METRE
_Elements of verse rhythm._ The simplest metrical unit is the syllable;
the next higher unit is the foot, a group of syllables; the next higher
unit the line, a group of feet; then the stanza or strophe.
In some prosodies--as the French and Italian, for example--the standard
unit of verse is the syllable. The first essential of a line is that it
have a certain number of syllables; the accents or stresses may,
theoretically at least, fall anywhere in the line. In English verse also
the syllable has sometimes been regarded as the unit, but for the most
part only by a few poets and prosodists of the late sixteenth, the
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
The foot corresponds in English verse to what has been described in
Chapter I as the rhythmic unit of all rhythms, namely that which recurs
in regular sequence. It comprises, therefore, a point of emphasis and
all that occupies the time-distance between that point of emphasis and
the following one. In other words, a foot is a section of speech-rhythm
containing a stressed element and an unstressed element, usually one or
two unaccented syllables. So much is clear and undisputed in theory. But
there are few single topics on which writers on English prosody are so
much at variance as on the further, more accurate definition of the
foot. One of the main sources of difficulty, however, is easily removed.
The metrical foot is not a natural division of language, like the word
or the phrase, but an arbitrary division, like the bar in music, an
abstraction having no existence independent of the larger rhythm of
which it is a part. The analogy between the metrical foot and the
musical bar is very close: they are both artificial sections of rhythm
which either in whole or in part may be grouped into such phrases as the
ideas or melodies may require.[23] They may be isolated and treated by
themselves only for the purposes of analysis, for they are merely
theoretical entities, like the chemical elements. There is no reason,
therefore, that the foot should correspond with word divisions, no
objection to the falling of different syllables of one word into
different feet. Thus in Gray's line
The cur | few tolls | the knell | of part | ing day
both _curfew_ and _parting_ are divided.[24] Further, the division
between clauses may fall in the middle of a foot, as in Wordsworth's
lines
The world | is too | much with | us; late | and soon
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [23] The chief difference perhaps between the foot and the |
| bar is that the latter always begins with a rhythmic stress, |
| whereas the foot may begin with an unstressed element. |
| |
| [24] Some metrists, holding that every foot should begin |
| with a stress, divide thus: |
| |
| The | curfew | tolls the | knell of | parting | day. |
| |
| Such a division can be justified on several grounds, but it |
| remains awkward and obscures the plain fact of rising |
| rhythm. It does not affect the division of word and foot; |
| for compare Shelley's line: |
| |
| Ne | cessi | ty! thou | mother | of the | world. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
But another difficulty remains, which is apparent in the second line
just quoted from Wordsworth. The general rhythm of the whole sonnet of
which these two lines are the beginning is plainly duple rising, or
iambic. The first line and the latter part of the second are easily
divisible into iambs; but how shall _Getting and spend_- be divided?
Clearly _and spend_- is an iamb, but _Getting_ is not. Can trochees and
iambs occur together in the same line without either obscuring or
actually destroying the rhythm? The simpler solution would be to keep
the whole line in rising rhythm by regarding -_ing and spend_- as the
second foot and ‸ _Gett_- as the first. (The sign ‸ indicates a missing
syllable or musical rest. See below, page 63.)
The most common feet are the iamb, the trochee, the anapest, and the
dactyl (see above, page 38), to which may be added the spondee. The
names are borrowed, not quite felicitously, from classical prosody.
Various symbols are in use:
FOOT SYMBOLS EXAMPLES
iamb ◡_̷ X ̷ _xa_ alone, despair, to walk.
trochee _̷◡ ̷ X _ax_ study, backward, talk to.
anapest ◡◡_̷ X X ̷ _xxa_ interdict, to permit,
dactyl _̷◡◡ ̷ X X _axx_ tenderly, after the.
spondee _̷_̷ ̷ ̷ _aa_ stone deaf, broad-browed.
Classical prosody distinguished several other feet, some of which are
occasionally mentioned in treatises on English verse: amphibrach ◡_◡,
tribrach ◡◡◡, pyrrhic ◡◡, paeon _◡◡◡, choriamb _◡◡_.
The objection to the use of these classical terms is not so serious as
is frequently supposed. Since Greek and Latin prosody was primarily
quantitative, that is, based upon syllabic length, and every long
syllable was theoretically equal to two short syllables, an iamb or
◡-had the musical value of ♪♩, a trochee of ♩♪, a dactyl of ♩♪♪, etc.
And since no such definite musical valuation can be given to English
feet, a Greek iamb and an English iamb are obviously different. But
after all there was inevitably an element of stress in the classical
feet, and there is a very positive element of time in the English, so
that the difference is not so great, and no confusion need result once
the facts are recognized. Another set of terms, however, borrowed from
the Greek and Latin is open to more grave objection, for no real
equivalence exists between the classical and the modern phenomena. The
_iambic trimeter_ in Greek consists of three dipodies or six iambs; as
used by English prosodists it consists of three iambs. The Greek
_trochaic tetrameter_, similarly, contains eight trochees, the English
'trochaic tetrameter' but four. The common term _iambic pentameter_ is
not so objectionable, but is to be rejected because of its similarity to
the others, which are actually confusing.
The next larger metrical unit after the foot is the _line_ or _verse_.
It is distinguished (1) mechanically by the custom of printing, (2)
phonetically by the pause usual at the end, and (3) structurally by its
use as a unit in forming the stanza. Lines are of one, two, three, or
more feet, according to the metrical form used by the poet (see Chapter
IV). In rimed verse the end of the line is so emphasized that the line
itself stands out as a very perceptible rhythmic unit; in unrimed verse,
however, the line is frequently not felt as a unit at all, but is so
interwoven with the natural prose rhythm of the words as to be almost
indistinguishable to the ear, though of course visible to the eye on the
printed page. This fact is easily apparent in reading the second, fifth,
and sixth illustrative selections on pages 43, 44.
The _stanza_ or _strophe_ is a combination of two or more lines of the
same or varying lengths, according to a regular pattern chosen by the
poet. 'Irregular' stanzas sometimes occur, in which the thought rhythm
is said to control and determine the stanzaic rhythm; that is, the
length of line and position of rimes are regulated by the logical and
emotional content of the words. On the various kinds of stanzaic
structure, see pages 88 ff., below.
* * * * *
_Metrical Patterns._ It must be fully understood that these metrical
patterns of line and stanza are purely formal. They are the bottles into
which the poet pours his liquid meaning, or better, the sketched-in
squares over which the painter, copying from an old masterpiece, draws
and paints his figures. They have no literal or concrete existence. They
are no more the music of verse than
[Illustration: Waltz rhythm]
is the music of a waltz. They are absolutely fixed and predetermined
(though the poet may invent new patterns if he chooses). But he uses
them _only as forms_ on which he arranges his words and phrases. For the
rhythm of language is extremely soft and malleable: by skilful handling
it can be moulded into an infinite variety of shapes. Perhaps the
comparison of a stanza by John Donne with a stanza by W.B. Yeats, both
based on the same metrical scheme, will help to make this clear. The
formal scheme is
◡_̷◡_◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷
Death, be not proud, though some have callèd 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.
JOHN DONNE, Death.
When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
W. B. YEATS, When You are Old.
Even more striking is the difference of rhythmical effect observable in
reading, one after the other, a page of Pope's heroic couplets in the
Essay on Man, of Keats's same couplets in Endymion, and Browning's same
couplets in My Last Duchess.
While the formal pattern remains fixed and inflexible, over its surface
may be embroidered variations of almost illimitable subtlety and change;
but _always the formal pattern must be visible, audible_. The poet's
skill lies largely in preserving a balance of the artistic principles of
variety in uniformity and uniformity in variety. Once he lets go the
design, he loses his metrical rhythm and writes mere prose. Once we
cease to hear and feel the faint regular beating of the metronome we
fail to get the enjoyment of sound that it is the proper function of
metre to give. On the other hand, if the mechanical design stands out
too plainly, if the beat of the metronome becomes for an instant more
prominent than the music of the words, then also the artistic pleasure
is gone, for too much uniformity is as deadly to art as too much
variety.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
These verses are regular (as is appropriate for the theme), and vary
comparatively little from the formal metrical pattern. The coincidence
of prose rhythm and metrical rhythm is almost complete. Yet by means of
small subtleties of variation in pause, word order, long and short
syllables, Gray always saves the poem from monotony. How far the
variations may be carried, how much the ear may be depended upon for
rhythmic substitution and syncopation, is determined by many things.
Certain lines are unmistakably metrical to all ears and in all
positions--such as these verses of Gray's Elegy. Certain lines are
generally felt to contain daring variations and yet be successful and
effective--such as
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay.
SHELLEY, Ode to the West Wind.
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn.
TENNYSON, Small Sweet Idyl, in The Princess.
Other lines stretch our metrical sense to the breaking point, and
according to individual taste we judge them bold or too bold--such as
Tennyson's
Take your own time, Annie, take your own time.
Enoch Arden.
or Milton's
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.
Paradise Lost, VI, 866.
In all of these examples the metrical pattern is the same: five
consecutive iambs. The modifications illustrate plainly the
extraordinary flexibility of language.
* * * * *
_Time and Stress._ Probably the most disputed point in all prosodic
theory is the relative importance of time (duration, syllabic length)
and stress (accent) in English verse. Some writers have attempted to
explain all the phenomena entirely by stress; others entirely by time.
Neither side, of course, has been very successful.[25] The difficulty is
partly one of theory and partly one of correct analysis of the facts.
Thanks, now, to the attention paid in recent decades by the experimental
psychologists to rhythm and metre, we are in a position to reach at
least approximate clearness on this vexed point. Since the older
theorists have mostly started either from the traditional conceptions of
classical prosody or from examination of but a part of the phenomena,
their work may be left out of account here. Certainly no great blame
attaches to them; they are the Bacons and Harveys and Newtons of
metrical science. A more nearly correct analysis of the facts is
possible now because with the minutely accurate instruments of the
scientists to aid us we need no longer trust to the uncertainties of
perception and statement of separate individuals. Of course no one today
holds the extreme belief that science explains everything; and of course
the scientific experiments on the nature and effect of rhythm must have
a starting point in the personal equations of those who have submitted
themselves to the scientific tests. With all its patience and
thoroughness of investigation, experimental psychology is only now
establishing itself. But it does offer, on this one mooted point of
versification, invaluable help.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [25] An historical survey of the problems and theories, |
| somewhat colored by the author's own theory, may be found in |
| English Metrists, Oxford, 1921, by T. S. Omond. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
The theory presented in the previous pages states that sound rhythm
consists of a succession of points of emphasis separated by equal time
divisions. This is the ideal rhythm. When subjected to the conditions of
metrical language it suffers two alterations. In the first place, our
notions of time are extremely untrustworthy. Days vanish in a moment and
they drag like years. Very few of us can estimate correctly the passage
of five minutes: syllables are uttered in a few hundredths of a second.
We are satisfied with the accuracy shown by an orchestra in keeping
time; but if we took a metronome to the concert we should find the
orchestra very deficient in its sense of time. The fact is that the
orchestra knows better than the metronome, that perfectly accurate time
intervals become unpleasantly monotonous, that we rebel at 'mechanical'
music. Thus the time divisions of pleasurable rhythm are not
mathematically equal, nor even necessarily approximately equal, but are
such as are _felt to be equal_. The second alteration of ideal rhythm
is that which results from the conformity of fluid language to its
metrical mould. This metrical scheme, based theoretically on equal time
units marked by equal stresses, becomes a compromise of uneven stresses
and apparently equal time divisions.
Almost every line of verse is a proof of this: both the fact and the
explanation are clear when approached from the right angle, and may be
tested by carefully prepared statistics. In the following examples the
figures beneath each syllable give the time of utterance in tenths and
one-hundredths of a second; the figures in parentheses represent
pauses.[26] The first, from Paradise Lost, II, 604-614, is in blank
verse, with five iambic feet to a line; the second, from Shelley's The
Cloud, is apparently irregular, but the basis is clearly anapestic. The
ideal rhythm or metrical pattern of the first is
◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷
regularly repeated. The ideal rhythm of the second is
◡◡_̷◡◡_̷◡◡_̷◡◡_̷
◡◡_̷◡◡_̷(◡◡_̷)
six times repeated.[27]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [26] I take these figures from the two articles by Professor |
| Ada L. F. Snell in the Publications of the Modern Language |
| Association for September, 1918, pp. 396-408, and September, |
| 1919, pp. 416-435. For the first example I have made an |
| average from the records of three different readers; for the |
| second Miss Snell gives only one set of figures. |
| |
| [27] The second and fourth lines have two feet each, the |
| alternate lines throughout the rest of the poem have three |
| feet each; but it is noteworthy that the average length of |
| these two short lines (1.61) is only .37 less than the |
| average of the four longer lines (1.98). The first, third, |
| fifth, etc., lines have four feet each. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
They fer-ry o - ver this Le-the-an sound
.29 .36 .15 .24 .13 .26 .23 .23 .23 .62 (.18)
Both to and fro, their sor-row to aug-ment,
.41 .27 .2 .63 (.36).26 .4 .16 .24 .32 .43 (.6)
And wish and strug-gle, as they pass, to reach
.2 .47 .25 .33 .25 (.13) .21 .21 .57 (.4) .24 .35
The tempt-ing stream, with one small drop to lose
.14 .32 .3 .69 (.44) .24 .37 .53 .47 (.09).21 .47
In sweet for-get-ful-ness all pain and woe,
.2 .37 .19 .28 .17 .25 (.1) .39 .53 .17 .52 (.59)
All in one mo-ment and so near the brink;
.42 .2 .21 .34 .3 (.47) .27 .28 .37 .11 .57 (.49)
But Fate with-stands, and, to op - pose the attempt
.23 .39 .28 .66 (.49).22 .18 .11 .48 .23 .52 (.33)
Me - du - sa with Gor-go-nian ter-ror guards
.15 .33 .15 .21 .3 .3 .23 .28 .21 .51
The ford, and of it-self the wa - ter flies
.14 .6 (.3) .27 .2 .2 .48 .13 .25 .22 .64
All taste of liv-ing wight, as once it fled
.26 .48 .16 .19 .18 .43 (.5) .29 .39 .16 .43
The lip of Tan - ta -lus.
.1 .32 .14 .33 .15 .3
* * * * *
I bring fresh showers for the thirst-ing flowers,
.25 .35 .15 .8 (.15) .15 .15 .3 .2 .6 (.2)
From the seas and the streams;
.2 .18 .42 .15 .15 .62 (.75)
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
.2 .35 .3 .5 .18 .18 .34 .4 .45
In their noon-day dreams.
.18 .2 .22 .2 .7 (.6)
From my wings are shak-en the dews that wak - en
.25 .35 .44 .22 .3 .2 .1 .6 .2 .25 .25
The sweet buds ev - ery one,
.1 .35 .53 (.15) .2 .21 .5 (.55)
When rocked to rest on their moth - er's breast,
.18 .47 .2 .4 (.2) .18 .2 .22 .18 .47 (.4)
As she danc - es a - bout the sun.
.2 .2 .45 .2 .1 .25 .2 .5 (.85)
I wield the flail of the lash - ing hail,
.22 .22 .1 .5 .15 .15 .25 .15 .45 (.3)
And whit - en the green plains un - der,
.2 .22 .18 .1 .32 .5 .2 .2 (.5)
And then a - gain I dis - solve in rain,
.22 .38 .1 .55 .15 .2 .7 .15 .55 (.07)
And laugh as I pass in thun - der.
.2 .4 (.2) .15 .18 .39 .18 .22 .25
Two facts emerge from these statistics at once: (1) that in about 90 per
cent of the feet the ◡ or unstressed element is shorter than the _̷ or
stressed element, or, in other words, stress and syllabic length nearly
always coincide; and (2) that while there is very great variation in the
absolute lengths of short syllables and long syllables, the proportion
of average lengths is about 2:4.[28] One need not suppose that the
conscious mind always hears or thinks it hears the syllables pronounced
with these quantitative proportions. Though we deceive ourselves very
readily in the matter of time, it is not true that we have no sense of
duration whatever. Quite the contrary. Our cerebral metronome is set
when we read verse for about .6 seconds for a foot (.2 seconds for the
unstressed element;.4 seconds for the stressed element). If we read
faster or more slowly the proportions remain the same. When, however, in
Paradise Lost, II, 607,
◡ _̷ ◡ _̷
with one small drop
.24 .37 .53 .47
the normal proportions are so patently departed from that the
theoretically unstressed syllable _small_ is actually longer than the
theoretically stressed syllable _drop_, and the foot _small drop_ takes
1. second, or 2/5 longer than the average foot beside it (_with one_,
.61 seconds)--when divergences so great as this are both possible and
pleasurable, the conclusion should be, not that the ear makes no
recognition of the time, but that it is capable, by syncopation and
substitution, of adjusting itself to a very great possibility of
variation without losing hold of the rhythmic pattern. Looked at from
one point of view, the extreme variations would appear to be
irregularities and warrant the judgment that no element of duration
exists as a principle of English verse; but from the right point of view
these variations mean only that the metrical time unit is
extraordinarily elastic while still remaining a unit; that the ear is
willing and able to pay very high for the _variety_ in uniformity which
it requires.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [28] This statement is based on Miss Snell's computations |
| from analysis of several records for blank verse and several |
| kinds of lyric verse. The short syllables range in blank |
| verse from .02 to .54, in lyrics from .09 to .7; the long |
| syllables range in blank verse from .08 to .84, in lyrics |
| from .11 to .92. The average length of all long syllables is |
| .4, of all short syllables is .21. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
_Pause._ The time element of English verse is affected also by different
kinds of pauses. Three kinds may be distinguished, two of which belong
properly to prose rhythm as well. (1) The _logical_ pause is that
cessation of sound which separates the logical components of speech. It
helps hold together the members of a unit and separates the units from
each other, and never occurs unless a break in the meaning is possible.
It is usually indicated in printed language by punctuation. (2) The
_rhythmical_ pause separates the breath groups of a sentence and
therefore concerns language chiefly as a series of sounds independent
for the most part of logical content or symbolism. Though its origin is
primarily physiological, it soon induces a psychological state and
results in an overuse or overdevelopment of the cerebral metronome. Both
readers and writers get into a certain 'swing' which turns to monotony
and sing-song in reading and to excessive uniformity of sentence length
and structure in writing--what is called a jog-trot style. This pause as
it affects the reading of verse is only slightly dependent upon the
logical content of words, for it takes its pace, especially in rimed
verse, from the normal line length, and tends to make every line sound
like every other, regardless of the meaning. (3) _Metrical_ pause is
primarily independent of the other two, but most frequently falls in
with them. It belongs to the formal metrical pattern, and serves usually
to mark off the line units. There is thus theoretically a pause at the
end of every line, and a greater pause at the end of every stanza. When
verses are 'run on,' i. e., when there is no logical pause at the end,
many readers omit the metrical pause or reduce it to a minimum. Others,
whose rhythmic sense is very keen, preserve it, making it very slight
but still perceptible. The metrical pause is greatly emphasized by rime.
There are two other time elements in English verse, related in different
ways to each of these three pauses, one which is nearly equivalent to
the musical _rest_; the other which is nearly equivalent to the musical
_hold_. The latter is common to both verse and prose, and is emotional
or elocutionary in origin; "If....," "Well----?" "'_These_ roses?' she
drawled." In verse it often coincides with and supports a metrical
pause, especially on rime words. Many readers in fact combine the hold
and the metrical pause or use them interchangeably. The former, the
_rest_, is a pause used to take the place of an unstressed element. As
such, however, it does not altogether compensate the break in the normal
time-space, but fills in the omission sufficiently to preserve the
rhythm of the verse.
These various pauses are all well illustrated in Tennyson's lyric,
Break, Break, Break.
Break, break, break,
.5 (.6) .5 (.28) .6 (.3)
On thy cold grey stones, O sea!
.35 .3 .6 .5 .7 (.15) .3 .55 (.65)
And I would that my tongue could ut - ter
.2 .2 .4 .2 .25 .4 .18 .18 .3 (.35)
The thoughts that a - rise in me.
.2 .5 .3 .2 .4 .3 .5 (.8)
O, well for the fish - er - man's boy
.6 .6 .2 .2 .22 .15 .45 .6 (.55)
That he shouts with his sis - ter at play!
.2 .18 .55 .25 .2 .35 .18 .2 .6 (.9)
O, well for the sail - or lad
.5 (.3) .61 .25 .3 .55 .2 .5 (.45)
That he sings in his boat on the bay.
.18 .18 .55 .25 .2 .45 .15 .15 .6
Logical pauses occur at the end of ll. 2, 4, 6, 8; and probably after
_stones_ in l. 2. After _stones_ there would be also a rhythmic pause,
but it is reinforced and practically replaced by the logical pause.
Another rhythmic pause might occur after _tongue_ in l. 3, but it is
absorbed partly by the length of _tongue_ and partly by the necessity of
preserving the line rhythm through _utter_. It will be felt, however, if
the lines are read thus:
And I would that my tongue
Could utter the thoughts
That arise
In me.
The metrical pause appears clearly after _utter_ in l. 3. The pauses
after _boy_ (l. 5) and _lad_ (l. 7) are both metrical and logical. The
hold is illustrated by _O_ in l. 5 and l. 7. [29] The rest appears
distinctly in l. 1. From reading the whole poem we know that the
movement is anapestic. The pattern rhythm for the first line would be
◡◡_̷ ◡◡_̷ ◡◡_̷
Break break break
The number of syllables is three, whereas the other lines have from
seven to nine syllables each. That is, before each _break_ two light
syllables, or their time equivalent, are lacking, their place being
supplied by the rest-pause (which is also logical and emotional).[30]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [29] In the latter case it is supplemented by a pause in |
| Miss Snell's marking. Many readers would no doubt combine |
| the hold and pause; as was done in fact in l. 5. |
| |
| [30] It should be noted that the average line length here |
| (including pauses within the line, excluding those at the |
| end of the line) is 2.8, and the first line is therefore |
| only .32 shorter than the average. If additional allowance |
| (omitted in Miss Snell's computation) be made for the |
| theoretical initial ◡◡ the average would be 2.85 and l. 1 |
| would total 2.92. If the end pause is included the average |
| would be 3.38 and l. 1 2.78--a difference of .66; or with |
| the additional allowance the average would be 3.44 and l. 1 |
| 3.22. While too much faith is not to be placed in the mere |
| figures, the inference is plain that the rests practically |
| compensate here for the omitted ◡◡. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
The reader may analyze the comparative lengths of foot, line, pause, and
rest in the following record:[31]
Kent-ish Sir Bing stood for the king,
.4 .32 .46 .8 (.2) .5 .18 .16 .8 (.6)
Bid-ding the crop-head-ed par-lia-ment swing;
.26 .2 .12 .45 .3 .2 .4 .1 .35 .72 (.6)
And, press-ing a troop un - ab - le to stoop,
.2 .38 .12 .1 .55 (.2) .18 .26 .12 .2 .58 (.5)
And see the rogues flour-ish and hon - est folk droop;
.22 .35 .15 .5 .6 .2 (.2) .26 .45 .18 .35 .48 (.75)
Marched then a - long fif - ty - score strong
.52 .22 .12 .8 (.14) .35 .25 .5 .7 (.7)
Great-heart-ed gent-le-men, sing-ing this song.
.35 .3 .2 .3 .12 .3 (.45) .44 .25 .28 .68 (.9)
God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
.6 .46 .5 .8 (.5) .38 .26 .3 .85 (.42)
To the Dev - il that prompts them their treas-on-ous parles!
.18 .18 .35 .25 .42 .5 .38 .2 .38 .1 .32 .75 (.55)
Cav - a - liers, up! Lips from the cup.
.35 .15 .5 (.4) .5 (.4) .6 .3 .12 .4
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [31] Miss Snell, Pause; a Study of its Nature and its |
| Rhythmical Function in Verse (Ann Arbor, 1918), pp. 78, 79. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
_Pitch._ Pitch appears to be sometimes a determining element in rhythm,
as has been shown above; but since its chief function in verse is that
of supporting the recognized determinants and adding grace-notes to the
music, it is omitted here and discussed in Chapter V, below.
* * * * *
_Balance of Forces._ It is not to be inferred from the foregoing
sections that the basis of English metre is time. For the basis of
English metre is dual: time and stress are inextricable. Beneath all
metrical language runs the invisible current of time, but the surface is
marked by stress. The warp of the metrical fabric is time; stress is the
woof. And from the surface, of course, only the woof is visible.
Moreover, the poet's point of view in composing and generally the
reader's point of view in reading has always been that of the
'stresser.' No poet ever wrote to a metronome accompaniment; extremely
few readers are fully conscious--few can be, from the nature of our
human sense of time--of the temporal rhythm that underlies verse. Thus
it has come about, historically, that modern English verse is written
and regarded as a matter of stress only, because to the superficial view
stress is predominant.[32] Probably the truth is that most poets compose
verse with the ideal metrical scheme definitely in mind and trust (as
they well may) to their rhythmical instinct for the rest. Whatever
device they employ for keeping the pattern always before them, they do
keep it distinctly before them--except perhaps in the simpler measures
which run easily in the ear--and build from it as from a scaffolding.
They may not know and may not need to know that this metrical scheme
does itself involve equal time units as well as equal stresses. They
vary and modulate both time and stress according to the thought and
feeling the words are asked to express. And though it is a point on
which no one can have a dogmatic opinion, one inclines to the belief
that usually the finest adaptations of ideas and words to metre are
spontaneous and intuitive. Skill is the result of habit and training,
and metrical skill like any other; but there is also the faculty divine.
One is suspicious of the
Laborious Orient ivory sphere in sphere;
for when we can see how the trick is done we lose the true thrill.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [32] Modern English verse theory may be dated from |
| Coleridge's famous manifesto in the prefatory note to |
| Christabel in 1816: "I have only to add that the metre of |
| Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it |
| may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: |
| namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the |
| syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, |
| yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. |
| Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of |
| syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for mere ends of |
| convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in |
| the nature of the imagery or passion." Even here there is |
| implied a vague perception of the time unit, but Coleridge |
| was apparently unaware of its significance. See Leigh Hunt's |
| comments in "What is Poetry?" in Imagination and Fancy. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
It would be absurd to imagine a prosody which was independent of its own
materials. It would be absurd therefore not to find in all language the
elements out of which verse is made. Indeed, M. Jourdain, having
recovered from his first shock on learning that he had actually been
talking prose, must prepare for a second: that he has actually been
talking potential verse. The three acoustic properties of
speech--duration, intensity, pitch--modified by the logical and
emotional content of which the sounds are symbolic, combine to produce
an incredibly subtle and elastic medium which the poet moulds to his
metrical form. In this process of moulding and adjustment, each element,
under the poet's deft handling, yields somewhat to the other, the
natural rhythm of language and the formal rhythm of metre; and the
result is a delicate, exquisite compromise. When we attempt to analyze
it, its finer secrets defy us, but the chief fundamental principles we
can discover, and their more significant manifestations we can isolate
and learn to know. In all the arts there is a point at which technique
merges with idea and conceals the heart of its mystery. The greatest
poetry is not always clearly dependent upon metrical power, but it is
rarely divorced from it. No one would venture to say how much the metre
has to do with the beauty of the
magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
CHAPTER IV
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.--
Shrill | shrieks in our | faces the | blind bland | air that was |
mute as a | maiden,
Stung into | storm by the | speed of our | passage, and | deaf
where we | past;
And our | spirits too | burn as we | bound, thine | holy but | mine
heavy | laden,
As we | burn with the | fire of our | flight; ah, | love, shall
we | win at the | last?
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.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [35] Apparent paeons occur now and then, where the usual |
| contraction would reduce them to triple time. Mr. Omond, |
| Study of Metre, pp. 96, 97, gives among others these |
| examples: |
| |
| The leaves they were _withering and_ sere. |
| Our _memories were treacherous and_ sere. |
| POE. |
| |
| The rags of the sail |
| Are _flickering in_ ribbons within the fierce gale. |
| SHELLEY. |
| |
| A land that is _lonelier than_ ruin. |
| SWINBURNE. |
| |
| [36] In the last stanza occurs the foot: |
| |
| _̷ ◡ ◡ ◡ ◡ |
| she of the seven |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
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.
or
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.