Chapter 7

THE QUATRAIN AND SONNET

_The Quatrain_

In the seventeenth century the quatrain was a favorite tool of the old English writers who wished to embody a stinging epigram or epitaph in verse. The works of Robert Herrick contain several, most of them, unfortunately, not fit for print. Nor was he the only unblushing exponent of the questionable quatrain.

But times have changed and like everything else the quatrain has grown respectable. From the disuse and misuse into which it had fallen the modern magazine editor rescued it and by creating a market revived the art of quatrain making. To-day sometimes the four lines are descriptive; again they contain a kindly or clever epigram, or perhaps an unexpected twist at the end that makes for a joke.

The average quatrain is in iambic pentameter with alternate lines rhyming. Sometimes the first and fourth lines rhyme and the second and third, and occasionally one sees a detached Omaric stanza. It all depends upon the thought and the way it is to be expressed. One thing is certain, that the quatrain because of its very brevity demands more care and polishing than a longer piece of verse. The thought must not only be concise and clearly expressed but the four lines must contain nothing else.

The following example by Frank Dempster Sherman not only describes this form of verse but is an excellent quatrain in itself:

"Hark at the lips of this pink whorl of shell And you shall hear the ocean's surge and roar: So in the quatrain's measure, written well A thousand lines shall all be sung in four."

_The Sonnet_

It is the ambition of many a versifier to be known as a maker of sonnets. Doubtless this love for the form is prompted not only by its possibilities but even more by its traditions. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Rossetti, to mention only a few of the celebrated names, were masters of the sonnet, though it must be said that the version used by the earlier English writers was not the one we know to-day. Shakespeare's seventy-third sonnet may serve as a fair example of the arrangement of the lines in the early Elizabethan period, though even in his day the present rhyming order was passing gradually into use.

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves or few or none do hang Upon the boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined 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, Consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

This fourteen lines, as an examination will discover, might be written in three four-line stanzas with an additional two lines as an epigrammatic envoy. In fact it can scarcely be called a sonnet at all, and the last two lines come out with such force as to offend the ear accustomed to the more modern form.

The sonnet by Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," is an excellent illustration of the change in the rhyming system and emphasis.

"Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

The first eight lines rhyme: a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a; the last six: c, d, c, d, c, d. Thus the sonnet halts only at one place, the interval between the eighth and the sixth lines, where the rest is welcome, while the emphasis, instead of coming out so brazenly at the end, reaches its climax in the next to the last line, dying away gradually. The order of the eight lines in the modern sonnet is almost invariably unchanged, but the sestet is varied as the movement of the thought dictates.

As to sonnet construction little can be said here or, if one wished to go into detail, so much could be said that it would fill this volume a dozen times. Keats, Wordsworth and Rossetti, to say nothing of a dozen or more modern sonneteers, are safe models to follow. One trifling suggestion seems in order. There are so many really good sonnets now that a second-rate production is a drug on the market. Except as an exercise it is altogether superfluous. A first-class sonnet must be grounded first on an idea and then rewritten and worked over until the idea has found a fit setting. Commonplaceness either in the idea or its expression is alike fatal.

VII

THE BALLADE AND OTHER FRENCH FORMS