_aaaa_
Suete iesu, king of blysse,
Myn huerte love, min huerte lisse,
Þou art suete myd ywisse,
Wo is him þat þe shal misse!
(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253--12th century, Böddeker's _Altenglische
Dichtungen_, p. 191.)
_aabb_
O Lord, that rul'st our mortal line,
How through the world Thy name doth shine;
Thou hast of Thy unmatched glory
Upon the heavens engrav'd Thy story.
(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Psalm viii._ ab. 1580.)
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
(SHELLEY: _The Sensitive Plant._ 1820.)
_abcb_
In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song.
(Ballad of _Robin Hood and the Monk_. In Gummere's _English Ballads_, p.
77.)
This is the familiar stanza of the early ballads. The omission of rime
in the third line signalizes the fact that the stanza could be (and was)
regarded indifferently as made up either of two long lines or four short
ones. Thus the famous Chevy Chase ballad is found (Ashmole Ms., of about
1560) written in long lines:
"The yngglyshe men hade ther bowys ybent yer hartes wer good ynoughe
The first off arros that the shote off seven skore spear-men the
sloughe."
(See in Flügel's _Neuenglisches Lesebuch_, vol. i. p. 199.)
The same thing occurs also where there are two rimes to the stanza.
Originally, the extra internal rime was no doubt the cause of the
breaking up of the long couplet into two short lines. (See examples in
Part Two, in the case of the septenary.)
Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fair!
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae fu' o' care!
(BURNS: _Bonnie Doon._ ab. 1790.)
_abab_
Þe grace of god ful of mi[gh]t
Þat is king and ever was,
Mote among us ali[gh]t
And [gh]ive us alle is swet grace.
(From the Harleian Ms. 913. In Mätzner's _Altenglische Sprachproben_,
vol. i. p. 125.)
Furnivall prints this in long lines with internal rime, which of itself
seems to form the short-line stanza from the long lines.
Of al this world the wyde compas
Hit wol not in myn armes tweyne.--
Who-so mochel wol embrace
Litel thereof he shal distreyne.
(CHAUCER: _Proverb._ ab. 1380.)
When youth had led me half the race,
That Cupid's scourge me caus'd to run,
I looked back to meet the place
From whence my weary course begun.
(EARL OF SURREY: _Description of the restless state of a lover._ ab.
1545.)
Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry.
(BEN JONSON: _Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy._ 1616.)
And now the weary world's great medicine, Sleep,
This learned host dispensed to every guest,
Which shuts those wounds where injured lovers weep,
And flies oppressors to relieve the opprest.
(SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT: _Gondibert_, Bk. i. Canto 6. 1651)
Now like a maiden queen she will behold
From her high turrets hourly suitors come;
The East with incense and the West with gold
Will stand like suppliants to receive her doom.
(DRYDEN: _Annus Mirabilis_, stanza 297. 1667.)
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
(GRAY: _Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard._ 1751.)
To Davenant's _Gondibert_ is usually traced the use of this "heroic"
stanza (_abab_ in iambic five-stress lines) in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. In his preface the author said: "I believed it
would be more pleasant to the reader, in a work of length, to give this
respite or pause, between every stanza, ... than to run him out of
breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rime by any lowliness
of cadence make the sound less heroic, but rather adapt it to a plain
and stately composing of music." Dryden followed Davenant in using the
stanza for his _Annus Mirabilis_, saying in his preface: "I have chosen
to write my poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme,
because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both
for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us.... I
have always found the couplet verse most easy (though not so proper for
this occasion), for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines
concluding the labor of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it
further on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the
troublesome sense of four lines together." Dryden did not use the stanza
again, however, and it is obviously unsuited to a long narrative poem.
Saintsbury says: "With regard to the nobility and dignity of this
stanza, it may safely be said that _Annus Mirabilis_ itself, the best
poem ever written therein, killed it by exposing its faults.... It is
chargeable with more than the disjointedness of the couplet, without the
possibility of relief; while, on the other hand, the quatrains have not,
like the Spenserian stave or the _ottava rima_, sufficient bulk to form
units in themselves." (_Life of Dryden_, Men of Letters Series, p. 34.)
It is hard to say what Mr. Saintsbury means in speaking of the _Annus
Mirabilis_ as the best poem ever written in the heroic quatrain, when we
remember that it is the quatrain of Gray's _Elegy_. On the possible
sources of his use of it, see Gosse's _Life of Gray_, in the Men of
Letters Series, p. 98 (also his _From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 140). Mr.
Gosse refers to the use of the quatrain by Sir John Davies in the _Nosce
Teipsum_ (1599), with which Gray was familiar, and (in addition to
Davenant, Dryden, and Hobbes's _Homer_) to the _Love Elegies_ of James
Hammond, published 1743. "It is believed that the printing of Hammond's
verses incited Gray to begin his _Churchyard Elegy_, and to make the
four-line stanza the basis of most of his harmonies.... The measure
itself, from first to last, is an attempt to render in English the
solemn alternation of passion and reserve, the interchange of imploring
and desponding tones, that is found in the Latin elegiac; and Gray gave
his poem, when he first published it, an outward resemblance to the text
of Tibullus by printing it without any stanzaic pauses." Mr. Gosse
neglects the elegies of William Shenstone, which were also in the
quatrain, and some of which had apparently been published before the
_Churchyard Elegy_. On this matter see Beers's _Romanticism in the
Eighteenth Century_, p. 137, where Shenstone is said to have borrowed
the stanza from Hammond, and Gray from Shenstone. Shenstone, in his
_Prefatory Essay on Elegy_, defended the metrical form and referred to
the elegies of Hammond. "Heroic metre, with alternate rhyme, seems well
enough adapted to this species of poetry; and, however exceptionable
upon other occasions, its inconveniencies appear to lose their weight in
shorter elegies, and its advantages seem to acquire an additional
importance. The world has an admirable example of its beauty in a
collection of elegies not long since published." (Chalmers's _English
Poets_, vol. xiii. p. 264.)
For there was Milton like a seraph strong,
Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;
And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song,
And somewhat grimly smiled.
(TENNYSON: _The Palace of Art._ 1833.)
_abba_
Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling,
Do invite a stealing Kiss.
Now will I but venture this;
Who will read, must first learn spelling.
(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, Song ii. ab. 1580.)
Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
(SHAKSPERE: _The Ph[oe]nix and the Turtle_, 1601.)
Though beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours of whom I sing, be such
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet is't your virtue now I raise.
(BEN JONSON: _Elegy_, in _Underwoods_. 1616.)
Lord, in thine anger do not reprehend me,
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject,
And very weak and faint; heal and amend me.
(MILTON: _Psalm vi._ 1653.)
Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh,
The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!
Nor meanly thus complain of fortune's power,
When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.
(COLERIDGE: _To a Friend._ ab. 1795.)
Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
Heard in each hour, crept off; and then
The ruffled silence spread again,
Like water that a pebble stirs.
(ROSSETTI: _My Sister's Sleep._ 1850.)
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
(TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_, xxvii. 1850.)
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tasselled wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odor streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."
(TENNYSON: _ibid._, lxxxiv.)
This stanza (_abba_ in four-stress iambics) is commonly known as the
"_In Memoriam_ stanza," from its familiar use by Tennyson. Tennyson is
indeed said to have invented it for his own use, not knowing of its
earlier appearance in the works of Jonson and Rossetti. Professor Corson
has an interesting passage on the poetic quality of the stanza: "By the
rhyme-scheme of the quatrain, the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza
is reduced, the second and third verses being most closely braced by the
rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to that sweet continuity of
flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow
which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire
change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read,
aloud of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and
fourth, verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By
such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding
rhymes more emphatic." Compare the stanza quoted above from section
xxvii. with the transposed form:
"I feel it when I sorrow most;
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
On the passage quoted from section lxxxiv. Professor Corson also
observes: "The four stanzas of which it is composed constitute but one
period, the sense being suspended till the close. The rhyme-emphasis is
so distributed that any one, hearing the poem read, would hardly be
sensible of any of the slightest checks in the continuous and even
movement of the verse.... There is no other section of _In Memoriam_ in
which the artistic motive of the stanza is so evident." (_Primer of
English Verse_, pp. 70-77.)
_aaba_
Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes entendeth,
Which now my breast, surcharg'd, to music lendeth!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Only in you my song begins and endeth.
(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella._ Song i, ab. 1580.)
Here the third line (the same in all the stanzas) has an additional
internal rime.
Oh, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and--sans end!
(EDW. FITZGERALD: _Paraphrase of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam._ 1859.)
For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand.
(Tennyson: _To the Rev. F. D. Maurice._ 1854.)
This delightful stanza (used also by Tennyson in _The Daisy_) seems to
be an imitation of the well-known Alcaic stanza of Horace:
"Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec jam sustineant onus
Silvae laborantes, geluque
Flumina constiterint acuto."
Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air would wash and long leaves cover me,
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.
(SWINBURNE: _Laus Veneris._)