My Muse, what ails this ardor
To blaze my only secrets?
Alas, it is no glory
To sing my own decay'd state.
Alas, it is no comfort
To speak without an answer;
Alas, it is no wisdom
To show the wound without cure.
(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Anacreontics_, from the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)
Sidney was a member of the little group of classical students who called
themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing
classical measures into English verse. Others of the group were Gabriel
Harvey and Edmund Spenser, from whose correspondence most of our
information regarding the movement is derived. (See the letters in
Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works, vol. i. pp. 7-9, 20-24, 35-37,
75-76, 99-107.) Spenser's only known efforts in the same direction are
also preserved in this correspondence; a poem in twenty-one iambic
trimeters, and this "tetrasticon":--
"See yee the blindfoulded pretie god, that feathered archer,
Of lovers miseries which maketh his bloodie game?
Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coovered his face?
Trust me, least he my loove happely chaunce to beholde."
It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than
Sidney did, to follow the classical rules of quantity in making his
verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English
rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the classical versification are perhaps
the most successful, to modern taste, of all those made in the
Elizabethan period. Among the other songs in the _Arcadia_ will be found
sapphics and hexameters.
See especially Spenser's letter of April, 1580, and Harvey's reply
(_op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 35, 99), for notable passages indicating
the seriousness with which the members of the "Areopagus" were
trying to orm English verse so as to bring it under the rules of
classical prosody. The relations of quantity and accent were not
understood, as indeed they may be said still not to be understood
for the English language. Spenser suggests, in a frequently quoted
passage, that in the word _carpenter_ the middle syllable is "short
in speech, when it shall be read long in verse,"--that is, because
the vowel is followed by two consonants; hence it "seemeth like a
lame gosling that draweth one legge after her.... But it is to be
wonne with custome, and rough words must be subdued with use."
Harvey resented the idea that the common pronunciation of words
could be departed from in order to conform them to arbitrary
metrical rules, and in his reply said: "You shall never have my
subscription or consent ... to make your Carp[=e]nter our
Carp[)e]nter, an inche longer or bigger, than God and his Englishe
people have made him.... Else never heard I any that durst presume
so much over the Englishe ... as to alter the quantitie of any one
sillable, otherwise than oure common speache and generall receyved
custome woulde beare them oute." But while all English verse must
be consistent with "the vulgare and naturall mother prosodye,"
Harvey does not despair of finding a system that shall be at the
same time "countervaileable to the best tongues" in making possible
quantitative verse. The whole passage is well worth reading. The
best account of the movement toward classical versification in the
days of the "Areopagus" will be found in Professor Schelling's
_Poetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_
(Publications of the University of Pennsylvania).
O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke,
For to bathe there your pretty breasts at all times:
Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe.
And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass,
Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth:
Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre.
(WILLIAM WEBBE: Sapphic Verse, in _A Discourse of English Poetrie_.
1586.)
Webbe was another of those who believed "that if the true kind of
versifying in immitation of Greekes and Latines, had been practised in
the English tongue, ... it would long ere this have aspyred to as full
perfection, as in anie other tongue whatsoever." So he added to his
_Discourse_ (see Arber Reprint, pp. 67-84) a discussion of the
principles of quantitative prosody, and some specimens of what might be
done by way of experiment.[42] The Sapphics from which the present
specimen is taken are a paraphrase of Spenser's praise of Elizabeth in
the fourth eclogue of the _Shepherd's Calendar_. (For a specimen of
Webbe's hexameters, see p. 334, below.)
Greatest in thy wars,
Greater in thy peace,
Dread Elizabeth;
Our muse only truth,
Figments cannot use,
Thy ritch name to deck
That itselfe adorns:
But should now this age
Let all poesye fayne,
Fayning poesy could
Nothing faine at all
Worthy halfe thy fame.
(THOMAS CAMPION: Iambic Dimeter, "an example Lyrical," in _Observations
in the Art of English Poesie_. 1602.)
Rose-cheekt Lawra come
Sing thou smoothly with thy beawtie's
Silent musick, either other
Sweetely gracing.
Lovely formes do flowe
From concent devinely framed,
Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie's
Birth is heavenly.
(THOMAS CAMPION: Trochaic Dimeter, _ib._)
The full title of Campion's work was: "Observations in the Art of
English Poesie; wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by example
confirmed, that the English toong will receive eight severall kinds of
numbers, proper to it selfe, which are all in this booke set forth, and
were never before this time by any man attempted." Campion, like other
classical versifiers, condemned rime as a barbarity; but in imitating
the classical measures he does not violate the normal English accent, so
that his verses read smoothly in English rhythm. Curiously enough, he
includes among his innovations an iambic measure which proves to be
ordinary decasyllabic verse:
"Goe numbers boldly passe, stay not for ayde
Of shifting rime, that easie flatterer,
Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile".
Professor Schelling exclaims: "Where could the musical Doctor have kept
his ears all this time? to propose this measure thus innocently for the
drama, when the English stage had been ringing with his 'licentiate
iambics' for more than two decades!"
The second of the specimens quoted above Campion describes as a dimeter
"whose first foote may either be a Sponde or Trochy: the two verses
following are both of them Trochaical, and consist of foure feete, the
first of either of them being a Spondee or Trochy, the other three only
Trochyes. The fourth and last verse is made of two Trochyes. The number
is voluble and fit to expresse any amorous conceit." (See also another
of Campion's measures, in Part One, p. 27.)[43]
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries few, if any, notable English
poems were written in the classical measures. Goldsmith, in one of his
essays (xviii, on Versification), maintained the possibility of reducing
English words to the classical prosody, and said: "We have seen several
late specimens of English hexameters and sapphics so happily composed
that, by attaching them to the idea of ancient measure, we found them in
all respects as melodious and agreeable to the ear as the works of
Virgil and Anacreon, or Horace." But whose these were it seems to be
impossible to say.
Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going?
Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order--
Bleak blows the blast;--your hat has got a hole in't,
So have your breeches!
Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives and
Scissors to grind O!"
(CANNING and FRERE: _Sapphics; the Friend of Humanity and the
Knife-Grinder_, in the _Anti-Jacobin_, November, 1797).
These "Sapphics" were a burlesque of some by Southey in similar stanzas,
opening:
"Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snow fell,
Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked,
When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey,
Weary and way-sore."
"In this poem," said the _Anti-Jacobin_, not unjustly, "the pathos of
the matter is not a little relieved by the absurdity of the metre."
O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset.
(TENNYSON: _Milton; Alcaics._)
O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty metre.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
(TENNYSON: _Hendecasyllabics._)
On the first of these stanzas of Tennyson, compare his stanzas to
Maurice, and note, p. 77, above. With the hendecasyllabics, compare the
"Phaleuciakes" of Sidney, p. 331, above, and "Hendecasyllabics" in
Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_.
Tennyson took no little interest in the relations of classical and
English metres, and seems to have believed in the possibility of genuine
English quantitative verse. He did not, however, regard it as of
practical value, and treated his own experiments as trifles. In his
Memoirs, written by his son, Tennyson is said to have observed that he
knew the quantity of every English word except _scissors_, a mysterious
saying which may be set beside Southey's declaration that _Egypt_ is the
only spondee in the English language. His son also preserves an
extemporaneous line composed by Tennyson to illustrate the observance of
quantity "regardless of accent":
"All men alike hate slops, particularly gruel;"
and a sapphic stanza, also extemporized, quantitative but conforming to
common accent:
"Faded ev'ry violet, all the roses;
Gone the glorious promise; and the victim,
Broken in this anger of Aphrodite,
Yields to the victor."
(_Memoir_, vol. ii. p. 231.)
God, on verdurous Helicon
Dweller, child of Urania,
Thou that draw'st to the man the fair
Maiden, O Hymenæus, O
Hymen, O Hymenæus!
(ROBINSON ELLIS: _Poems of Catullus_, LXI. 1871.)
Mr. Ellis's translations from Catullus are all "in the metres of the
original," and are among the most interesting specimens of modern
classical versifying. "Tennyson's Alcaics and Hendecasyllabics," he said
in his Preface, "suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go
to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless
the ancient quantity was reproduced also." Of special interest is the
imitation of the "almost unapproachable" galliambic verse of the _Attis_
(pp. 49-53):
"When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orient
Scann'd lustrous air, the rude seas, earth's massy solidity,
When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime,
Then arous'd was Attis; o'er him sleep hastily fled away
To Pasithea's arms immortal with a tremulous hovering."
As Mr. Ellis observes, the metre of Tennyson's _Boadicea_ was modelled
on this of Catullus. Compare also Mr. George Meredith's _Phaëthon_,
"attempted in the galliambic measure":
"At the coming up of Ph[oe]bus, the all-luminous charioteer,
Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,
And with shadows dappled, men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent;
For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder
to black."
--Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
Saw the reluctant
Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
Shone Mitylene.
(SWINBURNE: _Sapphics_, in _Poems and Ballads_.)
Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought,
with love?
What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?
What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised
to wave,
Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?
(SWINBURNE: _Choriambics_, in _Poems and Ballads_, Second Series, 1878.)
Swinburne's imitations of classical measures are frankly accentual, with
no effort to introduce fixed quantities into English.