Chapter 12

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 "n[=e] wintersc[=u]r."

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 "s[=æ]l[=i]ðende" 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 [=u]s [=a]l[=y]fed _lucis auctor_, þæt w[=e] m[=o]tun h[=e]r _merueri_ g[=o]dd[=æ]dum begietan _gaudia in celo_, þ[=æ]r w[=e] m[=o]tun _maxima regna_ s[=e]can and gesittan _sedibus altis_, lifgan in lisse _lucis et pacis_, [=a]gan eardinga _almæ letitæ_, br[=u]can bl[=æ]ddaga _blandem et mitem_ ges[=e]on sigora Fr[=e]an _sine fine_, and him lof singan _laude perenne_ [=e]adge mid englum _Alleluia_.

(From the Anglo-Saxon _Ph[oe]nix_. 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 [gh]ou singe Of Mury þe kinge. King he was bi weste So longe so hit laste. Godhild het his quen, Fairer ne mi[gh]te non ben. He hadde a sone þat het Horn, Fairer ne mi[gh]te 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, Ro[gh] rakkes per ros with rudnyng anunder, Þe see sou[gh]ed ful sore, gret selly to here, Þe wyndes on þe wonne water so wrastel togeder, Þat þe wawes ful wode waltered so hi[gh]e And efte busched to þe abyme, þat breed fysches, Durst nowhere for ro[gh] 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 ro[gh]e yþes.

(_Patience_, ll. 137-147. ab. 1375.)

Til þe kny[gh]t com hym-self, kachande his blonk, Sy[gh] hym byde at þe bay, his burne[gh] bysyde, He ly[gh]tes luflych adoun, leve[gh] his corsour, Brayde[gh] out a bry[gh]t bront, & bigly forth stryde[gh], Founde[gh] fast þur[gh] the forþ, þer þe felle byde, Þe wylde wat[gh] war of þe wy[gh]e with weppen in honde. Hef hy[gh]ly þe here, so hetterly he fnast, Þat fele ferde for þe freke[gh], lest felle hym þe worre Þe swyn sette[gh] hym out on þe segge even, Þat þe burne & þe bor were boþe upon hepe[gh], In þe wy[gh]t-est of þe water, þe worre had þat oþer; For þe mon merkke[gh] 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 [gh]arrande hym [gh]elde, & [gh]edoun þe water, ful tyt; A hundreth hounde[gh] hym hent, Þat bremely con hym bite, Burne[gh] him bro[gh]t to bent, & dogge[gh] 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 p[oe]na 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.)

[Gh]yf þou ever þurghe folye Dydyst ou[gh]t do nygromauncye. Or to the devyl dedyst sacryfyse þurghe wychcraftys asyse, Or any man [gh]af þe mede For to reyse þe devyl yn dede, For to telle, or for to wrey, þynge þat was don awey; [gh]yf 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 [gh]af 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-colored 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-colored shade More fine than moonbeams; white her eyelids shone As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun, And through their curled and colored 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 C[oe]us, 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. C[oe]us, 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 [gh]it 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 ma[gh][gh] 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 ma[gh][gh] 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 a[gh]en 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 slope 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 Ph[oe]bus 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 Dyke 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 slope 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 Carp[=e]nter our Carp[)e]nter, 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 Ph[oe]bus, 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 Lesbos, 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 Ph[oe]bus 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-colored 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 _[OE]uvres 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.