others of
the class; but the present specimen is an interesting attempt to
represent the characteristic metrical expressiveness of the form.

    Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
    A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
    Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
    Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
    Kneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er;
    Far off the noises of the world retreat;
    The loud vociferations of the street
    Become an undistinguishable roar.
    So, as I enter here from day to day,
    And leave my burden at this minster gate,
    Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
    The tumult of the time disconsolate
    To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
    While the eternal ages watch and wait.

(LONGFELLOW: _Sonnets on the Divina Commedia_, i. 1864.)

    Caliph, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late
    "Abdul the Damned," and would recall my word.
    It merged thee with the unillustrious herd
    Who crowd the approaches to the infernal gate--
    Spirits gregarious, equal in their state
    As is the innumerable ocean bird,
    Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heard
    On Ailsa or Iona desolate.
    For, in a world where cruel deeds abound,
    The merely damned are legion: with such souls
    Is not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?
    Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureoles
    Dost shine supreme, incomparably crowned,
    Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.

(WILLIAM WATSON: _To the Sultan_, in _The Year of Shame_. 1897.)

Mr. William Archer says of Mr. Watson's political sonnets, that the form
becomes in his hands "a weapon like the sling of David. In the octave he
whirls it round and round with ever-gathering momentum, and in the
sestet sends his scorn or rebuke singing through the air, arrow-straight
to its mark." (_Poets of the Younger Generation_, p. 503.)


B.--THE ENGLISH (SHAKSPERIAN) SONNET

    From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race:
    Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate:
    The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe face
    Wilde Cambers clifs, did geve her lively heate:
    Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest:
    Her sire, an Erle; her dame, of princes blood.
    From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest,
    With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food.
    Honsdon did first present her to mine yien:
    Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.
    Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine:
    And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight.
    Her beauty of kind, her vertues from above.
    Happy is he that can obtaine her love.

(EARL OF SURREY: _Description and praise of his love Geraldine_. In
Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_, p. 9. Pub. 1557.)

Surrey experimented with the Italian sonnet as it had been introduced
into England by his master Wyatt, but soon devised a variation from the
Italian form, and wrote a majority of his sonnets in the new English
form (nine out of the sixteen which are printed in Tottel's Miscellany).
This new form is divided, not into octave and sestet, but into three
quatrains, with alternate rime, and a couplet. It produces, therefore,
an effect quite different from that of the legitimate Italian sonnet,
the couplet at the end giving it a more epigrammatic structure.
Surrey's form seems more consonant with common English taste for
simplicity of rime-structure, and, besides being honored by its adoption
by Shakspere, has remained a favorite side by side with the more
"correct" original.[37]

    Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
    The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
    The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
    The indifferent judge between the high and low;
    With shield of proof shield me from out the press
    Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw.
    O make me in those civil wars to cease;
    I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
    Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
    A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
    A rosy garland and a weary head:
    And if these things, as being thine in right,
    Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
    Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

(SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, xxxix. ab. 1580.)

    Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
    Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
    Relieve my languish, and restore the light;
    With dark forgetting of my care return.
    And let the day be time enough to mourn
    The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
    Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
    Without the torment of the night's untruth.
    Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
    To model forth the passions of to-morrow;
    Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
    To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:
    Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
    And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

(SAMUEL DANIEL: _Care-charmer Sleep_. 1592.)

Daniel was one of the most skilful of the Elizabethans in the use of the
English form of the sonnet. The greater number of his _Sonnets to Delia_
are of this type. The subject of the present sonnet was a fashionable
one in the sixteenth century (compare Sidney's, quoted above).

    Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,--
    Nay I have done, you get no more of me;
    And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
    That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
    Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
    And when we meet at any time again,
    Be it not seen in either of our brows
    That we one jot of former love retain.
    Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
    When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
    When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
    And innocence is closing up his eyes,
    --Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
    From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!

(DRAYTON: _Love's Farewell_. 1594.)

Rossetti called this sonnet "perhaps the best in the language."
Drayton's sonnet-sequence, the _Idea_, follows the Shaksperian form; and
the present specimen illustrates how the important division of this type
of sonnet is between the quatrains and the final couplet.

    One day I wrote her name upon the strand;
    But came the waves and washed it away:
    Again I wrote it with a second hand,
    But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
    Vain man! said she, that dost in vain essay
    A mortal thing so to immortalize;
    For I myself shall like to this decay,
    And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
    Not so (quoth I); let baser things devise
    To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
    My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
    And in the heavens write your glorious name,--
    Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
    Our love shall live, and later life renew.

(SPENSER: _Amoretti_, lxxv. 1595.)

The sonnets in Spenser's collected poems number 177, of which fifty-six
are in the common English (Surrey) form, the remainder--like the present
specimen--riming _ababbcbccdcdee_. This order of rimes reminds us of
that in the Spenserian stanza, and must have been devised by Spenser at
about the same time. It has never been adopted by other poets.

    When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
    I all alone beweep my outcast state,
    And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
    And look upon myself and curse my fate;
    Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
    Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
    Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
    With what I most enjoy contented least;
    Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
    Haply I think on thee--and then my state,
    Like to the lark at break of day arising
    From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
    For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
    That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

(SHAKSPERE: _Sonnet_ xxix. 1609.)

    That time of year thou may'st in me behold
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
    Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
    Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:
    In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
    As after sunset fadeth in the west,
    Which by and by black night doth take away,
    Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:
    In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
    That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
    As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
    Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by:
    --This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

(SHAKSPERE: _Sonnet_ lxxiii. 1609.)

These two specimens, perhaps the favorites of as many readers as any
which could be chosen, must serve to represent the sonnets of Shakspere.
The whole number of these is 154, and all are in the English form.
Slight irregularities in the rime-scheme will be found in about fifteen.
Number 99 has fifteen lines and 126 (sometimes called the Epilogue to
the first part of the series) has only twelve. Number 20 is wholly based
on feminine rimes.[38]

    Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
    Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
    Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
    To rules of reason, holy messengers,
    Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
    Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
    Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
    Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
    Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
    The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
    Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
    Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
    Yet all these fences and their whole array
    One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

(GEORGE HERBERT: _Sin_. 1631.)

    In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
    And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire;
    The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
    Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
    These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
    A different object do these eyes require;
    My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine,
    And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
    Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
    And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
    The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
    To warm their little loves the birds complain;
    I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
    And weep the more because I weep in vain.

(GRAY: _On the Death of Richard West_. 1742.)

On the place of this sonnet in the eighteenth century, see p. 277,
above.

    Oh it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
    Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
    To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
    Or let the easily-persuaded eyes
    Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
    Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low
    And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold
    'Twixt crimson bank; and then, a traveler, go
    From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
    Or listening to the tide, with closed sight,
    Be that blind bard who, on the Chian strand
    By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
    Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
    Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

(COLERIDGE: _Fancy in Nubibus_. 1819.)

The sonnets of Coleridge, as has already been noted, were written under
the influence of those of Bowles, and are not of the Italian type. He
defined the sonnet as "a short poem in which some lonely feeling is
developed," thus emphasizing, like Wordsworth, the idea of unity rather
than of progressive structure.

    Darkly, as by some gloomed mirror glassed,
    Herein at times the brooding eye beholds
    The great scarred visage of the pompous Past,
    But oftener only the embroidered folds
    And soiled regality of his rent robe,
    Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
    And cumber with their trailing pride the globe,
    And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes;
    Till the world seems a world of husks and bones
    Where sightless Seers and Immortals dead,
    Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
    Invincible armies long since vanquished,
    And powerless potentates and foolish sages
    Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.

(WILLIAM WATSON: _History_.)


FOOTNOTES:

[35] It will perhaps be found of interest to reproduce the "Ten
Commandments of the Sonnet" given by Mr. Sharp in his Introduction to
_Sonnets of this Century_ (p. lxxviii):

"1. The sonnet must consist of fourteen decasyllabic lines.

"2. Its octave, or major system, whether or not this be marked by a
pause in the cadence after the eighth line, must (unless cast in the
Shakespearian mould) follow a prescribed arrangement in the
rhyme-sounds--namely, the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth lines must
rhyme on the same sound, and the second, third, sixth, and seventh on
another.

"3. Its sestet, or minor system, may be arranged with more freedom, but
a rhymed couplet at the close is only allowable when the form is the
English or Shakespearian.

"4. No terminal should also occur in any other portion of any other line
in the same system; and the rhyme-sounds (1) of the octave should be
harmoniously at variance, and (2) the rhyme-sounds of the sestet should
be entirely distinct in intonation from those of the octave....

"5. It must have no slovenliness of diction, no weak or indeterminate
terminations, no vagueness of conception, and no obscurity.

"6. It must be absolutely complete in itself--_i.e._, it must be the
evolution of one thought, or one emotion, or one poetically apprehended
fact.

"7. It should have the characteristic of apparent inevitableness, and in
expression be ample, yet reticent....

"8. The continuity of the thought, idea, or emotion must be unbroken
throughout.

"9. Continuous sonority must be maintained from the first phrase to the
last.

"10. The end must be more impressive than the commencement."

These rules of course represent the ideal of the strictest Italian form,
and are by no means derived from the prevailing practice of English
poets.

[36] On the structure and history of the sonnet, see Schipper, as cited
above; C. Tomlinson: _The Sonnet, its Origin, Structure, and Place in
Poetry_ (1874); K. Lentzner: _Ueber das Sonett und seine Gestaltung in
der englischen Dichtung bis Milton_ (1886); Leigh Hunt and S. A. Lee:
_The Book of the Sonnet_ (with introductory essay, 1867); W. Sharp:
_Sonnets of This Century_ (with essay, 1886); S. Waddington: _English
Sonnets by Poets of the Past_, and _English Sonnets by Living Poets_;
Hall Caine: _Sonnets of Three Centuries_ (1882); H. Corson: _Primer of
English Verse_, chap. x.

[37] In 1575, when Gascoigne wrote his _Notes of Instruction_, he found
it necessary to say: "Some thinke that all Poemes (being short) may be
called Sonets, as in deede it is a diminutive worde derived of _Sonare_,
but yet I can beste allowe to call those Sonnets whiche are of fouretene
lynes, every line conteyning tenne syllables. The firste twelve do ryme
in staves of foure lines by crosse meetre, and the last two ryming
togither do conclude the whole." (Arber's Reprint, pp. 38, 39.) It is,
of course, the English sonnet which Gascoigne thus describes.

[38] Shakspere also introduced sonnets into some of his earlier plays:
_Love's Labor's Lost_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Romeo and Juliet_,
and _Henry V._ See Fleay's _Chronicle of the English Drama_, vol. ii. p.
224, and Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, p. xxx.




V. THE ODE


The term Ode is used of English poetry with considerable vagueness. The
Century Dictionary defines the word thus: "A lyric poem expressive of
exalted or enthusiastic emotion, especially one of complex or irregular
metrical form; originally and strictly, such a composition intended to
be sung." Compare with this the definition of Mr. Gosse, in his
collection of _English Odes_: "Any strain of enthusiastic and exalted
lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively
with one dignified theme."

Viewed from the purely metrical standpoint, English odes are commonly
either (_a_) regular Pindaric odes, imitative of the structure of the
Greek ode, or (_b_) irregular, so-called "Pindaric" or "Cowleyan" odes.
A third group may be made of forms based on the imitation of the choral
odes of the Greek drama. There is also a class of odes called
"Horatian," made up of simple lyrical stanzas; the name "ode" is applied
here only because of the content of the poem or because of resemblance
to the so-called odes (properly _carmina_ or songs) of Horace, and since
these Horatian odes show no metrical peculiarities they will not be
represented here.[39]

The characteristic effect of the ode is produced by the varying lengths
of lines employed, and the varying distances at which the rimes answer
one another. This variety, in the hands of a master of verse, is capable
of splendid effectiveness, but it gives dangerous license to the
unskilled writer.


A.--REGULAR PINDARIC

III.^{1} _The Strophe, or Turn_

        It is not growing like a tree
        In bulk, doth make men better be;
    Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
    To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear:
              A lily of a day
              Is fairer far, in May,
        Although it fall and die that night;
        It was the plant of flower and light.
    In small proportions we just beauties see;
    And in short measures life may perfect be.

III.^{2} _The Antistrophe, or Counter-turn_

        Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
        And let thy looks with gladness shine;
    Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,
    And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead.
            He leap'd the present age,
            Possess'd with holy rage,
        To see that bright eternal day;
        Of which we priests and poets say
    Such truths as we expect for happy men:
    And there he lives with memory, and Ben.

III.^{3} _The Epode, or Stand_

    Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went,
              Himself, to rest,
    Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
              To have express'd,
            In this bright asterism!--
            Where it were friendship's schism,
        Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry,
                To separate these twi-
                Lights, the Dioscuri;
        And keep the one half from his Harry.
    But fate doth so alternate the design,
    Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.

(BEN JONSON: _A Pindaric Ode on the death of Sir H. Morison_. 1629.)

This ode of Jonson's is apparently the earliest, and remained for a long
time the only, notable English ode based on the strict structure of the
Greek original. The Greek ode was commonly divided into the strophe, the
antistrophe, and the epode; the strophe and antistrophe being identical
in structure, though varying in different odes, and the epode being of
different structure. Jonson therefore followed the classical form
carefully, and introduced English terms to express the original three
divisions.

Professor Bronson observes, in his Introduction to the Odes of Collins:
"It is a commonplace that the Pindaric Ode in English is an artificial
exotic, of slight native force, and unable to reproduce the effects of
the Greek original. The reason is obvious. The Greek odes were
accompanied by music and dancing, the singers moving to one side during
the strophe, retracing their steps during the antistrophe, ... and
standing still during the epode. The ear was thus helped by the eye, and
the divisions of the ode were distinct and significant. But in an
English Pindaric the elaborate correspondences and differences between
strophe, antistrophe, and epode are lost upon most readers, and even the
critical reader derives from them a pleasure intellectual rather than
sensuous." (Edition of Collins, Athenæum Press Series, Introduction, pp.
lxxiv, lxxv.)

    I^{1}

        Daughter of Memory, immortal Muse,
        Calliope, what poet wilt thou choose,
            Of Anna's name to sing?
        To whom wilt thou thy fire impart,
        Thy lyre, thy voice, and tuneful art,
    Whom raise sublime on thy ethereal wing,
    And consecrate with dews of thy Castalian spring?

    I^{2}

        Without thy aid, the most aspiring mind
        Must flag beneath, to narrow flights confin'd,
            Striving to rise in vain;
        Nor e'er can hope with equal lays
        To celebrate bright Virtue's praise.
    Thine aid obtain'd, even I, the humblest swain,
    May climb Pierian heights, and quit the lowly plain.

    I^{3}

      High in the starry orb is hung,
        And next Alcides' guardian arm,
      That harp to which thy Orpheus sung,
        Who woods and rocks and winds could charm;
    That harp which on Cyllene's shady hill,
        When first the vocal shell was found,
          With more than mortal skill
        Inventor Hermes taught to sound:
        Hermes on bright Latona's son,
          By sweet persuasion won,
          The wondrous work bestow'd;
            Latona's son, to thine
      Indulgent, gave the gift divine:
    A god the gift, a god th' invention show'd.

(CONGREVE: _A Pindaric Ode on the victorious progress of her Majesty's
Arms_. 1706.)

To Congreve is due the credit for the revival of the regular ode in the
eighteenth century, after it had been long forgotten by English poets.
Meantime the irregular form, devised by Cowley, had become popular; and
against the license of this Congreve protested in his _Discourse on the
Pindaric Ode_, prefixed to his Ode of 1706. (See Mr. Gosse's
Introduction to _English Odes_, p. xvii., and his _Life of Congreve_, p.
158.)

     Congreve said in his Discourse: "The following ode is an attempt
     towards restoring the regularity of the ancient lyric poetry, which
     seems to be altogether forgotten, or unknown, by our English
     writers. There is nothing more frequent among us than a sort of
     poems entitled Pindaric Odes, pretending to be written in imitation
     of the manner and style of Pindar, and yet I do not know that there
     is to this day extant, in our language, one ode contrived after his
     model.... The character of these late Pindarics is a bundle of
     rambling incoherent thoughts, expressed in a like parcel of
     irregular stanzas, which also consist of such another complication
     of disproportioned, uncertain, and perplexed verses and rhymes....
     On the contrary, there is nothing more regular than the odes of
     Pindar, both as to the exact observation of the measures and
     numbers of his stanzas and verses, and the perpetual coherence of
     his thoughts....

     "Though there be no necessity that our triumphal odes should
     consist of the three afore-mentioned stanzas, yet if the reader can
     observe that the great variation of the numbers in the third stanza
     (call it epode, or what you please) has a pleasing effect in the
     ode, and makes him return to the first and second stanzas with more
     appetite than he could do if always cloyed with the same quantities
     and measures, I cannot see why some use may not be made of Pindar's
     example, to the great improvement of the English ode. There is
     certainly a pleasure in beholding anything that has art and
     difficulty in the contrivance, especially if it appears so
     carefully executed that the difficulty does not show itself till it
     is sought for....

     "Having mentioned Mr. Cowley, it may very well be expected that
     something should be said of him, at a time when the imitation of
     Pindar is the theme of our discourse. But there is that great
     deference due to the memory, great parts, and learning, of that
     gentleman, that I think nothing should be objected to the latitude
     he has taken in his Pindaric odes. The beauty of his verses is an
     atonement for the irregularity of his stanzas.... Yet I must beg
     leave to add that I believe those irregular odes of Mr. Cowley may
     have been the principal, though innocent, occasion of so many
     deformed poems since, which, instead of being true pictures of
     Pindar, have (to use the Italian painters' term) been only
     caricatures of him."

(_Discourse on the Pindaric Ode_, in Chalmers's _English Poets_, vol. x.
p. 300.)

      Who shall awake the Spartan fife,
      And call in solemn sounds to life
    The youths whose locks divinely spreading,
      Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue,
    At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding,
      Applauding Freedom lov'd of old to view?
        What new Alcæus, fancy-blest,
        Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest,
      At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing
    (What place so fit to seal a deed renowned?),
      Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing,
    It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound?
        O goddess, in that feeling hour,
        When most its sounds would court thy ears,
        Let not my shell's misguided power
        E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears.
        No, Freedom, no, I will not tell
        How Rome before thy weeping face,
    With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell,
        Push'd by a wild and artless race
        From off its wide ambitious base,
      When Time his Northern sons of spoil awoke,
      And all the blended work of strength and grace,
          With many a rude repeated stroke,
    And many a barb'rous yell, to thousand fragments broke....

        Beyond the measure vast of thought,
        The works the wizard Time has wrought!
      The Gaul, 'tis held of antique story,
        Saw Britain link'd to his now adverse strand;
      No sea between, nor cliff sublime and hoary,
        He pass'd with unwet feet thro' all our land.
            To the blown Baltic then, they say,
            The wild waves found another way,
        Where Orcas howls, his wolfish mountains rounding;
      Till all the banded West at once 'gan rise,
        A wide wild storm ev'n Nature's self confounding,
      With'ring her giant sons with strange uncouth surprise.
            This pillar'd earth so firm and wide,
            By winds and inward labors torn,
            In thunders dread was push'd aside,
            And down the should'ring billows borne.
            And see, like gems, her laughing train,
            The little isles on every side!
      Mona, once hid from those who search the main,
            Where thousand elfin shapes abide,
            And Wight, who checks the west'ring tide;
      For thee consenting Heaven has each bestowed,
      A fair attendant on her sovereign pride.
            To thee this blest divorce she ow'd,
    For thou hast made her vales thy lov'd, thy last abode!

(COLLINS: _Ode to Liberty_, strophe and antistrophe. 1746.)

This ode consists of strophe, epode, antistrophe, and second epode. The
antistrophe corresponds metrically to the strophe, as usual; the epodes
are in four-stress couplets. It was Collins's habit to place the epode
between the strophe and antistrophe, perhaps, as Professor Bronson
suggests, in order that it may produce "an impression of its own
analogous to that of the Greek epode, namely, an impression of relief
and repose." Mr. Bronson says further of Collins's odes: "Collins was
less scholarly than Gray, but he was bolder and more original; and
consciously or unconsciously he so constructed his odes that their
organic parts stand out clearly distinct and produce effects analogous
to those produced by the Greek ode. In brief, his method was, first, to
make large divisions of the thought correspond to the large divisions of
the form; and, second, to throw out into relief the complex strophe and
antistrophe by contrasting them with a simple epode. The reader may not
perceive the minute correspondences in form between strophe and
antistrophe, but he can hardly fail to feel that the two answer to one
another in a general way." (Athenæum Press edition of Collins,
Introduction, p. lxxv.)

III^{1}

        Far from the sun and summer-gale,
      In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid,
      What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
        To him the mighty Mother did unveil
      Her awful face. The dauntless Child
      Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.
      This pencil take (she said) whose colors clear
      Richly paint the vernal year;
      Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!
      This can unlock the gates of Joy,
      Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,
    Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.

    III^{2}

        Nor second he, that rode sublime
      Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
      The secrets of th' Abyss to spy,
        He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time;
      The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze,
      Where Angels tremble while they gaze,
      He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
      Clos'd his eyes in endless night.
      Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car
      Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
      Two coursers of ethereal race,
    With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace.

    III^{3}

        Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
      Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er
      Scatters from her pictured urn
      Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
      But ah! 'tis heard no more--
        Oh! Lyre divine, what daring spirit
        Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit
      Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
        That the Theban Eagle bear
      Sailing with supreme dominion
        Thro' the azure deep of air;
      Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
        Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray
      With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun;
        Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
      Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
    Beneath the good how far--but far above the great.

(GRAY: _The Progress of Poesy._ 1757.)

Gray's _Progress of Poesy_ is probably to be regarded as the chief of
all English odes of the regular Pindaric form. Mr. Lowell said, indeed,
that it "overflies all other English lyrics like an eagle." _The Bard_
is in precisely the same form, and shows the same skill in the wielding
of the intricately varying melodies of the lines of different length.


B.--IRREGULAR (COWLEYAN)

            Whom thunder's dismal noise,
        And all that Prophets and Apostles louder spake,
        And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice,
          Could not, whilst they liv'd, awake,
          This mightier sound shall make
              When dead t' arise,
          And open tombs, and open eyes,
        To the long sluggards of five thousand years.
      This mightier sound shall wake its hearers' ears.
      Then shall the scatter'd atoms crowding come
          Back to their ancient home.
        Some from birds, from fishes some,
        Some from earth, and some from seas,
        Some from beasts, and some from trees.
        Some descend from clouds on high,
        Some from metals upwards fly,
    And where th' attending soul naked and shivering stands,
        Meet, salute, and join their hands,
      As dispers'd soldiers at the trumpet's call
              Haste to their colors all.
          Unhappy most, like tortur'd men,
      Their joints new set, to be new-rack'd again,
          To mountains they for shelter pray;
    The mountains shake, and run about no less confus'd than they.

    Stop, stop, my Muse! allay thy vig'rous heat,
          Kindled at a hint so great.
    Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,
          Which does to rage begin,
    And this steep hill would gallop up with violent course;
    'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse,
          Fierce, and unbroken yet,
          Impatient of the spur or bit;
    Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place;
    Disdains the servile law of any settled pace;
    Conscious and proud of his own natural force,
          'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
    But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.

(COWLEY: _The Resurrection_, strophes iii. and iv. 1656).

Cowley, as has already appeared, introduced the irregular ode into
English poetry, calling it "Pindaric" under a misapprehension of the
real structure of the Greek odes. He published fifteen "Pindarique Odes"
in 1656 (see the Preface to these, in Grosart's edition of his works,
vol. ii. p. 4). The present specimen illustrates the really not
unskilful use which Cowley made of the varying cadences of the form, and
also sets forth--in the amusing concluding lines--his own idea of its
difficulties.

Under the influence of Cowley's odes, the new form speedily became
popular. According to Dr. Johnson, "this lax and lawless versification
so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the
laziness of the idle, that it immediately over-spread our books of
poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they who
could do nothing else could write like Pindar." (_Life of Cowley_.)
Compare also the remarks of Mr. Gosse: "Until the days of Collins and
Gray, the ode modelled upon Cowley was not only the universal medium for
congratulatory lyrics and pompous occasional pieces, but it was almost
the only variety permitted to the melancholy generations over whom the
heroic couplet reigned supreme." (_Seventeenth Century Studies_, p.
216.)

It has been the habit of modern critics to treat the irregularities of
the Cowleyan ode with no little contempt, and it is undoubtedly true
that in the hands of small poets its liberties are dangerous; but it is
also true that some of the greatest modern poets have adopted the form
for some of their best work, and that they have generally preferred it
to that of the regular Pindaric ode.

    When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
      To raise the nations under ground;
      When in the valley of Jehoshaphat
    The judging God shall close the book of Fate,
      And there the last assizes keep
      For those who wake and those who sleep;
      When rattling bones together fly
      From the four corners of the sky;
    When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
    Those cloth'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
    The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
    And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
    For they are covered with the lightest ground;
    And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing,
    Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
    There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go,
    As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
    The way which thou so well hast learn'd below.

(DRYDEN: _To the Pious Memory of Mistress Anne Killigrew_, strophe x.
1686.)

See also specimen from the _Ode for St. Cecilia's Day_, quoted above, p.
52.

Dryden's odes for St. Cecilia's Day (especially the _Alexander's Feast_)
are among the most highly esteemed of his poems; but parts, at least, of
the ode on Mistress Killigrew are no less fine, and in this case we have
a purely literary ode, whose irregularities are not designed--as in the
case of the others--to fit choral rendering. The conclusion of the ode,
here quoted, seems to owe something of both substance and form to the
conclusion of Cowley's Resurrection Ode (see preceding specimen). Dr.
Johnson called Dryden's Killigrew Ode "undoubtedly the noblest ode that
our language ever has produced."

      Last came Joy's ecstatic trial.
      He, with viny crown advancing,
        First to the lively pipe his hand addrest;
      But soon he saw the brisk awak'ning viol,
        Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.
        They would have thought, who heard the strain,
        They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids,
        Amidst the festal sounding shades,
    To some unwearied minstrel dancing,
      While, as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings,
        Love fram'd with Mirth a gay fantastic round;
        Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,
          And he, amidst his frolic play,
      As if he would the charming air repay,
      Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

(COLLINS: _The Passions._ 1746.)

    I marked Ambition in his war-array!
    I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry--
    "Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay!
    Groans not her chariot on its onward way?"
          Fly, mailed Monarch, fly!
        Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
        No more on murder's lurid face
    The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
        Manes of the unnumbered slain!
      Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain!
      Ye that erst at Ismail's tower,
    When human ruin choked the streams,
      Fell in conquest's glutted hour,
    Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams!
      Spirits of the uncoffined slain,
          Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
      Oft, at night, in misty train,
          Rush around her narrow dwelling!
    The exterminating fiend is fled--
      (Foul her life, and dark her doom)--
    Mighty armies of the dead
      Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb!
        Then with prophetic song relate
        Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

(COLERIDGE: _Ode on the Departing Year_, strophe iii. 1796.)

This ode was evidently intended to be in the regular Pindaric form, and
was divided into strophes, antistrophes, and epodes; but it soon broke
into irregularity. On Coleridge's odes see some remarks by Mr. Theodore
Watts in the article on Poetry in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
    The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
        Hath had elsewhere its setting,
          And cometh from afar:
        Not in entire forgetfulness,
        And not in utter nakedness,
    But trailing clouds of glory do we come
          From God, who is our home.
    Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
    Shades of the prison-house begin to close
          Upon the growing boy,
    But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
          He sees it in his joy;
    The youth, who daily farther from the east
        Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
          And by the vision splendid
          Is on his way attended;
    At length the man perceives it die away,
    And fade into the light of common day....
          O joy! that in our embers
            Is something that doth live,
          That nature yet remembers
            What was so fugitive!
    The thought of our past years in me doth breed
    Perpetual benediction: not indeed
    For that which is most worthy to be blest;
    Delight and liberty, the simple creed
    Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
    With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
          Not for these I raise
          The song of thanks and praise;
        But for those obstinate questionings
        Of sense and outward things,
        Fallings from us, vanishings;
          Blank misgivings of a creature
    Moving about in worlds not realized,
    High instincts before which our mortal nature
    Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
          But for those first affections,
          Those shadowy recollections,
        Which, be they what they may,
    Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
    Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
        Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
    Our noisy years seem moments in the being
    Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake
            To perish never;
    Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
            Nor man nor boy,
    Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
    Can utterly abolish or destroy!
        Hence in a season of calm weather,
          Though inland far we be,
    Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
            Which brought us hither,
        Can in a moment travel thither,
    And see the children sport upon the shore,
    And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

(WORDSWORTH: _Intimations of Immortality_, strophes v. and ix. 1807.)

In this poem the English ode may be said to have reached its high-water
mark. Professor Corson observes: "The several metres are felt, in the
course of the reading of the Ode, to be organic--inseparable from what
each is employed to express. The rhymes, too, with their varying
degrees of emphasis, according to the nearness or remoteness, and the
length, of the rhyming verses, are equally a part of the expression....
The feelings of the reader of English poetry get to be set, so to speak,
to the pentameter measure, as in that measure the largest portion of
English poetry is written; and, accordingly, other measures derive some
effect from that fact. In the theme-metre, generally, the more
reflective portions of the Ode, its deeper tones, are expressed. The
gladder notes come in the shorter metres.... Wordsworth never wrote any
poem of which it can be more truly said than of his great Ode, 'Of the
soul the body form doth take.'" (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 32-34.)

          Then gentle winds arose
          With many a mingled close
    Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-odor keen;
          And where the Baian ocean
          Welters with airlike motion,
    Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
    Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves
      Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
        Floats o'er the Elysian realm,
    It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves
      Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
          No storm can overwhelm;
          I sailed, where ever flows
          Under the calm Serene
          A spirit of deep emotion
          From the unknown graves
          Of the dead kings of Melody.
    Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
    The horizontal ether; heaven stripped bare
    Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
      Made the invisible water white as snow;
      From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,
    There streamed a sunlight vapor, like the standard
          Of some ethereal host;
          Whilst from the coast,
    Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
    Over the oracular woods and divine sea
    Prophesyings which grew articulate--
    They seize me--I must speak them--be they fate!

(SHELLEY: _Ode to Naples_, strophe ii. 1819.)

    Bury the Great Duke
    With an empire's lamentation,
    Let us bury the Great Duke
    To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,
    Mourning when their leaders fall,
    Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
    And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
    Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
    Here, in streaming London's central roar.
    Let the sound of those he wrought for,
    And the feet of those he fought for,
    Echo round his bones for evermore.

    Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
    As fits an universal woe,
    Let the long long procession go,
    And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
    And let the mournful martial music blow;
    The last great Englishman is low....

    ... We revere, and while we hear
    The tides of Music's golden sea
    Setting toward eternity,
    Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,
    Until we doubt not that for one so true
    There must be other nobler work to do
    Than when he fought at Waterloo,
    And Victor he must ever be.
    For though the Giant Ages heave the hill
    And break the shore, and evermore
    Make and break, and work their will;
    Though world on world in myriad myriads roll
    Round us, each with different powers,
    And other forms of life than ours,
    What know we greater than the soul?
    On God and Godlike men we build our trust.
    Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears:
    The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears:
    The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears;
    Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
    He is gone who seemed so great.--
    Gone; but nothing can bereave him
    Of the force he made his own
    Being here, and we believe him
    Something far advanced in state,
    And that he wears a truer crown
    Than any wreath that man can weave him.
    Speak no more of his renown,
    Lay your earthly fancies down,
    And in the vast cathedral leave him.
    God accept him, Christ receive him.

(TENNYSON: _On the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, strophes i, ii,
iii, ix (in part). 1852.)

This ode of Tennyson's is one of the few poems in which he gave himself
such liberty of form (compare some of the irregular measures of _Maud_).
It shows his usual skill in the adaptation of metrical effects to the
purposes of description. Dr. Henry Van <DW18> has suggested that the
varying--almost lawless--movements of the opening lines are designed to
suggest the surging of the crowd through the streets of London, before
the entrance into the cathedral for the funeral.

    Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!
        Thy God, in these distempered days,
      Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
    And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!
          Bow down in prayer and praise!
      No poorest in thy borders but may now
    Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.
      O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more,
      Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
      O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
          And letting thy set lips,
          Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
      The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
      What words divine of lover or of poet
      Could tell our love and make thee know it,
      Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
          What were our lives without thee?
          What all our lives to save thee?
          We reck not what we gave thee;
          We will not dare to doubt thee.
      But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

(LOWELL: _Harvard Commemoration Ode_, strophe xii. 1865.)

This is undoubtedly the finest of odes by American poets, and remains
one of the glories of new-world poetry. Its irregular measures were
designed by Mr. Lowell to fit the poem for public reading (see his
letter to Mr. Gosse on the subject, quoted in the Appendix to Gosse's
_Seventeenth Century Studies_).

    In the Year of the great Crime,
    When the false English nobles and their Jew,
    By God demented, slew
    The Trust they stood thrice pledged to keep from wrong,
    One said, Take up thy Song,
    That breathes the mild and almost mythic time
    Of England's prime!
    But I, Ah, me,
    The freedom of the few
    That, in our free Land, were indeed the free,
    Can song renew?
    Ill singing 'tis with blotting prison-bars,
    How high soe'er, betwixt us and the stars;
    Ill singing 'tis when there are none to hear;
    And days are near
    When England shall forget
    The fading glow which, for a little while,
    Illumes her yet,
    The lovely smile
    That grows so faint and wan,
    Her people shouting in her dying ear:
    Are not jays twain worth two of any swan!
    Harsh words and brief asks the dishonor'd Year.

(COVENTRY PATMORE: Ode ix. Printed 1868.)

Mr. Patmore's use of the irregular ode forms is of particular interest.
He made a special study of the form, and applied it more widely than is
commonly done. His first odes were printed (not published) in 1868, and
from one of these the present specimen is taken. Later (1877), in
connection with _The Unknown Eros_, he set forth his view of the ode
form, treating it not as lawless but as governed by laws of its own.
"Nearly all English metres," he said, "owe their existence as metres to
'catalexis,' or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule,
the position and amount of catalexis, are fixed. But the verse in which
this volume is written is catalectic _par excellence_, employing the
pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies
of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own,
some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the
wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less
discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part
sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it
has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical
movements which are destructive of its character. Some persons,
unlearned in the subject of this metre, have objected to this kind of
verse that it is 'lawless.' But it has its laws as truly as any other.
In its highest order, the lyric or 'ode,' it is a tetrameter, the line
having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the
expression of a less exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter,
having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of
four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter 'ode' by the occasional
introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures,
but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at
indefinite intervals is counterbalanced ... by unusual frequency in the
recurrence of the same rhyme." (From Patmore's Prefatory Note to _The
Unknown Eros_; quoted by William Sharp, in the Introduction to _Great
Odes_, p. xxxii.)[40]

      On the shores of a Continent cast,
        She won the inviolate soil
    By loss of heirdom of all the Past,
    And faith in the royal right of Toil!
    She planted homes on the savage sod:
      Into the wilderness lone
      She walked with fearless feet,
      In her hand the divining-rod,
      Till the veins of the mountains beat
    With fire of metal and force of stone!
    She set the speed of the river-head
        To turn the mills of her bread;
        She drove her ploughshare deep
    Through the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep.
        To the South, and West, and North,
          She called Pathfinder forth,
        Her faithful and sole companion
    Where the flushed Sierra, snow-starred,
        Her way to the sunset barred,
    And the nameless rivers in thunder and foam
        Channeled the terrible canyon!
      Nor paused, till her uttermost home
    Was built, in the smile of a softer sky
      And the glory of beauty yet to be,
    Where the haunted waves of Asia die
      On the strand of the world-wide sea.

(BAYARD TAYLOR: _National Ode_, strophe iii. 1876.)

    Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,
    Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;
    Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose
    Go honking northward over Tennessee;
    West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie,
    And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,
    And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young,
    Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,
    With restless violent hands and casual tongue
    Moulding her mighty fates,
    The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;
    And like a larger sea, the vital green
    Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung
    Over Dakota and the prairie states.
    By desert people immemorial
    On Arizonan mesas shall be done
    Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;
    Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice
    More splendid, when the white Sierras call
    Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
    And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,
    Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,
    Unrolling rivers clear
    For flutter of broad phylacteries;
    While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas
    That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep
    To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,
    And Mariposa through the purple calms
    Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms
    Where East and West are met,--
    A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set
    To say that East and West are twain,
    With different loss and gain:
    The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet....

    ... Ah no!
    We have not fallen so,
    We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!
    'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
    Came up the tropic wind, 'Now help us, for we die!'
    Then Alabama heard,
    And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho
    Shouted a burning word.
    Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,
    And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,
    East, west, and south, and north,
    Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young,
    Shed on the awful hill <DW72> at San Juan,
    By the unforgotten names of eager boys
    Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung
    With the old mystic joys
    And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,
    But that the heart of youth is generous,--
    We charge you, ye who lead us,
    Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!
    Turn not their new-world victories to gain!
    One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays
    Of their dear praise,
    One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,
    The implacable republic will require.

(WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY: _An Ode in Time of Hesitation_, strophes iii. and
ix. 1900.)


C.--CHORAL

Different from either of the two classes of odes already represented are
the irregular choral measures used by a few English poets in translation
or imitation of the odes of the Greek drama.

_Chorus._

    O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious!
    Living or dying thou hast fulfilled
    The work for which thou wast foretold
    To Israel, and now liest victorious
    Among thy slain self-killed;
    Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
    Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined
    Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more
    Than all thy life had slain before.

_Semi-chorus._

    While their hearts were jocund and sublime,
    Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine
    And fat regorged of bulls and goats,
    Chaunting their idol, and preferring
    Before our living Dread, who dwells
    In Silo, his bright sanctuary,
    Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent,
    Who hurt their minds,
    And urged them on with mad desire
    To call in haste for their destroyer.
    They, only set on sport and play,
    Unweetingly importuned
    Their own destruction to come speedy upon them.
    So fond are mortal men,
    Fallen into wrath divine,
    As their own ruin on themselves to invite,
    Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,
    And with blindness internal struck.

_Semi-chorus._

    But he, though blind of sight,
    Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
    With inward eyes illuminated,
    His fiery virtue roused
    From under ashes into sudden flame,
    And as an evening dragon came,
    Assailant on the perched roosts
    And nests in order ranged
    Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle
    His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.
    So Virtue, given for lost,
    Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
    Like that self-begotten bird
    In the Arabian woods embost,
    That no second knows nor third,
    And lay erewhile a holocaust,
    From out her ashy womb now teemed,
    Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
    When most unactive deemed;
    And, though her body die, her fame survives,
    A secular bird, ages of lives.

(MILTON: _Samson Agonistes_, ll. 1660-1707. 1671.)

Of this passage Mr. Swinburne says: "It is hard to realize and hopeless
to reproduce the musical force of classic metres so recondite and
exquisite as the choral parts of a Greek play. Even Milton could not;
though with his godlike instinct and his godlike might of hand he made a
kind of strange and enormous harmony by intermixture of assonance and
rhyme with irregular blank verse, as in that last Titanic chorus of
Samson which utters over the fallen Philistines the trumpet-blast and
thunder of its triumphs." (_Essays and Studies_, pp. 162, 163.)

    The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere;
    In the court of gods, in the city of men,
    And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen,
    In the still mountain air.
    Only to Typho it sounds hatefully,--
    To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown,
    Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone,
    To embed them in the sea.
    Wherefore dost thou groan so loud?
    Wherefore do thy nostrils flash,
    Through the dark night, suddenly,
    Typho, such red jets of flame?
    Is thy tortured heart still proud?
    Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash?
    Still alert thy stone-crushed frame?
    Doth thy fierce soul still deplore
    Thine ancient rout by the Cilician hills,
    And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore?
    Do thy bloodshot eyes still weep
    The fight which crowned thine ills,
    Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep?
    Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair,
    Where erst the strong sea-currents sucked thee down,
    Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest,
    Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair?
    That thy groans, like thunder prest,
    Begin to roll, and almost drown
    The sweet notes whose lulling spell
    Gods and the race of mortals love so well,
    When through thy caves thou hearest music swell?

    But an awful pleasure bland
    Spreading o'er the Thunderer's face,
    When the sound climbs near his seat,
    The Olympian council sees;
    As he lets his lax right hand,
    Which the lightnings doth embrace,
    Sink upon his mighty knees.
    And the eagle, at the beck
    Of the appeasing, gracious harmony,
    Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck,
    Nestling nearer to Jove's feet;
    While o'er his sovran eye
    The curtains of the blue films slowly meet.
    And the white Olympus-peaks
    Rosily brighten, and the soothed gods smile
    At one another from their golden chairs,
    And no one round the charmed circle speaks.
    Only the loved Hebe bears
    The cup about, whose draughts beguile
    Pain and care, with a dark store
    Of fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o'er;
    And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _Empedocles on Etna_, Act II. Song of Callicles. 1853.)

    Wherefore to me, this fear--
    Groundedly stationed here
    Fronting my heart, the portent-watcher--flits she?
    Wherefore should prophet-play
    The uncalled and unpaid lay,
    Nor--having spat forth fear, like bad dreams--sits she
    On the mind's throne beloved--well-suasive Boldness?
    For time, since, by a throw of all the hands,
    The boat's stern-cables touched the sands,
    Has passed from youth to oldness,--
    When under Ilion rushed the ship-borne bands.

    And from my eyes I learn--
    Being myself my witness--their return.
    Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul,
    Itself its teacher too, chants from within
    Erinus' dirge, not having now the whole
    Of Hope's dear boldness: nor my inwards sin--
    The heart that's rolled in whirls against the mind
    Justly presageful of a fate behind.
    But I pray--things false, from my hope, may fall
    Into the fate that's not-fulfilled-at-all!

    Especially at least, of health that's great
    The term's insatiable: for, its weight
    --A neighbor, with a common wall between--
    Ever will sickness lean;
    And destiny, her course pursuing straight,
    Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen.
    Now, when a portion, rather than the treasure
    Fear casts from sling, with peril in right measure,
    It has not sunk--the universal freight,
    (With misery freighted over-full,)
    Nor has fear whelmed the hull.
    Then too the gift of Zeus,
    Two-handedly profuse,
    Even from the furrows' yield for yearly use
    Has done away with famine, the disease;
    But blood of man to earth once falling,--deadly, black,--
    In times ere these,--
    Who may, by singing spells, call back?
    Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knew
    The way to bring the dead again.
    But, did not an appointed Fate constrain
    The Fate from gods, to bear no more than due,
    My heart, outstripping what tongue utters,
    Would have all out: which now, in darkness, mutters
    Moodily grieved, nor ever hopes to find
    How she a word in season may unwind
    From out the enkindling mind.

(BROWNING: _Agamemnon_; chorus. 1877.)

Of the same general metrical character as the irregular odes are certain
poems (like some of Patmore's) with no regularly organized structure and
varying lengths of line. See, for example, Milton's verses _At a Solemn
Music_ and _On Time_; Swinburne's _Thalassius_ and _On the Cliffs_; and
William Morris's _On a fair Spring Morning_. Compare, also, the effect
of the irregular strophic forms in Southey's _Curse of Kehama_,
Shelley's _Queen Mab_, and the like.[41]


FOOTNOTES:

[39] On English ode-forms, see the introductions to Mr. Gosse's _English
Odes_ and Mr. William Sharp's _Great Odes_; also Schipper, vol. ii. p.
792.

[40] Mr. Patmore has used the same sort of verse for narrative poetry,
with unusual daring but also with unusual success. For an example see
his _Amelia_, included in the _Golden Treasury_, Second Series. The
following passage exhibits the metrical method of the poem at its best:

"And so we went alone By walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plume
Shook down perfume; Trim plots close blown With daisies, in conspicuous
myriads seen, Engross'd each one With single ardor for her spouse, the
sun; Garths in their glad array Of white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,
With azure chill the maiden flower between; Meadows of fervid green,
With sometime sudden prospect of untold Cowslips, like chance-found
gold; And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze, Rending the air with
praise, Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shout Of Jacob camp'd in
Midian put to rout; Then through the Park, Where Spring to livelier
gloom Quickened the cedars dark, And, 'gainst the clear sky cold, Which
shone afar Crowded with sunny alps oracular, Great chestnuts raised
themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom."



[41] The easy abuse of these irregular measures is amusingly parodied by
Mr. Owen Seaman, in a burlesque of an ode of Mr. Le Gallienne's:

"Is this the Seine? And am I altogether wrong About the brain, Dreaming
I hear the British tongue? Dear Heaven! what a rhyme! And yet 'tis all
as good As some that I have fashioned in my time, Like _bud_ and _wood_;
And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neater Metre."

(_The Battle of the Bays_, p. 37.)




VI. IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES


While English verse is generally admitted to be based on a different
system from that of Greek and Latin poetry (the element of accent
obscuring that of quantity in English prosody, as the element of
quantity obscures that of accent in classical prosody), there have been
repeated attempts to introduce the more familiar classical measures into
English. Most of these attempts have been academic and have attracted
the attention only of critics and scholars; a few have interested the
reading public.

Imitations of classical verse in English may conveniently be divided
into two classes: imitations of lyrical measures, and imitations of the
dactylic hexameter. The latter group is of course much the larger,
especially in modern poetry. It will appear that the classical measures
might also be divided into two groups according to another distinction:
those attempting to observe the quantitative prosody of the original
language, and those in which the original measure is transmuted into
frankly accentual verse.

     The original impulse toward this classical or pseudo-classical
     verse was a product of the Renaissance, when all forms of art not
     based on Greek and Latin models were suspected. Rime, not being
     found in the poetry of the classical languages, was treated as a
     product of the dark ages,--the invention of "Goths and Huns." See
     Roger Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ (1570) for the most characteristic
     representative of this phase of thought in England. The new forms
     of verse were, naturally enough, first tried in Italy. Schipper
     traces the beginning of the movement to Alberti (1404-1484). A
     century later Trissino wrote his _Sophonisbe_ and _Italia Liberata_
     in unrimed verse, in professed imitation of Homer, and was looked
     upon as the inventor of _versi sciolti_, that is, verses "freed"
     from rime (compare the remarks of Milton in the prefatory note to
     _Paradise Lost_). In 1539 Claudio Tolomei wrote _Versi e Regole
     della Poesia Nuova_, a systematic attempt to introduce the
     classical versification. He also wrote hexameters and sapphics. In
     France there were similar efforts in the sixteenth century. Mousset
     translated Homer into hexameters in 1530, and A. de Baïf, a member
     of the "Pleiade" (1532-1589), devised some French hexameters which
     he called _vers baïfins_. The English experiments were worked out
     independently, and yet under the same neo-classical influences. On
     this subject, see Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 2-12, 439-464.


A.--LYRICAL MEASURES

    Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason
    In this strange violence, to make resistance
    Where sweet graces erect the stately banner
    Of Virtue's regiment, shining in harness
    Of Fortune's diadems, by Beauty mustered:
    Say, then, Reason, I say, what is thy counsel?

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Phaleuciakes_, from the _Arcadia_, ab. 1580.)

This is the measure commonly called "Phalæcian." Compare Tennyson's
imitation of it, in his Hendecasyllabics quoted below.

    O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness!
    O how much I do like your solitariness!
    Where man's mind hath a freed consideration
    Of goodness to receive lovely direction.
    Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host,
    And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Asclepiadics_, from the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

This is the measure now called "Lesser Asclepiadean."

    My Muse, what ails this ardor
    To blaze my only secrets?
    Alas, it is no glory
    To sing my own decay'd state.
    Alas, it is no comfort
    To speak without an answer;
    Alas, it is no wisdom
    To show the wound without cure.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Anacreontics_, from the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was a member of the little group of classical students who called
themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing
classical measures into English verse. Others of the group were Gabriel
Harvey and Edmund Spenser, from whose correspondence most of our
information regarding the movement is derived. (See the letters in
Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works, vol. i. pp. 7-9, 20-24, 35-37,
75-76, 99-107.) Spenser's only known efforts in the same direction are
also preserved in this correspondence; a poem in twenty-one iambic
trimeters, and this "tetrasticon":--

    "See yee the blindfoulded pretie god, that feathered archer,
      Of lovers miseries which maketh his bloodie game?
    Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coovered his face?
      Trust me, least he my loove happely chaunce to beholde."

It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than
Sidney did, to follow the classical rules of quantity in making his
verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English
rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the classical versification are perhaps
the most successful, to modern taste, of all those made in the
Elizabethan period. Among the other songs in the _Arcadia_ will be found
sapphics and hexameters.

     See especially Spenser's letter of April, 1580, and Harvey's reply
     (_op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 35, 99), for notable passages indicating
     the seriousness with which the members of the "Areopagus" were
     trying to orm English verse so as to bring it under the rules of
     classical prosody. The relations of quantity and accent were not
     understood, as indeed they may be said still not to be understood
     for the English language. Spenser suggests, in a frequently quoted
     passage, that in the word _carpenter_ the middle syllable is "short
     in speech, when it shall be read long in verse,"--that is, because
     the vowel is followed by two consonants; hence it "seemeth like a
     lame gosling that draweth one legge after her.... But it is to be
     wonne with custome, and rough words must be subdued with use."
     Harvey resented the idea that the common pronunciation of words
     could be departed from in order to conform them to arbitrary
     metrical rules, and in his reply said: "You shall never have my
     subscription or consent ... to make your Carpēnter our
     Carpĕnter, an inche longer or bigger, than God and his Englishe
     people have made him.... Else never heard I any that durst presume
     so much over the Englishe ... as to alter the quantitie of any one
     sillable, otherwise than oure common speache and generall receyved
     custome woulde beare them oute." But while all English verse must
     be consistent with "the vulgare and naturall mother prosodye,"
     Harvey does not despair of finding a system that shall be at the
     same time "countervaileable to the best tongues" in making possible
     quantitative verse. The whole passage is well worth reading. The
     best account of the movement toward classical versification in the
     days of the "Areopagus" will be found in Professor Schelling's
     _Poetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_
     (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania).

    O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke,
    For to bathe there your pretty breasts at all times:
    Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe.

    And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass,
    Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth:
    Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre.

(WILLIAM WEBBE: Sapphic Verse, in _A Discourse of English Poetrie_.
1586.)

Webbe was another of those who believed "that if the true kind of
versifying in immitation of Greekes and Latines, had been practised in
the English tongue, ... it would long ere this have aspyred to as full
perfection, as in anie other tongue whatsoever." So he added to his
_Discourse_ (see Arber Reprint, pp. 67-84) a discussion of the
principles of quantitative prosody, and some specimens of what might be
done by way of experiment.[42] The Sapphics from which the present
specimen is taken are a paraphrase of Spenser's praise of Elizabeth in
the fourth eclogue of the _Shepherd's Calendar_. (For a specimen of
Webbe's hexameters, see p. 334, below.)

    Greatest in thy wars,
    Greater in thy peace,
    Dread Elizabeth;
    Our muse only truth,
    Figments cannot use,
    Thy ritch name to deck
    That itselfe adorns:
    But should now this age
    Let all poesye fayne,
    Fayning poesy could
    Nothing faine at all
    Worthy halfe thy fame.

(THOMAS CAMPION: Iambic Dimeter, "an example Lyrical," in _Observations
in the Art of English Poesie_. 1602.)

      Rose-cheekt Lawra come
    Sing thou smoothly with thy beawtie's
    Silent musick, either other
          Sweetely gracing.

      Lovely formes do flowe
    From concent devinely framed,
    Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie's
          Birth is heavenly.

(THOMAS CAMPION: Trochaic Dimeter, _ib._)

The full title of Campion's work was: "Observations in the Art of
English Poesie; wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by example
confirmed, that the English toong will receive eight severall kinds of
numbers, proper to it selfe, which are all in this booke set forth, and
were never before this time by any man attempted." Campion, like other
classical versifiers, condemned rime as a barbarity; but in imitating
the classical measures he does not violate the normal English accent, so
that his verses read smoothly in English rhythm. Curiously enough, he
includes among his innovations an iambic measure which proves to be
ordinary decasyllabic verse:

    "Goe numbers boldly passe, stay not for ayde
    Of shifting rime, that easie flatterer,
    Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile".

Professor Schelling exclaims: "Where could the musical Doctor have kept
his ears all this time? to propose this measure thus innocently for the
drama, when the English stage had been ringing with his 'licentiate
iambics' for more than two decades!"

The second of the specimens quoted above Campion describes as a dimeter
"whose first foote may either be a Sponde or Trochy: the two verses
following are both of them Trochaical, and consist of foure feete, the
first of either of them being a Spondee or Trochy, the other three only
Trochyes. The fourth and last verse is made of two Trochyes. The number
is voluble and fit to expresse any amorous conceit." (See also another
of Campion's measures, in Part One, p. 27.)[43]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries few, if any, notable English
poems were written in the classical measures. Goldsmith, in one of his
essays (xviii, on Versification), maintained the possibility of reducing
English words to the classical prosody, and said: "We have seen several
late specimens of English hexameters and sapphics so happily composed
that, by attaching them to the idea of ancient measure, we found them in
all respects as melodious and agreeable to the ear as the works of
Virgil and Anacreon, or Horace." But whose these were it seems to be
impossible to say.

    Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going?
    Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order--
    Bleak blows the blast;--your hat has got a hole in't,
                              So have your breeches!

    Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones
    Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
    road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives and
                              Scissors to grind O!"

(CANNING and FRERE: _Sapphics; the Friend of Humanity and the
Knife-Grinder_, in the _Anti-Jacobin_, November, 1797).

These "Sapphics" were a burlesque of some by Southey in similar stanzas,
opening:

    "Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snow fell,
    Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked,
    When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey,
                Weary and way-sore."

"In this poem," said the _Anti-Jacobin_, not unjustly, "the pathos of
the matter is not a little relieved by the absurdity of the metre."

    O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
    O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
      God-gifted organ-voice of England,
        Milton, a name to resound for ages;
    Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
    Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
      Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
        Rings to the roar of an angel onset.

(TENNYSON: _Milton; Alcaics._)

    O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
    Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
    Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
    All composed in a metre of Catullus,
    All in quantity, careful of my motion,
    Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
    Lest I fall unawares before the people,
    Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
    Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
    Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
    They should speak to me not without a welcome,
    All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
    Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,
    So fantastical is the dainty metre.
    Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
    Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.

(TENNYSON: _Hendecasyllabics._)

On the first of these stanzas of Tennyson, compare his stanzas to
Maurice, and note, p. 77, above. With the hendecasyllabics, compare the
"Phaleuciakes" of Sidney, p. 331, above, and "Hendecasyllabics" in
Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_.

Tennyson took no little interest in the relations of classical and
English metres, and seems to have believed in the possibility of genuine
English quantitative verse. He did not, however, regard it as of
practical value, and treated his own experiments as trifles. In his
Memoirs, written by his son, Tennyson is said to have observed that he
knew the quantity of every English word except _scissors_, a mysterious
saying which may be set beside Southey's declaration that _Egypt_ is the
only spondee in the English language. His son also preserves an
extemporaneous line composed by Tennyson to illustrate the observance of
quantity "regardless of accent":

    "All men alike hate slops, particularly gruel;"

and a sapphic stanza, also extemporized, quantitative but conforming to
common accent:

    "Faded ev'ry violet, all the roses;
    Gone the glorious promise; and the victim,
    Broken in this anger of Aphrodite,
        Yields to the victor."

(_Memoir_, vol. ii. p. 231.)

    God, on verdurous Helicon
    Dweller, child of Urania,
      Thou that draw'st to the man the fair
    Maiden, O Hymenæus, O
      Hymen, O Hymenæus!

(ROBINSON ELLIS: _Poems of Catullus_, LXI. 1871.)

Mr. Ellis's translations from Catullus are all "in the metres of the
original," and are among the most interesting specimens of modern
classical versifying. "Tennyson's Alcaics and Hendecasyllabics," he said
in his Preface, "suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go
to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless
the ancient quantity was reproduced also." Of special interest is the
imitation of the "almost unapproachable" galliambic verse of the _Attis_
(pp. 49-53):

    "When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orient
    Scann'd lustrous air, the rude seas, earth's massy solidity,
    When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime,
    Then arous'd was Attis; o'er him sleep hastily fled away
    To Pasithea's arms immortal with a tremulous hovering."

As Mr. Ellis observes, the metre of Tennyson's _Boadicea_ was modelled
on this of Catullus. Compare also Mr. George Meredith's _Phaëthon_,
"attempted in the galliambic measure":

    "At the coming up of Phœbus, the all-luminous charioteer,
    Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,
    And with shadows dappled, men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent;
    For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder
        to black."

    --Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
    Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
    Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
        Saw the reluctant

    Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
    Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
    Back to <DW26>s, back to the hills whereunder
        Shone Mitylene.

(SWINBURNE: _Sapphics_, in _Poems and Ballads_.)

    Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought,
        with love?
    What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?

    What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised
        to wave,
    Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

(SWINBURNE: _Choriambics_, in _Poems and Ballads_, Second Series, 1878.)

Swinburne's imitations of classical measures are frankly accentual, with
no effort to introduce fixed quantities into English.


B.--DACTYLIC HEXAMETER

    Lady, reserved by the heavens to do pastors' company honor,
    Joining your sweet voice to the rural Muse of a desert,
    Here you fully do find this strange operation of love,
    How to the woods Love runs, as well as rides to the palace,
    Neither he bears reverence to a prince nor pity to beggar,
    But (like a point in midst of a circle) is still of a nearness,
    All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Dorus and Zelmane_, in the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was evidently trying to write genuinely quantitative hexameters.
Thus "of love," in the third line, may be regarded as a quantitative
spondee (the _o_ being followed by two consonants), although the _of_
would not naturally be stressed. In like manner it is very possible that
"pallace" was spelled with two _l_'s in order to make the first syllable
seem long.

Sidney's hexameters are the first in literary verse which have come down
to us; but there must have been earlier efforts at least by the time of
Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ (1570), which vigorously attacked "our rude
beggerly ryming, brought first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, ... and
at last receyved into England by men of excellent wit in deede, but of
small learning, and less judgement in that behalfe." (Arber Reprint, p.
145.) One hexameter distich by a contemporary and friend of Ascham's,
Master Watson of Cambridge, is handed down to us by Webbe, as being
"common in the mouthes of all men":

    "All travellers doo gladlie report great praise to Ulisses
    For that he knewe manie mens maners, and saw many citties."

(_Discourse of English Poetrie_, p. 72.)

    But the Queene in meane while with carks quandare deepe anguisht,
    Her wound fed by Venus, with firebayt smoldred is hooked.
    Thee wights doughtye manhood leagd with gentilytye nobil,
    His woords fitlye placed, with his hevnly phisnomye pleasing,
    March throgh her hert mustring, al in her brest deepelye she printeth.
    Theese carcking cratchets her sleeping natural hynder.
    Thee next day foloing Phœbus dyd clarifye brightlye
    Thee world with luster, watrye shaads Aurora remooved,
    When to her deere sister with woords haulf gyddye she raveth.
    "Sister An, I merveyle, what dreams me terrefye napping,
    What newcom travayler, what guest in my harborye lighted?
    How brave he dooth court yt? what strength and coorrage he carryes?
    I beleve yt certeyn (ne yet hold I yt vaynelye reported)
    That fro the great linnadge of gods his pettegre shooteth."

(RICHARD STANYHURST: Vergil's _Æneid_, bk. iv. 1582.)

Stanyhurst's _Vergil_ is one of the curiosities of Elizabethan
literature, not only from its verse-form but from its spelling and
diction. The translator declares himself a disciple of Ascham, in his
antipathy to rimed verse; "What Tom Towly is so simple," he asks, "that
wyl not attempt too bee a _rithmoure_?" In an address to the Learned
Reader he explains his system of English quantitative prosody. In 1593
Stanyhurst's hexameters were severely noticed in a passage by Thomas
Nash directed primarily against the classical versifying of Gabriel
Harvey. "The hexamiter verse," said Nash, "I graunt to be a gentleman of
an auncient house (so is many an English begger), yet this clyme of ours
he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough
in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running
upon quagmiers, up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in
another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts
himselfe with among the Greeks and Latins.... Master Stannyhurst (though
otherwise learned) trod a foule lumbring boystrous wallowing measure, in
his translation of Virgil." (Works of Nash, Grosart edition, vol. ii.
pp. 237, 238.)

Stanyhurst was also ridiculed by Joseph Hall, in the Satires of his
_Virgidemiarum_ (1597):

    "Another scorns the home-spun thread of rhymes,
    Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times:
    Give me the numbred verse that Virgil sung,
    And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue:
    Manhood and garboiles shall he chaunt with chaunged feet
    And head-strong dactyls making music meet.
    The nimble dactyl striving to out-go,
    The drawling spondees pacing it below.
    The lingring spondees, labouring to delay,
    The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay.
    Whoever saw a colt wanton and wild
    Yok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field,
    Can right areed how handsomely besets
    Dull spondees with the English dactylets."

(CHALMERS'S _English Poets_, vol. v. p. 266.)

Compare the lines of Chapman, in his _Hymn to Cynthia_, where he says
that

                                "sweet poesy
    Will not be clad in her supremacy
    With those strange garments (Rome's hexameters)
    As she is English; but in right prefers
    Our native robes."

See also, in Arber's edition of Stanyhurst in the _English Scholar's
Library_, an account of another work in hexameters, published
anonymously in 1599: the _First Booke of the Preservation of King Henry
the VII_. This writer admired Stanyhurst's effort, but desired "him to
refile" his verses into more polished English:

    "If the Poet Stanihurst yet live and feedeth on ay-er,
    I do request him (as one that wisheth a grace to the meter)
    With wordes significant to refile and finely to polishe
    Those fower _Æneis_, that he late translated in English."

In the same connection the writer tells us definitely what is to be
hoped from the "trew kind of Hexametred and Pentametred verse." "First
it will enrich our speach with good and significant wordes: Secondly it
will bring a delight and pleasure to the skilfull Reader, when he seeth
them formally compyled: And thirdly it will incourage and learne the
good and godly Students, that affect Poetry, and are naturally enclyned
thereunto, to make the like: Fourthly it will direct a trew Idioma, and
will teach trew Orthography."[44]

    Tityrus, happilie thou lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
    All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie chaunting:
    We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remooved,
    And fro our pastures sweete: thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
    Makst thicke groves to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.

(WILLIAM WEBBE: Vergil's First Eclogue, in _A Discourse of English
Poetrie_. 1586.)

Webbe prefaces his hexameters with a reference to those made by Gabriel
Harvey, and says: "I for my part, so farre as those examples would leade
me, and mine owne small skyll affoorde me, have blundered upon these
fewe; whereinto I have translated the two first Æglogues of Virgill:
because I thought no matter of my owne invention, nor any other of
antiquitye more fitte for tryal of thys thyng, before there were some
more speciall direction, which might leade to a lesse troublesome manner
of wryting." (Arber Reprint, p. 72.)

    Thou, who roll'st in the firmament, round as the shield of my fathers,
    Whence is thy girdle of glory, O Sun! and thy light everlasting?
    Forth thou comest in thy awful beauty; the stars at thy rising
    Haste to their azure pavilions; the moon sinks pale in the waters;
    But thou movest alone; who dareth to wander beside thee?
    Oaks of the mountains decay, and the hard oak crumbles asunder;
    Ocean shrinks and again grows; lost is the moon from the heavens;
    Whilst thou ever remainest the same to rejoice in thy brightness.

(WILLIAM TAYLOR: Paraphrase of _Ossian's Hymn to the Sun_. 1796.)

When English hexameters were revived at the end of the eighteenth
century, it was in good part under German influence. Bodmer, Klopstock,
and Voss, followed later by Goethe, made the German hexameter popular;
and William Taylor of Norwich, who in many ways helped to familiarize
his countrymen with German literature, became interested in the form. In
1796, the year of Goethe's _Hermann und Dorothea_, he contributed to the
_Monthly Magazine_ an article called "English Hexameters Exemplified,"
in which occurred the paraphrase from Ossian here quoted. Taylor pointed
out that the hexameter of the Germans was purely accentual. They were
"obliged, by the scarceness of long vowels and the rifeness of short
syllables in their language, to tolerate the frequent substitution of
trochees for spondees in their hexameter verse; and they scan, like
other modern nations, by emphasis, not by position." (Quoted in J. W.
Robberds's _Memoir of William Taylor of Norwich_, vol. i. pp. 157 ff.)
Most later writers of English hexameters have followed the line here
indicated, and have frankly abandoned the effort to represent the
quantities of classical prosody.

    Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,
    Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the Sun, the rejoicer!
    Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget not,
    Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold thee!
    Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation?)
    Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamoured!

(COLERIDGE: _Hymn to the Earth._ 1799.)

Coleridge made several experiments in hexameters at this time, and
planned, together with Southey, a long hexameter poem on Mohammed. To
Wordsworth he sent an experiment of the same kind in a lighter vein:

    "Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table;
    Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing,
    Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic,
    Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forked left hand,
    Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger,
    Read with a nod of the head in a humoring recitativo;
    And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.
    This is a galloping measure, a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!"

(Wordsworth's _Memoirs_, quoted in Coleridge's Poems, Aldine edition,
vol. ii. p. 307.)

Coleridge also translated from Schiller the well-known distich
describing and exemplifying the elegiac verse of Ovid:

    "In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;
    In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."

This distich, it is interesting to find, was revised by Tennyson so as
to represent the measure quantitatively rather than accentually:

    "Up springs hexameter, with might, as a fountain arising,
    Lightly the fountain falls, lightly the pentameter."

    Lift up your heads, ye gates; and ye everlasting portals,
    Be ye lift up! Behold, the Worthies are there to receive him,--
    They who, in later days or in elder ages, ennobled
    Britain's dear name. Bede I beheld, who, humble and holy,
    Shone like a single star, serene in a night of darkness.
    Bacon also was there, the marvellous Friar; and he who
    Struck the spark from which the Bohemian kindled his taper;
    Thence the flame, long and hardly preserved, was to Luther transmitted,--
    Mighty soul; and he lifted his torch, and enlightened the nations.

(SOUTHEY: _A Vision of Judgment_, ix. 1821.)

Southey followed the example of William Taylor in attempting to
construct hexameters "which would be perfectly consistent with the
character of our language, and capable of great richness, variety and
strength," yet which should not profess to follow "rules which are
inapplicable to our tongue." (Preface to _Vision of Judgment_, Southey's
Works, ed. 1838, vol. x. p. 195.)[45] In the same Preface he briefly
reviewed the history of earlier efforts to introduce the classical
measures into English. It is to be feared that Southey's hexameters are
to be counted among the worst of modern times.

    Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure,
    Sat the lovers and whispered together, beholding the moon rise
    Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows.
    Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
    Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
      Thus was the evening passed. Anon the bell from the belfry
    Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightway
    Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household.

(LONGFELLOW: _Evangeline_, Part. I. 1847.)

_Evangeline_ is undoubtedly the most popular and widely read poem in
English hexameters, and may be said to have revived the vogue of the
measure in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet its metrical
qualities have not pleased most careful critics. Matthew Arnold said
that the reception which the poem met with indicated that the dislike
for the metre "is rather among professional critics than among the
general public. Yet," he went on to say, "a version of Homer in
hexameters of the _Evangeline_ type would not satisfy the judicious, nor
is the definite establishment of this type to be desired." (_On
Translating Homer_, Macmillan ed., p. 284.) Mr. Arnold had previously
suggested that the "lumbering effect" of such hexameters as Longfellow's
is "caused by their being much too dactylic"; more spondees should be
introduced.

The editor of the Riverside edition of _Evangeline_ remarks
interestingly: "The measure lends itself easily to the lingering
melancholy which marks the greater part of the poem. The fall of the
verse at the end of the line and the sharp recovery at the beginning of
the next will be snares to the reader, who must beware of a jerking
style of delivery.... A little practice will enable one to acquire that
habit of reading the hexameter which we may liken, roughly, to the
climbing of a hill, resting a moment on the summit, and then descending
the other side."

Longfellow's hexameters were criticised most severely by his countryman,
Edgar Poe. Poe denied the possibility of any adequate representation of
the classical hexameter in English, largely because of the impossibility
of using English spondees. The only genuine hexameters he knew, he
declared, were some he had himself made, running:

    "Do tell! when may we hope to make men of sense out of the Pundits,
    Born and brought up with their snouts deep down in the mud of the
        Frog-pond?"

(See Poe's Works, ed. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. vi. p. 104.)

Another interesting American experiment in hexameters is found in the
_Home Pastorals_ of Bayard Taylor (1869-1874). Taylor modeled his verses
after those of the Germans, particularly Goethe's in _Hermann und
Dorothea_. See, for example, the opening lines of _November_:

    "Wrapped in his sad- cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth
    Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,--
    Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,--
    Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top,
    Breathing the reek of withered reeds, or the drifted and sodden
    Splendors of woodland, as whoso piously groaneth in spirit:
    'Vanity, verily; yea, it is vanity, let me forsake it!'"
    But as the light of day enters some populous city,
    Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal,
    High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gas-lamps--
    All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness
    Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access
    Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in
    Narrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys:--
    He that goes forth to his walks, while speeding to the suburb,
    Sees sights only peaceful and pure; as laborers settling
    Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber;
    Humble market-carts, coming in, bringing in, not only
    Flower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country
    Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon after
    Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters
    Up at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the doorway,
    School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel,
    Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly tripping;...
    Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires;
    So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric--
    All its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway out-works--
    Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty.

(ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH: _The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_. 1848.)

Clough's hexameters are quite unlike any others in English poetry, both
in their metrical quality and in their use for serio-comic verse. As
Matthew Arnold observed, they are "excessively, needlessly rough," but
their free, garrulous effect has a charm of its own. Clough also wrote
some hexameters intended to be strictly quantitative. (For a detailed
criticism of the verse of the _Bothie_, see Robert Bridges's _Milton's
Prosody_, 1901 ed., Appendix J.)

It was Clough's hexameters, together with some "English Hexameter
Translations" by Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Lockhart (1847), that chiefly
encouraged Matthew Arnold to believe that the measure might be well
adapted to a translation of Homer. "The hexameter, whether alone or with
the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre
hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced
English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content
to forego." (_Ib._, p. 210.) Mr. James Spedding replied to Mr. Arnold's
suggestion, from the point of view of the classical scholar, urging that
only hexameters purely quantitative could properly represent those of
Vergil. He illustrated his views by an amusing "hexametrical dialogue,"
conducted alternately in Vergilian measure and "in that of Longfellow."
Of the former are the lines:

    "Verses so modulate, so tuned, so varied in accent,
    Rich with unexpected changes, smooth, stately, sonorous,
    Rolling ever forward, tidelike, with thunder, in endless
    Procession, complex melodies--pause, quantity, accent,
    After Virgilian precedent and practice, in order
    Distributed--could these gratify th' Etonian ear-drum?"

(JAMES SPEDDING: _Reviews and Discussions_, 1879. p. 327.)

Arnold, however, wisely declined to be led into a discussion of the
relations of accent and quantity in English. "All we are here concerned
with," he said, "is the imitation, by the English hexameter, of the
ancient hexameter _in its effect upon us moderns_.... The received
English type, in its general outlines, is, for England, the necessary
given type of this metre; it is by rendering the metrical beat of its
pattern, not by rendering the accentual beat of it, that the English
language has adapted the Greek hexameter.... I look with hope towards
continued attempts at perfecting and employing this rhythm; but my
belief in the immediate success of such attempts is far less confident
than has been supposed." (See the whole passage, _On Translating Homer_,
pp. 275-284.)

The hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, quoted by Arnold, are these:

    Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;
    Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;
    Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders,
    Kastor fleet in the car,--Polydeukes brave with the cestus,--
    Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants.
    Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lakedaimon,
    Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters,
    Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of heroes,
    All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?
    --So said she. They long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing,
    There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lakedaimon.

(From _English Hexameter Translations_, p. 242.)

Arnold also illustrated his doctrine in some hexameters of his own,
which have not usually been regarded as a happy experiment. They run in
part as follows:

    "Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles!
    But thy day of death is at hand; nor shall we be the reason--
    No, but the will of heaven, and Fate's invincible power.
    For by no slow pace nor want of swiftness of ours
    Did the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus;
    But that prince among gods, the son of the lovely-haired Leto,
    Slew him fighting in front of the fray, and glorified Hector.
    But, for us, we vie in speed with the breath of the West-Wind,
    Which, men say, is the fleetest of winds; 'tis thou who art fated
    To lie low in death, by the hand of a god and a mortal."

(_Ib._, p. 234.)

Tennyson evidently viewed with small respect these various efforts to
render Homer in English hexameters. See his lines beginning:

    "These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer!
    No--but a most burlesque barbarous experiment."

(_In Quantity: Hexameters and Pentameters_.)

Compare the amusing lines of Walter Savage Landor:

    "Askest thou if in my youth I have mounted, as others have mounted,
    Galloping Hexameter, Pentameter cantering after,
    English by dam and by sire; bit, bridle, and saddlery, English;
    English the girths and the shoes; all English from snaffle to crupper;
    Everything English about, excepting the tune of the jockey?....
    Seldom my goosequill, of goose from Germany, fatted in England,
    (Frolicsome though I have been) have I tried on Hexameter, knowing
    Latin and Greek are alone its languages. We have a measure
    Fashioned by Milton's own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder.
    .... Peace be with all! but afar be ambition to follow the Roman,
    Led by the German uncombed and jigging in dactyl and spondee,
    Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or supple.
    Much as old metres delight me, 'tis only where first they were nurtured,
    In their own clime, their own speech: than pamper them here, I would rather
    Tie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed rack of a sonnet."

(_English Hexameters_, in _The Last Fruit off an Old Tree_.)

In like manner Mr. Swinburne says: "I must say how inexplicable it seems
to me that Mr. Arnold, of all men, should be a patron of English
hexameters. His own I have tried in vain to reduce by scansion into any
metrical feet at all; they look like nothing on earth, and sound like
anapests broken up and driven wrong.... And at best what ugly bastards
of verse are these self-styled hexameters! how human tongues or hands
could utter or could write them except by way of burlesque improvisation
I could never imagine, and never shall." (_Essays and Studies_, p. 163.)
From this condemnation Mr. Swinburne excepts only the hexameters of Dr.
Hawtrey, "but that is simply a graceful interlude of pastime."

See also the essay called "Remarks on English Hexameters," in the _Horæ
Hellenicæ_ of Professor John Stuart Blackie.

    Hovering over the water he came, upon glittering pinions,
    Living, a wonder, outgrown from the tight-laced fold of his sandals;
    Bounding from billow to billow, and sweeping the crests like a sea-gull;
    Leaping the gulfs of the surge, as he laughed in the joy of his leaping.
    Fair and majestic he sprang to the rock; and the maiden in wonder
    Gazed for a while, and then hid in the dark-rolling wave of her tresses,
    Fearful, the light of her eyes; while the boy (for her sorrow had awed
        him)
    Blushed at her blushes, and vanished, like mist on the cliffs at the
        sunrise.
    Fearful at length she looked forth: he was gone: she, wild with amazement,
    Wailed for her mother aloud: but the wail of the wind only answered.

(CHARLES KINGSLEY: _Andromeda_. 1858.)

Kingsley believed in the possibility of representing the quantitative
verse of classical poetry in English, and at the same time holding to
genuinely English rhythm.[46] Thus he tried to introduce more real
spondees into his hexameters than Longfellow and others had done.
Compare such a line as Longfellow's--

    "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice"--

with Kingsley's--

    "Then as a pine upon Ida when south-west winds blow landward."

In the former the dissyllabic feet are in no sense spondees; in the
latter there is an effort to fill them with genuinely long syllables.

    Lover whose vehement kisses on lips irresponsive are squandered,
    Lover that wooest in vain Earth's imperturbable heart;
    Athlete mightily frustrate, who pittest thy thews against legions,
    Locked with fantastical hosts, bodiless arms of the sky;
    Sea that breakest for ever, that breakest and never art broken,
    Like unto thine, from of old, springeth the spirit of man,--
    Nature's wooer and fighter, whose years are a suit and a wrestling,
    All their hours, from his birth, hot with desire and with fray.

(WILLIAM WATSON: _Hymn to the Sea_, ii.)

Here the alternate lines represent the "pentameter" of the Latin elegiac
verse, where the light syllables were omitted at the cesura and the end
of the line.

    When they came to the fair-flowing river and to the places
    Where stood pools in plenty prepared, and water abundant
    Gushed up, a cure for things manifold uncleanly, the mules were
    Unyoked from the waggons, driven off to the bindweed pastures
    By the rushing swirling river, and the women set about it
    Unloading the waggons, carrying clothes down to the water,
    One with other striving, stepping hastily into the wash-troughs.
    When washing and rinsing were done, they brought the linen down
    On to the sea-shore, and set it all out thereupon in rows
    Where the pebbles thrown up by the waves most thickly abounded.

(WILLIAM JOHNSON STONE: Translation of _Odyssey_, vi. 85 ff., in _The
Use of Classical Measures in English_. 1899.)

Mr. Stone, like the Elizabethan classical versifiers, seeks to write
purely quantitative verse in English, and, so far from aiming at the
same time to preserve the rhythm of the usual English hexameter, he
regards the clash between accent and quantity as a beauty rather than a
defect. The verses he intends to be read "with the natural accent
unimpaired," the reader listening for the regular quantities at the same
time.

     The views of Mr. Stone on the nature of English accent and quantity
     are perhaps unique among modern writers on the subject. "The
     ordinary unemphatic English accent is exactly a raising of pitch,
     and nothing more," as in Greek. "The accent of emphasis is
     something quite different in character from the ordinary accent."
     To those who insist that to them the second syllable of
     _carpenter_ is distinctly short, Mr. Stone replies: "You are
     associating yourselves by such an admission with the vulgar actors
     of Plautus rather than the educated readers of Virgil;"--a truly
     terrible charge! Mr. Stone gives an interesting critical history of
     earlier efforts to introduce classical measures into English. His
     monograph is reprinted, but without the specimen translation, as
     the second part of the 1901 edition of Robert Bridges's _Milton's
     Prosody_.

     For further discussion of the relations of classical and English
     prosody, and of accent and quantity in English, see Schipper, vol.
     i. pp. 21-27; A. J. Ellis: article in the _Transactions of the
     Philological Society_, 1875-1876; T. D. Goodell: article on
     "Quantity in English Verse," in the _Proceedings of the American
     Philological Society_, 1885; Edmund Gurney: _The Power of Sound_,
     pp. 429-439; J. M. Robertson: Appendix to _New Essays towards a
     Critical Method_, 1897; and the discussion in Part Three of the
     present volume.


FOOTNOTES:

[42] Puttenham's treatise on English poetry, which followed Webbe's
(1589), and was the most thorough treatment of the subject written in
the Elizabethan period, also discussed the "reformed versifying," but
with less respect. The chapter is entitled: "How if all maner of sodaine
innovations were not very scandalous, specially in the lawes of any
langage or arte, the use of the Greeke and Latine feete might be brought
into our vulgar Poesie, and with good grace inough." (Arber Reprint of
_The Arte of English Poesie_, p. 126.) Puttenham seems to see the
relations of quantity and accent somewhat more clearly than most of his
contemporaries, and while he gives rules for adapting English words to
quantitative prosody, he is disposed to think that "peradventure with us
Englishmen it be somewhat too late to admit a new invention of feete and
times that our forefathers never used nor never observed till this day"
(p. 132).

[43] Campion's _Observations_ are reprinted in Mr. Bullen's edition of
his poems, and also in Rhys's _Literary Pamphlets_, vol. i. His attack
on the customary English rimed verse was answered by the poet laureate,
Samuel Daniel, who published in the same year (1602) his _Defence of
Ryme against a Pamphlet entituled Observations in the Art of English
Poesie_. "Wherein is demonstratively prooved that Ryme is the fittest
harmonie of words that comports with our Language." Daniel struck at the
root of all the principles of the classical versifiers,--the supreme
authority of the classics. "We are the children of nature as well as
they," he exclaims with reference to the ancients. "It is not the
observing of Trochaiques nor their Iambiques, that will make our
writings ought the wiser." And he expounds the English accentual
verse-system with clearness and vigor. This essay of Daniel's may be
said to mark the end, if it did not bring about the end, of the
Elizabethan experiments in classical metres. For other contemporary
criticism of the effort, see under the following section, on the
Hexameter.

[44] On the history of the English hexameter, see the admirable account
in Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_, 2d ed., chap. xv.

[45] Southey's effort was attacked by the Rev. S. Tillbrook, Fellow of
Peterhouse, in a pamphlet entitled "Historical and Critical Remarks upon
the Modern Hexameters, and upon Mr. Southey's _Vision of Judgment_." To
this Southey replied in the second edition of his poem, saying to Mr.
Tillbrook: "You try the measure by Greek and Latin prosody: you might as
well try me by the Laws of Solon, or the Twelve Tables. I have
distinctly stated that the English hexameter is not constructed upon
those canons." He further appealed to the success of the hexameter in
Germany, and concluded: "I am glad that I have made the experiment, and
quite satisfied with the result. The critics who write and talk are with
you: so I dare say are the whole posse of schoolmasters. The women, the
young poets, and the _docile bairns_ are with me." (_Op. cit._, Preface
to the Present Edition, pp. xix, xxi.)

[46] For Kingsley's exposition of his theories, see the _Letters and
Memories_, edited by his wife, vol. i. pp. 338-344. He declined to yield
to "trocheism one atom. My ear always demands the equivalent of the
'lost short syllable.'" And again: "Every argument you bring convinces
me more and more that the theory of our prosody depending on accent is
false, and that it really is very nearly identical with the Greek.... I
am glad to hear (being a lazy man) that I have more license than I wish
for; but I do think that, with proper care, you may have as many
spondees, without hurting the rhythm, in English as you have in Greek,
and my ear is tortured by a trochee instead.... I must try for Homer's
average of a spondee a line."




VII. IMITATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL FRENCH LYRICAL FORMS


A number of artificial lyrical forms, originating in the ingenuity of
the mediæval Provençal poets, were adopted by the Middle English
imitators of the Romance lyrists, and were revived with no little vigor
in the Victorian period. Chief among the influential models for these
forms, in early times, were the poems of Machault (1284-1377), Deschamps
(1328-1415), Froissart (1337-1410), and Villon (1431-1485). Again in the
seventeenth century such forms as the rondeau were revived in France by
Voiture (1598-1648), but with little effect in England. Finally, in the
nineteenth century, the forms were reintroduced by M. Théodore de
Banville, and later into England by Mr. Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr.
Gosse, and others. For the history of these fashions in outline, see the
admirable introduction to Mr. Gleeson White's _Ballades and Rondeaus_
(1893); also Mr. Andrew Lang's _Lays and Lyrics of Old France_ (1872);
Mr. Austin Dobson's "Note on some Foreign Forms of Verse," in the
collection of _Latter Day Lyrics_ (1878); and an article by Mr. Edmund
Gosse in the _Cornhill Magazine_, July, 1877.

Says Mr. Dobson: "It may be conceded that the majority of the forms now
in question are not at present suited for ... the treatment of grave or
elevated themes. What is modestly advanced for some of them ... is that
they may add a new charm of buoyancy,--a lyric freshness,--to amatory
and familiar verse, already too much condemned to faded measures and
out-worn cadences. Further, ... that they are admirable vehicles for the
expression of trifles or _jeux d'esprit_. They have also a humbler and
obscurer use. If, to quote the once-hackneyed, but now
too-much-forgotten maxim of Pope--

    'Those move easiest that have learned to dance,'

what better discipline, among others, could possibly be devised for
'those about to versify' than a course of Rondeaux, Triolets, and
Ballades?" Mr. Dobson refers to the article by Mr. Gosse already cited,
and "to the _Odes Funambulesques_, the _Petit Traité de Poésie
Française_, and other works of M. Théodore de Banville. To M. de
Banville in particular and to the second French Romantic School in
general, the happy modernization in France of the old measures of Marot,
Villon, and Charles of Orleans is mainly to be ascribed." (_Latter Day
Lyrics_, ed. W. D. Adams, pp. 334 ff.)[47]

Says Mr. Gleeson White: "The taste for these _tours de force_ in the art
of verse-making is no doubt an acquired one; yet to quote the first
attempt to produce a lyric with a repeated burden would take one back to
the earliest civilization.... Whether the first refrains were used for
decorative effect only, or to give the singer time to recollect or
improvise the next verse, it matters little, since the once mere adjunct
was made in later French use an integral and vital part of the verse.
The charm of these strictly written verses is undoubtedly increased by
some knowledge of their technical rules.... To approach ideal
perfection, nothing less than implicit obedience to all the rules is the
first element of success; but the task is by no means finished there.
Every quality that poetry demands, whether clearness of thought,
elegance of expression, harmonious sound, or faultless rhythm, is needed
as much in these shapes as in unfettered verse.... It may be said,
without fear of exaggeration, that all the qualities required to form a
perfect lyric in poetry are equally needful here, _plus_ a great many
special ones the forms themselves demand. To the students of any art
there is always a peculiar charm when the highest difficulties are
surmounted with such ease that the consummate art is hidden to all who
know not the magic password to unveil it." (_Ballades and Rondeaus_,
Introduction, pp. xli, xlii.) "No one is compelled to use these complex
forms, but if chosen, their laws must be obeyed to the letter if success
is to be obtained. The chief pleasure they yield consists in the
apparent spontaneity, which is the result of genius, if genius be indeed
the art of taking infinite pains; or, if that definition is rejected,
they must yet exhibit the art which conceals art, whether by intense
care in every minute detail, or a happy faculty for naturally wearing
these fetters." (_Ib._, pp. l, li.)


A.--THE BALLADE

The ballade commonly consists of three stanzas, with an envoy. In modern
usage the stanzas usually contain either eight or ten lines, and the
envoy half as many as the stanza; but in earlier usage both stanza and
envoy varied, and the latter might be omitted altogether. The rimes in
all the stanzas must be identical in the corresponding lines, but the
riming words must be different. The most characteristic element is the
refrain,--the keynote of the poem,--which forms the last line of each
stanza, including the envoy. The favorite rime-scheme for the eight-line
stanza is _ababbcbc_, with the envoy _bcbc_. Mr. White says of the envoy
that it "is not only a dedication, but should be the peroration of the
subject, and richer in its wording and more stately in its imagery than
the preceding verses, to convey the climax of the whole matter, and
avoid the suspicion that it is a mere postscript."

    Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse,
    Suffyce unto thy good, though hit be smal;
    For hord hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse,
    Prees hath envye, and wele blent overal;
    Savour no more than thee bihove shal;
    Werk wel thy-self, that other folk canst rede;
    And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

    Tempest thee noght al croked to redresse,
    In trust of hir that turneth as a bal:
    Gret reste slant in litel besinesse;
    And eek be war to sporne ageyn an al;
    Stryve noght, as doth the crokke with the wal.
    Daunte thy-self, that dauntest otheres dede;
    And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

    That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse;
    The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fal.
    Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:
    Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal!
    Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;
    Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede:
    And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

    _Envoy_

    Therfore, thou vache, leve thyn old wrecchednesse
    Unto the worlde; leve now to be thral;
    Crye him mercy, that of his hy goodnesse
    Made thee of noght, and in especial
    Draw unto him, and pray in general
    For thee, and eek for other, hevenlich mede;
    And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

(CHAUCER: _Balade de bon conseyl._ ab. 1385.)

Here Chaucer follows the rules of the ballade carefully, but in the
"rime royal" stanza. It will be noticed that the rime-word "al" seems to
be repeated, but it is used each time in a distinct sense,
hence--according to the rules of Chaucer's time, as of modern French--is
regarded as a different rime-word each time.

     Compare, also, Chaucer's _Fortune_ ("_Balades de visage sanz
     peinture_"), made of three ballades, with one envoy; the _Balade to
     Rosemound_ and _Moral Balade on Gentilesse_, without envoys; the
     ballades on _Lak of Stedfastnesse_ and the _Compleint of Chaucer to
     his Empty Purse_, with envoys addressed to the king; also the
     ballade in the Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_, B-text, ll.
     249-269. The _Compleynt of Venus_, like _Fortune_, is in three
     ballades, with one envoy, and is of special interest as being based
     on three French ballades of Graunson.[48] Says Chaucer:

        "And eek to me hit is a greet penaunce,
        Sith rym in English hath swich scarsitee,
        To folowe word by word the curiositee
        Of Graunson, flour of hem that make in Fraunce."

     In the Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_, when Chaucer is
     accused by the god of love for his translation of the _Romance of
     the Rose_, Alcestis defends him by enumerating his other works,
     which include:

        "many an ympne for your halydayes,
        That highten Balades, Roundels, Virelayes."

    (B-text, ll. 422 f.)

     On the roundels, see below; none of Chaucer's virelays have come
     down to us. Chaucer's contemporary, John Gower, also wrote
     ballades, but in French.

    Tell me now in what hidden way is
      Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
    Where's Hipparcha, and where is Thais,
      Neither of them the fairer woman?
      Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
    Only heard on river and mere,--
      She whose beauty was more than human?--
    But where are the snows of yester-year?

    Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
      For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
    Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
      (From love he won such dule and teen!)
      And where, I pray you, is the Queen
    Who willed that Buridan should steer
      Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine?--
    But where are the snows of yester-year?

    White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
      With a voice like any mermaiden,--
    Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
      And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,--
      And that good Joan whom Englishmen
    At Rouen doomed and burned her there,--
      Mother of God, where are they then?--
    But where are the snows of yester-year?--

    Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
      Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
    Except with this for an overword,--
      But where are the snows of yester-year?

(ROSSETTI: _The Ballad of Dead Ladies_, from the French of François
Villon, 1450.)

This is a notable translation of a notable ballade, but it will be
observed that it does not follow the strict rules as to the number of
rimes. In Mr. Andrew Lang's _Ballades of Blue China_ is a formally
correct translation.

    Where are the cities of the plain?
      And where the shrines of rapt Bethel?
    And Calah, built of Tubal-Cain?
      And Shinar whence King Amraphal
      Came out in arms, and fought, and fell,
    Decoyed into the pits of slime
      By Siddim, and sent sheer to hell;
    Where are the cities of old time?

    Where now is Karnak, that great fane
      With granite built, a miracle?
    And Luxor smooth without a stain,
      Whose graven scriptures still we spell?
      The jackal and the owl may tell,
    Dark snakes around their ruins climb,
      They fade like echo in a shell;
    Where are the cities of old time?

    And where is white Shusan, again,
      Where Vashti's beauty bore the bell,
    And all the Jewish oil and grain
      Were brought to Mithridath to sell,
      Where Nehemiah would not dwell,
    Because another town sublime
      Decoyed him with her oracle?
    Where are the cities of old time?

    _Envoy_

    Prince, with a dolorous, ceaseless knell,
      Above their wasted toil and crime
    The waters of oblivion swell:
      Where are the cities of old time?

(EDMUND GOSSE: _Ballad of Dead Cities._)

In this ballade Mr. Gosse finely reproduces the more serious tones of
the old form, and imitates the ancient custom of addressing the envoy to
royalty. This _motif_, of old things lost, is a favorite one for the
serious ballade, being suggested by Villon's _Ballade of Dead Ladies_.
Compare Mr. Lang's _Ballade of Dead Cities_, in _Ballades of Blue
China_.

On the other hand, the next specimen illustrates the use of the form for
the light familiarity of _vers de société_ and parody.

    He lived in a cave by the seas,
      He lived upon oysters and foes,
    But his list of forbidden degrees
      An extensive morality shows;
      Geological evidence goes
    To prove he had never a pan,
      But he shaved with a shell when he chose,
    'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

    He worshipp'd the rain and the breeze,
      He worshipp'd the river that flows,
    And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees,
      And bogies, and serpents, and crows;
      He buried his dead with their toes
    Tucked up, an original plan,
      Till their knees came right under their nose,
    'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

    His communal wives, at his ease,
      He would curb with occasional blows;
    Or his state had a queen, like the bees
      (As another philosopher trows):
      When he spoke it was never in prose,
    But he sang in a strain that would scan,
      For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)
    'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

    _Envoy_

      Max, proudly your Aryans pose,
    But their rigs they undoubtedly ran,
      For, as every Darwinian knows,
    'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

(ANDREW LANG: _Ballade of Primitive Man._)

In Mr. Lang's _Ballades of Blue China_ this appears as a _double
ballade_, with three more stanzas.

    From the sunny climes of France,
      Flying to the west,
    Came a flock of birds by chance,
      There to sing and rest:
      Of some secrets deep in quest,--
    Justice for their wrongs,--
      Seeking one to shield their breast,
    One to write their songs.

    Melodies of old romance,
      Joy and gentle jest,
    Notes that made the dull heart dance
      With a merry zest;--
      Maids in matchless beauty drest,
    Youths in happy throngs;--
      These they sang to tempt and test
    One to write their songs.

    In old London's wide expanse
      Built each feathered guest,--
    Man's small pleasure to entrance,
      Singing him to rest,--
      Came, and tenderly confessed,
    Perched on leafy prongs,
      Life were sweet if they possessed
    One to write their songs.

    _Envoy_

    Austin, it was you they blest:
      Fame to you belongs!
    Time has proven you're the best
      One to write their songs.

(FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN: _To Austin Dobson._)

Mr. Austin Dobson is said to have been the first to reintroduce the
ballade into English poetry, and the present specimen is a tribute to
his success by an American poet.

    Bird of the bitter bright gray golden morn
      Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years,
    First of us all and sweetest singer born
      Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears
      Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears;
    When song new-born put off the old world's attire
    And felt its tune on her changed lips expire,
      Writ foremost on the roll of them that came
    Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre,
      Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!

(SWINBURNE: _Ballad of François Villon, Prince of all Ballad-Makers_,
st. i.)

This specimen represents the ballade in ten-line stanzas.

There is also an extended form of the ballade, called the _Chant Royal_,
with five stanzas and envoy, the stanzas consisting of eleven verses.
The usual rime-scheme is _ababccddede_, with envoy _ddede_. For
admirable specimens, see Mr. Dobson's _Dance of Death_ and Mr. Gosse's
_Praise of Dionysus_, in _Ballades and Rondeaus_, pp. 98, 100. Mr. White
says of this form: "The chant royal in the old form is usually devoted
to the unfolding of an allegory in its five stanzas, the envoy supplying
the key; but this is not always observed in modern examples. Whatever be
the subject, however, it must always march in stately rhythm with
splendid imagery, using all the poetic adornments of sonorous,
highly-wrought lines and rich embroidery of words, to clothe a theme in
itself a lofty one. Unless the whole poem is constructed with intense
care, the monotony of its sixty-one lines rhymed on five sounds is
unbearable." (_Ballades and Rondeaus_, Introduction, p. liv.)


B.--THE RONDEAU AND RONDEL

_Rondel_ is the old French form of the word _rondeau_, and the terms are
therefore naturally interchangeable. They have been applied to a number
of different forms, all characterized by a refrain so repeated as to
link together different parts of the structure. Two of these forms are
particularly familiar. The first (called more commonly the _rondel_)
consists of fourteen lines, with only two rimes; the first two lines
constitute the refrain, and are commonly repeated as the seventh and
eighth and again as the thirteenth and fourteenth. The rime-scheme
varies, but is often _ABba, abAB, abbaAB_ (the capitals indicating the
repeated lines of the refrain). Sometimes the form is shortened to
thirteen lines, the second line of the refrain not being repeated at the
close. The second principal form (called more commonly the _rondeau_)
consists of thirteen lines, with two rimes, and an unrimed refrain,
taken from the opening words of the first line, which follows the eighth
line and is again repeated at the end. The common rime-scheme is
_aabba,aab (refrain), aabba (refrain)_. Both these forms are found in
early French poetry, together with many variations. The modern
distinction between _rondeau_ and _rondel_ is artificial but
convenient.


i. _"Rondel" Type_

    Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,
    That hast this wintres weders over-shake,
    And driven awey the longe nightes blake!

    Seynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte,
    Thus singen smale foules for thy sake:
    Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,
    That hast this wintres weders over-shake.

    Wel han they cause for to gladen ofte,
    Sith ech of hem recovered hath his make;
    Ful blisful may they singen whan they wake:
    Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,
    That hast this wintres weders over-shake,
    And driven awey the longe nightes blake.

(CHAUCER: _Qui bien aime a tard oublie_, in _The Parlement of Foules_,
ll. 680-692. ab. 1380.)

This is the "roundel" sung by the birds "to do Nature honour and
plesaunce." "The note" we are told was made in France. It will be seen
that Chaucer employs a form with three-line refrain, of which the first
two lines are twice repeated, the last only once: _ABB,abAB,abbABB_. The
same form is used in the three roundels of _Merciles Beaute_.

    Too hard it is to sing
      In these untuneful times,
    When only coin can ring,
      And no one cares for rhymes!

    Alas! for him who climbs
      To Aganippe's spring:--
    Too hard it is to sing
      In these untuneful times!

    His kindred clip his wing;
      His feet the critic limes;
    If Fame her laurel bring
      Old age his forehead rimes:--
    Too hard it is to sing
      In these untuneful times!

(AUSTIN DOBSON: _Too hard it is to sing._)

    Underneath this tablet rest,
      Grasshopper by autumn slain,
    Since thine airy summer nest
      Shivers under storm and rain.

    Freely let it be confessed
      Death and slumber bring thee gain
      Spared from winter's fret and pain,
    Underneath this tablet rest.

      Myro found thee on the plain,
    Bore thee in her lawny breast,
      Reared this marble tomb amain
    To receive so small a guest!
    Underneath this tablet rest,
      Grasshopper by autumn slain.

(EDMUND GOSSE: _After Anyte of Tegea._)

In this the second line of the refrain is omitted where we should expect
it as line eight, the scheme of the first part of the rondel being
changed to _ABab, abbA_.

    The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
      And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
      From camp and church, the fireside and the street,
    She signs to come, and strife and song have been.

    A summer night descending, cool and green
      And dark, on daytime's dust and stress and heat,
    The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
      And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.

    O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien
      And hopeful faces look upon and greet
    This last of all your lovers, and to meet
      Her kiss, the Comforter's, your spirit lean.--
    The ways of Death are soothing and serene.

(W. E. HENLEY: _The Ways of Death._)


ii. _"Rondeau" Type_

    Ma foi, c'est fait de moi, car Isabeau
    M'a conjuré de lui faire un rondeau.
    Cela me met en peine extrême.
    Quoi! treize vers, huit en _-èau_, cinq en _-ème!_
    Je lui ferais aussitôt un bateau.

    En voilà cinq pourtant en un monceau,
    Faisons-en huit, en invoquant Brodeau,
    Et puis mettons, par quelque stratagème:
                            Ma foi, c'est fait.

    Si je pouvais encore de mon cerveau
    Tirer cinq vers, l'ouvrage serait beau;
    Mais cependant je suis dedans l'onzième:
    Et si je crois que je fais le douzième,
    En voilà treize ajustés au niveau.
                            Ma foi, c'est fait!

(VOITURE: _Rondeau_, ab. 1640. In _Œuvres de Voiture_, ed. Ubicini,
vol. ii. p. 314.)

This is perhaps the most famous of rondeaus of the type which Voiture
did much to make popular.

    What no pardy ye may be sure
    Thinck not to make me to yor lure
    With wordes and chere so contrarieng
    Swete and sowre contrewaing
    To much it were still to endure
    Trouth is tryed where craft is in ure
    But though ye have had my herte cure
    Trow ye I dote withoute ending
                        What no pardy
    Though that with pain I do procure
    For to forgett that ons was pure
    Wtin my hert shall still that thing
    Unstable unsure and wavering
    Be in my mynde without recure
                        What no pardye.

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: Rondeau in Wyatt MS., reproduced in _Anglia_, vol.
xviii. p. 478. ab. 1540.)

Besides the rondeaus found in the Wyatt MS., three poems of Wyatt's,
published in Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_ (1557), were evidently
intended as rondeaus (see Arber's Reprint, pp. 53, 73). The editor, not
understanding the form or thinking it too unfamiliar to be popular,
seems to have changed it to a sort of sonnet, omitting the refrain at
the end and making a complete line of it as the ninth of the poem. These
hidden rondeaus were discussed by Mr. Dobson in the _Athenæum_ for 1878
(vol. i. p. 380); see also Alscher's _Sir Thomas Wyatt und seine
Stellung_, etc.

    Thou fool! if madness be so rife,
    That, spite of wit, thou'lt have a wife,
    I'll tell thee what thou must expect--
    After the honeymoon neglect,
    All the sad days of thy whole life;

    To that a world of woe and strife,
    Which is of marriage the effect--
    And thou thy woe's own architect,
                      Thou fool!

    Thou'lt nothing find but disrespect,
    Ill words i' th' scolding dialect,
    For she'll all tabor be, or fife;
    Then prythee go and whet thy knife,
    And from this fate thyself protect,
                      Thou fool!

(CHARLES COTTON: _Rondeau._ ab. 1675. Quoted by Guest, _English
Rhythms_, Skeat ed., p. 645.)

    A good rondeau I was induced to show
    To some fair ladies some short while ago;
      Well knowing their ability and taste,
      I asked should aught be added or effaced,
    And prayed that every fault they'd make me know.

    The first did her most anxious care bestow
    To impress one point from which I ne'er should go:
      "Upon a good beginning must be based
                  A good rondeau."

    Zeal bid the other's choicest language glow:
    She softly said: "Recount your weal or woe,
      Your every subject, free from pause or haste;
      Ne'er let your hero fail, nor be disgraced."
    The third: "With varying emphasis should flow
                  A good rondeau."

(J. R. BEST: _Ung Bon Rondeau_, in _Rondeaulx_. Translated from the
French, ed. 1527. 1838. Quoted in _Ballades and Rondeaus_, Introduction,
p. xxxviii.)

    Death, of thee do I make my moan,
      Who hadst my lady away from me,
      Nor wilt assuage thine enmity
    Till with her life thou hast my own;
    For since that hour my strength has flown.
    Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,
                      Death?

    Two we were, and the heart was one;
      Which now being dead, dead I must be,
      Or seem alive as lifelessly
    As in the choir the painted stone,
                      Death!

(ROSSETTI: _To Death, of his Lady_, from the French of Villon, 1450.)

This represents an early short form of the rondeau.

    With pipe and flute the rustic Pan
    Of old made music sweet for man;
      And wonder hushed the warbling bird,
      And closer drew the calm-eyed herd,--
    The rolling river slowlier ran.

    Ah! would,--ah! would, a little span,
    Some air of Arcady could fan
      This age of ours, too seldom stirred
                  With pipe and flute!

    But now for gold we plot and plan;
    And from Beersheba unto Dan
      Apollo's self might pass unheard,
      Or find the night-jar's note preferred.--
    Not so it fared, when time began
                  With pipe and flute!

(AUSTIN DOBSON: _With Pipe and Flute._)

    What is to come we know not. But we know
    That what has been was good--was good to show,
      Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
      We are the masters of the days that were:
    We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered--even so.

    Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
    Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe--
      Dear, though it break and spoil us!--need we care
                                  What is to come?

    Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
    Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:
      We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
      And we can conquer, though we may not share
    In the rich quiet of the afterglow
                                  What is to come.

(W. E. HENLEY: _What is to Come._)

    A man must live! We justify
    Low shift and trick to treason high,
      A little vote for a little gold,
      To a whole senate bought and sold,
    With this self-evident reply.

    But is it so? Pray tell me why
    Life at such cost you have to buy?
      In what religion were you told
        "A man must live"?

    There are times when a man must die.
    Imagine for a battle-cry
      From soldiers with a sword to hold--
      From soldiers with the flag unrolled--
    This coward's whine, this liar's lie,
        "A man must live"!

(CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON: _A Man Must Live._)

    A Roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
    With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
    That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
                  A roundel is wrought.

    Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught--
    Love, laughter, or mourning--remembrance of rapture or fear--
    That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought.

    As a bird's quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear--
    Pause answers to pause, and again the same strain caught,
    So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear,
                     A roundel is wrought.

(SWINBURNE: _The Roundel_, in _A Century of Roundels_.)

Mr. Swinburne has reintroduced the old word-form "roundel," to
distinguish this style of rondeau, of his own devising, with nine long
lines, riming _aba, bab, aba_, the refrain riming also with the _b_
lines.


C.--THE VILLANELLE

This highly intricate form was originally used for pastoral or idyllic
verse, and it is commonly reserved, as Mr. Dobson observes, for subjects
"full of sweetness and simplicity." In its typical form it consists of
nineteen lines, divided into five groups or stanzas of three and one of
four. There are but two rimes, and the two verses which constitute the
refrain recur again and again, line 1 reappearing as line 6, line 12,
and line 18, while line 3 reappears as line 9, line 15, and line 19. The
rime scheme of all the tercets is _aba_, of the conclusion _abaa_. Those
villanelles are considered most highly finished in which the refrain
recurs with slightly different significations.

On the history of this form, see J. Boulmier's _Les Villanelles_, Paris,
1878. The modern development of the villanelle has been largely
influenced by the work of Passerat (1534-1602), whose most famous
villanelle is the following specimen:

    J'ay perdu ma tourterelle;
    Est-ce-point elle que j'oy?
    Je veux aller après elle.

    Tu regrettes ta femelle;
    Hélas! aussy fay-je moy:
    J'ay perdu ma tourterelle.

    Si ton amour est fidèle,
    Aussy est ferme ma foy;
    Je veux aller après elle.

    Ta plainte se renouvelle?
    Toujours plaindre je me doy:
    J'ay perdu ma tourterelle.

    En ne voyant plus la belle
    Plus rien de beau je ne voy:
    Je veux aller après elle.

    Mort, que tant de fois j'apelle,
    Prens ce que se donne à toy:
    J'ai perdu ma tourterelle.
    Je veux aller après elle.

(JEAN PASSERAT: _Villanelle._)

    When I saw you last, Rose,
      You were only so high;--
    How fast the time goes!

    Like a bud ere it blows,
      You just peeped at the sky,
    When I saw you last, Rose!

    Now your petals unclose,
      Now your May-time is nigh;--
    How fast the time goes!

    And a life,--how it grows!
      You were scarcely so shy
    When I saw you last, Rose!

    In your bosom it shows
      There's a guest on the sly;
    How fast the time goes!

    Is it Cupid? Who knows!
      Yet you used not to sigh,
    When I saw you last, Rose;--
    How fast the time goes!

(AUSTIN DOBSON: _When I Saw You Last, Rose._)

    A dainty thing's the Villanelle.
      Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme,
    It serves its purpose passing well.

    A double-clappered silver bell
      That must be made to clink in chime,
    A dainty thing's the Villanelle;

    And if you wish to flute a spell,
      Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime,
    It serves its purpose passing well.

    You must not ask of it the swell
      Of organs grandiose and sublime--
    A dainty thing's the Villanelle;

    And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
      Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
    It serves its purpose passing well.

    Still fair to see and good to smell
      As in the quaintness of its prime,
    A dainty thing's the Villanelle,
    It serves its purpose passing well.

(W. E. HENLEY: _Villanelle._)

    Wouldst thou not be content to die
      When low-hung fruit is hardly clinging
    And golden Autumn passes by?

    Beneath this delicate rose-gray sky,
      While sunset bells are faintly ringing,
    Wouldst thou not be content to die?

    For wintry webs of mist on high
      Out of the muffled earth are springing,
    And golden Autumn passes by.

    O now when pleasures fade and fly,
      And Hope her southward flight is winging,
    Wouldst thou not be content to die?

    Lest Winter come, with wailing cry
      His cruel icy bondage bringing,
    When golden Autumn hath passed by;

    And thou with many a tear and sigh,
      While life her wasted hands is wringing,
    Shall pray in vain for leave to die
    When golden Autumn hath passed by.

(EDMUND GOSSE: _Villanelle._)

    Spring knocks at winter's frosty door:
      In boughs by wild March breezes swayed
    The bonnie bluebirds sing once more.

    The brooks have burst their fetters hoar,
      And greet with noisy glee the glade;
    Spring knocks at winter's frosty door.

    The swallow soon will northward soar,
      The rush uplift its gleaming blade,
    The bonnie bluebirds sing once more.

    Soon sunny skies their gold will pour
      O'er meads that breezy maples shade;
    Spring knocks at winter's frosty door.

    Along the reedy river's shore,
      Fleet fauns will frolic unafraid,
    The bonnie bluebirds sing once more.

    And Love, the Love we lost of yore,
      Will come to twine the myrtle braid;
    Spring knocks at winter's frosty door,
    The bonnie bluebirds sing once more.

(CLINTON SCOLLARD: _Spring Knocks at Winter's Frosty Door._)


D.--THE TRIOLET

The triolet is really a diminutive form of the Rondeau, and was not
originally distinguished by name. It consists of eight lines, with two
rimes, lines 1 and 2 recurring as lines 7 and 8, and line 1 also as line
4. The rime-scheme is _ABaAabAB_. Here, as in the villanelle, a change
of signification in the repeated lines is thought to add to the charm of
the form.

A French specimen, from Ranchin, is cited by Mr. Gleeson White as being
called by some "the king of triolets":

    Le premier jour du mois de mai
    Fut le plus heureux de ma vie:
    Le beau dessein que je formai,
    Le premier jour du mois de mai!
    Je vous vis et je vous aimai.
    Si ce dessein vous plut, Sylvie,
    Le premier jour du mois de mai
    Fut le plus heureux de ma vie.

    Easy is the Triolet,
      If you really learn to make it!
    Once a neat refrain you get,
    Easy is the Triolet.
    As you see!--I pay my debt
      With another rhyme. Deuce take it,
    Easy is the Triolet,
      If you really learn to make it!

(W. E. HENLEY.)

    Rose kissed me to-day,
      Will she kiss me to-morrow?
    Let it be as it may,
    Rose kissed me to-day.
    But the pleasure gives way
      To a savor of sorrow;--
    Rose kissed me to-day,--
    _Will_ she kiss me to-morrow?

    I intended an Ode,
      And it turned to a Sonnet.
    It began _à la mode_,
    I intended an Ode;
    But Rose crossed the road
      In her latest new bonnet.
    I intended an Ode,
      And it turned to a Sonnet.

(AUSTIN DOBSON: _Rose Leaves._)

In an earlier version of this last "rose-leaf" the ode is said to have
"turned into triolets," when Rose crossed the road "with a bunch of
fresh violets."

    A little kiss when no one sees,
      Where is the impropriety?
    How sweet amid the birds and bees
    A little kiss when no one sees!
    Nor is it wrong, the world agrees,
      If taken with sobriety.
    A little kiss when no one sees,
      Where is the impropriety?

(SAMUEL MINTURN PECK: _Under the Rose._)

    Worldly designs, fears, hopes, farewell!
      Farewell all earthly joys and cares!
    On nobler thoughts my soul shall dwell!
    Worldly designs, fears, hopes, farewell!
    At quiet, in my peaceful cell,
      I'll think on God, free from your snares;
    Worldly designs, fears, hopes, farewell!
      Farewell all earthly joys and cares!

(PATRICK CAREY: in _Trivial Poems and Triolets_, 1651; reprinted by
Scott, 1819; this triolet also quoted in _Ballades and Rondeaus_,
Introduction, p. xxxvi.)

Originally, the triolet was often used for serious sentiment. The
present and the following specimen are rare instances of its serious use
in English.

    In his arms thy silly lamb
      Lo! he gathers to his breast!
    See, thou sadly bleating dam,
    See him lift thy silly lamb!
    Hear it cry, "How blest I am!--
      Here is love and love is rest."
    In his arms thy silly lamb
      See him gather to his breast!

(GEORGE MACDONALD.)


E.--THE SESTINA

This form, although originally found in Provençal like the others of the
group, has been more used in Italy than in France, and, as the English
form of the word indicates, was introduced into England under Italian
influence. It was invented at the end of the thirteenth century, by the
troubadour Arnaut Daniel, celebrated in the following specimen. The
common form of the sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, with a
tercet at the end. There is usually no rime, but the stanzas are based
on six end-words, which are the same in all stanzas; in the tercet three
of these words are used in the middle of the lines, and three at the
ends. The order of the end-words changes in each stanza according to a
complex system: thus (in the common modern form) if the end-words of the
first stanza be represented by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the order in the second
stanza will be 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3; in the third, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5; in the
fourth, 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4; in the fifth, 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2; in the sixth,
2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1. Sometimes the end-words also rime by twos and threes.

    In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose,
    Arnaut, great master of the lore of love,
    First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart;
    For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang,
    And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme,
    And in this subtler measure hid his woe.

    "Harsh be my lines," cried Arnaut, "harsh the woe,
    My lady, that enthroned and cruel rose,
    Inflicts on him that made her live in rhyme!"
    But through the metre spake the voice of Love,
    And like a wildwood nightingale he sang
    Who thought in crabbed lays to ease his heart.

    It is not told if her untoward heart
    Was melted by her poet's lyric woe,
    Or if in vain so amorously he sang.
    Perchance through crowd of dark conceits he rose
    To nobler heights of philosophic love,
    And crowned his later years with sterner rhyme.

    This thing alone we know: the triple rhyme
    Of him who bared his vast and passionate heart
    To all the crossing flames of hate and love,
    Wears in the midst of all its storm and woe--
    As some loud morn of March may bear a rose--
    The impress of a song that Arnaut sang.

    "Smith of his mother-tongue," the Frenchman sang
    Of Lancelot and of Galahad, the rhyme
    That beat so bloodlike at its core of rose,
    It stirred the sweet Francesca's gentle heart
    To take that kiss that brought her so much woe,
    And sealed in fire her martyrdom of love.

    And Dante, full of her immortal love,
    Stayed his drear song, and softly, fondly sang
    As though his voice broke with that weight of woe;
    And to this day we think of Arnaut's rhyme,
    Whenever pity at the laboring heart
    On fair Francesca's memory drops the rose.

    Ah! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme!
    The men of old who sang were great at heart,
    Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose.

(EDMUND GOSSE: _Sestina._)

For a specimen of the rimed sestina, see Swinburne's _Poems and
Ballads_, Second Series, p. 46.

The Virelai, which we have seen was one of the forms used by Chaucer,
though not represented in his extant poetry, has been but slightly
imitated in English. It was a poem of indeterminate length, composed of
longer and shorter lines, the longer lines in each stanza riming, the
shorter lines in the same stanza also riming, while in the succeeding
stanza the short-line rime of the previous stanza became the long-line
rime. The last stanza took the unrepeated rime of the first stanza as
its new rime; so that in the whole poem each rime was used in two
stanzas. Charles Cotton, one of whose rondeaus has been quoted, also
wrote a virelai. A modern specimen, by Mr. John Payne, is quoted in
_Ballades and Rondeaus_, p. 276.

The Pantoum is another very interesting form belonging in this group
rather than elsewhere, although it originated not in France but
Malaysia. It was imitated in French by Victor Hugo and other poets, and
through French influence has found a place in English verse. It consists
of an indeterminate number of stanzas of four lines each, the second and
fourth line of each stanza being repeated as the first and third of the
succeeding stanza, while the second and fourth lines of the last stanza
repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza. Thus the whole
forms a sort of interwoven circle, and is used most appropriately to
represent any kind of monotony,--the dull round of repetition. From
_Love in Idleness_ (1883) Mr. White reprints the following admirable
specimen:

    _Monologue d'outre Tombe._

    Morn and noon and night,
      Here I lie in the ground;
    No faintest glimmer of light,
      No lightest whisper of sound.

    Here I lie in the ground;
      The worms glide out and in;
    No lightest whisper of sound,
      After a lifelong din.

    The worms glide out and in;
      They are fruitful and multiply;
    After a lifelong din
      I watch them quietly.

    They are fruitful and multiply,
      My body dwindles the while;
    I watch them quietly;
      I can scarce forbear a smile.

    My body dwindles the while,
      I shall soon be a skeleton;
    I can scarce forbear a smile,
      They have had such glorious fun.

    I shall soon be a skeleton,
      The worms are wriggling away;
    They have had such glorious fun,
      They will fertilize my clay.

    The worms are wriggling away,
      They are what I have been;
    They will fertilize my clay;
      The grass will grow more green.

    They are what I have been.
      I shall change, but what of that?
    The grass will grow more green,
      The parson's sheep grow fat.

    I shall change, but what of that?
      All flesh is grass, one says.
    The parson's sheep grow fat,
      The parson grows in grace.

    All flesh is grass, one says;
      Grass becomes flesh, one knows;
    The parson grows in grace:
      I am the grace he grows.

    Grass becomes flesh, one knows.
      He grows like a bull of Bashan.
    I am the grace he grows;
      I startle his congregation.

    He grows like a bull of Bashan,
      One day he'll be Bishop or Dean.
    I startle his congregation;
      One day I shall preach to the Queen.

    One day he'll be Bishop or Dean,
      One of those science-haters;
    One day I shall preach to the Queen.
      To think of my going in gaiters!

    One of those science-haters,
      Blind as a mole or bat;
    To think of my going in gaiters,
      And wearing a shovel hat!

    Blind as a mole or bat,
      No faintest glimmer of light,
    And wearing a shovel hat,
      Morning and noon and night.


FOOTNOTES:

[47] On the early history of these forms in France, see Stengel's
article in Gröber's _Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie_. vol. ii. pp.
87-96.

[48] On these ballades of Graunson, a "knight of Savoy," see the
articles by A. Piaget, in _Romania_, vol. xix., and Lounsbury's _Studies
in Chaucer_, vol. iii. p. 450.




PART THREE




THE TIME-ELEMENT IN ENGLISH VERSE[49]


Nearly all modern writers on the theory of verse have admitted that
English words have no fixed syllabic quantities such as are postulated
for the classical languages, but that English quantities, so far as they
exist, are variable and (in part at least) subjective in character. To
this it is true there are exceptions, chiefly among the poets, like some
of those considered in the preceding section on Imitations of Classical
Metres.

Writers who have agreed that English words have no fixed quantities, are
still at variance as to the relation of the element of syllabic time to
the element of accent in English verse. Two extremes may at once be
distinguished: that represented by the familiar statement that our
rhythms differ from those of classical poetry in being based wholly on
accent, and that represented most notably by the late Sidney Lanier, who
held that syllabic time-values in English verse are as exact and regular
(hence as accurately measurable) as the notes of music. Lanier applied
his theory with admirable consistency, and represented all sorts of
English verse, even that of the Anglo-Saxon period, in musical notation.
He is almost universally regarded, however, as having been led by the
analogy between music and poetry to carry his method to quite impossible
lengths. The most characteristic example of this is his representation
of the familiar "blank verse" measure in "three-four" time, each
accented syllable being given a time-value twice as long as that of the
adjacent unaccented syllable--a method of reading which can easily be
shown to be contrary to all common practice. It should not be forgotten,
however, that a debt of gratitude is owed Mr. Lanier for having been one
of the first to emphasize adequately the fact that verse, like music, is
_rhythmical sound_.

Besides those who make English verse to depend wholly on accent, and
those who give it time-values equally regular and measurable with those
of music, there is a third class disposed to confuse the two elements of
quantity and accent. Of this class was Edgar Poe, who in his essay on
The Rationale of Verse constantly spoke of accented and unaccented
syllables as "long" and "short," respectively, and was even disposed to
carry the identification into Latin verse itself. This essay of Poe's
has lately been defended by Mr. John M. Robertson, in the interesting
Appendix to his _New Essays toward a Critical Method_ (1897).
Unfortunately Mr. Robertson seems to have perpetuated deliberately the
confusion which he found in Poe in the use of the terms "accent" and
"quantity." He even says that the attempt to distinguish them is
ill-founded, "that quantity in speaking _must_ amount substantially to
the same thing as stress," and, again, that "Poe's identification of
stress with length is perfectly sound." Whatever be the fundamental fact
here, the use of terms cannot be commended. If quantity is swallowed up
in accent, so that accent alone dominates our verse, that is one thing;
if the conditions are such that a heavy stress and a long quantity
nearly always coincide, that is also a possible doctrine; but that is
not to say that the two things should be identified. If all tall men
wear long coats, or if all men--tall and short--wear long coats, it
follows in neither case that tallness and long-coatedness are the same
thing. It is a mere matter of physics that duration of sound and
intensity of sound are perfectly distinguishable, and that they have no
necessary connection with each other. The problem is: how are they
related in practice?

It has already been observed that Mr. Lanier did good service in
emphasizing the analogy between music and poetry, but that he carried
the analogy too far. It may, therefore, be worth while to consider at
just this point the elements of likeness and of difference in the two
forms of art. Both are forms of _rhythmical_ art: music and verse are
alike rhythmical sound. Lanier showed with sufficient certainty that
rhythm is dependent upon both _time_ and _accent_. He said, to be sure,
that "time is _the_ essential" element;[50] but this does not seem to
have been altogether what he meant, for he himself pointed out that the
ear insistently marks off time-elements by the sense of variation of
stress, even when there is no real variation, as in the tick-tack of the
clock. He also pointed out that accent marks the rhythm of music quite
as truly as that of verse, the rule being that ordinarily the first note
of each measure shall receive a special stress. It seems, then, that the
rhythm of music is based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal
time-intervals. The same thing is true of the rhythm of verse. For every
kind of metre there is a normal verse-rhythm which is present in the
mind as the basis on which the verse is built up, no matter how many
variations may constantly occur. This normal rhythm is formed by a
succession of accents at exactly equal time-intervals,[51] such as can
be marked off by a metronome, or by the mechanical beating of the foot
on the floor. We realize that the verse as commonly read frequently
departs from this regularity of intervals; but without the regularity as
a norm to which to refer it, we should not recognize it as verse. The
normal accent-interval we call a "foot."

Exception must therefore be taken, it seems to me, to another contention
of Mr. Robertson's; namely, that "there is no time-unit." "Our feet," he
says, "are a pure convention, and the sole rhythmic fact is the
fluctuant relativity of long and short, or stress and slur." I am glad
to be able to believe that the fundamental rhythmic fact is something
more definite than this.[52] But the latest writer on the subject, Mr.
Mark Liddell, in his _Introduction to the Scientific Study of Poetry_,
joins Mr. Robertson in finding no feet in English verse. Nay, he
represents the metrist who makes use of the old conventions of
rhythmical measurement as one who will "flounder ceaselessly amid the
scattered timbers of iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never
reaching the firm ground of truth"! Mr. Liddell points out that we do
not pronounce English words, even in verse, with mechanically regular
alternations of stress; and he rejects the explanation that there is
nevertheless a typical form in the poet's and the reader's mind, on the
ground that it is "a strange state of affairs that the æsthetically
imperfect should produce a greater pleasure than the æsthetically
perfect." Strange, perhaps, but as familiar as sunrise, if by
"æsthetically perfect" we mean absolutely regular. Here we need to recur
to the analogy of music, where the phenomenon in question is so obvious.
Let any one attempt to follow a symphony with a metronome in his hand,
and he will soon discover that if the metronome represents the
æsthetically perfect rhythm, the orchestra represents a more pleasurable
imperfection. Its accelerations and retardations carry on a continual
conflict with the typical time of the music, yet that typical time is
not only printed on every sheet, but is in the mind of every player. It
is precisely so with verse.

It is true, of course, that the variations from regularity of rhythm are
more numerous and conspicuous in verse than in music. The reason is
obvious: the sounds of verse have constantly to effect a compromise
between the typical rhythm to which they are set and the irregular
stress-and time-variations of human speech, while music has no such
complicated task. Lyrical verse, being closest to music, keeps the
typical rhythm freest from interruption; and it is worthy of remark that
Mr. Liddell's study of English rhythms is based very largely on those of
a non-lyrical character, although he himself points out (p. 271) that
these are the least regular. The drama is dominated, most of all forms
of verse, by the necessity of representing natural human speech; hence
it is not the place to look for the fundamental laws of verse at their
purest.

There is, then, a unit of time on which all verse-rhythms, like all
musical rhythms, are based; and this is what we commonly call in music
the _measure_, and in verse, the _foot_, I shall recur to this matter a
little later in considering the terminology of the subject; for the
present let us return to the relations of verse and music. Both, we have
seen, are based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal
time-intervals. There is some difference, however, in the emphasis which
one naturally places on the respective parts of the statement. In music
we feel that the fact of chief importance is that the measures shall be
equal in time, while the recurring accent seems a mere means of marking
this equality; but in verse we feel that the chief fact is that the
accents shall recur, the equality of time-intervals being in a sense a
secondary source of pleasure. In music, therefore, as we have seen, we
treat departures from regularity of time-intervals as somewhat more
exceptional than in verse. But the rhythm would suffer, would even
disappear, were either element wholly removed.

If we look for further distinctions between verse and music, we find
them in the separate sounds which go to make up the unit-measures. Not
only are the measures of music of mathematically equal length, but all
the sounds bear exact time-relations to each other: each is either half
as long, or twice as long, or a quarter as long, or four times as long,
as its neighbor. On the other hand, the number of separate sounds in the
measure constantly varies; it is sufficient that the total length be
that of the full measure. In verse these conditions are reversed. The
separate syllables, while they doubtless vary in length, are not
mathematically coördinated as to duration by the ordinary reader. It is
almost as difficult to say just what the time-relation of any two
adjacent syllables is, as to be sure that one is stressed just twice as
strongly as the other. On the other hand, the _number_ of syllables in
the foot (in good modern English verse) is tolerably constant.

For the sake of completeness, one may add two other fundamental
distinctions which, _apart_ from the elements of rhythm, differentiate
verse from music. Music, apart from rhythm, characteristically depends
on variation of pitch, and only incidentally (as in the case of the use
of different instruments in orchestration) on variation of
sound-quality; whereas verse, apart from rhythm, characteristically
depends on variation of sound-quality,--that is, on the different sounds
of the different words,--and only incidentally on changes of pitch.
Finally, the changing sounds of music are only vaguely symbolic, while
the changing sounds of verse are symbolic of definite ideas.

For the sake of easy comparison we may put these observations in a rough
sort of table:

                MUSIC                                  VERSE
                            _Rhythmical Sound_,
                                     i.e.

    Recurrence of accented sounds          Recurrence of _accented sounds_
    _at equal time-intervals_.             at equal time-intervals.

    Separate sounds mathematically         Separate sounds not mathematically
    related in length, and constantly      related in length, and
    varying in number and arrangement.     generally with unchanged number
                                           and arrangement.

    Apart from rhythm, dependent on        Apart from rhythm, dependent on
    variation of _pitch_ (incidentally     variation of sound-_quality_
    on sound-_quality_).                  (incidentally on _pitch_).

    Sounds vaguely symbolic.               Sounds symbolic of definite ideas.

Let us now consider more closely the time-values of the separate
syllables of verse, asking just what we mean by a "long" or a "short"
syllable in English. It has already been indicated that the ear
recognizes no such fixed proportions in the length of our syllables as
are recognized for musical notes, or as are postulated for the syllables
of Greek and Latin verse. It must also be remembered that the terms
"long" and "short," as commonly used of English vowels, are of little
significance for the matter of real quantity. They are applied for
historical reasons, and do not describe present facts. Thus we call the
_o_ in "hotel" _long_, and that in "cot" short; but it is fairly clear
that the _o_ of "cot" takes rather more time, as commonly uttered, than
that of "hotel." The so-called "short _o_" is, in fact, a sound so open
that it has lost the _o_-quality. In the same way what we call "long
_a_" is a short-_e_ sound diphthongized. We cannot be said to preserve
in modern English any single vowels with fixed long quantity, such as we
hear in German words like _Saal_ and _See_,--sounds which obviously take
more time in utterance than others.

Can we speak accurately, then, of long syllables and short syllables in
modern English? It may be said that we have a large number of genuine
diphthongs; and such double sounds, especially where they are so open as
to require unusual effort on the part of the vocal organs (like _-ow_,
for example), may be assumed to take a longer time in utterance than
monophthongs. Even such a sound as is represented by _-au_ or _-aw_,
though it has but slight diphthongal quality, seems to sound longer than
most monophthongs. But in none of these cases does ordinary
pronunciation make the sound-length at all conspicuous, except where it
coincides with strong stress; and it requires a moment's reasoning to
convince one's self that the vowel in _fine_ is any longer than that in
_fan_. It is more than doubtful, then, whether our vowel sounds can be
regarded as of significance for metrical time. A word like "saw" or
"now," occurring in such a place in the verse as to be passed over with
the briefest and lightest utterance, would be pronounced with rapidity
by the ordinary reader, with no thought that the vowel-sound was too
"long."

But in the earlier languages a syllable might be long, not only from the
presence of a long vowel, but also from the presence of two or more
consonants following the vowel. May this be said to hold good for modern
English? In general, prolonged consonantal sounds seem to be avoided, as
in the case of vowels. We pass over them rapidly, and have, for
instance, no such clearly stopped syllables due to double consonants as
are heard in Italian words like _madonna_. Yet we cannot doubt that two
or three consonants require more time than one, and in words like
_strength_, _flushed_, _fists_, and the like, every one would find the
consonantal length perceptible. More than this, two consonants often
serve to "close" the preceding syllable, by making it impossible to run
the consonant at the end of it over into the following syllable, and
hence really lengthen it. This, of course, is the reason why the first
syllable of the Latin _avis_ is said to be short, but that of _alvus_ to
be long. The Elizabethan metrists tried to apply these Latin rules of
"quantity by position" to all English words; and many modern English
writers, who have been trained from childhood in the appreciation of
Latin quantities, easily perceive the differing consonantal quantities
of English words. These quantities may, then, certainly be said to
exist; but in ordinary English pronunciation, and to the ordinary,
untrained English ear, they must be strongly marked in order to attract
attention. When thus strongly marked, they doubtless play some part in
the structure of verse. In some lines attributed to Raleigh,

    "His desire is a dureless content,
      And a trustless joy,"

the syllable _trust_-occupies the time of two syllables; the typical
metre would require something like

    "And a pitiless joy."

Now, the fact that _trust_-is a noticeably long syllable, especially
when closed by the following _l_, makes it well fitted to fill the place
of two syllables; and we should find the line distinctly less pleasing
if a short syllable were there instead. _Boundless_ would do as well,
because equally long; _trusty_ would not be quite so good; _silly_ would
be very bad. Conversely, when a noticeably long syllable occupies the
place of a light syllable, in rapid tri-syllabic verse, we feel that
the verse is injured. Mr. William Larminie criticises a line of Mr.
Swinburne's on this ground,--

    "Time sheds them like snow on strange regions;"[53]

the combination _-ange_, with its final _-nj_ sound, made still longer
by the following _r_, and preceded, too, by the combination _n-st_, has
too much quantity for the place where it stands in the verse. In the
verse of inferior writers many worse cases could easily be found. These
illustrations, then, may serve to show that while we do not coördinate
our consonantal syllable-lengths as absolute "shorts" and "longs," we
perceive certain degrees of length, and find these playing a part in our
verse.

So much for intrinsic quantity as found in English syllables. But there
is much more to be said for syllables made long or short at the will of
the speaker, under certain conditions. If we address a friend in
surprise, saying, "_Why, John!_" we not only throw a heavy stress on
both the words, but also perceptibly prolong them. In like manner, we
realize that unimportant words, especially proclitics (like the
italicized words in the phrase "_The_ land _of the_ free") are not only
unstressed, but are hurried over in shorter moments than the accented
words. Examples like this suggest what may in fact be expressed in a
general statement, that accented syllables are very commonly prolonged.
This is not, as we have seen, from any essential connection between the
nature of accent and the nature of quantity. In certain cases,
unaccented syllables even show a tendency to length beyond that of those
bearing the stress, as in words like _follow_, _dying_, and others where
the final sound is easily prolonged. The coincidence of stress and
length, then, is due simply to the operation of the same cause--the
grammatical or rhetorical importance of the syllable in question. This
fact, that the important (stressed) syllables are likely to be held a
little longer than the others, will not warrant us in representing them
as _twice_ as long, in the exact mathematical relations of musical
notes; but it may explain why a musician like Lanier tried to represent
them in such notation. It must also be the cause of Mr. Robertson's
attempt to identify quantity and stress. His statement that "quantity in
fact, in spoken verse, consists of stress _and_ of the consonantal total
of syllables," may be regarded as much more satisfactory than those
already quoted from his essay. It is, however, not quite accurate.

Still another kind of relative syllable-length remains to be considered,
and for metrical purposes it is probably the most important. The
_accents_ of English words not only vary in degree according to the
different stresses which they receive in different prose sentences, but
in verse they are made artificially to vary also so as to conform as
closely as possible to the scheme of the metre. Thus the first syllable
of the word _over_ is accented far more strongly when it occurs at the
opening of a dactylic verse,

    "Over the ocean wave,"

than when it occurs at the opening of an anapestic verse,

    "Over land, over sea."

This being the case with accent, which tends to be strongly fixed in
English words, we might naturally expect that it would be still more
clearly the case with the element of time; and so it is. Syllables will
be lengthened and shortened by the reader in order to preserve as nearly
as possible the fundamental equal time-intervals between the principal
accents. This is most easily recognized, and most commonly practised, in
the case where syllables are shortened because there are more of them
than the normal scheme of the verse would imply. The old "tumbling
verse" of our ancestors depended on this principle, and so did the
revival of it in Coleridge's _Christabel_. For example:

    "A little door she opened straight,
    All in the middle of the gate,
    The gate that was ironed within and without,
    Where an army in battle array had marched out."

Here the rhythm of the last verse is brought into the four-beat measure
of the first verse, by passing lightly and rapidly over all syllables
save the four that mark the metre. In prose, the word _marched_ would be
stressed quite as much as the word _out_, but there is no difficulty in
reducing the stress in reading the verse.[54] It cannot be said,
however, that there is no difficulty in reducing its _length_, for the
final consonant combination _-cht_ takes up considerable time, and the
whole word follows a syllable (_had_) which has been closed and so
lengthened by the _d + m_. Sensitive readers would probably agree,
therefore, that the quantity in this verse is too much for the
smoothness of the rhythm. On the other hand, the long syllable _ironed_
helps us to fill the place of the light syllable which is missing after
it, and we find the rhythm easier than it would be in this form:

    "The gate that was ironed both within and without."

Once more, for the sake of convenience, let us attempt to put our
conclusions into the form of a summary. An English syllable may be said
to be _long_, not absolutely but _relatively_, from:

    [1. The naturally long character of its vowel-sound, due either
          to open quality or diphthongization.]

    2. The presence of two or more consonants which require a
          perceptible time for utterance.

    3. Prolongation by the speaker
          (_a_) because of the importance of the syllable, or
          (_b_) because of the time which it ought to occupy in
                    the scheme of the verse.

The artificial lengthening and shortening of syllables, then, is
constantly and naturally practised in the reading of verse which has a
strong lyrical swing such as guides the reader into a sense of its
structure. In verse more subtle and less lyrical in character the
time-intervals are not so strongly marked, and by the ear not trained to
listen for rhythm they are not so easily observed. The five-stress
iambic line, especially when unrimed, has developed far more freedom and
subtlety in English poetry than any other measure, and it is to this
that one finds these writers invariably turning who wish to prove that
our verse is not based on regular time-intervals. A verse like this:

    "The lone couch of his everlasting sleep,"

if read as an ordinary prose phrase, has no obvious metrical character.
The second foot ("couch of") inverts the normal order of accent and
no-accent, and in common speech the second and third syllables would be
long and followed by a phrase-pause, while the fourth and fifth
syllables would be made very short and jointed closely to what follows.
There is no rhythm in such a group of words. But when we know that they
are part of a poem in five-stress verse, we can readjust them so as to
approach more closely to the rhythmical scheme in our minds. We cannot
accent either _of_ or _his_, without destroying the sense; nor can we
deprive either _lone_ or _couch_ of its accent; but we can _lengthen_
the words _of his_ beyond their natural time in speech, pronouncing them
more deliberately, and we can also, perhaps, diminish the phrase-pause
after _couch_. This would tend to equalize the five time-intervals to
which the verse, as a verse, should fit itself. It would be too much to
say that this is what the ordinary reader would do, because the ordinary
reader is likely to have his mind fixed on expressing the sense,
neglecting the rhythm which is equally an element of the poetry; but it
is what the careful reader could do without difficulty.

The first line of _Paradise Lost_,

    "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit,"

always a favorite specimen for metrists to dissect, is of like
character. Mr. Robertson, in the essay already cited, makes considerable
use of this verse as showing the vanity of the usual method of dividing
verses into equal feet. He quotes approvingly Professor Shairp's account
of the way in which Clough analyzed the line: "The two feet 'first
disobe-' took up the time of four syllables, two iambic feet: the voice
rested awhile on the word 'first'; then passed swiftly over 'diso-,'
then rested again on 'be-' so as to recover the previous hurry." Now
this seems to be merely a description of the way in which the words
would be uttered in prose, and to neglect the rhythm of the poem in
which they stand. In the second foot one can and should give the
syllable _dis-_ full syllabic time, instead of hurrying over it as in
prose speech,--a rendering made easy by the fact that it frequently has
a marked secondary accent. Conversely, one can give _first_ somewhat
less time than it would occupy in prose, without thereby diminishing
its accent. The word _and_, in the fourth foot, would in prose utterance
be allowed almost no time-value; and it may be treated in the same way
in the verse, by permitting the pause at the comma to fill up the normal
time of the foot. It would seem to be better, however, to give _and_ a
fairly distinct utterance for metrical purposes (without, of course,
adding any stress), and thus to approach more closely to the scheme of
time-intervals. It is highly improbable that any one would read this
verse--or almost any other verse of _Paradise Lost_--with such exact
observance of the equal time-intervals as would appear in regular
lyrical poetry. We have already seen that blank verse departs more
constantly from the typical scheme of the measure than any other of our
verse-forms. Nevertheless, the reader with a well-trained ear listens
always for the flow of the typical metre underneath the surface
irregularities, and, by a delicate adjustment of syllable-lengths, can
bring the poet's words into far more rhythmical utterance than they
would find in prose.

There is one other method of varying the time-elements in verse which
has already been suggested by what was said of the pause at the comma in
the line of _Paradise Lost_. It will be seen very generally that light
syllables, such as one wishes to utter in brief periods of time, are
found on either side of the phrase-pauses in our verse.

    "The first in valor, as the first in place"

is a typical line in this respect. The natural pause, indicated by the
comma, takes up part of the time of the third foot, which there are no
syllables fitted wholly to fill. It might almost be said that, in
ordinary five-stress verse, such verses are quite as numerous as those
with five complete feet. The pause satisfies the ear, so far as the
time-intervals are concerned, quite as well as a long syllable.

Pauses not only fill up the incomplete time of a foot containing only
short syllables, but they also fill the time of wholly missing
syllables. In the verse

    "Come from the dying moon, and blow"

we start out with trisyllabic rhythm, but have only two syllables in the
second and in the third foot. It does not seem certain whether the
missing syllable after _dying_ is to have its place filled by a pause or
by a prolongation of either or both of the syllables _dy-ing_--perhaps
by all three means combined. In the same way the missing syllable after
_moon_ may have its place filled either by the prolongation of the _oo_,
or by the pause indicated by the comma, or by both. But in other cases
the pause occupies the entire syllable-moment; for examples, see under
Pauses in pages 20-22 above. The whole matter was well summed up in
Lanier's saying that "rhythm may be dependent on silences" as well as on
sounds.

Let us now try to gather what we have been considering into the form of
definite statements regarding the place of the time-element in our
verse.

1. _In the normal verse, accents appear at equal time-intervals._ This,
of course, does not preclude all manner of variations; the unit of
measure is not the distance between the accents as they are found in
each verse, but between the points where they belong in the typical
metre.

2. _There is a tendency toward the coincidence of long and accented, and
of short and unaccented, syllables._ This we have seen to be true in two
different senses. In the first place, an accented syllable is likely to
be lengthened for the same reason that it is accented--because of its
relative importance in the place where it stands. In the second place,
syllables noticeably long are avoided in those places in the verse where
the accent does not fall, and are preferred where the stress is heavy.

3. _In the reading of verse, the length of the syllables is varied
artificially, so as to tend to preserve the equal time-intervals._

4. _In like manner, pauses are introduced where syllables are short or
wanting, to preserve these intervals._

It is quite possible that these laws might be stated more fully and
definitely. In Anglo-Saxon verse the conditions were perhaps not so
different from those of modern English as we are likely to think; there
we know that the principal stresses of the verse always fell on long
syllables, and scholars like Sievers, by analyzing the remains of our
early poetry, have formulated certain other laws as to the position and
relations of the short syllables. If similar laws were to be formulated
for our modern verse, we should probably find them no more perplexing
than our ancestors would find those we have formulated for their verse.
In every case the "law" is only an attempt to express what the ear has
long known and obeyed. Mr. Goodell, in an article on "Quantity in
English Verse," in the _Proceedings of the American Philological
Society_ for 1885, attempted to do for our verse what has just been
suggested. He stated such laws as these:

"The thesis becomes a triseme if the next syllable bears the ictus. No
syllable can be placed in this position which is incapable of
prolongation."

"If the arsis is monosyllabic, a short vowel in the thesis followed by a
single consonant is not lengthened by the ictus; the arsis is instead
prolonged."

"With arsis monosyllabic, the strong tendency is to make the thesis
short."

Perhaps these rules are on the right track; the terminology is somewhat
difficult, and makes one hesitate to criticise carefully. But since, as
we have seen, the terms "long" and "short," as applied to English
syllables, have come to be so purely relative, since our syllabic
quantities vary so much at the will of the reader, and since the whole
matter of the reading of our verse is in good measure one of subjective
interpretation, it seems very doubtful whether any statements more
explicit than those already laid down would be found of practical
service.

Finally, we come back to the question whether we shall use for English
verse the classical terminology which has for so long been applied to
it. Those who object to such terminology do so either on the ground that
it implies that English accented and unaccented syllables are equivalent
respectively to Latin long and short syllables, or on the still more
fundamental ground that there is nothing in our verse which can properly
be called a "foot." It is undoubtedly true that the use of terms based
on quantity has given rise to some confusion when applied to phenomena
based on accent, yet the terms are now understood with as fair a degree
of clearness as any terms relating to so disputed a subject as English
verse; and it seems very doubtful whether it is not easier to explain
them than to introduce new ones. Experiments in the latter direction
have not been very successful. The latest writer on the subject objects,
with considerable severity, to the classical nomenclature "hardly
pressed and barbarously misapplied." Our current prosody, he says later,
"ignores" the frequent occurrence of an accented syllable at the
beginning of a line of Shakspere's verse, "turning it off with the
statement that 'a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse.'" Yet when we
reach the summary of the author's discussion of the subject, we find the
same phenomenon "turned off" with this statement: "In rising rhythm a
thought-moment may begin with a falling wave-group." One cannot avoid
querying whether this interesting combination of words conveys any
simpler and better idea to the normal English reader than the familiar
statement that "a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse." The case is
instructive as to the danger of attempting a new terminology where one
is already established, and of imagining that one has thereby made the
discussion of the subject more scientific.

The second of the objections to the usual terminology, that there is no
real _foot_ in English verse, has already been considered. If there are
no regular units of measure in our verse, then to attempt constantly to
find such units, and to use terms that imply their existence, is
certainly a mistake. But those are on the wrong track who would find the
divisions of the verse in the natural phrase-divisions of English
speech.[55] In "_arma virumque cano_" the syllable _vi-_ is far more
closely connected with the syllable _-rum_, for all prose purposes, than
with the preceding syllables; but in the verse the Romans thought of it
as being in the same foot with _arma_; and later in the verse the last
syllable of _cano_ is rhythmically connected (over the barrier of a
comma) with the first of _Trojæ_. Indeed, the Latin poets instinctively
avoided the regular coincidence of metrical units with word or sentence
units. Precisely the same thing is true of English verse. It has been
suggested more than once that the great preponderance, among English
dissyllables, of those accented on the first syllable, goes to explain
our preference for iambic over trochaic measures; and that one reason
why the rhythm of _Hiawatha_, for example, so soon wearies the ear, is
because its metrical divisions and word divisions so frequently
coincide. The fundamental principle of verse is that it sets up a new
order of progress which constantly conflicts with, yet without
destroying, the order of progress of common prose speech.

So the _foot_ means, not a unit of measure for the words, but for the
syllables viewed as rhythmical sound; and the attempt has already been
made to show that it represents the time-interval between the regularly
recurring accents of the normal metre. When there are two syllables in
the interval, it is convenient to call the foot an iambus, a trochee, a
pyrrhic, or a spondee; when there are three, it is convenient to call
the foot an anapest or a dactyl. According to this system, the number of
feet in the metre will always depend on the number of regularly
recurring accents, which of course is not the case in classical prosody.
For the same reason, all exceptional feet can be named by one of the six
terms indicated, except where (as in Swinburne's "Choriambics") some
classical metre is deliberately imitated. There is no sufficient reason
for speaking of the choriambus as occurring in Shakspere's verse,
because where four syllables occur in such succession as to form a sort
of choriambus, they will be found to fill the place of _two_ ordinary
feet, not of one; hence it would be irrational to combine them into one
exceptional foot. But on this matter of convenience in the terminology
of verse, one cannot do better than to refer the reader to Mr. Mayor's
_Chapters on English Metre_, where a refreshingly simple system is set
forth, such as will not break down under any reasonable test.

There is one defect, it may be freely admitted, in these classical names
of feet. They provide no place for the secondary accent. A foot made up
of a fully accented plus a slightly accented syllable must be called
either a spondee (the second syllable being thought of as approaching
the stress of the first) or a trochee (the syllable being thought of as
approaching no stress). The abundant use of secondary or compromised
accents--and one might say, too, of secondary or compromised
quantities--is a Germanic characteristic, for which no classical
terminology can provide. There is, theoretically, room for some new
names of feet recognizing these ambiguous syllables. Yet since degrees
of accent are purely relative, and no two readers would be sure of
agreeing as to which syllables are fully stressed, and which are
half-stressed, it is not likely that such additional terms would make
our terminology any more exact for practical purposes. The present
system does, in fact, represent a characteristic feature of modern
English as distinguished from early English verse; namely, that our
metres strive after a regular alternation of stress and no-stress, and
that the ear imagines this alternation even where (if it were a matter
of prose utterance) it can scarcely be said to exist.

It would be absurd to strive with any warmth for the classical system of
terminology in English prosody. It is undoubtedly not an ideal system,
nor such a one as we should adopt if we were naming everything anew; few
existing terminologies are. The only object of the present defence of
its carefully limited use is to show that it does stand for some
fundamental facts in our verse, and to suggest that it is usually wiser
to make the best of the vocabulary we have than to fly to one we know
not of. The important thing, in any case, is not the question of terms,
but the end that we should not lose hold of the musical rhythms of our
verse, made up of delicately adjusted elements of accent and time.


FOOTNOTES:

[49] This discussion is in part a reproduction of an article with the
same title originally published in _Modern Language Notes_, December,
1899.

[50] _Science of English Verse_, p. 65.

[51] On the nature of our sense of rhythm, see Mr. T. L. Bolton's
account of his experiments relating to the subject, given in the
_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vi, p. 145. He reaches the
conclusion that, in order to awaken the sense of rhythm, it is necessary
that "the accents in a line shall recur at regular intervals."

[52] Similarly, so distinguished a scholar as Professor Skeat has lately
opposed the scansion of English verse by feet, in the _Transactions of
the Philological Society_ for 1897-1898. For an ample examination of his
views the reader must be referred to the new edition of Mr. Mayor's
_Chapters on English Metre_, chap. vii.

[53] See Mr. Larminie's article on "The Development of English Metres"
in the _Contemporary Review_ for November, 1894. In this article there
is one of the clearest statements of the place of quantity in our verse
that one can easily find. Mr. Larminie seems disposed, however, to place
too much stress on the element of fixed or natural quantity, and
sometimes to use the terms "long" and "short" with merely traditional
meanings. The most characteristic feature of his discussion is, that he
establishes certain principles of quantity, and judges the poets by
their conformity to these principles. The inductive method is less
pretentious and perhaps safer: to inquire what the poets do, and how in
the reading of their verse we may preserve the rhythm which they
undoubtedly had in mind. Both methods are legitimate. One will lay down
rules for the poet, another for the reader; and there is perhaps as much
chance of one being followed as of the other.

[54] At least no difficulty has generally been found; but Mr. Liddell
marks the word as one which _must_ be stressed from its grammatical
importance. He even finds Coleridge untrue to the metre in putting
_where_ in an unstressed place in the verse, on the ground that it means
"through which." It would perhaps be safe to guess that no
unsophisticated English reader has ever found difficulty in the accents
of the line in question. The matter is worthy of remark as illustrating
the tendency of one class of readers to emphasize _sense_-reading at the
expense of rhythm. On the other hand, for an illustration of the
opposite extreme see Professor Bright's article on "Grammatical Ictus in
English Verse," in the Furnivall _Miscellany_ (1901), where we are told,
in effect, that the metrical accent must always triumph over the
sense-accent. As usual, the truth seems to lie somewhere between the
extremes.

[55] This seems to be a part of the old effort to seek a grammatical
rather than a musical origin for metre. On this subject the reader
should see the brilliant discussion of Professor Gummere in _The
Beginnings of Poetry_, from which a few paragraphs are quoted in Part
Four.




PART FOUR




THE PLACE AND FUNCTION OF THE METRICAL ELEMENT IN POETRY


     The following extracts from important critical discussions are
     selected with reference to their bearing on two questions: Is metre
     an essential or only an incidental element of poetry? and, What are
     its functions in the total content and effect of poetry? The
     student of the subject will do well to analyze the answers to the
     second question, determining under how many aspects of the metrical
     element they can be grouped.

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them
lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted
in man from childhood.... Next, there is the instinct for harmony and
rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore,
starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special
aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.

(ARISTOTLE: _Poetics_, iv. Butcher's translation, pp. 15, 17.)


Poetry, music, and dancing constitute in Aristotle a group by
themselves, their common element being imitation by means of
rhythm--rhythm which admits of being applied to words, sounds, and the
movements of the body. The history of these arts bears out the views we
find expressed in Greek writers upon the theory of music; it is a
witness to the primitive unity of music and poetry, and to the close
alliance of the two with dancing.... The intimate fusion of the three
arts afterward known as the "musical" arts--or rather we should perhaps
say, the alliance of music and dancing under the supremacy of
poetry--was exhibited even in the person of the artist. The office of
the poet as teacher of the chorus demanded a practical knowledge of all
that passed under the term "dancing," including steps, gestures,
attitudes, and the varied resources of rhythmical movement.... The poet,
lyric or dramatic, composed the accompaniment as well as wrote the
verses; and it was made a reproach against Euripides, who was the first
to deviate from the established usage, that he sought the aid of Iophon,
son of Sophocles, in the musical setting of his dramas. The very word
"poet" in classical times often implies the twofold character of poet
and musician, and in later writers is sometimes used, like our
"composer," in a strictly limited reference to music.

Aristotle does full justice to the force of rhythmic form and movement
in the arts of music and dancing. The instinctive love of melody and
rhythm is, again, one of the two causes to which he traces the origin of
poetry, but he lays little stress on this element in estimating the
finished products of the poetic art. In the _Rhetoric_ he observes that
if a sentence has metre it will be poetry; but this is said in a popular
way. It was doubtless the received opinion, but it is one which he twice
combats in the _Poetics_, insisting that it is not metrical form that
makes a poem....

The general question whether metre is necessary for poetical expression
has been raised by many modern critics and poets, and has sometimes been
answered in the negative, as by Sidney, Shelley, Wordsworth. It is,
however, worth observing that from Aristotle's point of view, which was
mainly one of observation, the question to be determined was rather as
to the vehicle or medium of literary _mimesis_; and so far as the
_mimesis_ doctrine is concerned, it is undeniable that some kinds of
imaginative subject-matter are better expressed in prose, some in verse,
and that Aristotle, who had before him experimental examples of writings
poetic in spirit, but not metrical in form, had sufficient grounds for
advocating an extension of meaning for the term _poietes_. But as
regards the _Art_ of Poetry, his reasoning does not lead us to conclude
that he would have reckoned the authors of prose dialogues or romances
among poets strictly so called. As Mr. Courthope truly says, "he does
not attempt to prove that metre is not a necessary accompaniment of the
higher conceptions of poetry," and he, "therefore, cannot be ranged with
those who support that extreme opinion." Still there would appear to be
some want of firmness in the position he takes up as to the place and
importance of metre. In his definition of tragedy (chap. vi. 2)
"embellished language" is included among the constituent elements of
tragedy; and the phrase is then explained to mean language that has the
twofold charm of metre (which is a branch of rhythm) and of melody. But
these elements are placed in a subordinate rank and are hardly treated
as essentials. They are in this respect not unlike scenery or
spectacular effect, which, though deduced by Aristotle from the
definition, is not explicitly mentioned in it. The essence of the poetry
is the "imitation"; the melody and the verse are the "seasoning" of the
language.... Aristotle, highly as he rates the æsthetic capacity of the
sense of hearing in his treatment of music, says nothing to show that he
values at its proper worth the power of rhythmical sound as factor in
poetry; and this is the more striking in a Greek, whose enjoyment of
poetry came through the ear rather than the eye, and for whom poetry was
so largely associated with music. After all, there can hardly be a
greater difference between two ways of saying the same thing than that
one is said in verse, the other in prose. There are some lyrics which
have lived and will always live by their musical charm, and by a strange
magic that lies in the setting of the words. We need not agree with a
certain modern school who would empty all poetry of poetical thought and
etherealize it till it melts into a strain of music; who sing to us we
hardly know of what, but in such a way that the echoes of the real
world, its men and women, its actual stir and conflict, are faint and
hardly to be discerned. The poetry, we are told, resides not in the
ideas conveyed, not in the blending of soul and sense, but in the sound
itself, in the cadence of the verse. Yet, false as this view may be, it
is not perhaps more false than that other which wholly ignores the
effect of musical sound and looks only to the thought that is conveyed.
Aristotle comes perilously near this doctrine.

(S. H. BUTCHER: _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_. pp.
138-147.)


It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long
gown maketh an advocate; who, though he pleaded in armor, should be an
advocate and no soldier. But it is that feigning notable images of
virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching which must
be the right describing note to know a poet by; although, indeed, the
senate of poets hath chosen verse as their fittest raiment, meaning, as
in matter they passed all in all, so in manner to go beyond them: not
speaking (table-talk fashion, or like men in a dream) words as they
chanceably fell from the mouth, but poyzing each syllable of each word
by just proportion according to the dignity of the subject....

It is already said (and as I think, truly said) it is not riming and
versing that maketh poesy.... But yet, presuppose it were inseparable
(as, indeed, it seemeth Scaliger judgeth) truly it were an inseparable
commendation. For if _oratio_ next to _ratio_, speech next to reason, be
the greatest gift bestowed upon mortality, that cannot be praiseless,
which doth most polish that blessing of speech, which considers each
word, not only (as a man may say) by his forcible quality, but by his
measured quantity, carrying even in themselves a harmony, without
(perchance) number, measure, order, proportion, be in our time grown
odious. But lay aside the just praise it hath, by being the only fit
speech for music (music, I say, the most divine striker of the senses);
thus much is undoubtedly true, that if reading be foolish, without
remembering, memory being the only treasurer of knowledge, those words
which are fittest for memory are likewise most convenient for knowledge.
Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory,
the reason is manifest. The words (besides their delight, which hath a
great affinity to memory), being so set, as one word cannot be lost, but
the whole work fails, which accuseth itself, calleth the remembrance
back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth it. Besides, one word
so as it were begetting another, as be it in rime or measured verse, by
the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower.... So that,
verse being in itself sweet and orderly, and being best for memory, the
only handle of knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can speak
against it.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _An Apologie for Poetrie_.)


Versification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indispensably
necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the understanding is
enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose.
But the poet has this peculiar superiority, that to all the powers which
the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the
faculty of joining music with reason, and of acting at once upon the
senses and the passions. I suppose there are few who do not feel
themselves touched by poetical melody, and who will not confess that
they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed
by different sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order
than another. The perception of harmony is, indeed, conferred upon men
in degrees very unequal; but there are none who do not perceive it, or
to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds cannot give delight.

(SAMUEL JOHNSON: _The Rambler_, No. 86.)


Various causes might be pointed out why, when the style is manly, and
the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will long
continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who proves the
extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. The end of poetry is
to produce excitement in coexistence with an overbalance of pleasure;
but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and irregular state of
the mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state, succeed each other
in accustomed order.... Now the co-presence of something regular,
something to which the mind has been accustomed in various moods and in
a less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and
restraining the passion by an intertexture of ordinary feeling, and of
feeling not strictly and necessarily connected with the passion. This is
unquestionably true; and hence, though the opinion will at first appear
paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest language, in a certain
degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a sort of half-consciousness
of unsubstantial existence over the whole composition, there can be
little doubt but that more pathetic situations and sentiments--that is,
those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them--may
be endured in metrical composition, especially in rime, than in
prose.... This opinion may be further illustrated by appealing to the
reader's own experience of the reluctance with which he comes to the
reperusal of the distressful parts of _Clarissa Harlowe_, or the
_Gamester_; while Shakspere's writings, in the most pathetic scenes,
never act upon us as pathetic beyond the bounds of pleasure--an effect
which, in a much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to
be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable
surprise from the metrical arrangement.[56] On the other hand (what it
must be allowed will much more frequently happen), if the poet's words
should be incommensurate with the passion, and inadequate to raise the
reader to a height of desirable excitement, then (unless the poet's
choice of his metre has been grossly injudicious), in the feelings of
pleasure which the reader has been accustomed to connect with metre in
general, and in the feeling, whether cheerful or melancholy, which he
has been accustomed to connect with that particular movement of metre,
there will be found something which will greatly contribute to impart
passion to the words, and to effect the complex end which the poet
proposes to himself.

If I had undertaken a systematic defence of the theory here maintained,
it would have been my duty to develop the various causes upon which the
pleasure received from metrical language depends. Among the chief of
these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to
those who have made any of the Arts the object of accurate reflection;
namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of
similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the great spring of the
activity of our minds, and their chief feeder.... It would not be a
useless employment to apply this principle to the consideration of
metre, and to show that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure,
and to point out in what manner that pleasure is produced. But my limits
will not permit me to enter upon this subject, and I must content myself
with a general summary.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity;
the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the
tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which
was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does
itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition
generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but
the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various
causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any
passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will,
upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious
to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought
to profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take
care that, whatever passions he communicates to his reader, those
passions, if his reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be
accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of harmonious
metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind
association of pleasure which has been previously received from works of
rime or metre of the same or similar construction, an indistinct
perception perpetually renewed of language closely resembling that of
real life, and yet, in the circumstance of metre, differing from it so
widely--all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight,
which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling
always found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper
passions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and impassioned
poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with
which the Poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a
principal source of the gratification of the reader. All that it is
necessary to say, however, upon this subject, may be effected by
affirming, what few persons will deny, that of two descriptions, either
of passions, manners, or characters, each of them equally well executed,
the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be read a
hundred times where the prose is read once.

(WORDSWORTH: Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_, 2d ed.)


The true question must be,[57] whether there are not modes of
expression, a construction, and an order of sentences, which are in
their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but would be
disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and, _vice
versa_, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be an
arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection of
(what are called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their
frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would
be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend that in both
cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will
and ought to exist. And, first, from the origin of metre. This I would
trace to the balance in the mind effected by the spontaneous effort
which strives to hold in check the workings of passion. It might be
easily explained likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is
assisted by the very state which it counteracts; and how this balance
of antagonists became organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of
that term) by a supervening act of the will and judgment, consciously
and for the foreseen purpose of pleasure. Assuming these principles as
the data of our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate conditions,
which the critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First,
that as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of
increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the
natural language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are
formed into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and
for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of
present volition should throughout the metrical language be
proportionally discernible....

Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. As far as metre acts in and
for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of
the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces by
the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick reciprocations of
curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, which are too slight
indeed to be at any moment objects of distinct consciousness, yet become
considerable in their aggregate influence. As a medicated atmosphere, or
as wine during animated conversation, they act powerfully, though
themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, correspondent food and
appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and feelings thus
roused, there must needs be disappointment felt;--like that of leaping
in the dark from the last step of a staircase, when we had prepared our
muscles for a leap of three or four.

The discussion on the powers of metre, in the Preface, is highly
ingenious, and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any
statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the
contrary, Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers
which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of) its
combination with other elements of poetry. Thus the previous difficulty
is left unanswered, what the elements are with which it must be combined
in order to produce its own effects to any pleasurable purpose.... For
any poetic purposes, metre resembles (if the aptness of the simile may
excuse its meanness) yeast, worthless or disagreeable by itself, but
giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is proportionally
combined....

Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the attention, and therefore
excites the question, Why is the attention to be thus stimulated? Now
the question cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre itself; for
this we have shown to be conditional, and dependent on the
appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions to which the metrical
form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other answer that can be
rationally given, short of this: I write in metre, because I am about to
use a language different from that of prose....

Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes elsewhere assigned
which render metre the proper form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and
defective without metre. Metre, therefore, having been connected with
poetry most often, and by a peculiar fitness, whatever else is combined
with metre must, though it be not itself essentially poetic, have
nevertheless some property in common with poetry, as an intermedium of
affinity.

(COLERIDGE: _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xviii.)


In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural
objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm
or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the
same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in
the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of
natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to
each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer
and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any
other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste
by modern writers....

Language, color, form, and religious and civil habits of action are all
the instruments and materials of poetry; and they may be called poetry
by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the
cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those
arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are
created by that imperial faculty whose throne is curtained within the
invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of
language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and
passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and
delicate combinations than color, form, or motion, and is more plastic
and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the
creation.... Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each
other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the
order of those relations has always been found connected with a
perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language
of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence
of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less
indispensable to the communication of its influence than the words
themselves, without reference to that peculiar order.... An observation
of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in the language of
poetical minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or
a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is
by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to
this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be
observed.

(SHELLEY: _A Defence of Poetry_.)


Poetry, in its matter and form, is natural imagery or feeling, combined
with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the
ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question of
long standing in what the essence of poetry consists, or what it is that
determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, another in
verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in a single line:

    "Thoughts that voluntary move
    Harmonious numbers."

As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song
and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that
lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and change "the
words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo." ... The jerks, the breaks,
the inequalities and harshnesses of prose are fatal to the flow of a
poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs
the reverie of an absent man. But poetry "makes these odds all even." It
is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind, untying,
as it were, "the secret soul of harmony." Wherever any object takes such
a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it,
melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of
enthusiasm; wherever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed
on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to
bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same
movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually varied,
according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it--this is
poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the
musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near
connection between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As
often as articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry
begins.... It is to supply the inherent defect of harmony in the
customary mechanism of language, to make the sound an echo to the sense,
when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself--to mingle the tide of
verse, "the golden cadences of poetry," with the tide of feeling,
flowing and murmuring as it flows--in short, to take the language of the
imagination from off the ground; and enable it to spread its wings where
it may indulge its own impulses:

    "Sailing with supreme dominion
    Through the azure deep of air,"

without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and
petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry
was invented. It is to common language what springs are to a carriage,
or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by
the modulations of the voice; in poetry the same thing is done
systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well
observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a
subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose.... An
excuse might be made for rime in the same manner. It is but fair that
the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of
the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables,
that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It
is allowed that rime assists the memory.... But if the jingle of names
assists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy?

(WILLIAM HAZLITT: _On Poetry in General_.)


With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by which verses
ought to be modulated, and oneness of impression diversely produced, it
has been contended by some that poetry need not be written in verse at
all; that prose is as good a medium, provided poetry be conveyed through
it, and that to think otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or
form with essence. But the opinion is a prosaical mistake. Fitness and
unfitness for _song_, or metrical excitement, just make all the
difference between a poetical and prosaical subject; and the reason why
verse is necessary to the form of poetry is that the perfection of
poetical spirit demands it--that the circle of its enthusiasm, beauty,
and power is incomplete without it. I do not mean that a poet can never
show himself a poet in prose; but that being one, his desire and
necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he were unable to do
so, he would not and could not deserve his title. Verse to the true poet
is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and a difficulty. It is a help.
It springs from the same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is
necessary to their satisfaction and effect.... Verse is the final proof
to the poet that his mastery over his art is complete. It is the
shutting up of his powers in "_measureful_ content"; the answer of form
to his spirit; of strength and ease to his guidance.... Verse, in short,
is that finishing, and rounding, and "tuneful planeting" of the poet's
creations which is produced of necessity by the smooth tendencies of
their energy or inward working, and the harmonious dance into which they
are attracted round the orb of the beautiful. Poetry, in its complete
sympathy with beauty, must of necessity leave no sense of the beautiful,
and no power over its forms, unmanifested; and verse flows as inevitably
from this condition of its integrity as other laws of proportion do from
any other kind of embodiment of beauty....

Every poet, then, is a versifier; every fine poet an excellent one; and
he is the best whose verse exhibits the greatest amount of strength,
sweetness, straightforwardness, unsuperfluousness, variety, and
oneness;--oneness, that is to say, consistency in the general
impression, metrical and moral; and variety, or every pertinent
diversity of tone and rhythm, in the process.... It is thus that
versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem, and
vindicates the pains that have been taken to show its importance. I know
of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry; no poetry
of a mean order accompanied with verse of the highest.

(LEIGH HUNT: _What is Poetry?_ Cook ed., pp. 37-40, 61.)


No literary expression can, properly speaking, be called poetry that is
not in a certain deep sense emotional, whatever may be its
subject-matter, concrete in its method and its diction, rhythmical in
movement, and artistic in form.... That poetry must be metrical or even
rhythmical in movement, however, is what some have denied. Here we touch
at once the very root of the subject.... While prose requires
intellectual life and emotional life, poetry seems to require not only
intellectual life and emotional life but rhythmic life.... Unless the
rhythm of any metrical passage is so vigorous, so natural, and so free
that it seems as though it could live, if need were, by its rhythm
alone, has that passage any right to exist? and should it not, if the
substance is good, be forthwith demetricized and turned into prose? ...
Aristotle ignored, and Plato slighted, the importance of versification
(though Plato on one occasion admitted that he who did not know rhythm
could be called neither musician nor poet).... On the whole, however,
the theory that versification is not an indispensable requisite of a
poem seems to have become nearly obsolete in our time. Perhaps, indeed,
many critics would now go so far in the contrary direction as to say
with Hegel (_Æsthetik_, iii. p. 289) that "metre is the first and only
condition absolutely demanded by poetry, yea even more necessary than a
figurative picturesque diction."

(THEODORE WATTS: Article on "Poetry" in _Encyclopædia Britannica_.)


Verse-rhythm in words is the imposition of a _sensible_ order on what
naturally and normally has only a _logical_ order; and there is piquancy
in the feeling that so little is this ideal control a fettering
instrument, that each order seems to gain verve and spontaneity from the
other, or rather from the latent sense that the other, though present
and operative, is powerless to hamper it. Much more important, however,
is it to notice how the sense that one single thing--the word-series--is
lending itself to this joint dominance may take the form of a sort of
transfigured surprise. (The root-principle here involved is the old one
of "unity in variety," the _single_ line of words, "dominated at once by
the idea which they express in their grammatical connection and by their
metrical adjustment," clearly possessing _two_ independent functions or
aspects. See the fuller discussion of "The Sound-element in Verse," in
chapter xix. of _The Power of Sound_.) ... When, as in verse, the sounds
are pointedly addressed _both_ to the ear and to the understanding, the
rarity of the combination of aspects contributes a strain of feeling
partly akin to that with which we follow an exhibition of skill, and
partly to that with which we receive an unexpected gratuity....

Nor is this all. Rhythm perpetually not only transfigures the poetical
expression of an idea, but makes the existence of that expression
possible. This is tolerably obvious in the case of what is often called
_par excellence_ poetical language--language which keeps clear of
prosaic homeliness and prosaic precision and of technical and abstract
terms, and confines itself to a more picturesque and loftier
vocabulary.... Clearly it is the rarity of rhythmic, as compared with
non-rhythmic, speech that supports such rarity of poetic as compared
with non-poetic diction; that is to say, verse, being in one
respect--namely, its effect on the ear--a marked exception from ordinary
language, thereby establishes for itself the means of being exceptional,
without seeming unnatural, in other ways....

... In dwelling on the non-reasonable part in poetical beauty, I am in
no way committed to the assertion that all its constituents are excluded
from prose, but only to the assertion that the metrical form makes a
difference of kind. It cannot be for nothing that the very idea of
"poetical prose" inspires dread; and the instances of prose-writing
where we find delight of the intangible and non-reasonable kind are
exceptions that only prove the rule. One has but to test by
self-examination the living force of words in a specimen of verse and of
poetical prose which may respectively seem to oneself first-rate of
their kind. For such typical passages may often be regarded as fairly on
a par in respect of the ideas and emotions which they reasonably
express; and the prose may unquestionably further resemble the poetry in
a certain subtle individuality of life in its more prominent words, so
far as this life can be quickened in them by the idea itself, aided by
such qualities of sound-arrangement as are possible apart from metre. So
far the poetical merits of the respective passages may be equal; yet
only one of them is Poetry.... Language, which in prose does little more
than transmit thought, like clear glass, becomes--even as that
becomes--by art's adjustments and the moulding of measured form, a lens,
where the thought takes fire as it passes. The poet speaks through a
medium which seems to intensify the point and to extend the range of
what he would tell us by some power outside his own volition. Such a
power, in fact, a rhythmic order, in its fundamental appeal to human
nerves, literally is.... The _ictus_ of the verse comes upon us as the
operative force which shocks the words into their unwonted life.

... In considering the total contribution of metre to imaginative
language, it is impossible to overlook the quality of _permanence_. I do
not mean permanence merely in the sense that metrical words live in the
memory.... This is, of course, a most important fact; but I am here
dealing only with elements of effect that enter into the actual moment
of enjoyment.... It is a sense of combined parts, and their
indispensableness one to another, which gives us a sense of permanence
in an arch as compared with a casual heap of stones; it is a similar
indispensableness which gives to metrical language an air of permanence
impossible even to the most harmonious sentence whose sounds conform to
no genuine scheme. And again, in the case of this constituent as of the
others, we have no difficulty in seeing that its influence is really a
joint one of sound and sense--that, though founded in the nature of
metrical sound as such, it is not merely a sound-quality superposed _ab
extra_ on the intelligible beauty of the words, but depends for its
existence on their intelligible character.... We cannot glory in the
enshrining for memory of things that we do not care to remember. But for
that which is of true spiritual significance the fairly-fitted body of
sound is greeted as the inevitable investiture; and thus justified and
quickened, the strength of the mutually indispensable parts seems no
longer that of mere structure but of organic life.

(EDMUND GURNEY: Essay on "Poets, Critics, and Class-Lists," in _Tertium
Quid_, vol. ii. pp. 162-179, _passim_.)


Why have poets always written in metre? The answer is, Because the laws
of artistic expression oblige them to do so. When the poet has been
inspired from without in the way in which we saw Scott was inspired to
conceive the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_--that is to say, when he has
found his subject-matter in an idea, universally striking to the
imagination, when he has received this into his own imagination, and has
given it a new and beautiful form of life there, then he will seek to
express his conception through a vehicle of language harmonizing with
his own feelings and the nature of the subject, and this kind of
language is called verse. For example, when Marlowe wishes to represent
the emotions of Faustus, after he has called up the phantom of Helen of
Troy, it is plain that some very rapturous form of expression is needed
to convey an adequate idea of such famous beauty. Marlowe rises to the
occasion in those "mighty lines" of his:

    "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
    And burned the topless towers of Ilium?"

But it is certain that he could only have ventured on the sublime
audacity of saying that a face launched ships and burned towers by
escaping from the limits of ordinary language, and conveying his
metaphor through the harmonious and ecstatic movements of rhythm and
metre....

I think Wordsworth's analysis of emotion is clearly wrong. The reason
why the harrowing descriptions of Richardson are simply painful, while
Shakspere's tragic situations are pleasurable, is that the imagination
shrinks from dwelling on ideas so closely imitated from real objects as
the scenes in _Clarissa Harlowe_, but contemplates without excess of
pain the situation in _Othello_, for example, because the imitation is
poetical and ideal. Prose is used by Richardson because his novel
professedly resembles a situation of real life; metre is needed by
Shakspere to make the ideal life of his drama real to the imagination.
Wordsworth, if I may say so, has put the poetical cart before the
horse....

The propriety of poetical expression is the test and the touch-stone of
the justice of poetical conception.... Poetry lies in the invention of
the right metrical form--be it epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric--for
the expression of some idea universally interesting to the imagination.
When the form of metrical expression seems _natural_--natural, that is,
to the genius of the poet and the inherent character of the
subject--then the subject-matter will have been rightly conceived....
Apply this test of what is natural in metrical expression to any
composition claiming to be poetically inspired, and you will be able to
decide whether it fulfils the universal conditions of poetical life, or
whether it is one of those phantoms, or, as Bacon calls them, idols of
the imagination, which vanish as soon as the novelty of their appearance
has exhausted its effect. For instance, the American poet, Walt Whitman,
announces his theme, and asks for the sympathy of the reader in these
words:

    "Oneself I sing, a simple, separate person,
    Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En Masse.
    Poets to come, orators, singers, musicians to come,
    Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
    But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
        before known,
    Arouse! for you must justify me!..."

To this appeal I think the reader may reply: The subject you have chosen
is certainly an idol of the imagination. For if you had anything of
universal interest to say about yourself, you could say it in a way
natural to one of the metres, or metrical movements, established in the
English language. What you call metre bears precisely the same relation
to these universal laws of expression, as the Mormon church and the
religion of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young bear to the doctrines of
Catholic Christendom.[58] ...

Why do we so often find men in these days, either using metre ... where
they ought to have expressed themselves in prose, or expressing
themselves in verse in a style so far remote from the standard of
diction established in society that they fail to touch the heart? I
think the explanation of this curious phenomenon is that, though metre
can only properly be used for the expression of universal ideas, there
is in modern society an eccentric or monastic principle at work, which
leads men to pervert metre into a luxurious instrument for the
expression of merely private ideas.

(WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE: _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, pp. 71-83.)


Language is colloquial and declarative in our ordinary speech, and on
its legs for common use and movement. Only when it takes wings does it
become poetry. As the poet, touched by emotion, rises to enthusiasm and
imaginative power or skill, his speech grows _rhythmic_, and thus puts
on the attribute that distinguishes it from every other mode of artistic
expression--the guild-mark which, rightly considered, establishes the
nature of the thing itself.... Our new empiricism, following where
intuition leads the way, comprehends the function of _vibrations_: it
perceives that every movement of matter, seized upon by universal force,
is _vibratory_; that vibrations, and nothing else, convey through the
body the look and voice of nature to the soul; that thus alone can one
incarnate individuality address its fellow; that, to use old Bunyan's
imagery, these vibrations knock at the ear-gate, and are visible to the
eye-gate, and are sentient at the gates of touch of the living temple.
The word describing their action is in evidence; they "thrill" the body,
they thrill the soul, both of which respond with subjective,
interblending vibrations, according to the keys, the wave-lengths, of
their excitants. Thus it is absolutely true that what Buxton Forman
calls "idealized language,"--that is, speech which is imaginative and
rhythmical,--goes with emotional thought; and that words exert a
mysterious and potent influence, thus chosen and assorted, beyond their
normal meanings....

Aside from the vibratory mission of rhythm, its little staff of
adjuvants, by the very discipline and limitations which they impose,
take poetry out of the plane of common speech, and make it an art which
lifts the hearer to its own unusual key. Schiller writes to Goethe that
"rhythm, in a dramatic work, treats all characters and all situations
according to one law.... In this manner it forms the atmosphere for the
poetic creation. The more material part is left out, for only what is
spiritual can be borne by this thin element." In real, that is,
spontaneous minstrelsy, the fittest assonance, consonance, time, even
rime, ... come of themselves with the imaginative thought.... Such is
the test of genuineness, the underlying principle being that the
masterful words of all poetic tongues are for the most part in both
their open and consonantal sounds related to their meanings, so that
with the inarticulate rhythm of impassioned thought we have a
correspondent verbal rhythm for its vehicle. The whole range of poetry
which is vital, from the Hebrew psalms and prophecies, in their original
text and in our great English version, to the Georgian lyrics and
romances and the Victorian idyls, confirms the statement of Mill that
"the deeper the feeling, the more characteristic and decided the
rhythm." The rapture of the poet governs the tone and accent of his

         "high and passionate thoughts
    To their own music chanted."

(EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN: _The Nature and Elements of Poetry_, pp.
51-55.)


We agree, then, to call by the name of poetry that form of art which
uses rhythm to attain its ends, just as we call by the name of flying
that motion which certain animals attain by the use of wings; that the
feelings roused by poetry can be roused by unrhythmic order of words,
and that rhythmic order of words is often deplorably bad art, or
"unpoetic," have as little to do with the case as the fact that a
greyhound speeding over the grass gives the spectator quite the
exhilaration and sense of lightness and grace which is roused by the
flight of a bird, and the fact that an awkward fowl makes itself
ridiculous in trying to fly, have to do with the general proposition
that flying is a matter of wings.... As a matter of fact, all writers on
poetry take rhythm for granted until some one asks why it is necessary;
whereupon considerable discussion, and the protest signed by a
respectable minority, but a minority after all, that rhythm is not an
essential condition of the poetic art. This discussion, as every one
knows, has been lively and at times bitter. A patient and comprehensive
review of it in a fairly impartial spirit has led to the conclusion,
first, that no test save rhythm has been proposed which can be put to
real use, even in theory, not to mention the long reaches of a
historical and comparative study; secondly, that all defenders of the
poem in prose are more or less contradictory and inconsistent, making
confusion between theory and practice; and thirdly, that advocates of a
rhythmic test, even in abstract definition, seem to have the better of
the argument....

All reports of primitive singing, that is, of singing among races on a
low plane of culture, make rhythm a wholly insistent element of the
verse.... Rhythm is obscured or hidden by declamation only in times when
the eye has usurped the functions of the ear, and when a highly
developed prose makes the accented rhythm of poetry seem either
old-fashioned or a sign of childhood. Not that one wishes to restore a
sing-song reading, but rather a recognition of metrical structure, of
those subtle effects in rhythm which mean so much in the poet's art;
verse, in a word, particularly lyric verse, must not be read as if it
were prose. Dramatic verse is a difficult problem.... For in drama one
wishes nowadays to hear not rhythm, but the thought, the story, the
point.... As thought recedes, as one comes nearer to those primitive
emotions which were untroubled by thought, they get expression more and
more in cadenced tones. And again, this cadenced emotional expression,
as it grows stronger, grows wider; the barriers of irony and reserve,
which keep a modern theatre tearless in the face of Lear's most pathetic
utterance, break down; first, as one recedes from modern conditions,
comes the sympathetic emotion of the spectators expressed in sighs and
tears; ... then comes the partial activity of the spectators by their
deputed chorus; and at last the throng of primitive times, common
emotion in common expression, with no spectators, no audience, no
reserve or comment of thought,--for thought is absorbed in the
perception and action of communal consent; and here, by all evidence,
rhythm rules supreme....

If, now, the curve of evolution in Aryan verse begins with an absolutely
strict rhythm and alternate emphasis of syllables, often, as in Iranian,
to the neglect of logical considerations; if the course of poetry is to
admit logical considerations more and more, forcing in at least one case
the abandoning of movable accent and the agreement of verse-emphasis
with syllabic-emphasis, an undisputed fact; if poetry, too, first shakes
off the steps of dancing, then the notes of song, finally the strict
scanning of the verse, until now recited poetry is triumphantly logical,
with rhythm as a subconscious element; if, finally, this process exactly
agrees with the gradual increase of thought over emotion, with the
analogous increase of solitary poetry over gregarious poetry,--then,
surely, one has but to trace back this curve of evolution, and to
project it into prehistoric conditions, in order to infer with something
very close to certitude that rhythm is the primal fact in the beginnings
of the poetic art....

The hold of rhythm upon modern poetry, even under conditions of analytic
and intellectual development which have unquestionably worked for the
increased importance of prose, is a hold not to be relaxed, and for good
reason. The reason is this. In rhythm, in sounds of the human voice,
timed to movements of the human body, mankind first discovered that
social consent which brought the great joys and the great pains of life
into a common utterance.... The mere fact of utterance is social;
however solitary his thought, a poet's utterance must voice this consent
of man with man, and his emotion must fall into rhythm, the one and
eternal expression of consent. This, then, is why rhythm will not be
banished from poetry so long as poetry shall remain emotional utterance;
for rhythm is not only sign and warrant of a social contract stronger,
deeper, vaster, than any fancied by Rousseau, but it is the expression
of a human sense more keen even than the fear of devils and the love of
gods--the sense and sympathy of kind.[59]

(Francis B. Gummere: _The Beginnings of Poetry_, chap. ii, "Rhythm as
the Essential Fact of Poetry." Pp. 30, 31, 82-85, 114, 115.)


FOOTNOTES:

[56] Compare with this a passage in a letter of Goethe's to Schiller
about _Faust_: "Some tragic scenes were done in prose; by reason of
their naturalness and strength they are quite intolerable in relation to
the other scenes. I am, therefore, now trying to put them into rime, for
there the idea is seen as if under a veil, and the immediate effect of
this tremendous material is softened." (Translation of Professor F. B.
Gummere, in _The Beginnings of Poetry_, p. 73.)

[57] In these chapters of the _Biographia Literaria_, Coleridge was
replying to the theories of Wordsworth as set forth in his Preface.

[58] Compare the amusingly vigorous remarks of Mr. Swinburne on the want
of metre in Whitman's poems:

"'Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?' inquires Mr. Whitman. ... No, my
dear good sir: ... not in the wildest visions of a distempered slumber
could I have dreamed of doing anything of the kind. ... But metre,
rhythm, cadence, not merely appreciable but definable and reducible to
rule and measurement, though we do not expect from you, we demand from
all who claim, we discern in the works of all who have achieved, any
place among poets of any class whatsoever.... The question is whether
you have any more right to call yourself a poet, or to be called a poet,
... than to call yourself or to be called, on the strength of your
published writings, a mathematician, a logician, a painter, a political
economist, a sculptor, a dynamiter, an old parliamentary hand, a civil
engineer, a dealer in marine stores, an amphimacer, a triptych, a
rhomboid, or a rectangular parallelogram."

(_Studies in Prose and Poetry_, pp. 133, 134.)

[59] Professor Gummere also gives this analysis of Karl Bücher's essay
on "Labor and Rhythm" (_Arbeit und Rhythmus_, Leipzig, 1896): "Fatigue,
which besets all work felt as work by reason of its continued
application of purpose, vanished for primitive man, as it vanishes now
for children, if the work was once freed from this stress of application
and so turned to a kind of play. The dance itself is really hard work,
exacting and violent; what makes it the favorite it is with savages as
with children? Simply its automatic, regular, rhythmic character, the
due repetition of a familiar movement which allows the mind to relax its
attitude of constant purpose. The purpose and plan of work involve
external sources and external ends; rhythm is instinctive, and springs
from the organic nature of man; it is no invention. The song that one
sings while at work is not something fitted to the work, but comes from
movements of the body in the specific acts of labor; and this applies
not only to the rhythm, but even to the words. So it was in the festal
dance.... That poetry and music were always combined by early man, and,
along with labor, made up the primitive three-in-one, an organic whole,
labor being the basal fact, with rhythm as an element common to the
three; and that not harmony or pitch, but this overmastering and
pervasive rhythm, exact, definite, was the main factor of early
song,--these are conclusions for which Bücher offers ample and
convincing evidence." (_Ib._ pp. 108, 109.)




APPENDIX

TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE HEROIC COUPLET


The following table is designed, in the first place, to illustrate the
history of the decasyllabic couplet in English verse, by making possible
a comparison of the characteristic details of its form in different
periods; and, in the second place, to suggest a method by which, through
the careful tabulation of facts, one may substantiate or correct general
statements as to the qualities of verse.

Any such statistics as are here presented must be accepted, if at all,
with no little caution. The table is based on passages of one hundred
lines each, believed to be fairly representative of the verse of the
several authors. No passage of this length, however, can be known to be
perfectly typical. A still greater difficulty is found in the
necessarily subjective character of any such tabulation. Most lines of
English decasyllabic verse can be read--with reference to the
distribution of accents and pauses--in more than one way. It is
unlikely, therefore, that any two readers would reach the same results
in trying to form a table of this kind. The _absolute_ validity of the
figures is therefore doubtful; but on condition that they all have been
computed by the same person, consistently with a single standard of
judgment, their relative validity, for purposes of _comparison_, may be
fairly assumed.

The facts here set down for each specimen of verse group themselves in
four divisions. In the first place, each line of verse is either
"run-on" or "end-stopped"; and, in riming couplets, it is also of
interest to know whether the second line of the couplet is run-on into
the following couplet. In the second place, the cesural pause occurs
either near the middle of the line or elsewhere, or--it may be--is
omitted altogether. In the third place, the line may have a feminine
ending. In the fourth place, it may contain some other foot than the
regular iambus.

There is some room for difference of judgment as to whether a given line
is "end-stopped" or "run-on"; but with occasional exceptions the
presence or want of a mark of punctuation may be made the determining
element. Obviously one may find such clear phrase-pauses, without
punctuation, as will justify the caption "end-stopped."

There is far more divergence of judgment in the recognition of the
cesura. Some writers on prosody treat practically every line of ten
syllables as having a cesural pause, and certainly some slight
phrase-pause may almost always be found. In the following table,
however, the cesura has been recognized only when there is a grammatical
or rhetorical pause so considerable as--in most cases--to require a mark
of punctuation. Such a verse, then, as--

    "Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky"

is counted as having "no cesura." The cesura is counted as "medial" when
occurring after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable; elsewhere it is
regarded as "variant." The significance of this distinction is very
clear in the comparison of the heroic couplet of the "classical" with
that of the "romantic" school of poets.[60]

It is in the last group of facts, those relating to substituted feet,
that the subjective element is most embarrassing. There can be no very
general agreement among readers as to the degree of accent necessary to
change a pair of syllables from an "iambus" to a "pyrrhic" or a
"spondee." The other two forms of substitution (inverted accent, giving
"trochees," and trisyllabic feet, giving "anapests") are somewhat more
definitely determinable. In the following table the naming of all these
feet is based on what is believed to be the natural reading of the
verse, with a due regard for both rhetorical and metrical accent. In the
verse--

    "By these the springs of property were bent"

the fourth foot is counted a pyrrhic; so also in this--

    "Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews,"

although here a certain secondary accent on the eighth syllable is
possible. In such a verse as--

    "There is a path on the sea's azure floor"

the third foot is counted a pyrrhic and the fourth a spondee.[61]

One may get, then, from a table of this sort, a general view of the
character of any particular piece of verse, in respect to the poet's
preference for run-on lines, for feminine endings, for breaking the
verse into two equal parts, for varying the cesura, or for substituting
exceptional feet. The description would be more nearly complete if there
were also indicated the _places_ in the verse where substituted feet
occur; a trochee in the second foot is a very different thing from one
in the first; but it is difficult to tabulate facts of this order
without complicating one's results beyond the point of serviceable
clearness.

Some students of verse are doubtless offended by the use of statistics
in connection with a subject of this kind; and it is easy to ridicule
the obvious incongruity of mathematical methods and poetry. A recent
magazine critic makes merry over certain statistical studies in rhythm,
carried on in a laboratory by recording the beats in nursery-rimes on
the one hand and in hymns on the other. "There is a certain class of
problems," he observes most justly, "whose external aspects may possibly
yield to statistical tabulation, but which in the last resort must be
spiritually discerned."[62] Poetry is unquestionably of this class. Yet
this would not seem to forbid the study, by scientific methods, of those
"external aspects" admittedly susceptible of tabulation. One is not
likely to recommend elementary students to count trochees and cesuras in
order to increase their appreciation of good verse. But when one comes
to the point of generalizing as to the laws or history of verse-forms,
it is well to have a method of correction, representable in figures
black and white, for the vague impressions which are all that
appreciative reading can give. Perhaps the real service of such a method
as has just been described is to prevent one from making hasty
generalizations which statistics will not support.

Obviously the same system can be applied to blank verse, with the
omission of the second category in the table. A convenient method of
making such a study is to use sheets of paper ruled for twenty-five
lines and seven columns. Each horizontal line represents a line of verse
analyzed. The columns are headed "Cesura," "T," "P," "S," "A," "Run-on,"
and "Fem. Ending." A cesural pause between the third and fourth
syllables is indicated by the figures 3/4 in the first column. A trochee
in the first foot is indicated by the figure 1 in the "T" column; a
spondee in the fourth foot by the figure 4 in the "S" column; and so on.
A simple check-mark in the sixth or seventh column indicates
respectively a case of _enjambement_ or of feminine ending. When the
tabulation is complete, one can easily note the proportion of run-on
lines and exceptional cesuras, and can also determine at a glance not
only the number of exceptional feet but the parts of the verse in which
they occur.

In the following table the figures regarding the couplets of Spenser are
based on his _Mother Hubbard's Tale_; those relating to Joseph Hall, on
the Satires of his _Virgidemiarum_ (see p. 182); those relating to Leigh
Hunt, on _The Story of Rimini_; those relating to Keats, on _Endymion_;
to Browning, on _Sordello_.

  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
           |  Chaucer |        |Joseph   |        |
           |   (ab.   |Spenser | Hall    |Jonson  |Waller
           |   1385)  |(1591)  |(1597)   |(1616)  |(ab. 1650)
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  Run-on   |          |        |         |        |
  Lines    |    16    |    14  |    10   |    26  |    16
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  Run-on   |          |        |         |        |
  Couplets |     7    |     4  |     1   |     8  |     2
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  Medial   |          |        |         |        |
  Cesura   |    33    |    31  |    37   |    48  |    50
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  No       |          |        |         |        |
  Cesura   |    58    |    64  |    58   |    29  |    42
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  Variant  |          |        |         |        |
  Cesura   |     9    |     5  |     5   |    23  |     8
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  Feminine |          |        |         |        |
  Endings  |    64    |     6  |     0   |     6  |     0
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  [a]      |          |        |         |        |
  Trochees |    15    |    13  |    18   |    22  |    23
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  [a]      |          |        |         |        |
  Pyrrhics |    26    |    29  |    24   |    35  |    46
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  [a]      |          |        |         |        |
  Spondees |     0    |    13  |    14   |    18  |    14
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------
  [a]      |          |        |         |        |
  Anapests |     4    |     0  |     0   |     6  |     0
  ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
           |           |           | Leigh  |       |
           |Dryden     |Pope       |  Hunt  | Keats |Browning
           |(ab. 1680) |(ab. 1725) | (1816) |(1818) |(1840)
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  Run-on   |           |           |        |       |
  Lines    |    11     |     4     |    13  |    40 |    58
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  Run-on   |           |           |        |       |
  Couplets |     1     |     0     |     0  |    25 |    27
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  Medial   |           |           |        |       |
  Cesura   |    52     |    47     |    46  |    53 |    30
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  No       |           |           |        |       |
  Cesura   |    40     |    44     |    35  |    27 |    25
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  Variant  |           |           |        |       |
  Cesura   |     8     |     9     |    19  |    20 |    45
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  Feminine |           |           |        |       |
  Endings  |     0     |     2     |     6  |     6 |     0
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  [a]      |           |           |        |       |
  Trochees |    15     |    25     |    29  |    29 |    34
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  [a]      |           |           |        |       |
  Pyrrhics |    46     |    27     |    40  |    37 |    34
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  [a]      |           |           |        |       |
  Spondees |     1     |    11     |     9  |    19 |    19
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------
  [a]      |           |           |        |       |
  Anapests |     0     |     1     |     1  |     3 |     1
  ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] No account is taken in the table of more than a single occurrence of
the same exceptional foot in any one line.


FOOTNOTES:

[60] Here a word of caution is needed. It will be observed that the
regularly balanced line of the classical couplet requires not only a
medial pause, but also a pause at the end. Hence where we find, as in
the verse of Keats, a large number of medial cesuras but at the same
time a very large number of "run-on" lines, the characteristic effect of
the medial pause is almost entirely lost, and the number of medial
pauses is not significant.

[61] This combination (of pyrrhic and spondee) is of course very
frequent; and where both substitutions occur together, the general
average of accents is maintained, only with exchange of position. On the
other hand, where there appears a large number of pyrrhics with almost
no spondees (as in the case of Dryden), a different sort of verse is
indicated,--one where the lines gain a certain lightness and rapidity
from the lack of the full number of fully accented syllables.

[62] "Divination by Statistics," in the _Atlantic Monthly_, January,
1902.




INDEX

_Names of poems are arranged alphabetically under authors. An asterisk
in connection with the page number indicates that the poem is quoted at
least in part._


      _Abraham and Isaac_ (Mystery Play), 112*.

      Accents, arbitrary variation of, 400;
        conflict of, 7-11;
        deficiency in, 55,56;
        degrees of, 3-5;
        excess of 55, 57;
        hovering, 9-11;
        inversion of, 7, 8, 55, 56, 57 f.;
        kinds of, 3, 6;
        relation of different kinds, 7;
        relation to quantity, 405 f.;
        secondary, 3, 5, 156, 409;
        time-intervals of, 11, 393-396;
        wrenched, 8-11.

      ADDISON: _Campaign_, 199*;
        _Cato_, 236*;
        on verse of Butler, 167 f.

      ÆLFRIC, verse of, 116 f.

      AKENSIDE: _Pleasures of the Imagination_, 238;
        _Virtuoso_, 104.

      ALAMANNI, influence on Wyatt, 65.

      ALBERTI, classical metres of, 330.

      Alcaic stanza, 77.

      Alexandrine, 252-259;
        developed by Browning, 258;
        French, 18;
        in five-stress verse, 195, 208, 258;
        in sonnet, 272 f.;
        in Spenserian stanza, 103;
        unrimed, 255;
        used at end of stanzas other than Spenserian, 107.

      Alliteration, 113, 116-121;
        in mediæval Latin, 117;
        sporadic, 135.
        "Alliterative long line," 119, 156.

      ALSCHER, on Wyatt, 11.

      Anacrusis, 25.

      Anapest, 24;
        substituted for iambus, 58 f.

      Anapestic verse, two-stress, 28 f.;
        three-stress, 34-36;
        four-stress, 39 f.;
        five-stress, 42;
        six-stress, 43;
        seven-stress, 45;
        eight-stress, 48;
        in _vers de société_, 39.

      ANDERSON, M. B.: _Inferno_, 68 f.*.

      ANDERSON, R., on verse of Joseph Hall, 182.

      Anglo-Saxon verse, alliteration in, 116 f.;
        relation of accent and quantity in, 405 f.;
        rime in, 124, 125 f.;
        stanzas in, 62 n.;
        two theories of, 151-154;
        types of, 152 f.

      ARCHER, W., on Watson's sonnets, 290.

      Areopagus, 332 f.

      ARISTOPHANES, Swinburne on verse of, 45 f.

      ARISTOTLE, his theory of metre, 413-416.

      ARNOLD, M.: _East London_, 286*;
        _Empedocles on Ætna_, 325-327*;
        _Forsaken Merman_, 5*, 22 f.*, 53 f.*;
        _Future_, 115*;
        on Chapman's septenary, 262;
        on English hexameters, 351-353;
        on Longfellow's hexameters, 348;
        _Sohrab and Rustum_, 58*, 249 f.*.

      ARNAUT, the troubadour, sestina of, 383.

      "Ascending rhythm," 24.

      ASCHAM: _Schoolmaster_, 330, 341.

      Asclepiadean verse, 331.

      Assonance, 113-115;
        in Celtic verse, 115;
        in verse of Romance languages, 113 f.

      ATTERBURY, on Dryden's influence, 197;
        on Waller, 188 f.

      _Aurora lucis rutilat_, 160*.


      BACON, F., on significant sounds, 136.

      BAÏF, DE, A., classical metre of, 331.

      Ballade, 360-367.

      Ballads, stanza of, 70, 264;
        verse of, 10, 157.

      BANVILLE, DE, T., 358, 359.

      BARBOUR: _Bruce_, 162 f*.

      BARCLAY: _Ship of Fooles_, 94.

      BARNES: _Parthenophil_, 273.

      _Baston_, 83.

      BEAUMONT, F.: _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, 263*.

      BEAUMONT, J., on heroic couplet, 190 f.;
        verse of, 191 n.

      BEERS, on heroic stanza, 73.

      BENTLEY, on Milton's verse, 58.

      _Beowulf_, 13*.

      BERNARD (ST.): _De Nativitate Domini_, 80*.

      BERNART, DE VENTADORN, 110.

      BEST, J. R.: _Bon Rondeau_, 373*.

      _Bestiary_, 118*.

      _Bewick and Grahame_ (ballad), 157*.

      BLAIR: _Grave_, 236 f.*.

      Blank verse, 213-251;
        abandoned in Restoration drama, 196-199;
        early use of term, 215;
        in lyrical poems, 246;
        its decadence, 230, 234;
        revival in 18th century, 238;
        unpopular in 18th century, 204 f.

      _Blow, northern wind_, 78*.

      Bob-wheel, 110 n.

      BÖDDEKER: _Altenglische Dichtungen_, cited, 14, 69, 78, 84, 86,
          110, 111, 175.

      BOLTON, T. L., on nature of rhythm, 393 n.

      BOWLES, W. L.: _Sonnet_, 277*;
        sonnets of, 278.

      BRIGHT, J. W., on "pitch-accent," 5 f.;
        theory of metrical accent, 401 n.

      BROME, R., blank verse of, 230.

      BRONSON, on Greek and English ode, 300;
        on odes of Collins, 305.

      BROWNING, E. B.: _Cowper's Grave_, 264*;
        _Rhyme of the Duchess May_, 80*;
        _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, 283*;
        sonnets of, 284.

      BROWNING, R.: _Abt Vogler_, 50*;
        _Agamemnon_, 327 f.*;
        blank verse of, 247-249;
        _Caliban upon Setebos_, 31 f.*, 57*, 145 f.*;
        _Cavalier Tunes_, 40*;
        _Epistle of Karshish_, 248*;
        _Fifine at the Fair_, 257 f.*;
        _Flight of the Duchess_, 129*;
        _Fra Lippo Lippi_, 249*;
        _Guardian Angel_, 95*;
        _Heretic's Tragedy_, 145*;
        _In a Balcony_, 248*;
        _Love among the Ruins_, 90*;
        _Misconceptions_, 37*;
        _One Word More_, 41*;
        _Pacchiarotto_, 128 f.*;
        _Paracelsus_, 8*, 59*, 145*;
        _Prospice_, 29*, 50*;
        _Ring and the Book_, 57*, 59*, 247*;
        _Saul_, 42*;
        sonnets of, 286, 287;
        _Sordello_, 211*;
        _Statue and the Bust_, 67*;
        _Why I am a Liberal_, 287*.

      BÜCHER, K.: _Labor and Rhythm_, 436 n.

      BURNS: _Auld Lang Syne_, 21*;
        _Birks of Aberfeldy_, 78*;
        _Bonnie Doon_, 70*;
        _Chevalier's Lament_, 39*;
        _Cotter's Saturday Night_, 104*;
        _Duncan Gray_, 79*;
        _Tam O'Shanter_, 171*;
        _To a Louse_, 87*.

      BUTCHER, S. H., on Aristotle's view of metre, 413-416.

      BUTLER: _Hudibras_, 137*, 167*.

      BYRON: _Childe Harold_, 105*;
        _Destruction of Sennacherib_, 39*;
        _Don Juan_, 100*, 128*;
        double rimes of, 128, 129;
        _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, 206*;
        _Farewell, if ever_, 97*;
        _Francesca of Rimini_, 68*;
        _Prisoner of Chillon_, 171*;
        _She Walks in Beauty_, 92*;
        _Song of Saul_, 40*;
        _Stanzas for Music_, 44*;
        use of _ottava rima_, 101.


      CAMPION, T.: _Anacreontics_, 27*;
        _Iambic Dimeter_, 334 f.*;
        _Observations in the Art of English Poesie_, 335 f.;
        _Trochaic Dimeter_, 335*.

      CANNING: _Rovers_, 131*.

      CANNING (and FRERE): _Sapphics_, 337*.

      _Canzone_, influence of, on the sonnet, 267.

      CAREW: _In Praise of his Mistress_, 89*.

      CAREY, P.: _Triolet_, 382 f.*.

      Catalexis, 22, 25;
        in the ode, 319.

      CATULLUS, metres of, imitated, 339.

      Caudated sonnet, 276.

      Celtic verse, alliteration in, 117;
        assonance in, 115;
        rime in, 124.

      Cesura, 17-19;
        in alexandrine, 253, 258;
        kinds of, 19.

      _Chant Royal_, 367 f.

      CHAPMAN: _All Fools_, 215*;
        _Hymn to Cynthia_, 343*;
        _Iliad_, 262*.

      CHATTERTON: _Ælla_, 79*, 107 f.*;
        his variant of Spenserian stanza, 108.

      CHAUCER: _Balade de bon conseyl_, 360f.*;
        _Balade on Gentilesse_, 362;
        _Balade to Rosemound_, 362;
        _Complaint to his Empty Purse_, 362;
        _Compleynt of Venus_, 362;
        _Compleynte unto Pite_, 93*, 177, 178;
        decasyllabic verse of, 177-179;
        _Fortune_, 362;
        free cesura in verse of, 17;
        French lyrical forms used by, 362;
        _House of Fame_, 165 f.*;
        influence on form of Spenserian stanza, 103;
        _Knights Tale_, 138 f.*;
        _Lak of Stedfastnesse_, 362;
        _Legend of Good Women_, 176* (ballade in, 362);
        _Monk's Tale_, 97*;
        octosyllabic couplet of, 166;
        omission of opening syllable in verse of, 20;
        on alliteration, 120;
        _Parlement of Foules_, 369*;
        perfect rime in, 121 n.;
        _Prologue_, 20*, 176*;
        _Proverb_, 71*;
        "rime royal" introduced by, 94;
        _Sir Thopas_, 84*.

      _Chevy Chase_ (ballad), 70*.

      Choral odes, 323-328.

      Choriambus, 408.

      _Cid, Poema del_, 114*.

      Classical metres, imitations of, 330-357.

      CLOUGH, A. H.: _Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_, 350*;
        hexameter of, 351;
        his analysis of a line of blank verse, 403.

      COLERIDGE: _Ancient Mariner_, 133*, 263*;
        _Christabel_, 15*, 401*;
        _Fancy in Nubibus_, 296*;
        hexameters of, 346;
        his theory of metre, 420-422;
        _Hymn before Sunrise_, 241*;
        _Hymn to the Earth_, 345 f.*;
        _Kubla Khan_, 138*, 147*;
        _Ode on the Departing Year_, 311*;
        on sonnet of White, 281;
        on sonnets of Bowles, 278;
        sonnets of, 296;
        _To a Friend_, 75*.

      COLLINS: _Ode to Evening_, 246;
        _Ode to Liberty_, 170*, 303 f.*;
        on verse of Skelton, 32;
        _Passions_, 310*.

      "Common metre," 261 f.

      _Confessio Goliae_, 259*.

      CONGREVE: _Discourse on Pindaric Ode_, 302 f.;
        _Pindaric Ode_, 301 f.*.

      Consonants, as lengthening English syllables, 396-399.

      CONSTABLE: _Diana_, 273.

      CORSON, on blank verse of Browning, 247 f.;
        on double rime, 129 f.;
        on _In Memoriam_ stanza, 76 f.;
        on Mrs. Browning's sonnets, 284;
        on _ottava rima_, 98, 99;
        on rime, 122;
        on Spenserian stanza of Keats, 105;
        on variety in verse movement, 61;
        on verse of Cowper, 240;
        on Wordsworth's Immortality Ode, 313 f.

      COTTON, C.: _Rondeau_, 372 f.*;
        Virelai of, 385.

      Couplet (see under Decasyllabic and Octosyllabic).

      COURTHOPE, on Aristotle's view of metre, 415;
        on the sonnet, 268, 272;
        on verse-form in poetry, 429-432;
        on verse of Pope, 201;
        on verse of Surrey, 216.

      COWLEY, Congreve on the odes of, 303;
        introduction of irregular ode by, 308;
        _Resurrection_, 307 f.*;
        _Solitude_, 88*.

      Cowleyan ode, 298, 307-323.

      COWPER: _Alexander Selkirk_, 34*;
        anapests of, 35;
        blank verse of, 240 f.;
        _John Gilpin_, 264;
        _My Mary_, 79*;
        on Milton's verse, 58 f.;
        _Sonnet to Mrs. Unwin_, 278*;
        _Table Talk_, 205*;
        _Task_, 239 f.*.

      CRABBE: _Borough_, 206f.*.

      CRASHAW: _Wishes for the Supposed Mistress_, 64*.

      _Creation and Fall_ (Mystery Play), 95*.

      Cretic, 31.

      "Crown of Sonnets," 275.

      CYNEWULF: _Crist_, 116*;
        _Elene_, rime in, 126 n.;
        Riddle of (strophic), 63 n.


      Dactyl, 24.

      Dactylic verse, two-stress, 30;
        three-stress, 37;
        four-stress, 40;
        five-stress, 42;
        six-stress, 44;
        seven-stress, 46;
        eight-stress, 48.

      DANIEL: _Care-charmer Sleep_, 291 f.*;
        _Civil War_, 99*;
        _Defence of Rime_, 33 n.;
        _Delia_, 273, 292.

      DANTE, _terza rima_ of, 65, 67-69.

      DAVENANT: _Gondibert_, 71*, 72.

      DAVIES, Sir J.:  _Nosce Teipsum_, 73.

      Decasyllabic couplet, 174-213;
        Chaucer's, 177;
        in Elizabethan age, 190;
        in the drama, 196-199;
        of the romantic poets, 209f., 212;
        Saintsbury on qualities of, 194f.

      _De Muliere Samaritana_, 253*.

      DENHAM: _Against Love_, 63*;
        _Cooper's Hill_, 191f.*.

      _Deo Gracias_, 96*.

      _Deor's Lament_, 62n.

      DE QUINCEY, on Milton's verse, 233n.

      "Descending rhythm," 25.

      DESCHAMPS, 358.

      DOBSON,  A., ballades of, 367;
        _Dance of Death_, 368;
        on French lyrical forms, 358f.;
        on _ottava rima_, 101;
        on Pope, 203;
        _Rose Leaves_, 381f.*;
        _Too Hard it is to Sing_, 269f.*;
        _When I Saw you Last, Rose_, 378*;
        _With Pipe and Flute_, 374*.

      DONNE, critics on the verse of, 183;
        _Holy Sonnets_, 274f.*;
        influence of, on lyrical forms of 17th century, 90;
        _La Corona_, 275;
        _Satires_, 183*.

      DOUGLAS, G.: _Palace of Honour_, 101*, 133*.

      DOWDEN, on Shakspere's verse, 184.

      Drama, rime in, 184;
        verse of, characteristic, 395.

      DRAYTON: _Agincourt_, 86*;
        _Amouret Anacreontic_, 26*;
        _Idea_, 273, 293;
        _Love's Farewell_, 292*;
        _Polyolbion_, 256f.*.

      DRUMMOND, W.: _Sonnet_, 274*.

      DRYDEN: _Absalom and Achitophel_, 56f.*, 193f.*;
        _Alexander's Feast_, 310;
        _All for Love_, 196, 234*;
        _Annus Mirabilis_, 72*;
        blank verse of, 234f.;
        _Conquest of Granada_, 196;
        _Evening's Love_, 40*;
        heroic couplet of, 194f.;
        his introduction of rimed dramatic verse, 196-199;
        _Indian Queen_, 196;
        _Marriage à la Mode_, 195f.*, 234*;
        _Ode for St. Cecilia's Day_, imitated by Young, 88;
        _Ode on Mistress Killigrew_, 309f.*;
        odes of, 310;
        on heroic stanza, 72;
        on verse of Denham and Waller, 188;
        on verse of Donne, 183;
        _Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, 52f.*, 142*.

      DU BARTAS: _La Première Semaine_, 18*.

      DUNBAR: _Lament for the Makaris_, 78*;
        rime royal of, 94;
        _Tua Mariit Wemen_, 119f.*.


      EDWARDS, T., sonnets of, 277.

      Elegiacs (hexameter and pentameter), 346, 355f.

      _Eleven Pains of Hell_, 161.

      ELIOT, GEORGE: _Spanish Gypsy_, 28*, 37*, 114*.

      Elision, 59f.

      ELLIS, A. J., on degrees of accent, 3, 4n.

      ELLIS,  R.:
        _Attis_, 339*;
        _Hymenæus of Catullus_, 339*;
        on classical metres, 339.

      "End-stopped" lines, 19, 187-190.

      _Enjambement_, 19:
        avoidance of in heroic verse, 187, 202;
        in Chaucer, 177;
        in couplets of the romantic poets, 208-212;
        in Milton, 233;
        in Shakspere's verse, 223.

      ETHEREDGE: _Comical Revenge_, 196.


      _Fair Helen_ (ballad), 9*, 79*.

      _Farmer's Complaint_, 14.

      Feet,  as measures of verse, 24;
        combinations and substitutions of, 49;
        names of, 24, 55f., 408f.

      Feminine ending, 25, 33;
        in Elizabethan blank verse, 226-228.

      Feminine rime, 121, 128f.

      FITZGERALD: _Rubáiyát_, 77*.

      Five-stress verse, 174-251;
        early examples of, 175;
        introduced by Chaucer, 177.

      FLETCHER, G.: _Lycia_, 273.

      FLETCHER, J., blank verse of, 226-228;
        couplets of, 210;
        _Faithful Shepherdess_, 184f.*;
        _Valentinian_, 225*.

      FLETCHER, J. (and SHAKSPERE): _Two Noble Kinsmen_, 85*.

      FLETCHER, J. B., on Spenser, 17.

      FLETCHER, P.: _Piscatory Eclogues_, 107*.

      Foot, significance of the term, 24, 393-395, 406-408.

      _Fortunae rota volvitur_, 259*.

      Four-stress verse, 151-173.

      French alexandrine, relation to English, 252f.

      French influence, on stanza forms, 63, 82f., 110.

      French lyrical forms, imitation of, 358-385.

      French verse, decasyllabic, 177f.;
        influence on heroic couplet, 187, 190;
        perfect rime in,  121 n.;
        regular cesura in, 17, 18;
        influence on octosyllabic couplet, 154, 160f., 163 n.

      French words, accent of, 11.

      FRERE, J. H.: _Monks and the Giants_, 100*.

      FROISSART, 358.


      Galliambic verse, 339.

      _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, 133*, 157*.

      GASCOIGNE: _Notes of Instruction_ cited, 17, 94 n., 265, 291 n.;
        _Steel Glass_, 18*, 218.

      GASCOIGNE (and KINWELMARSHE): _Jocasta_, 218.

      GAY, J.: _Fables_, 168f.*.

      _Genesis and Exodus_, 162*.

      German hexameters, influence of, 345, 349.

      Germanic verse, alliteration in, 116f.;
        avoidance of syllable-counting in, 151;
        irregular time-intervals in, 12.

      GLOVER: _Leonidas_, 238.

      GODRIC (ST.): _Sainte Marie_, 126*;
        verse of, 161.

      _God Ureisun_, 118*.

      GOETHE, hexameters of, 345, 349;
        his view of metre in the drama, 418 n.

      GOLDSMITH: _Deserted Village_, 204*;
        Essay on Versification, 336;
        on blank verse, 205;
        _Retaliation_, 39*.

      GOLLANCZ, I., on the stanza of _The Pearl_, 109.

      GOODELL, T. G.: _Quantity in English Verse_, 406.

      GOSSE, E.: _After Anyte of Tegea_, 370*;
        _Ballad of Dead Cities_, 364*;
        on Cowleyan ode, 309;
        on decadent blank verse, 230;
        on Dryden's blank verse, 235;
        on heroic stanza, 73;
        on ode, 298;
        on rime in the drama, 197;
        on sonnet of Walsh, 277;
        on verse of Denham, 192;
        on verse of Goldsmith, 204;
        on verse of Oldham, 193;
        on verse of Parnell, 168;
        on verse of Swift, 170;
        on verse of Waller and contemporaries, 189, 190, 191 n.;
        _Praise of Dionysus_, 368;
        _Sestina_, 384 f.*;
        _Villanelle_, 379 f.*.

      GOWER, ballades of, 362;
        _Confessio Amantis_, 165*;
        couplets of, 166.

      _Grace of God_, 71*.

      GRAUNSON, French ballades of, 362.

      GRAY: _Bard_, 307;
        _Elegy in a Churchyard_, 72*;
        on verse of Dryden, 194;
        _Progress of Poesy_, 306 f.*;
        _Sonnet on West_, 295 f.*.

      Greek ode, imitated in English, 300, 323-328.

      GREENE: _Morando_, 219.

      GREIN, on Riming Poem, 126 n.

      GRIMALD: _Death of Zoroas_, 218.

      GRIMM, on rime, 124.

      GUEST, on Poulter's Measure, 265;
        on significance of sounds, 136.

      GUMMERE, F. B., on early English five-stress verse, 180;
        on rhythm in poetry, 433-436.

      GURNEY, E., on Browning's rimes, 129 f.;
        on the function of metre in poetry, 427-429.


      HALL, J.:  _Virgidemiarum_, 182*, 343*.

      HAMMOND, J.: _Love Elegies_, 73.

      HARVEY, G., influence on imitation of classical metres, 332 f.

      _Havelok the Dane_, 164*.

      HAWES, rime royal of, 94.

      HAWTREY, hexameter of, 351, 352*, 354.

      HAZLITT, W., on verse-form in poetry, 423-425.

      HEGEL, on metre in poetry, 427.

      _Heliand_, 124.

      HENLEY, W. E.: _Easy is the Triolet_, 381*;
        _Villanelle_, 378 f.*;
        _Ways of Death_, 370 f.*;
        _What is to Come_, 375*.

      HERBERT, G.: _Gifts of God_, 90*;
        _Sonnet on Sin_, 295*.

      HERDER, on rime, 123.

      HERENC: _Doctrinal_, 252.

      HERFORD, on verse of Leigh Hunt, 208.

      Heroic couplet (see Decasyllabic couplet).

      Heroic stanza, 71-73.

      HERRICK: _His Poetry his Pillar_, 27*;
        _His Recantation_, 26*;
        _Thanksgiving to God_, 90*;
        _To Julia_, 64*;
        _To the Lark_, 26*;
        _Upon his Departure_, 25*.

      Hexameter (dactylic), 340-356.

      _Hildebrandlied_, 124, 152.

      HILL, A.: _Praise of Blank Verse_, 239 n.*.

      HOBBES: _Homer_, 73.

      HOLMES, O. W.: _Chambered Nautilus_, 108*;
        on heroic couplet, 203 n.

      Homœoteleuton, relation to rime, 125.

      HOOD, T.: _Bridge of Sighs_, 30*, 130*.

      HORACE, stanza of, imitated, 77.

      Horatian ode, 298.

      Hudibrastic couplet, 167.

      HUGO, V., pantoums of, 386.

      HUNT, L., on Coleridge's verse, 16 n.;
        on  sonnets of Bowles, 278;
        on sonnets of Drummond, 274;
        on verse-form in poetry, 425 f.;
        _Story of Rimini_, 207 f.*;
        _The Fish to the Man_, 283*;
        _Wealth and Womanhood_, 266*.

      _Hymn to the Virgin_ ("Blessed beo thu"), 260*;
        ("Of on that is"), 87*.

      Hypermetrical syllables, 58-60.


      Iambic verse, one-stress, 25;
        two-stress, 26 f.;
        three-stress, 32 f.;
        four-stress, 160-173;
        five-stress, 174-251;
        six-stress, 252-258;
        seven-stress, 44 f., 260-264;
        eight-stress, 46.

      Iambus, 24;
        substituted for trisyllabic foot, 60.

      Inclusive rime, 74-76.

      INGELOW, J.: _Give us Love and Give us Peace_, 49*.

      _In Memoriam_ stanza, 76.

      Inversion of accent, 7, 8, 55, 56, 57 f.

      Italian sonnet, 267-271.

      Italian verse, influence on Chaucer, 178 f.;
        rimes in, 130;
        _terza rima_ derived from, 65.


      JAMES I. (of England): _Reulis and Cautelis_ cited, 94 n., 120, 157 n.

      JAMES I. (of Scotland): _King's Quhair_, 93*.

      _Jesu for thi muchele miht_, 111*.

      JOHNSON, S.: _London_, 205;
        on blank verse, 205;
        on Cowleyan ode, 308 f.;
        on Dryden's Killigrew Ode, 310;
        on tone-color, 137;
        on verse-form in poetry, 417;
        _Vanity of Human Wishes_, 205.

      JONSON, B.: _Elegy_, 74*;
        _Epigrams_, 185*;
        _Epitaph_, 92*;
        _Epitaph on Salathiel Pavey_, 71*;
        _Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme_, 123;
        influence on classical school of verse, 186;
        _Pindaric Ode_, 299 f.*;
        _Sad Shepherd_, 225;
        _Sejanus_, 224*.

      _Judas_, 254.


      KAWCZYNSKI, on alliteration, 117;
        on origin of alexandrine, 252.

      KEATS: _Chapman's Homer_, 282;
        _Endymion_, 209*;
        _Eve of St. Agnes_, 105*;
        _Grasshopper and Cricket_, 282*;
        _Hyperion_, 242*;
        _Isabella_, 100*;
        _Lamia_, 8*;
        _Mermaid Tavern_, 38*;
        _Ode to Psyche_, 143*;
        Sonnets of, 282;
        _Sonnet to Haydon_, 22*.

      KENT, A. J., on verse of Leigh Hunt, 208 f.

      _King Horn_, 154*.

      KINGSLEY, C.: _Andromeda_, 354*.

      KIPLING, R.: _Last Chantey_, 21 f.*;
        _Mulholland's Contract_, 65*;
        _Song of the English_, 49*;
        _Wolcott Balestier_, 44 f.*.

      KITTREDGE, G. L., on French decasyllabic couplet, 178.


      LACHMANN, on Anglo-Saxon verse, 151 f.

      LANDOR: _Children Playing in a Churchyard_, 64*;
        _English Hexameters_, 353*;
        on Milton's sonnets, 276.

      LANG, A.: _Ballade of Primitive Man_, 365 f.*;
        _Ballades of Blue China_, 363, 365, 366;
        on Pope, 202 f.

      LANGLAND: _Piers Plowman_, 119*.

      LANGTOFT, P. DE, Chronicle of, 82.

      LANIER, S.: _Ballad of Trees and the Master_, 131*;
        his theory of English verse, 391-393, 400;
        _Science of English Verse_ cited, 21, 49.

      LARMINIE, W., on assonance, 115;
        on quantity in English, 399;
        on rime, 123.

      Latin _septenarius_, 259;
        relation to ballad metre, 264.

      Latin verse, influence on octosyllabic couplet, 160f.;
        influence on stanza, 63;
        rime in, 124 f.;
        used with Anglo-Saxon, 153.

      LAYAMON: _Brut_, 118*, 127*;
        verse of, 119.

      Lays, four-stress couplet in, 164 f.

      LE GALLIENNE, R., irregular verse of, burlesqued, 329 n.

      _Legend-Cycle_, 255.

      LEGOUIS, E., on Spenser's verse, 17.

      _Lenten ys come_, 111*.

      LENTZNER, on the sonnet, 268, 286, 287.

      Leonine rime, 132.

      LEWIS, C. M., on octosyllabic couplet, 160 f.;
        on sources of Chaucer's verse, 179.

      LIDDELL, M., his theories of English verse, 394 f., 401 n., 407.

      LINDSAY, D.: _Satyre of the Three Estates_, 85*.

      _Little Soth Sermun_, 261.

      LLOYD, R., verses against blank verse, 239 n.*.

      LODGE: _Phyllis_, 273.

      LOK, sonnets of, 273.

      LONGFELLOW: _Evangeline_, 348*;
        _Golden Legend_, 48*, 51*;
        hexameters of, 348 f., 355;
        _Hiawatha_, 37*, 408;
        _Maidenhood_, 64*;
        _Saga of King Olaf_, 30 f.*;
        _Sonnets on Divina Commedia_, 289*.

      _Love in Idleness_, pantoum from, 386-388*.

      LOWELL: _Commemoration Ode_, 317*;
        on Gray's _Progress of Poesy_, 307;
        on Spenserian stanza, 103.

      LUICK, on revival of alliterative verse, 156.

      _Lutel wot hit anymon_, 174 f.*.

      LYDGATE, rime royal of, 94.

      LYLY: _Woman in the Moon,_ 219.

      Lyrical verse characteristic, 395.

      Lyrics, complex measures of early English, 110 f.


      MACAULAY, G. C., on verse of Fletcher, 227 n.

      MACDONALD, G.: _Triolet_, 383*.

      MACHAULT, 178, 358.

      Malaysian verse, pantoum derived from, 386.

      MALHERBE, influence on heroic verse, 187.

      MANNING, R.: _Chronicle_, 82*, 254*;
        _Handlying Synne,_ 163*;
        simplifying of French metrical forms by, 82 f.

      MARLOWE, blank verse  of, 221;
        couplets of, 210;
        _Faustus_, 57*, 219 f.*;
        _Hero and Leander_, 181*, 190;
        _Jew of Malta_, 139*;
        _Tamburlaine_, 219*.

      _Marriage of Wit and Science_, 255 f.*.

      MASON, W., sonnets of, 277.

      MASSINGER, blank verse of, 230;
        _New Way to Pay Old Debts_, 229*.

      MASSON, on Milton's tailed sonnet, 276.

      MAYOR, J. B.: _Chapters on English Metre_ cited, 409;
        on Browning's blank verse, 249;
        on Ellis's view of accent, 4 n.;
        on substitutions of feet, 60.

      MEREDITH, G.: _Phaëthon_, 339.

      Metre, its place and function in poetry, 413-436.

      Metrical romances, tail-rime in, 84.

      MEYER, C. F., on rime, 123, 124.

      MIDDLETON, blank verse of, 228;
        _Changeling_, 227*.

      MILL, J. S., on rhythm in poetry, 433.

      MILTON: _At a Solemn Music_, 329;
        blank verse of, 232 f.;
        _Il Penseroso_, 166 f.*;
        _L'Allegro_, 38*;
        _Lycidas_, 99*, 142*;
        _Nativity Ode_, 33*, 107*;
        _On his Blindness_, 275*;
        _On Time_, 329;
        _Paradise Lost_, 4*, 7*, 15*, 57*, 58*, 59*, 140*, 141*, 230 f.*;
        _Passion_, 94;
        _Psalm II_., 66*;
        _Psalm VI_., 74*;
        _Samson Agonistes_, 231 f.*, 323-325*;
        _Sonnet on Piedmont Massacre_, 141*;
        sonnets of, 276.

      MINOT, L.: _Battle of Halidon Hill_, 96*.

      _Misfortunes of Arthur_, 219.

      MITCHELL, S. WEIR: _Psalm of the Waters_, 36*.

      MOLZA, FRANCESCO, 216.

      "_Monk's Tale_ stanza," 97.

      _Monologue d'outre Tombe_, 386*.

      MOODY, W. V.: _Menagerie_, 91*;
        _Ode in Time of Hesitation_, 321-323*.

      MOORE, T.: _Believe me, if all those endearing young charms_, 40*;
        _Down in yon Summervale_, 121 n.*;
        _Go Where Glory Waits Thee_, 33 f.*.

      MORRIS, R., on early octosyllabic verse, 162.

      MORRIS, W.: _Earthly Paradise_, 93 f.*, 173*;
        _Fair Spring Morning_, 329;
        _Folk-Mote by the River_, 159*;
        _Jason_, 213*.

      MOULTON, R. G., on Browning's _Caliban_, 32.

      MOUSSET, classical metres of, 331.

      Music, its relation to verse, 391-396, 407 n., 413 f., 434-436.

      _Must I be Carried to the Skies_, 262*.

      Mystery plays, verse of, 94 f., 112, 265.


      NASH, T., on English hexameters, 342;
        Preface to _Menaphon_, 215.

      _Ne mai no lewed_, etc., 109 f.*.

      NEWCOMER, A. G., on wrenched accent, 10.

      NEWMAN, metre of his _Iliad_ translation, 262.

      NORDEN, on rime, 125.

      Norse verse, influence on Anglo-Saxon, 126;
        stanza in, 63.

      _Nutbrowne Maide_ (ballad), 132*.


      OCCLEVE, rime royal of, 94.

      Octosyllabic couplet, 160-173.

      Ode (The), 298-329.

      OLDHAM, J.: _Satires upon the Jesuits_, 192*.

      Onomatopœia, 135 f.

      _Ormulum_, 260*.

      O'SHAUGHNESSY, A.: _Fountain of Tears_, 36*.

      OTFRIED, verse of, 123, 124.

      _Ottava rima,_ 98-101;
        possible source of sonnet, 267.

      OTWAY: _Venice Preserved_, 235*.

      _Owl and the Nightingale_, 162*.


      Pantoum, 385-388.

      PARIS, G., on Machault, 178.

      PARNELL: _Night-Piece on Death_, 168*.

      PASSERAT, J.: _Villanelle_, 377*.

      _Passion of our Lord_, 254.

      _Pater Noster_, 161*.

      _Patience_, 155*.

      PATMORE: _Amelia_, 319 n.*;
        _Ode_, 318*;
        on the ode, 319;
        _Unknown Eros_, 319.

      Pauses, 16-23;
        varied to preserve metrical time, 404 f.

      PAYNE, J., virelai of, 385.

      PEACOCK, T. L.: _Misfortunes of Elphin_, 33*.

      _Pearl, The,_ 109*.

      PECK, S. M.: _Under the Rose_, 382*.

      PEELE: _Arraignment of Paris_, 218*.

      PETRARCA: _Sonnet_, 271*.

      Phalæcian verse, 331, 338.

      PHILIPS, J.: _Cider_, 238.

      PHILLIPS, S.: _Marpessa_, 251;
        _Paolo and Francesca_, 250 f.*.

      _Phœnix_, 153*.

      Pindaric ode, 298, 299-307.

      Pitch-accent, so-called, 5 f.

      PITT, W., 131 n.

      POE: _Lenore_, 134*;
        on English hexameter, 349;
        _Rationale of Verse_, 392;
        _Raven_, 47*.

      _Poema Morale_, 127*, 260.

      POPE, A.: _Essay on Criticism_, 12*, 57*, 142*, 199 f.*;
        _Iliad_, 200 f.*;
        on verse of Denham and Waller, 188;
        on verse of Dryden, 194;
        rules of verse, 201 f.;
        _Solitude_, 27*.

      Poulter's Measure, 255, 265 f.

      Pre-Raphaelites, 10.

      _Preservation of King Henry VII_., 343.

      PRIOR: _Better Answer_, 39*.

      Provençal, lyrical forms of, 358, 383.

      PUTTENHAM, G.: _Arte of English Poesie_ cited, 8 n., 18, 94 n., 334 n.

      Pyrrhic, 49, 55, 56.


      Quantity in English, 391-406;
        in English verse, 330, 332 f., 338, 354 f., 356, 357.

      Quatrains, 69-77.

      _Quinque Gaudia_, 85*.


      RALEIGH, W.: _Pilgrim to Pilgrim_, 35*.

      RANCHIN: _Triolet_, 381*.

      READ, T. B.: _Drifting_, 88*.

      Refrain stanzas, 78-90.

      _Regulae de Rhythmis_, 81*.

      Rhythm, arts of, 413 f.;
        change of, 53-55, 61.

      _Rhythmus_, meaning of, 124.

      RICH, B.: _Don Simonides_, 219.

      RIEGER, on rime in Anglo-Saxon, 126 n.

      Rime, 113, 121-135;
        as organizer of stanza, 63;
        broken, 131 f.;
        defended by Daniel, 336 n.;
        feminine, 121, 128 f.;
        functions of, 122;
        imperfect, 122 n.;
        in Butler's _Hudibras_, 167 f.;
        in drama, 196-199;
        internal, 132-135
         (in ballads, 70;
          in Middle English alexandrines, 255;
          in septenary, 259-261);
        objections to, 122 f.;
        origin of, 123-125;
        suspected by classicists, 214, 232, 330;
        triple, 121, 128-131.

      _Rime couée_, 80-86;
        in French, 81;
        in Latin, 80 f.

      Rime  royal, 93 f.;
        in Chaucer's _Balade_, 361.

      _Riming Poem_ (Anglo-Saxon), 125 f.*.

      ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER: _Chronicle_, 265.

      ROBERTSON, J. M., his theories of English verse, 24 n., 392-394, 400,
          403.

      _Robin Hood_ (ballad), 70*, 263*.

      _Roland, Chanson de_, 113 f.*.

      Romance languages, assonance in, 113.

      Romance metres, regular time-intervals in, 12, 14 n.

      Rondeau, 368, 371-376.

      Rondel, 368-371.

      ROSSETTI: _Ballad of Dead Ladies_, 362 f.*;
        _Blessed Damozel_, 7*;
        _House of Life_, 284*, 285*;
        _Love's Nocturn_, 146*;
        _My Sister's Sleep_, 75*;
        on Drayton's sonnet, 293;
        _Penumbra_, 135*;
        _Rose Mary_, 91*;
        _Sister Helen_, 80*;
        sonnets of, 285;
        _Sunset Wings_, 89*;
        _To Death_ (rondeau), 374*;
        _Willowwood_, 9*.

      Roundel, in Chaucer, 369;
        Swinburne's form of, 376.

      ROWLANDS, S., verse of, 190.

      "Run-on" lines, 19 (see also _Enjambement_).

      RUSSELL, T., sonnets of, 277.


      SACKVILLE:  _Mirror for Magistrates_, 94.

      SACKVILLE (and NORTON): _Gorboduc_, 217*.

      SAINTSBURY, on alexandrine, 258 f.;
        on Blair, 237;
        on Dryden's couplet, 194 f.;
        on Dryden's dactyls, 40;
        on heroic stanza, 73;
        on Shenstone, 35 f.;
        on Thomson, 238.

      SANDYS, G., heroic couplets of, 189 f., 191;
        influence on Pope's verse, 201;
        _Metamorphoses_, 191*;
        _Paraphrase of Luke_, 63*.

      Satire, heroic couplet in, 181, 182, 183, 206.

      _Satire on People of Kildare_, 91*.

      Scandinavian  verse, influence in England, 126.

      SCHELLING, F. E., on Campion's classical metres, 335 f.;
        on influence of Jonson's verse, 186;
        on Raleigh's anapests, 35.

      SCHILLER, elegiac distich of, 346;
        on rhythm in the drama, 433.

      SCHIPPER, on accent, 3;
        on Anglo-Saxon alliteration, 117;
        on early imitation of classical verse, 330 f.;
        on Layamon, 119;
        on the octosyllabic couplet, 161;
        on Poulter's Measure, 265;
        on rime, 123-125;
        on rime in Cynewulf, 126 n.;
        on rime royal, 94;
        on _Riming Poem_, 126;
        on Romance stanza-forms, 110 f.;
        on the sonnet, 270;
        on the stanza, 62;
        on tumbling verse, 158 n.;
        on types of alexandrine, 255;
        on "unaccented rime," 121 n.

      SCHLEGEL., A. W., on tone-color, 137.

      SCHRÖER, on early blank verse, 218.

      SCOLLARD, C.: _Villanelle_, 380*.

      SCOTT, W.: _Hunting Song_, 13*;
        _Lady of the Lake_, 29*, 172*.
        _Scottish Field_ (ballad), 120 f.*.

      Scottish verse, alliteration in, 120.

      _Sdruciolla_, 215.

      SEAMAN, O.: _Battle of the Bays_, 329 n.*.

      Septenary, 259-264;
        in drama, 218;
        internal rime in, 132;
        mingled with alexandrine, 252, 253 f., 261, 265;
        unrimed, 260, 262.

      SERAFINO: _Strambotti_, 272.

      Sestina, 383-385.

      SHAKSPERE: _As You Like It_, 57*;
        blank verse of, 223 f.;
        _Henry V._, 140*;
        heroic verse of, 184;
        _It was a lover_, etc., 9*;
        _Julius Cæsar_, 58*;
        _King John_, 20*;
        _Love's Labor's Lost_, 38*, 183 f.*;
        _Macbeth_, 20*;
        _Measure for Measure_, 20*, 222*;
        _Merchant of Venice_, 57*;
        _Midsummer Night's Dream_, 26*, 31*, 139*;
        _Much Ado_, 215;
        _Phœnix and the Turtle_, 63*, 74*;
        _Rape of Lucrece_, 93*;
        _Richard II._, 20*;
        _Romeo and Juliet_, 7*, 57*;
        _Sonnets_, 293*, 294*;
        sonnets of, 294 f.;
        _Tempest_, 37*, 222 f.*;
        _Troilus and Cressida_, 138*;
        _Twelfth Night_, 51 f.*;
        _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, 221*;
        _Venus and Adonis_, 92*.

      SHAKSPERE (and FLETCHER): _Two Noble Kinsmen_, 85*.

      SHARP, W., on the sonnet, 268 n.

      SHELLEY: _Adonais_, 105 f.*;
        _Alastor_, 243*;
        _Arethusa_, 28*;
        _Epipsychidion_, 210*;
        _Flight of Love_, 50 f.*;
        heroic verse of, 210;
        _Ode to Naples_, 314 f.*;
        _Ode to West Wind_, 66 f.*;
        _Ozymandias_, 281 f.*;
        _Queen Mab_, 329;
        _Sensitive Plant_, 69*;
        sonnets of, 282;
        _To a Skylark_, 34*;
        use of Spenserian stanza, 106;
        view of verse-form in poetry, 422 f.

      SHENSTONE, heroic stanza of, 73;
        _Pastoral Ballad_, 35*;
        _Schoolmistress_, 104.

      SHERMAN, F. D.: _Ballade to Austin Dobson_, 366 f.*.

      SIDNEY: _Anacreontics_, 332*;
        _Asclepiadics_, 331*;
        _Astrophel and Stella_, 74*, 77*, 256*, 272*, 273*, 291*;
        _Dorus and Zelmane_, 340 f.*;
        hexameters of, 341;
        _Mopsa_, 266*;
        _Phaleuciakes_, 331*;
        _Psalm VIII_., 69*;
        sonnets of, 273;
        _Thyrsis and Dorus_, 65 f.*;
        view of verse-form in poetry, 416 f.

      SIEVERS, on Anglo-Saxon verse, 152 f.;
        on stanzaic and stichic verse, 63.

      _Sir Fyrumbras_, 261*.

      _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_, 109, 155 f.*.

      SKALAGRIMSSON, Egil, 126.

      SKEAT, on sources of Chaucer's couplet, 178;
        theory of English verse, 394 n.

      SKELTON: _Colyn Cloute_, 32*;
        rime royal of, 94.

      _Song of Songs_ (French version), 81*.

      Sonnet, 267-297;
        bipartite structure of, 268, 270, 280, 282, 285, 286, 290, 293;
        English form of, 290;
        Italian form of, 270;
        revived in 18th century, 277;
        sequences, 273;
        "Ten Commandments" of, 268 n.

      Sonnets on the sonnet, 278, 279, 284, 288.

      Sound-qualities of verse made expressive of sense, 135-137.

      SOUTHEY: _Curse of Kehama_, 329;
        hexameters of, 347 f.;
        _Sapphics_, 337*;
        _Vision of Judgment_, 347*.

      Spanish verse, 28, 115;
        assonance in, 114.

      SPEDDING, J., on English hexameter, 351.

      SPENSER: _Amoretti_, 293*;
        _Faerie Queene_, 102*;
        free cesura in, 17;
        interest in classical metres, 332 f.;
        _Mother Hubbard's Tale_, 181*;
        _Shepherd's Calendar_, 15*, 89*, 158 f.*, 179 f.*;
        _Tetrasticon_, 332*;
        tumbling verse of, 159;
        unrimed sonnets of, 219;
        _Virgil's Gnat_, 98 f.*.

      Spenserian sonnet, 293*.

      Spenserian stanza, 102-106;
        stanzas influenced by, 107 f.

      Spondee, 56, 57.

      STANYHURST, R.: _Æneid_, 341 f.*;
        hexameters of, 342 f.

      Stanzas, 62-112;
        complex forms of, under French influence, 110;
        formed by refrains, 78;
        how determined and described, 62;
        tail-rime, 80-86.

      STEDMAN, E. C., on rhythm in poetry, 432 f.

      STENGEL, on French alexandrine, 252;
        on French decasyllabic verse, 177 f.;
        on octosyllabic verse, 160.

      STETSON, C. P.: _A Man Must Live_, 375 f.*.

      STEVENSON, R. L., on tone-color, 138.

      Stichic verse, 62.

      STILLINGFLEET, B., sonnets of, 277.

      _Stond wel, moder_, 84*.

      STONE, W. J.: _Odyssey_, 356*;
        on quantity in English verse, 356 f.

      Stress (see Accent).

      Substitution of feet, 55-61.

      SUCKLING: _A Soldier_, 86*.

      _Suete iesu, king of blysse_, 69*.

      SURREY, EARL OF, accents in verse of, 10;
        _Æneid_, 215 f.*;
        _How no Age is Content_, 266*;
        inventor of English sonnet, 290;
        _Psalm LV_., 255*;
        _Restless State of a Lover_, 71*;
        _Sonnet_, 290*;
        verse of, 216.

      SWIFT: _Death of Dr. Swift_, 169 f.*.

      SWINBURNE: _Armada_, 51*, 134*;
        _Atalanta in Calydon_, 9*, 146*;
        _Ballad of François Villon_, 367*;
        _Birds_, 45*;
        _Century of Roundels_, 42*;
        _Choriambics_, 340*;
        _Death of Wagner_, 60*;
        _Garden of Cymodoce_, 43*;
        _Hendecasyllabics_, 338;
        _Hesperia_, 44*;
        _Last Oracle_, 43*;
        _Laus Veneris_, 78*;
        _Leper_, 9*;
        _March_, 13*, 48*;
        _Night in Guernsey_, 47*;
        on choral ode of Milton, 325;
        on English hexameters, 353 f.;
        on sonnets of Wordsworth, 280;
        _On the Cliffs_, 329;
        on Whitman, 431 n.;
        _Roundel_, 376*;
        _Sapphics_, 340*;
        _Seaboard_, 51*;
        _Song in Season_, 28*;
        _Thalassius_, 329;
        _Tristram of Lyonesse_, 212*;
        _Winter in Northumberland_, 130 f.*, 147*.

      Syllable-counting, in Surrey's verse, 216;
        want of, in early English verse, 16, 112, 151.

      Syllables, artificially varied in length when in metre, 401-404;
        kinds of accented, 3.

      SYMONDS, J. A., on blank verse, 214, 232, 233;
        of 18th century, 239;
        of _Gorboduc_, 217;
        of Jonson, 225;
        of Keats, 242;
        of Marlowe, 220 f.;
        of Shakspere, 222;
        of Tennyson, 246;
        of Webster, 229;
        on heroic verse of the romantic poets, 210;
        _Sonnets on the Thought of Death_, 287 f.*.


      Tailed sonnet, 276.

      Tail-rime (see _Rime couée_).

      TAYLOR, B.: _Home Pastorals_, 349*;
        _National Ode_, 320 f.*.

      TAYLOR, W., on German and English hexameters, 345;
        _Ossian's Hymn to the Sun_, 344 f.*.

      TEN BRINK, on Anglo-Saxon verse, 151 f.;
        on Chaucer's verse, 177, 178;
        on early five-stress verse, 175;
        on verse of court romances, 164 f.;
        on verse of _King Horn_, 155.

      TENNYSON: _Alcaics on Milton_, 337*;
        blank verse of, 246;
        _Boadicea_, 339;
        _Break, break, break_, 21*;
        _Charge of the Light Brigade_, 30*;
        _Coming of Arthur_, 143;
        _Daisy_, 77;
        elegiac distich of, 346*;
        _Enoch Arden_, 58*, 59*, 144*;
        _Geraint and Enid_, 59*;
        _Hendecasyllabics_, 337 f.*;
        _In Memoriam_, 75 f.*;
        _Locksley Hall_, 13*, 46 f.*;
        _Lotos-Eaters_, 106*;
        _Maud_, 32*, 42*, 43*, 52*, 317;
        _Merlin and Vivien_, 58*;
        _Montenegro_, 285 f.*;
        _Northern Farmer_, 44*;
        _Œnone_, 59*;
        on English hexameters, 353;
        on quantity in English, 338;
        _Oriana_, 80*;
        _Palace of Art_, 74*;
        _Passing of Arthur_, 244*;
        _Princess_, 8*, 58*, 134*, 144 f.*, 245*, 246*;
        _Queen Mary_, 245*;
        _Sapphics_, 339*;
        sonnets of, 286;
        _Tears, Idle Tears_, 246*;
        _To Maurice_, 77*;
        _Two Voices_, 64*;
        _Vision of Sin_, 41*, 54 f.*;
        _Wellington Ode_, 315 f.*.

      Tercets, 63-69.

      Terminology, classical in English verse, 24 n., 406-409.

      _Terza rima,_ 65-69.

      THACKERAY, irregular verse in ballads of, 158 n.;
        _Sorrows of Werther_, 47*;
        _What Makes my Heart_, etc., 132*.

      THOMSON, as imitator of Spenser's verse, 104;
        _Castle of Indolence_, 103*, 143*;
        _Seasons_, 237 f.*.

      THOMSON, J.: _City of Dreadful Night_, 95*.

      TILLBROOK, S., on Southey's hexameters, 347 n.

      Time-element in English verse, 391-409.

      Time-intervals, 11-23;
        irregular, 13-16;
        regular, 12 f.;
        the basis of metrical feet, 408.

      TODHUNTER, on Shelley's verse, 106.

      TOLOMEI, C., 331.

      TOMLINSON, on the sonnet, 267 f.

      Tone-color, 135-147.

      Tone-quality, 113-147.

      TOTTEL: _Songs and Sonnets_, 10, 87*, 98*, 218, 266*, 271*, 290*, 372.

      _Trial before Pilate_ (Mystery Play), 157*.

      TRIGGS, on verse of _De Muliere Samaritana_, 253 f.

      Triolet, 381-383.

      Triple endings in Elizabethan drama, 226-228.

      Triplet, used in heroic verse, 195, 208.

      TRISSINO, G., 214, 330.

      Trochaic verse, two-stress, 27 f.;
        three-stress, 33 f.;
        four-stress, 37 f.;
        five-stress, 41;
        six-stress, 43;
        seven-stress, 45, 259;
        eight-stress, 46 f.

      Trochee, 24;
        substituted for iambus, 57 f.

      _Troy Book_, 156.

      Truncation, 25, 33.

      "Tumbling verse," 157 f., 159;
        relation to decasyllabic, 179 f.

      TURBERVILLE: _Heroical Epistles_, 219.


      UDALL, N.: _Ralph Roister Doister_, 14*.


      VAN <DW18>, H., on Tennyson's _Wellington Ode_, 317.

      Variety in verse, significant, 61.

      _Vers baïfins_, 331.

      _Vers de société_, 39, 365.

      _Versi sciolti_, 214, 330 f.

      Villanelle, 376-380.

      VILLON, 358, 363, 365, 367, 374.

      Virelai, 385.

      VOITURE, 358, 371;
        _Rondeau_, 371*.

      Vowels, long and short in English, 396 f.


      WACE, _Brut_, 160*.

      WADDINGTON: _Manuel des Pechiez_, 163 n.*.

      WALLER: _Battle of the Summer Islands_, 187*;
        _Go, Lovely Rose_, 89*;
        influence on heroic couplet, 187-190;
        _Of the Danger of his Majesty_, etc., 186*.

      WARD, on verse of Cowper, 240.

      WARNER, W.: _Albion's England_, 261*.

      WARTON brothers, revivers of sonnet, 277.

      WARTON, T., on verse of Joseph Hall, 182;
        _Sonnet on Dugdale's Monasticon_, 276 f.*.

      WATSON (of Cambridge), distich of, 341*.

      WATSON, T.: _Tears of Fancy_, 273.

      WATSON, W.: _Hymn to the Sea_, 355*;
        _Sonnet on History_, 297*;
        _Sonnet to the Sultan_, 289*.

      WATTS, T., on verse-form in poetry, 426 f.;
        _Sonnet's Voice_, 288*.

      _Wayle whyte, A,_ 86*.

      WEBBE, W.: _Discourse of English Poetrie_ cited, 46, 334, 341, 344;
        _Eclogue of Vergil_, 344*;
        _Sapphics_, 333*.

      WEBSTER: _Duchess of Malfi_, 228*.

      WENDELL, B., on Shakspere's verse, 223 f.

      WHITE, G., on _chant royal_, 368;
        on French lyrical forms, 359 f.

      WHITE, J. B.: _Sonnet to Night_, 281*.

      WHITMAN, W., verse of, 431.

      WOOD, H., on the heroic couplet, 189 f.

      WOODBERRY, on the heroic couplet, 207.

      WORDSWORTH: _Intimations of Immortality_ (ode), 312 f.*;
        _I wandered lonely_, 92*;
        _Norman Boy_, 264*;
        on blank verse, 232;
        on theory of metre, 417-420;
        _Peter Bell_, 91*;
        _Pet Lamb_, 257*;
        _Scorn not the Sonnet_, 279*;
        _Solitary Reaper_, 97 f.*;
        _Sonnet, The_, 278 f.*;
        sonnets of, 278, 280;
        _The World is too much with us_, 279 f.*;
        _Tintern Abbey_, 243*;
        _White Doe of Rylstone_, 171 f*.

      WYATT, accents in verse of, 10 f.;
        _How to use the court_, 65*;
        _Of his love that pricked his finger_, 98*;
        _O goodly hand_, 87*;
        _ottava rima_ introduced by, 98;
        _Power of Love_, 96*;
        _Rondeau_, 372*;
        _Sonnet_, 271*;
        sonnet introduced by, 272;
        text of poems of, 10 f.;
        _The joy so short_, 20*;
        _Torment of the Unhappy Lover_, 101 f.*;
        unaccented rime in, 122 n.


      YOUNG: _Night Thoughts_, 238;
        _Ocean_, 87 f.*;
        stanza of odes of, 88.





End of Project Gutenberg's English Verse, by Raymond MacDonald Alden, Ph.D.

*** 