Chapter 5

Chapter 518,086 wordsPublic domain

METRICAL FORMS

I. THE LINE

_Line Length._ A line of English verse may contain from one to eight feet. Theoretically, of course, more than eight feet would be possible; but just as there are sounds which the human ear cannot hear and colors which the eye cannot see, so there appears to be a limit beyond which we do not recognize the line as a unit. The most frequently used lines are of four and five feet, most conveniently called, respectively, 4-stress and 5-stress lines;[33] those of one, two, and three feet tend to become jerky, those of more than five to break up into smaller units.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [33] The expression '4-foot line' is too suggestive of | | fishing or surveying; 'tetrameter' is confusing because of | | its different usage in classical prosody; '4-stress line' is | | open to objection because it seems to overlook the temporal | | quality of the foot. On the whole, however, the last seems | | preferable. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

* * * * *

_Line Movement._ The movement of a line is determined primarily by the foot of which it is composed. It is iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, according as the metrical pattern is made up of iambs, trochees, etc. Thus

That time of year them mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs that shake against the cold-- Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 73.

is plainly iambic.

You and I would rather see that angel, Painted by the tenderness of Dante, Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.

You and I will never see that picture. While he mused on love and Beatrice, While he soften'd o'er his outlined angel, In they broke, those "people of importance": We and Bice bear the loss forever. BROWNING, One Word More.

is plainly trochaic.

I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood-pigeons breed. SHENSTONE, Pastoral Ballad.

is plainly anapestic.

Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care; Fashion'd so slenderly, Young, and so fair! HOOD, Bridge of Sighs.

is plainly dactylic.

But very few poems conform exactly to the metrical pattern. For example, Blake's

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

seems clearly to be trochaic; yet the last trochee of each line lacks its unstressed element, and the fourth line has an extra-metrical syllable, _Could_. By itself the fourth line would be called iambic: in this context it is called trochaic with 'anacrusis,' i. e., with one or more extra-metrical syllables at the beginning.[34] Or again in Clough's stanza,

And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright! 'Say Not, the Struggle Naught Availeth.'

the movement is clearly iambic, yet the first and third lines have an extra-metrical syllable at the end. This is called 'feminine ending.'

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [34] From the point of view of stanzaic rhythm _Could_ may | | be said to complete the final trochee of the previous line: | | | | What immortal hand or eye Could | | Frame, etc. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Moreover, sometimes the word or phrase rhythm clashes with the metrical rhythm and makes the resultant seem doubtful. Thus

Of hand, of foot, of lips, of eye, of brow. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 106.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance. TENNYSON, The Brook.

are unmistakably iambic, and Wordsworth's

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies. To the Small Celandine.

is unmistakably trochaic; but in Tennyson's

This pretty, puny, weakly little one. Enoch Arden.

With rosy slender fingers backward drew. Œnone.

there are metrically five iambs in each line, but also in each four words that are trochaic. The result is a conflict of rhythms, a kind of syncopation, which produces a very pleasing variant of the formal rhythm.

Furthermore, in a passage like the following, which everyone recognizes as exquisitely musical, it is not obvious whether the rhythm is iambic or anapestic or trochaic.

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. SWINBURNE, Atalanta in Calydon.

If the first two syllables be regarded as anacrusis, the first line would be trochaic, with a dactyl substituted for a trochee in the second foot. The third line is apparently trochaic. But only three lines of the eight have a feminine or trochaic ending, and all except the third have iambic or rising rhythm in the first foot; so that it is more simple and natural to consider the last syllable of the first, third, and seventh lines as extra-metrical, and call the rhythm iambic-anapestic, or rising. Since the ◡_̷ and ◡◡_̷ are both rising rhythm they may be readily substituted one for the other--the appearance of equal time values being preserved--without disturbing the musical flow of sounds. Thus of the thirty-two feet in the eight lines, seventeen are iambs and eleven anapests, two are weak iambs (-_orous_, -_ylus_), one a spondee (_bright night_-), and one monosyllabic with a rest (‸ _Fills_). Tennyson's Vastness may also be studied for its combinations of trochees, dactyls, and spondees. Here is one stanza:

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat.

Similar combinations, still freer, with frequent anacrusis as well, are characteristic of Swinburne's Hesperia; e. g.--

The first line of a poem is not always a good criterion of the metre of the whole poem--though Poe declared that it should be. For Tennyson's The Higher Pantheism is chiefly in triple falling rhythm, but it begins

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains.

The first stanza of Campbell's famous Battle of the Baltic runs:

Of Nelson and the North, Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand, In a bold determined hand, And the Prince of all the land Led them on.

Here the first line might be 3-stress or 2-stress; the second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth might have three stresses or four; the fifth five or six; the ninth two or one. It is not, in fact, until we reach the

Again! again! again!

of the fourth stanza that we are sure how the poem ought to be read. But Campbell was not a faultless artist. There is the same metrical ambiguity, however, in Tennyson's

Come into the garden, Maud,

until the second line shows us we should read it with three stresses, not four. There is a curious verse in Gay's Beggar's Opera which well illustrates the necessity of consulting the context to determine the pattern, for it can, taken by itself, be scanned in three different ways:

How happy could I be with either. Air XXXV.

viz., ◡_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡ or ◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡_̷◡ or ◡_̷◡◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡.

But sometimes it is difficult, if not impossible, to say whether a line or series of lines is in rising or falling rhythm, or what sort of foot is predominant--in other words, what is the formal metrical pattern. This difficulty is, of course, no fault of the poet's: it lies in the complexity of the phenomena, and is after all a weakness of our power of analysis. In the spectrum blue merges into green, red into yellow, and though we invent names for various tints, others still escape classification. And just as some verses combine iambic and anapestic (rising), or dactylic and trochaic (falling) movements, so others combine rising and falling rhythms. For example,

The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter. PEACOCK, War-song of Dinas Vawr, from The Misfortunes of Elphin.

This may be trochaic with anacrusis or iambic with feminine endings, but neither quite adequately describes it. Is Shelley's To Night prevailingly iambic or trochaic? All of the twenty-five long lines end with an iamb, but only eleven begin with rising rhythm (thirteen begin with falling or trochaic rhythm, and one is ambiguous). Two of the short lines are definitely iambic, the other eight are doubtful, but apparently trochaic. If it is read as iambic, eleven of the hundred feet in the long lines will be 'irregular'; if it is read as trochaic, eleven likewise will be 'irregular.' Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso contain lines that are purely iambic, as

And oft, as if her head she bow'd;

some that are purely trochaic, as

Whilst the landskip round it measures;

and others which are a combination, as

Bosom'd high in tufted trees. Then to the spicy nut-brown ale. The melting voice through mazes running.

Again, how shall the following stanza from F. W. H. Myers's Saint Paul be classified?

Lo, if some strange intelligible thunder Sang to the earth the secret of a star, Scarce could ye catch, for terror and for wonder, Shreds of the story that was peal'd so far.

The metrical scheme appears to be

_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡ _̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷ _̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡ _̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷

that is, 5-stress trochaic, with dactylic substitution in the first foot and truncation or catalexis of the last foot in the second and fourth lines; or perhaps iambic, with anapestic substitution in the second foot and a feminine ending in the first and third lines. But when many of these stanzas are read in succession, the movement is found to be

_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡ _̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡◡_̷ _̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡ _̷◡◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡_̷

that is, 4-stress falling rhythm, with intermixed duple, triple, and quadruple time.

This introduces a new question, whether English verse admits of a foot resembling the Greek paeon, _̷◡◡◡. The answer seems to be that theoretically it does not, but practically it does.[35] It would, doubtless, be more accurate to describe the foot as _̷◡◡[`]◡, for some stress, however slight, is regularly felt on the third syllable. But the poets have had their way, and written what certainly try to be paeonic feet. Thus Macaulay's The Battle of Naseby begins:

Oh! wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a bitter shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press that ye tread?[36]

And Mr. Kipling's The Last Chantey:

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

And Mr. E. A. Robinson's The Valley of the Shadow is in this same rhythm, the first four lines being almost perfectly regular:

There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow, There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget; There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.

Some have read Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's to the same tune, but at grave risk of destroying the music.

Rightly described, this movement is a discontinuous syncopation of fours and twos; the prevailing formal unit is _̷◡◡◡, but it is varied now by _̷◡_̷◡, and now by simply _̷◡, with the usual substitution of _̷◡◡ for _̷◡. It is an excellent exercise to analyze Jean Ingelow's Like a Laverock in the Lift and observe the pauses, holds, and substitutions. The most notable are _̷_̷◡ for _̷◡◡◡ (_we too, it's_), and _̷◡_̷ (_lass, my love_, l. 5; _thou art mine_, l. 6; _missed the mark_, l. 7, etc.). The third line may be read

Like a | laverock in the | lift ‸ etc.

Like a laverock | in the lift | etc.

The former seems preferable.[37]

It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye, All the world, and we two, and Heaven be our stay. Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride! All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side.

What's the world, my lass, my love!--what can it do? I am thine, and thou art mine; lift is sweet and new. If the world have missed the mark, let it stand by, For we two have gotten leave, and once more we'll try.

Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride! It's we two, it's we two, happy side by side. Take a kiss from me, thy man; now the song begins: "All is made afresh for us, and the brave heart wins."

When the darker days come, and no sun will shine, Thou shalt dry my tears, lass, and I'll dry thine. It's we two, it's we two, while the world's away. Sitting by the golden sheaves on our wedding day.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [37] See Sidney Lanier's scansion of the first stanza, in | | his Science of English Verse, p. 228. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

How musical and effective this rhythm is, judgments will differ. It is clearly capable of great variety, but the large proportion of light syllables forces heavier stress on some of the accents, and the number of naturally heavy syllables which do not coincide with the metrical stress is excessive; and the almost inevitable result is a thumping which only the deftest manipulation can avoid.[38]

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | [38] An interesting variation of this rhythm (though perhaps to be | | related to the Middle English descendant of the Anglo-Saxon | | long line) occurs in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Act I, | | | | O sister, desolation is a difficult thing. | | | | Compare also Shelley's earlier poem, Stanzas--April, 1814; | | and for a more recent example: | | | | Ithaca, Ithaca, the land of my desire! | | I'm home again in Ithaca, beside my own hearth-fire. | | Sweet patient eyes have welcomed me, all tenderness and truth, | | Wherein I see kept sacredly, the visions of our youth. | | AMELIA J. BURR, Ulysses in Ithaca. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Probably the most striking and successful use of the 4-beat movement is that of Meredith's Love in a Valley. So marked is the time element, with the compensatory lengthenings and pauses, that the poem almost demands to be chanted rather than read; but when well chanted it is peculiarly musical, and when ill read it is horribly ragged and choppy. The whole poem will repay study for the metrical subtleties, but the first stanza is sufficient to illustrate the rhythm (there are normally four _̷◡◡◡ in each line).[39]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [39] This metre has been used, e. g., by George Darley | | (1795-1846) in The Flower of Beauty (four stanzas) and | | (rather monotonously) by Charles Swain (1803-74) in Tripping | | down the Field-Path (cf. Stedman's Victorian Anthology, pp. | | 17, 76); and more recently by Mr. Alfred Noyes. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, Couch'd with her arms behind her golden head, Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: Then would she hold me and never let me go?

* * * * *

_Examples._ There occur examples of 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-stress iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic lines, sometimes used continuously and sometimes used in combinations with other lengths. But many of these are unusual, and may be found only by diligent search.[40] Some have already been illustrated in the previous section, others occur here and there throughout this volume, especially in the paragraphs on the stanza; some of the more important, however, are given below. But, of course, the line rhythm is significant mainly as a unit of the longer composition, and brief selections cannot well represent the rhythmic movement of a whole poem. Whenever possible the poem should be read complete.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [40] For a classified collection see Alden, English Verse, | | pp. 24 ff. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Attempts have been made to characterize the different feet as slow or rapid, solemn or light, and so on, but they are generally unsuccessful. For though certain measures seem to be inherently unsuitable for dignified themes, or for humorous subjects, there are always contrary instances to be adduced, and it is dangerous to be dogmatic. Anapests are said to be characteristically rapid, hurried, because they crowd more syllables than iambs do into a line; but anapests are often slow-moving, because there is frequent iambic substitution and because many important words--monosyllables, for the most part--have to do duty for light syllables metrically. Perfect anapests, like perfect dactyls, are comparatively few in English.

Two-stress and 6-stress anapestic:

Canst thou say in thine heart Thou hast seen with thine eyes With what cunning of art Thou wast wrought in what wise, By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies? SWINBURNE, Hertha.[41]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [41] This whole poem abounds in substitutions. See Shelley's | | The Cloud, above, pages 59 f., which may be regarded as 2-and| | 3-stress anapestic lines, though two 2-stress lines are | | printed as one. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Three-stress anapestic:

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

Though the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me, And the love which my spirit hath painted It never hath found but in _thee_. BYRON, Stanzas to Augusta.

Four-stress anapestic:

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

Five-stress anapestic. This is a peculiar metre, usually felt to be choppy and harsh. It has been said that no one can read Browning's Saul and follow both metre and meaning at the same time:

As I sang,-- Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool, silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, ...

Eight-stress anapestic. This is on the whole the longest line possible in English.[42] It is really a _tour de force_.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | [42] Tennyson's To Virgil, though it has nine stresses in | | each line and is therefore an exception to the statement | | made above, page 69, is shorter in respect of the number of | | syllables. There is, moreover, a poem, After Death, by Fanny | | Parnell, consisting of fourteen 10-stress lines. The | | cumbrousness of the rhythm is apparent in these two | | specimens--which are rather better than the others-- | | | | Ah, the harpings and the salvos and the shoutings of thy | | exiled sons returning! | | I should hear, though dead and mouldered, and the grave-damps | | should not chill my bosom's burning. | | | | The whole of this poem may be found in Sir Edward T. Cook's More | | Literary Recreations, p. 278. | | | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

The trochaic line is generally stiff and thumping. It does not admit of frequent substitutions, for many substitutions destroy the trochaic effect. It usually comes to an abrupt close because feminine endings are not easy or natural in English. Moreover, there are in the language so many dissyllabic words of trochaic movement that the resulting frequent coincidence of word and foot tends to produce monotony. Tennyson once said that when he wanted to write a poem that would be popular he wrote in trochaics. Certainly the stresses are more prominent in trochaic verse than in iambic or even anapestic; and the untrained ear likes its rhythms well marked.[43] The Locksley Hall poems are good examples:

Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Notable is Tennyson's skill in this 8-stress line in avoiding the natural break into 4 + 4. This break occurs regularly and is enforced by the rime in Poe's The Raven. One of the most successful metrically of purely trochaic poems is Browning's One Word More, a few lines of which are quoted on page 70.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [43] By a series of experiments C. R. Squire found a natural | | preference for duple over triple rhythms (though the triple | | rhythms seemed 'pleasanter'), and for trochaic and dactylic | | over iambic and anapestic. (Am. Journal of Psychology, vol. | | 12 (1901), p. 587.) | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Four-stress trochaic.

Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are?

Be she fairer than the day, Or the flow'ry meads in May, If she think not well of me, What care I how fair she be? WITHER, The Author's Resolution.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? KEATS, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern.

Five-stress trochaic.

Then the music touch'd the gates and died; Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited, As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbbed and palpitated; Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound, Caught the sparkles, and in circles, Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes, Flung the torrent rainbow round. TENNYSON, The Vision of Sin.

(Note here the substitutions for special imitative effect.)

Shelley's To a Skylark is in trochaic metre of 3-stress and 6-stress lines.

Dactylic lines are not common except in the imitations of the classical hexameter. Hood's familiar Bridge of Sighs in 2-stress lines, and Tennyson's still more familiar Charge of the Light Brigade (which is, however, only partly dactylic) are good illustrations.

Iambic lines are by very far the most frequent in English verse. No special examples need therefore be given except of the less usual 6-stress and 7-stress lines. On blank verse see pages 133 ff.

The 6-stress line is called the alexandrine (probably from the name of an Old French poem in this metre). It is still the standard line in classical French verse; but the French alexandrine differs from the English, principally in having four stresses instead of six. In English it is usually awkward when used for long stretches, and tends to split into 3 + 3. Lowell called it "the droning old alexandrine." It was employed for several long poems in Middle English; and certain of the Elizabethans tried it: Surrey, Sidney, and Drayton--Drayton's Polyolbion (1613) contains about 15,000 alexandrines. It has not commended itself to modern poets, with one exception, for sustained work. Browning wrote his Fifine at the Fair (1872) in this measure; and while he succeeded in relieving it of some of its monotony, he only demonstrated again its unfitness, in English, for continuous use. A peculiar musical effect is obtained from it, however, by Mr. Siegfried Sassoon in his Picture-Show:

And still they come and go: and this is all I know-- That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show, Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way, With glad or grievous hearts I'll never understand Because Time spins so fast, and they've no time to stay Beyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand.

On the other hand, as the last line of the Spenserian and similar stanzas the alexandrine has proved very melodious and effective, largely by contrast with the shorter lines. A few isolated examples will illustrate some of its powers, but of course the whole stanza should be read together.

And streames of purple bloud new die the verdant fields. SPENSER, Faerie Queen, I, 2, 17.

Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway. Ibid., I, 1, 34.

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep. With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close. MILTON, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowings speak his woes. BYRON, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, I, lxxvi.

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. Ibid., III, ii.

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. KEATS, Eve of St. Agnes, xxvii.

Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed. SHELLEY, Revolt of Islam, I, iv.

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. SHELLEY, Adonais, xxi.

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. Ibid., xl.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. SHELLEY, To a Skylark.

The slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. TENNYSON, Lotos Eaters.

Alexandrines were occasionally in the eighteenth century (and more frequently in the late seventeenth) inserted among heroic couplets for variety and special effect, as in Pope's

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. Odyssey, XI, 737-738.

But Pope himself condemned the 'needless alexandrine'

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. Essay on Criticism, 357.

One of the oldest lines of modern English verse is the so-called septenary (septenarius), having had a nearly continuous tradition from the twelfth-century Poema Morale down (in its divided form) to the present. It began as a single line of seven stresses or fourteen syllables, and continued to be used as such through the Elizabethan period, and sporadically even later.[44] But on account of its customary pause after the fourth foot, it very early broke into two short lines of four and three stresses each, and thus the septenary couplet became the ballad stanza. For example,

And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight When the unmeasur'd firmament bursts to disclose her light. CHAPMAN, Iliad, VIII.

is essentially the same metre, though printed differently, as

The western wave was all aflame, The day was wellnigh done! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad, bright sun. COLERIDGE, Ancient Mariner, Part III.

The more notable long poems in septenaries are Warner's Albion's England (1586), Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1565, 1567), and Chapman's translation of the Iliad (1598-1611).

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [44] Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning have written rimed | | septenaries. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

2. THE STANZA

_Couplet._ The line unit is used sometimes singly and continuously, as in blank verse, and sometimes in groups usually held together by rime. These groups are called stanzas or strophes. The simplest stanza is, therefore, the couplet rimed _aa_.[45] Couplets are either unequal or equal in length.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [45] The usual and most convenient way of indicating | | stanzaic structure is with small italic letters for the | | rimes and either superior or inferior numbers for the number | | of stresses in each line. Thus Landor's Rose Aylmer: | | | | Ah, what avails the sceptred race! | | Ah, what the form divine! | | What every virtue, every grace! | | Rose Aylmer, all were thine. | | | | is described as _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_. The repetition of a | | whole line is indicated by a capital letter. When all the | | lines are of the same length, one exponent figure suffices, | | as _abba^{4}_ for the In Memoriam stanza. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The only much-used unequal couplet is the combination, now old-fashioned, of an alexandrine and a septenary, and called, from the number of syllables, Poulter's Measure, because, says Gascoigne (1575), "it gives xii. for one dozen and xiii. for another." Wyatt and Surrey and Sidney wrote in it; the older drama employed it occasionally; Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562) on which Shakespeare's play was based, is in this measure. The following example is by Nicholas Grimald (1519-62).

What sweet relief the showers to thirsty plants we see, What dear delight the blooms to bees, my true love is to me! As fresh and lusty Ver foul Winter doth exceed-- As morning bright, with scarlet sky, doth pass the evening's weed-- As mellow pears above the crabs esteemed be-- So doth my love surmount them all, whom yet I hap to see!

It survives chiefly in the S.M. (short measure) of the hymn books and such stanzas as that used by Macaulay in his Horatius:

From Egypt's bondage come, Where death and darkness reign, We seek our new and better home, Where we our rest shall gain.

* * * * *

When the goodman mends his armor, And trims his helmet's plume; When the goodwife's shuttle merrily Goes flashing through the loom; With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave old days of old.

Other unequal couplets are found in Herrick's A Thanskgiving to God for his House (_a^{4}a^{2}_) and Browning's Love among the Ruins (_a^{6}a^{2}_).

The equal couplet is used both continuously and, more rarely except with long lines, as a single stanza. Sometimes two or three couplets are combined into a larger stanza. The usual forms of the couplet used continuously are the 4-stress or short couplet ("octosyllabic") and the 5-stress or heroic couplet ("decasyllabic").

* * * * *

_Short Couplet._ The short couplet in duple iambic-trochaic movement has proved its worth by its long history and the variety of its uses. The English borrowed it from the French octosyllabic verse, and employed it chiefly for long narrative poems. Chaucer used it in his earlier work, the Book of the Duchess, and the House of Fame; Butler in the serio-comic Hudibras; Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, and Morris in their Romantic narrative verse. For lyric purposes it was used by Shakespeare and other dramatists, by Milton in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and since then by most of the greater and lesser poets. But its effect, especially in long poems, is often monotonous because of the rapid recurrence of the rimes, and its powers are somewhat limited. Except under expert handling it is likely to turn into a dog-trot, and it seems sometimes to lack dignity where dignity is required. On the whole it is better for swift movement, for the obvious reason that the line is short: the frequent repetition of the unit, both line and couplet, produces the effect of hurry.

Never has the short couplet revealed its flexibility to better advantage than in Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and in Coleridge's Christabel. In Christabel Coleridge believed he was inventing a new prosodic principle, that of counting the stresses rather than the syllables;[46] and though he erred with respect to the originality of his principle, he succeeded in getting a freer movement than the couplet had had since Chaucer. Some of the roughness of Chaucer's short couplets is probably due to the imperfections of our texts, and some also to the haste with which he wrote--it is in this metre that the fatal facility of certain poets has proved the worst bane--but the Chaucerian couplet stands as a prototype (though not literally a model) of the freer flow of Byron's[47] and Morris's couplets, in contrast to those of Scott and Wordsworth, which resemble the stricter, syllable-counting couplets of Chaucer's friend Gower.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [46] See above, p. 66, n. 1. | | | | [47] Byron follows now one model, now another. In Parisina | | he consciously tried the metrical scheme of Christabel. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The chief drawbacks of the short couplet, besides monotony, are the tendency to diffuseness of language and looseness of grammatical structure (as in Chaucer and Scott, for instance), and rime-padding, i. e., the insertion of phrases and sometimes even irrelevant ideas, for the sake of the rime.

The chief sources of variety are substitution, pause, run-on lines, and division. The first is very apparent in the much-quoted passage in Christabel:

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

The pause offers more difficulties for the poet, and more opportunities; since the line is so short, and the rimes reinforce the regular metrical pause at the end of the line, important grammatical pauses cannot well occur in the middle of the line without danger of breaking the rhythm. The logical pause must, therefore, usually coincide with the metrical and thus emphasize unduly the line unit. Moreover, the quick return of the rime sound causes the couplet itself to be felt as a unit and produces what are called 'closed couplets,' in which the two lines contain an independent idea. To avoid irksome uniformity in this regard three devices are customary: to 'run-on' the meaning from one line to the next, thus momentarily obscuring the metrical pause, to 'run-on' the couplets themselves, and to divide the couplet so that the second verse belongs to a new sentence or independent clause.

And thus, when they appeared at last, And all my bonds aside were cast, These heavy walls to me had grown A heritage--and all my own! And half I felt as they were come 5 To tear me from a second home. With spiders I had friendship made, And watched them in their sullen trade; Had seen the mice by moonlight play-- And why should I feel less than they? 10 We were all inmates of one place, And I, the monarch of each race, Had power to kill; yet, strange to tell! In quiet we had learned to dwell. My very chains and I grew friends, 15 So much a long communion tends To make us what we are:--even I Regained my freedom with a sigh. BYRON, The Prisoner of Chillon.

In this passage, which is on the whole conservative and stiff in movement, observe (1) how the pause in the middle of ll. 4, 13, and 17 helps to vary the measure; (2) how many of the verses end with a logical as well as metrical pause; (3) how in ll. 3, 5, 16, and 17 the meaning runs over without pause into the next lines; (4) how the first two couplets and the last two are run together, whereas the third and fourth are both closed and independent; and (5) how at ll. 9 and 10 the couplet is divided. This last device is not very frequent in the practice of any poet except Chaucer; it is well illustrated, however, in these lines from Shelley's With a Guitar to Jane:

All this it knows; but will not tell To those that cannot question well The Spirit that inhabits it. It talks according to the wit Of its companions; and no more ...

Two other means of varying the swing of the short couplet are to change the order of the rimes (as in the example above from Christabel) or introduce a third riming line (that is, to use triplets with the couplets), and to intermingle shorter lines, as Coleridge does occasionally in Christabel, and Byron at the beginning of The Prisoner of Chillon:

My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears.

* * * * *

_Heroic Couplet._ The 5-stress line, both rimed and unrimed, is the most flexible and best adapted to all kinds of subjects that English versification possesses. Its powers range through the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, the dignity of the sonnet, and the grandeur of Milton, to the satire of Pope and the informal conversational verse of Mr. Robert Frost. The 4-stress line is too short, the 6-stress is too long (when it does not split into two equal parts); the 5-stress seems to hit the golden average. It is less inclined to 'go' by itself, and therefore is suitable for slow movements; on the other hand, it is easily divided by pauses and hence is easily relieved of monotony and adjustable to almost all tempos.[48]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [48] It is no doubt significant that the rhythmic pulses | | which come most naturally to us are in twos and threes and | | their multiples; while even to beat time in fives requires a | | special effort. In music 5/8 or 5/4 time is extremely rare. | | There is an example of the latter in Chopin's Sonata I (the | | larghetto movement). | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The earliest form, historically, of the 5-stress line in English was in rimed couplets; the first poet to use the rimed couplet continuously (as distinguished from occasional use in a stanza) was Chaucer.[49] Blank verse is a modification of the couplet by the simple omission of the rimes at the end.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [49] On the source and origin of the 5-stress couplet in | | English, authorities are in disagreement. See Alden, English | | Verse, pp. 177 ff., and the references there given. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The history of the heroic couplet may be divided into two periods, that of Chaucer and his followers, Gavin Douglas and Spenser, and that beginning with Marlowe, Chapman, and other Elizabethans and continuing down to the present. This division is peculiar, for it represents a double curve of development, the one comparatively short, the other long. Chaucer's couplet has all the marks of ease and freedom of a fully matured medium: great variety in the pauses, run-on lines and couplets, and divided couplets. (All the means of securing variety for the short couplet, explained above, apply _a fortiori_ to the heroic line.) Douglas, in large part, and Spenser pretty fully, adopted and preserved this unfettered movement, though the former anticipates here and there the neat balance of the Popian couplet. Then the measure seems to have begun all over again, partly on account of an attack of syllable-counting, with close formal recognition of the line unit and the couplet unit, and gradually worked its way back to its original flexibility.[50]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [50] Note Professor Woodberry's praise of the heroic couplet | | for its simple music, its suppleness, its power of forcing | | brevity: "the best metrical form which intelligence, as | | distinct from poetical feeling, can employ." (Makers of | | Literature, p. 104.) | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The following characteristic examples illustrate the chief varieties of the couplet. (Again, they should be supplemented by the reading of longer passages. Pope's couplet, in particular, with its perfection of form according to a few well-marked formulas, reveals its great weakness, monotony, only in the consecutive reading of several pages.)

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertue engendred is the flour; Whan Zephyrus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in here corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seken straunge strondes, To feme halwes, kouthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seeke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. CHAUCER, Canterbury Tales, Prologue.

The Husbandman was meanly well content Triall to make of his endevourment; And, home him leading, lent to him the charge Of all his flocke, with libertie full large, Giving accompt of th' annuall increce Both of their lambes, and of their woolly fleece. Thus is this Ape become a shepheard swaine, And the false Foxe his dog (God give them paine!) For ere the yeare have halfe his course out-run, And doo returne from whence he first begun, They shall him make an ill accompt of thrift. SPENSER, Mother Hubberd's Tale.

And in the midst a silver altar stood: There Hero, sacrificing turtles' blood, Kneel'd to the ground, veiling her eyelids close; And modestly they open'd as she rose: Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head; And thus Leander was enamoured. Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gaz'd, Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd, Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strook: Such force and virtue hath an amorous look. It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is over-rul'd by fate. MARLOWE, Hero and Leander.

But when the far-off isle he touch'd, he went Up from the blue sea to the continent, And reach'd the ample cavern of the Queen, Whom he found within; without seldom seen. A sun-like fire upon the hearth did flame; The matter precious, and divine the frame; Of cedar cleft and incense was the pile, That breathed an odour round about the isle. Herself was seated in an inner room, Whom sweetly sing he heard, and at her loom, About a curious web, whose yarn she threw In with a golden shuttle. A grove grew In endless spring about her cavern round, With odorous cypress, pines, and poplars crown'd. CHAPMAN, Odyssey, V.

Though Chapman sometimes uses the pause and run-on lines freely, the regularity of the foot makes for a certain stiffness and inflexibility.

She, she is gone; she's gone; when thou know'st this, What fragmentary rubbish this world is Thou know'st, and that it is not worth a thought; He honours it too much that thinks it nought. Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom, Which brings a taper to the outward room, Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light, And after brings it nearer to thy sight; For such approaches doth heaven make in death. DONNE, Anatomy of the World.

Donne's metres were notoriously careless--or deliberately irregular. They therefore stand somewhat out of place in the general trend of development.

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! No passion there in my free breast should move, None but the sweet and best of passions, love! There while I sing, if gentle Love be by, That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high; With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name, I'll make the list'ning savages grow tame. WALLER, Battle of the Summer Islands.

Waller, though his lifetime (1605-87) embraces that of Milton, is the natural precursor of the eighteenth century. His couplets are almost all characteristic of eighteenth-century couplets, which seem to seek perfection within themselves. The aim of Waller, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson was primarily to exalt the couplet and extract from it all its potentialities, not to obscure it by varied pauses and run-on lines. Waller was praised by the best critics of his own and the following generation for the great 'sweetness' and smoothness of his verse.

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, unfix'd in principles and place; In pow'r unpleas'd, 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. DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I.

All human things are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire and had govern'd long; In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute. This aged prince, now flourishing in peace And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the State. DRYDEN, MacFlecknoe.

It is interesting, from a metrical point of view, to compare Chaucer's couplets with Dryden's where he is translating Chaucer, e. g., in the Knight's Tale and Palamon and Arcite.

Between 1664 and 1678 it became the fashion, partly as a reaction against the liberties of the late Elizabethan blank verse, and partly under French influence, to write drama in heroic couplets. But the undertaking soon proved abortive.

Others for Language all their care express, And value books, as women men, for dress; Their praise is still,--the style is excellent; The sense, they humbly take upon content. Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place; The face of nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon; It gilds all objects, but it alters none. POPE, Essay on Criticism.

Meantime the Grecians in a ring beheld The coursers bounding o'er the dusty field. The first who marked them was the Cretan king; High on a rising ground, above the ring, The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey He well observ'd the chief who led the way, And heard from far his animating cries, And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes. POPE, Iliad, XXIII.

Pope's couplets represent the acme of polish and metrical dexterity--a perfect instrument for wit and satire.[51] Thus in the mock-heroic Rape of the Lock these well-modeled couplets prove their mettle, but in the translation of Homer their fatal limitations are easily apparent.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [51] See Pope's own analysis of his system of verse in a | | letter to Cromwell, November 25, 1710. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endear'd each scene! How often have I paus'd on every charm, The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topt the neighboring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made....

Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made: But a bold peasantry, a country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied. GOLDSMITH, The Deserted Village.

The departure from the petrified couplet was gradual and natural, and influenced greatly by the simpler language and content of the verses. These two specimens show Goldsmith writing in two manners, only a few lines apart. Still freer are Cowper's couplets in his On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) and Crabbe in his earlier work, still practised the eighteenth-century couplet (in the Tales of the Hall, 1819, Crabbe varied it to a considerable degree), but the new spirit of the Romantic Movement leavened all the metrical forms, as it did the themes, of poetry. Compare the following examples.

One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One heaven, one hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire! SHELLEY, Epipsychidion.

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons.... SHELLEY, Julian and Maddalo.

'Twas far too strange and wonderful for sadness; Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light, The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly, But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy; A dusky empire and its diadems; One faint eternal eventide of gems. Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold, Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told, With all its lines abrupt and angular. KEATS, Endymion, II.

Ay, happiness Awaited me; the way life should be used Was to acquire, and deeds like you conduced To teach it by a self-revealment, deemed Life's very use, so long! Whatever seemed Progress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayed My reaching it--no pleasure. I have laid The ladder down; I climb not; still, aloft The platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft, I dared not entertain, elude me; yet Never of what they promised could I get A glimpse till now! BROWNING, Sordello, III.

She thanked men,--good! but thanked Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say ... BROWNING, My Last Duchess.

It hath been seen and yet it shall be seen That out of tender mouths God's praise hath been Made perfect, and with wood and simple string He hath played music sweet as shawm-playing To please himself with softness of all sound; And no small thing but hath been sometime found Full sweet of use, and no such humbleness But God hath bruised withal the sentences And evidence of wise men witnessing; No leaf that is so soft a hidden thing It never shall get sight of the great sun; The strength of ten has been the strength of one, And lowliness has waxed imperious. SWINBURNE, St. Dorothy.

_Three-Line Stanza_

Stanzas of three lines riming _aaa_ (called tercets or triplets) are not very common. Familiar, however, is Herrick's Upon Julia's Clothes:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows That liquifaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see That brave vibration each way free; O how that glittering taketh me!

Other examples are: Threnos (in The Phœnix and the Turtle), Herbert's Trinity Sunday, Quarles' Shortness of Life, Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Tennyson's The Two Voices, Swinburne's After a Reading, and Clear the Way; and (with a simple refrain) Cowper's To Mary:

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

Crashaw's Wishes to his Supposed Mistress rimes _a^{2}a^{3}a^{4}_.

Tennyson's 'O Swallow, Swallow' in The Princess is in unrimed triplets.

On the terza rima see below, page 164.

_Four-Line Stanza: Quatrain_

The most important quatrains are the ballad stanza, riming _a^{4}b^{3}c^{4}b^{3}_ or _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_ (the Common Measure of the hymnals), with the related Long Measure riming _abab^{4}_ or _abcb^{4}_; the In Memoriam stanza _abba^{4}_; and the elegiac quatrain _abab^{5}_. These are often combined into 8-and 12-line stanzas, as _abab bcbc^{5}_ (called the Monk's Tale stanza), _abab cdcd_, etc., sometimes with alternating long and short lines. And these, as well as longer stanzas, are frequently varied by the use of repetitions and refrains.[52]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [52] For complete lists and examples of all the various | | stanzaic forms, the larger works of Alden and Schipper | | should be consulted. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The ballad stanza, with its frequent variations of internal rime and additional verses is excellently illustrated by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Similar is Tennyson's Sir Galahad, a 12-line stanza of three quatrains, _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}cdc^{4}d^{3}efgf^{4}_. Another common variation is that of Hood's The Dream of Eugene Aram, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, and Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, _a^{4}b^{3}c^{4}b^{3}d^{4}b^{3}_. The musical roughness of the old ballads should be contrasted with the regularized modern imitations, such as Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus. Better imitations are Rossetti's Stratton Water and The King's Tragedy, Robert Buchanan's Judas Iscariot, and W.B. Yeats's Father Gilligan. Sometimes a shorter quatrain is printed as a long couplet and combined into larger stanzas, as in Mr. Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman (which has an additional variation in the inserted fourth and fifth lines):

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding-- Riding--riding-- The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

The variations in Tennyson's The Revenge should be carefully studied.

The ballad stanza is closely similar to the _abab^{4}_ and _abcb^{4}_ quatrains, and (as in the Sir Galahad mentioned just above) the two are sometimes united. All three were much used by Wordsworth and many minor poets for lyrics as well as narratives; the result is often an undignified tinkle that takes the popular ear and "makes the judicious grieve." The stanzaic unit is so easily carried in one's mind and so rapidly repeats itself, that there is little opportunity for the necessary pleasing surprises. But that the measure is capable of a simple expressive music is evident from such examples as Wordsworth's 'Lucy' poems. These stanzas, both alone and doubled (as in To Mary in Heaven), were favorites with Burns.

A striking musical effect was obtained by Swinburne in Dolores by shortening the last line of a double quatrain:

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.

Similar interesting variations are Coleridge's Love, _aba^{4}b^{3}_ and Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper.

The In Memoriam stanza (_abba^{4})_ is named after Tennyson's poem (though that was by no means its first use), because Tennyson gave it a peculiar melody, and, partly for this reason and partly from the length and subject of the poem, almost preëmpted it for elegiac purposes.[53] Characteristic stanzas metrically are these:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair.

And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood.

Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [53] On its origin and the twenty-five poems in it by | | seventeen different poets, from Ben Jonson to Clough and | | Rossetti, before the publication of In Memoriam, see E. P. | | Morton in Modern Language Notes, 24 (1909), pp. 67 ff. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

One of the peculiarities of the stanza is the increased emphasis which the rime of the third verse receives from its proximity to that of the second; and this is noticeable both when there is a logical pause after the third verse and when there is none:

'Thou makest thine appeal to me: I bring to life, I bring to death: The spirit does but mean the breath: I know no more.' And he, shall he....

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

Run-on stanzas are very frequent; especially remarkable is the periodic movement of the four stanzas of LXXXVI, leading up to the last line--

A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'

"By the rhyme-scheme of the quatrain," says Corson, "the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza is reduced, the second and third verses being the most closely braced by the rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to the sweet continuity of flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read, aloud, of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and fourth, verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding rhymes more emphatic. There are as many as ninety-one such stanzas.... The poem could not have laid hold of so many hearts as it has, had the rhymes been alternate, even if the thought-element had been the same."[54] Examples for this experiment are:

To-night the winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day: The last read leaf is rolled away, The rooks are blown about the skies. XV, 1.

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. XXVII, 4.

Compare the slightly different effect of the same stanza printed as two lines, in Wilde's The Sphinx:

The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him come Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme. He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed, He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty, and the waters sank.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [54] H. Corson, Primer of English Verse, pp. 70 f. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The name 'elegiac stanza' for the _abab^{5}_ quatrain comes apparently from its appropriate use by Gray in the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, but it is not altogether fitting; for it is simply the quatrain movement of the English sonnet, where no lament is intended, and it was employed effectively by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, and has been often employed since, without elegiac feeling. For examples see the stanza from Gray, page 55, and the sonnets on pages 129 f. An especially interesting modification is that of Tennyson's Palace of Art, _a^{5}b^{4}a^{5}b^{3}_.

_Five-Line Stanza_

Five-line stanzas are formed in various ways, e. g., _aaaba_, _aabba_, _aabab_, _abbba_, _ababa_, _ababb_, etc., in lines of three, four, five, etc., stresses.

_Six-Line Stanza_

Six-line stanzas are formed by similar combinations; the most frequent is the quatrain + couplet, called, from Shakespeare's poem, the Venus and Adonis stanza, _ababcc^{5}_ (compare the end of the English sonnet and the ottava rima).[55] Familiar examples are Wordsworth's To a Skylark and his fine Laodamia.

Since them art dead, lo! here I prophesy: Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end; Ne'er settled equally, but high or low; That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. Venus and Adonis.

The same rimes with 4-stress verses are also common,[56] for example, Wordsworth's

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

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [55] Early examples may be conveniently found in the Oxford | | Book of English Verse, Nos. 75, 96, 102, 108, 172. | | | | [56] For early examples see again the Oxford Book of English | | Verse, Nos. 74, 140, 182, 184, 187. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Another important 6-line stanza is the tail-rime or _rime couée_, a stanza much used in the Middle English romances and chosen by Chaucer for his parody, Sir Thopas. Harry Bailey, mine host of the Canterbury pilgrims, called it 'doggerel rime.' The simple and probably normal form is _aa^{4}b^{3}cc^{4}b^{3}_ or _aa^{4}b^{3}aa^{4}b^{3}_, which to save space in the manuscripts was written thus:

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

Variations are extremely common: the _aaa^{4}b^{2}ccc^{4}b^{2}_ of Wordsworth's To the Daisy, _aaaa^{4}b^{2}ccc^{4}b^{3}_ of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, _aa^{3}b^{2}ccc^{3}b^{2}_ of S. F. Smith's America, _aaa^{3}b^{2}ccc^{3}b^{2}_ of Drayton's Agincourt, and the so-called Burns stanza, in which Burns wrote some fifty poems, _aaa^{4}b^{2}a^{4}b^{2}_, e. g., To a Mouse and Address to the Deil.

_Seven-Line Stanza_

The most important 7-line stanza is the _rime royale_ or Chaucer (or Troilus) stanza, _ababbcc^{5}_. In the Parlement of Foules, the Man of Law's Tale, and Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer made it a splendid vehicle both for narrative and for reflective analysis, for humor, satire, description, and all the gamut of emotions; in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries James I, Lydgate and Hoccleve, Henryson and Dunbar, and Skelton, Hawes and Barclay employed it, largely in imitation of Chaucer; Wyatt used it in his Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus; and Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece. Since then it has not proved attractive to the poets--though no reason for its disuse is obvious--except Wordsworth (in his translations of Chaucer) and Morris, Chaucer's latest disciple.

And by the hond ful oft he wolde take This Pandarus, and into gardyn lede, And swich a feste, and swiche a proces make Hym of Criseyde, and of hire wommanhede, And of hire beaute, that, withouten drede, It was an heven his wordes for to here, And thanne he wolde synge in this manere. Troilus and Criseyde, Bk. III.

So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care, Holds disputation with each thing she views, And to herself all sorrow doth compare; No object but her passion's strength renews; And as one shifts, another straight ensues: Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words; Sometime 'tis mad and too much talk affords. Rape of Lucrece.

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer of an empty day. MORRIS, Earthly Paradise.

In comparison with the formality of Shakespeare's and the evenness of Morris's, the ease and smoothness of Chaucer's stanza are striking. Wyatt's stanzas are musical in their way.

_Eight-Line Stanza_

Eight-line stanzas are variously formed--chiefly by the doubling of quatrains, sometimes with different rimes, as _ababcdcd_, sometimes preserving one or another or both rimes, as _ababbcbc_, _abcbdbeb_, _ababacac_, _abababab_, etc. Other varieties are _abcdabcd_ (Rossetti) and _aaabcccb_ (tail-rime), and _aabbccdd_.

One of the commonest 8-line stanzas is that imported from Italy and called _ottava rima_, _abababcc_. It has been charged with tediousness, and tedious it may become if not sedulously varied. It was introduced, along with so much else from Italy, by Wyatt, and was then employed for different purposes by Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, and others.[57] At the close of the eighteenth century it enjoyed a rebirth. "It had already been used by Harrington, Drayton, Fairfax (in his translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered), and ... in later times by Gay; and it had even been used by Frere's contemporary, William Tennant; but to Frere belongs the honour of giving it the special characteristics which Byron afterwards popularized in Beppo and Don Juan.... Byron, taking up the stanza with equal skill and greater genius, filled it with the vigour of his personality, and made it a measure of his own, which it has ever since been hazardous for inferior poets to attempt."[58] Byron had first adopted the stanza in his translation of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, which is itself in _ottava rime_. Beppo was written in 1817, and Don Juan begun in the next year. In 1819 the first four cantos of Don Juan were published; in 1820 Keats published his Isabella, and Shelley wrote his Witch of Atlas, both in the same metre.

Those giant mountains inwardly were moved, But never made an outward change of place; Not so the mountain-giants--(as behoved A more alert and locomotive race), Hearing a clatter which they disapproved, They ran straight forward to besiege the place With a discordant universal yell, Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell. J. H. FRERE, The Monks and the Giants.

To the kind of reader of our sober clime This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, And revell'd in the fancies of the time, True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic, But all these, save the last, being obsolete, I chose a modern subject as more meet. BYRON, Don Juan, IV, vi.

A lovely Lady garmented in light From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a temple's cloven roof; her hair Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar; And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new. SHELLEY, The Witch of Atlas.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [57] There are two _ottava rime_ in Lycidas, one at the | | close of the Blind Mouths passage and one at the end of the | | poem. | | | | [58] A. Dobson, in Ward's English Poets, vol. iv, p. 240. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

_Nine-Line Stanza_

By far the most important of 9-line stanzas, and one of the finest of all stanzas in English poetry, is the _ababbcbc^{5}c^{6}_ invented by Spenser--a double quatrain of 5-stress lines plus an alexandrine. This particular octave had been used by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, and is sometimes referred to as the Monk's Tale stanza: the stroke of metrical genius lay in adding the 'supplementary harmony' of the alexandrine, by which the whole stanza climbs to a majestic close or ebbs in a delightful decrescendo as the poet wills.[59] The long swing of nine verses on three rimes, with the combined effect of the interwoven rimes (_abab_ and _bcbc_) united by the couplet in the middle, culminating in the unequal couplet at the close, the extraordinary opportunity of balancing and contrasting the rime sounds, and of almost infinitely varying the pauses--all these render the Spenserian stanza incomparable for nearly every sort of poetic expression.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [59] On the Spenserian stanza see especially Corson, pp. 87 | | ff. Lowell's characterization of Spenser's use of it is | | interesting: "In the alexandrine, the melody of one stanza | | seems forever longing and feeling forward after that which | | is to follow.... In all this there is soothingness, indeed, | | but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, | | but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses--now at | | the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and | | again of the fourth--he gives spirit and energy to a measure | | whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous" (Essay | | on Spenser). See also Mackail's chapter on Spenser in | | Springs of Helicon; and Shelley's praise in his Preface to | | the Revolt of Islam: "I have adopted the stanza of Spenser | | (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider | | it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of | | Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is | | no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. | | This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was | | enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound | | which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts | | can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the | | pauses of this measure." | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

After the Faerie Queene, the chief poems in this metre are: Shenstone's The Schoolmistress (1742), Thomson's The Castle of Indolence (1748), Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786), Scott's Don Roderick (1811), Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818 et seq.), Shelley's Laon and Cythna (The Revolt of Islam) (1817, 1818), and Adonais (1821), Keats's Eve of St. Agnes (1820), and the opening of Tennyson's Lotos Eaters (1833).

From the following examples only a limited conception can be gained of the stanza's varied capabilities. Long passages should be read together--and read, for this purpose, with more attention to the sound than to the meaning--in order that the peculiarities of handling of the different poets may be felt.

A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, The cruell marks of many a bloody fielde; Yet armes till that time did he never wield. His angry steede did chide his foming bitt, As much disdayning to the curbe to yield: Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt, As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt. Faerie Queen, I, i, 1.

With loftie eyes, halfe loth to looke so lowe, She thancked them in her disdainefull wise; Ne other grace vouchsafed them to showe Of Princesse worthy; scarse them bad arise. Her Lordes and Ladies all this while devise Themselves to setten forth to straungers sight: Some frounce their curled heare in courtly guise; Some prancke their ruffes; and others trimly dight Their gay attyre; each others greater pride does spight. Ibid., I, iv, 14.

The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay: Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see, In springing flowre the image of thy day. Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee, That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may. Lo! see soone after how more bold and free Her bared bosome she doth broad display; Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away. Faerie Queen, II, xii, 74.

Or like the hell-borne Hydra, which they faine That great Alcides whilome overthrew, After that he had labourd long in vaine To crop his thousand heads, the which still new Forth budded, and in greater number grew. Such was the fury of this hellish Beast, Whitest Calidore him under him downe threw; Who nathemore his heavy load releast, But aye, the more he rag'd, the more his powre increast. Ibid., VI, xii, 32.

O ruthful scene! when from a nook obscure His little sister did his peril see: All playful as she sate, she grows demure; She finds full soon her wonted spirits free, She meditates a prayer to set him free: Nor gentle pardon could this dame deny (If gentle pardons could with dames agree) To her sad grief that swells in either eye And wrings her so that all for pity she could die. SHENSTONE, The Schoolmistress.

And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams, Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace; O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams, That played, in waving lights, from place to place, And shed a roseate smile on nature's face. Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array, So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space; Ne could it e'er such melting forms display, As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay. JAMES THOMSON, The Castle of Indolence, I, xliv.

The chearfu' supper done, wi' serious face, They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride: His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care; And 'Let us worship God!' he says, with solemn air. BURNS, Cotter's Saturday Night.

Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between Heights which appear as lovers who have parted In hate, whose mining depths so intervene, That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted; Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted, Love was the very root of the fond rage Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed: Itself expired, but leaving them an age Of years all winters,--war within themselves to wage. BYRON, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, xciv.

(Childe Harold begins with many deliberate imitations of Spenser's language and style, but soon neglects them. Here perhaps more than in any other metre the tone and subject of the poem determine the movement of the stanza. The above is but one example of Byron's great variety.)

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, If thou wouldst be with them that thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. SHELLEY, Adonais, lii.

The ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft; And so it chanced, for many a door was wide, From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide: The level chambers, ready with their pride, Were flowing to receive a thousand guests: The carvéd angels, ever eager-eyed, Stared, where upon their head the cornice rests, With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts. KEATS, Eve of St. Agnes, iv.

During the earlier half of the seventeenth century a small group of poets, imitating Spenser both in substance and in external manner, introduced a number of stanzas, some of them not to be admired, whose chief characteristic is the alexandrine for a last line--e. g., _abababcc^{5}c^{6}_, _ababcc^{5}c^{6}_, _ababbcc^{5}c^{6}_, and _ababbc^{5}c^{6}_ (which last is that of Milton's On the Death of a Fair Infant, The Passion, and the introduction to On the Morning of Christ's Nativity). Another modification is that of Milton's Ode itself, _aa^{3}b^{5}cc^{3}b^{5}d^{4}d^{6}_. Matthew Prior attempted to improve the Spenserian stanza in his Ode on the Battle of Ramillies by a rime scheme (suggested perhaps by the English sonnet) _ababcdcde^{5}e^{6}_--of which Dr. Johnson says: "He has altered the stanza of Spenser, as a house is altered by building another house in its place of a different form." Still farther from the Spenserian original, but probably a development from it, is Shelley's To a Skylark _abab^{3}b^{6}_ (mainly in falling rhythm); and an extension of this last is Swinburne's Hertha (see above, page 81) _abab^{2}b^{6}_ in triple rising rhythm.

_Fourteen-Line Stanza: Sonnet_

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. DANTE GABRIEL ROSETTI.

The sonnet is a world, where feelings caught In webs of phantasy, combine and fuse Their kindred elements 'neath mystic dews Shed from the ether round man's dwelling wrought; Distilling heart's content, star-fragrance fraught With influences from breathing fires Of heaven in everlasting endless gyres Enfolding and encircling orbs of thought. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

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.

It is the pure white diamond Dante brought To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought; The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core; The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought For his own soul, to wear for evermore. EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.[60]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [60] See also the collection of Sonnets on the Sonnet, | | edited by M. Russell, London and New York, 1898. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The only English stanza that can be said to rival the Spenserian in artistic merit is the sonnet: but the two are for very different purposes, the one being nearly always used in long, clearly connected series, generally narrative, the other nearly always as an independent poem. Even when sonnets are written in 'sequences,' the relation of the individual sonnets to each other is rarely very close; the unity of the whole sequence (as in Rossetti's House of Life, for example, or Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese) is one merely of general tone and subject. Some of Shakespeare's sonnets are bound together by an intimate unity like stanzas of one poem; others are completely detached. Occasionally a poem is composed of three or four sonnet-stanzas, as Leigh Hunt's The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit, but even then each sonnet remains an independent whole.

The word 'sonnet,' borrowed with the metrical form from Italy in the late sixteenth century,[61] was at first used loosely for almost any short poem on love not obviously a 'song'; but soon the term became restricted to a poem of fourteen 5-stress iambic lines arranged according to one of two definite rime schemes or their modifications. These two rime schemes are the original Italian _abba abba cde cde_ and the English _abab cdcd efef gg_.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [61] On the origin of the sonnet in Italy (Sicily) see the | | references in Alden's English Verse, p. 267. Still a | | standard work is C. Tomlinson's The Sonnet, London, 1874. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

* * * * *

_Italian Sonnet._ The organization of the subject matter of an Italian sonnet is (at least theoretically) as fixed as that of the rimes. The whole should aim to convey without irrelevant detail a single thought or feeling. The first quatrain, _abba_, should introduce the subject; the second, _abba_, should develop it to a certain point, at which a pause occurs; such is the octave. The sestet continues in the first tercet, _cde_, the thought or feeling in a new direction or from a new point of view, and in the second, _cde_, brings it to a full conclusion.[62] The rime sounds of the octave and those of the sestet should be harmonious but not closely similar.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [62] Elaborate rules for the sonnet are given by William | | Sharp in the introduction to his Sonnets of the Century, and | | by Mark Pattison in the introduction to his edition of | | Milton's sonnets. There is valuable matter in the | | Introduction of J. S. Smart's The Sonnets of Milton, | | Glasgow, 1921. Compare also the 'divisioni' of Dante's | | sonnets in the Vita Nuova. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

It stands to reason that very few poets have enslaved themselves to such an imperious master without assuming certain liberties. Very few sonnets of any poetic value can be found conforming strictly to all these requirements. But the general purport of the formal division may be seen in Christina Rossetti's poignant "Remember"--

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you no more can hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann'd: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.

The first quatrain says: Remember me when I am gone and we can no longer meet and part as in life. The second quatrain adds: when we can no longer enjoy the companionship of mind, planning what might have been. The sestet continues: Nevertheless, do not let the memory of me become a burden, especially if you ever learn what was in my living thoughts.

Most sonnet writers, while regarding the form as in the abstract something almost sacred, have felt free to mould it in some measure to the immediate demands of their subject--not all, however, with the same success.[63] For the sonnet demands perfection, a single flaw almost cripples it; and few have the absolute command of language necessary to forge a single idea without irrelevance and without omission according to so strict a pattern. Those who are too subservient to the form weaken their poetic thought; those who, like Wordsworth often, are inobedient to the form, produce a poem which is imperfect because it is neither a sonnet nor not a sonnet. Few have come as near the true balance as Milton at his best. "A hundred Poets," says Sir William Watson,

A hundred Poets bend proud necks to bear This yoke, this bondage. He alone could don His badges of subjection with the air Of one who puts a king's regalia on.

And yet Milton, while preserving the rime scheme, generally disregards the thought divisions, and in half of his sonnets has the pause, not after the eighth line but within the ninth. Commenting on this division Wordsworth says: "Now it has struck me, that this is not done merely to gratify the ear by variety and freedom of sound, but also to aid in giving that pervading sense of intense unity in which the excellence of the sonnet has always seemed to me mainly to consist. Instead of looking at this composition as a piece of architecture, making a whole out of three parts, I have been much in the habit of preferring the image of an orbicular body--a sphere or dew-drop."

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [63] "In the production of a sonnet of triumphant success, | | heart, head, and hand must be right." Corson, p. 145. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Such a close unity can easily be obtained from the Italian sonnet, as hundreds of examples prove,--Milton's On his Blindness is a striking case, with no full stop until the end of the fourteenth line,--but even better for this object is the rime scheme invented by Spenser and used in a hundred and twenty-one sonnets: _ababbcbccdcdee_. The Spenserian sonnet, however, has found no favor with later poets.

Certain variations in the Italian form are regularly admitted as legitimate. The quatrains must always rime _abba_, but the sestet may rime _cdecde_ or _cdcdcd_ or _cdedce_ or _cdedec_, or almost any arrangement of two or three rimes which does not end in a couplet. And even this last caveat is sometimes disregarded by careful sonneteers. A greater liberty is to vary the rimes of the octave to _abbaacca_. The division of the sestet into two distinct tercets is very rarely maintained; and that of the octave into quatrains is frequently neglected with impunity. Thus the poet adjusts his theme to the strict rules of the sonnet much as he adjusts the natural rhythm of language to the strict forms of metre; the one inescapable requisite being that in neither may he lose hold of the fundamental pattern. But there is this difference, that the sonnet form is extraordinarily firm, and breaks if forced very far from normal. _How_ far one may go can be determined only in special cases, for "the mighty masters are a law unto themselves, and the validity of their legislation will be attested and held against all comers by the splendour of an unchallengeable success" (Pattison).

The early Italian sonnets in English, those of Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, are very irregular: Sidney's nearly always end in a couplet and rime the octave _abbaabba_ or _abababab_ or _ababbaba_. Sometimes he uses such a scheme as _ababbababccbcc_. Wyatt has one rimed _abbaaccacddcee_, and Surrey one _ababababababaa_.

Donne's Holy Sonnets (written about 1617, though not printed till 1633, 1635) were regular in form, and were practically the first English sonnets not concerned with love. Milton followed this tradition, and expanded it to further themes--his only successful poems in lighter mood are sonnets--occasional and political subjects--

... in his hand The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!

On the formal side Milton handled the sonnet, as has been said, with the freedom of a master.

From the time of Milton's (1642-58) very few sonnets were written in England till towards the end of the eighteenth century. Then the form was revived, under the original impulse of the Wartons in the mid-century, by Bowles, and given a new life by Wordsworth and Keats. In 1850 Mrs. Browning published her Sonnets from the Portuguese, and in 1870 and 1881 Rossetti his sonnet-sequence, The House of Life. The latter contains on the whole the truest representatives of the Italian model.

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale: The nightingale with feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.

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 feelst 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 PHILLIP SIDNEY, Astrophel and Stella, xxxi.

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 picture be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do 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.

Cyriack, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear To outward view of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Not to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heav'ns hand or will, nor bate one jot Or heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? --The conscience, friend, to have lost them overpli'd In liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask, Content, though blind, had I no better guide. MILTON.

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! WORDSWORTH, Upon Westminster Bridge.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life shall I command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore-- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two. E. B. BROWNING, Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve), That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold. The rose and poppy are her flowers: for where Is he not found, O Lilith! whom shed scent And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent, And round his heart one strangling golden hair. D. G. ROSSETTI, Body's Beauty.

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.

Here the rime scheme is peculiarly irregular, and the result is hardly a sonnet at all. Shelley's manuscript shows that the poem cost him a great deal of trouble.

* * * * *

_English Sonnet_. Out of the 'irregularities' and experiments of the early English sonneteers there rapidly developed a new form based on an entirely different principle of division, a series of three quatrains _abab_, _cdcd_, _efef_, followed by a couplet _gg_. This looser structure, simpler in music and in arrangement of subject matter, soon became a favorite, was used by Surrey and by Sidney, and was adopted by Shakespeare for his hundred and fifty-four sonnets[64]--hence it is sometimes called the Shakespearian sonnet. "With this key," said Wordsworth,

Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

But a sonnet in the stricter sense this 14-line stanza of course is not; for it does not aim to possess the balance, contrast, and functional organization of the Italian stanza. It has qualities of its own, however, which give it its own distinction; and, moreover, it is frankly what many sonnets of the stricter form, without the justification of a difficult and definitely organic structure, are: simply a poem of fourteen lines. For many of Wordsworth's and most of Mrs. Browning's sonnets, though they have the rime-scheme of the Italian, have the simple thought arrangement of the English sonnet.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [64] Two of these are irregular, the 99th, with fifteen | | lines (_ababacdcdefefgg_) and the 126th with twelve | | (_aabbccddeeff_). Milton's On the Admirable Dramatick Poet, | | W. Shakespear, still traditionally miscalled a sonnet, | | resembles the latter, with its _aabbccddeeffgghh_ or eight | | couplets. The 16-line stanza of Meredith's Modern Love | | (_abbacddceffeghhg_) is sometimes loosely called a sonnet. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Not many examples are necessary. Some, like the first two below, preserve the metrical division of the quatrains, with the couplet for an epigrammatic summary; others more or less obscure the division.

Combinations of the two sonnet forms not infrequently occur (as in the last example below), but they are not approved by the critics or the theorists, and generally they miss the excellences of both forms, however successful they may be in other respects.

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things! Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light That doth both shine and give us sight to see. O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide In this small course which birth draws out to death, And think how evil becometh him to slide Who seeketh Heaven, and comes of heavenly breath. Then farewell, world! thy uttermost I see: Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me! SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs that 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 perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 73.

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Pressed by these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more; So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men; And Death once dead, there's no more dying then. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 146.

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 possessed, 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 remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 29.

O deep unlovely brooklet, moaning slow Through moorish fen in utter loneliness! The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press The huntsman fluskers through the rustled heather. In March thy sallow buds from vermeil shells Break satin-tinted, downy as the feather Of moss-chat, that among the purplish bells Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn. The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear And mournful-strange his human cry forlorn. While wearily, alone, and void of cheer, Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen, To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen. DAVID GRAY, To a Brooklet.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. RUPERT BROOKE, The Soldier.[65]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [65] Quoted by permission of Dodd, Mead & Co., owners of the | | copy-right. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

_Complex Stanzas: the Ode_

Besides the stanzas described above, which are but the most familiar or most important of the great variety of regular English stanzas, there are others which, because they are peculiarly constructed or not regularly repeated, may be called Complex. Such are, for example, the 'trailing vine' stanzas of Spenser's Prothalamion (_abba^{5}a^{3}bcbc^{5}dded^{5}ee^{3}ff^{5}_) and Epithalamion (_ababc^{5}c^{3}dcde^{5}e^{3}fggf^{5}f^{4}hh^{5}_), and also the simpler _ababcde^{5}c^{3}de^{5}_ of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale.

Many of these complex stanzaic forms, moreover, belong in the tradition of the so-called Pindaric ode, imitated freely from the Greek choric odes of Pindar. The closer imitations are in fixed though complex stanzas regularly repeated, and are called Regular Pindarics. These have first a strophe of undetermined length, then an antistrophe identical in structure with the strophe, and then an epode, different in structure from the strophe and antistrophe. The second strophe and second antistrophe are identical metrically with the first, the second epode with the first epode; and so on. The best examples in English are Ben Jonson's On the Death of Sir H. Morrison, and Gray's Progress of Poesy and The Bard.[66]

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | [66] | | The rime scheme of the Progress of Poesy is: strophe and antistrophe | | _a^{4}b^{5}b^{4}a^{5}cc^{4}d^{5}d^{4}e^{5}e^{4}f^{4}f^{6}_, epode | | _aabb^{4}a^{3}ccdede^{4}fgfgh^{5}h^{6}_. The formula is three times | | repeated. Note the unusual arrangement of parts in Collins' Ode to | | Liberty and Shelley's Ode to Naples. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

About the middle of the seventeenth century, Cowley, misunderstanding the structure of Pindar's verse, invented another sort of Pindaric ode, which is called Irregular because, as he himself explained, "the numbers are various and irregular," and there was no formal stanzaic repetition. The lines were long or short according as the thought-rhythm demanded (or seemed to demand), and in respect to arrangement were not bound to any formal pattern. This freedom, under skilful control, may well produce felicitous results, but when not managed by poets of a strong and sure rhythmic sense--as it was not by the many Cowleyan imitators--it results merely in metrical license and amorphousness. "That for which I think this inequality of number is chiefly to be preferred," said Dr. Sprat, the first historian of the Royal Society, intending no sarcasm, "is its affinity with prose." But this argument, which is in part also that of the modern free-versifiers, is simply a confusion of two functions, the verse function and the prose function.

But before very long Cowley's invention found a true master in Dryden, whose To the Pious Memory of ... Mrs. Anne Killigrew (1686), Song for St. Cecelia's Day (1687), and Alexander's Feast (1697) are justly praised for their 'concerted music.' The example had in fact already been set by a still greater master; for Milton with his early experiments in unequal rimed lines (On Time and At a Solemn Music), his incomparable success with the irregular placing of rimes in Lycidas, and his choral effects both with and without rime in Samson Agonistes, had shown what English could do under proper guidance. Then, after Dryden, the regular Pindarics of Gray and certain of Collins' Odes helped to carry on the tradition down to Coleridge's Dejection, Monody on the Death of Chatterton, and Ode on the Departing Year, and its culmination in Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality ode (1807). After that, both in time and in interest, come Shelley's Mont Blanc (1816) (which he himself described as "an undisciplined overflowing of the soul") and Tennyson's On the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852) (which has at least Tennyson's almost unfailing technical dexterity). The work of Coventry Patmore in this kind of verse has not been generally approved. This is partly because of the subjects on which he wrote and partly because of his inability to compose lines of haunting melody--perhaps his deliberate avoidance of them. But in certain poems like The Azalea and The Toys the very intensity of the feeling both creates and sustains and in the end justifies the 'irregular' metre.

3. BLANK VERSE

Perhaps three-fourths of the greatest English poetry is in the unrimed 5-stress line called blank verse--nearly all the Elizabethan drama, Paradise Lost, some of the best of Keats and Shelley, Wordsworth's Michael, The Prelude, The Excursion (the good with the bad!), Tennyson's Princess and Idylls (notable poems of their age, though not to be ranked with 'the greatest'), and Browning's The Ring and the Book, together with most of the dramatic monologues. No other metrical form has such an interesting history; no other form has manifested so great a variety and adaptability for every kind of poetic thought and feeling. These two facts alone--its bulk and its variety--would justify a much fuller treatment than is possible here. But it will perhaps be sufficient to follow rapidly in outline the development of blank verse, with illustrations of the most significant stages, and then, in the following chapter, to devote more attention to blank verse than to rimed stanzas in the exposition of metrical harmonies and modulations.

The idea of writing unrimed verse was no doubt the most valuable result to English poetry of the academic attempts, towards the end of the sixteenth century, to write classical verse in English. It could be pointed out triumphantly that all the splendid poetry of classical antiquity--Homer and Lucretius and Virgil, Sappho and Catullus and Horace and Ovid--had been independent of rime; and whatever might be the disagreement on quantitative feet in English, it was impossible to deny that English could successfully copy this element of the great classical verse and recover, as Milton said, the ancient liberty "from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."

The movement had already begun in Italy with Trissino's Sophonisbe, written in 1515, the first modern tragedy. It reached England in the middle of the century with the influence of the Italian Renaissance brought chiefly by Wyatt and Surrey. Surrey translated two books of the Æneid (II and IV) into blank verse (published in 1557); Sackville and Norton adopted it for the first English tragedy, Gorboduc (1565); and then Gascoigne used it in his Steele Glas (1576) for general didactic and satiric purposes. Thus the beginning was made, and it remained only for the new form to justify itself by its children. Experiments continued, with the first great achievement in Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great.

The early examples show plainly both the influence of the parent couplet--for, as was said above, blank verse was written first as the old couplet without rime--and the syllable-counting principle: the line unit is prominent, there are comparatively few run-on lines or couplets, and some of Surrey's verse, for example, though it has the ten syllables then regarded as necessary, refuses to 'scan' according to more recent practice because the stresses are wholly irregular. On the other hand, there is often so great a regularity in coincidence of natural rhythm and metrical pattern, reinforced by some awkward wrenches of the conventional order of word and phrase, that the result is unpleasantly stiff and formal.

The Greeks' chieftains all irked with the war Wherein they wasted had so many years, And oft repuls'd by fatal destiny, A huge horse made, high raised like a hill, By the divine science of Minerva: Of cloven fir compacted were his ribs; For their return a feigned sacrifice: The fame whereof so wander'd it at point. In the dark bulk they clos'd bodies of men Chosen by lot, and did enstuff by stealth The hollow womb with armed soldiers. There stands in sight an isle, high Tenedon, Rich, and of fame, while Priam's kingdom stood; Now but a bay, and road, unsure for ship. SURREY, Second Book of Virgil's Æneid.

This is not so much monotonously regular as intolerably rough and unsteady.

For cares of kings, that rule as you have rul'd, For public wealth, and not for private joy, Do waste man's life and hasten crooked age, With furrowed face, and with enfeebled limbs, To draw on creeping death a swifter pace. They two, yet young, shall bear the parted reign With greater ease than one, now old, alone Can wield the whole, for whom much harder is With lessened strength the double weight to bear. Gorboduc, Act I, sc. ii.

The Nightingale, whose happy noble hart, No dole can daunt, nor fearful force affright, Whose chereful voice, doth comfort saddest wights, When she hir self, hath little cause to sing, Whom lovers love, bicause she plaines their greves, She wraies their woes, and yet relieves their payne, Whom worthy mindes, alwayes esteemed much, And gravest yeares, have not disdainde hir notes: (Only that king proud Tereus by his name With murdring knife, did carve hir pleasant tong, To cover so, his own foule filthy fault) This worthy bird, hath taught my weary Muze, To sing a song, in spight of their despight, Which work my woe, withouten cause or crime ... The Steele Glas.

Note here the monotonous pauses, indicated by the original punctuation.

Marlowe, inheriting the defects of his predecessors, succeeded, by virtue of his "plastic energy and power of harmonious modulation" in recreating the measure. He found it "monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long [i. e., unstressed and stressed]. 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. He did not force his metre to preserve a fixed and unalterable type, but suffered it to assume most variable modulations, the whole beauty of which depended upon their perfect adaptation to the current of his ideal."[67] No metre responds so readily and so completely to a poet's endowment of genius as blank verse, and hence the secret of Marlowe's improvements over his predecessors is his superior poetic gift. He seems to have felt and thought and written with an enormous imaginative power; by making his verse an organic expression of this power he achieved an almost new medium, ranging in variety from the simplicity and pathos of--

Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer, Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer, That bloody man?

to the "swelling bombast of bragging blank verse" (Thomas Nash's hostile phrase) in Tamburlaine--

No! for I shall not die. See, where my slave, the ugly monster, Death, Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear, Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart, Who flies away at every glance I give, And, when I look away, comes stealing on. Villain, away, and hie thee to the field! I and mine army come to load thy back With souls of thousand mangled carcasses. Look, where he goes; but see, he comes again, Because I stay: Techelles, let us march And weary Death with bearing souls to hell.