THE QUATRAIN AND SONNET
_The Quatrain_
In the seventeenth century the quatrain was a favorite tool of the old
English writers who wished to embody a stinging epigram or epitaph in
verse. The works of Robert Herrick contain several, most of them,
unfortunately, not fit for print. Nor was he the only unblushing
exponent of the questionable quatrain.
But times have changed and like everything else the quatrain has grown
respectable. From the disuse and misuse into which it had fallen the
modern magazine editor rescued it and by creating a market revived the
art of quatrain making. To-day sometimes the four lines are descriptive;
again they contain a kindly or clever epigram, or perhaps an unexpected
twist at the end that makes for a joke.
The average quatrain is in iambic pentameter with alternate lines
rhyming. Sometimes the first and fourth lines rhyme and the second and
third, and occasionally one sees a detached Omaric stanza. It all
depends upon the thought and the way it is to be expressed. One thing is
certain, that the quatrain because of its very brevity demands more care
and polishing than a longer piece of verse. The thought must not only be
concise and clearly expressed but the four lines must contain nothing
else.
The following example by Frank Dempster Sherman not only describes this
form of verse but is an excellent quatrain in itself:
"Hark at the lips of this pink whorl of shell
And you shall hear the ocean's surge and roar:
So in the quatrain's measure, written well
A thousand lines shall all be sung in four."
_The Sonnet_
It is the ambition of many a versifier to be known as a maker of
sonnets. Doubtless this love for the form is prompted not only by its
possibilities but even more by its traditions. Shakespeare, Milton,
Wordsworth and Rossetti, to mention only a few of the celebrated names,
were masters of the sonnet, though it must be said that the version used
by the earlier English writers was not the one we know to-day.
Shakespeare's seventy-third sonnet may serve as a fair example of the
arrangement of the lines in the early Elizabethan period, though even in
his day the present rhyming order was passing gradually into use.
"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves or few or none do hang
Upon the boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."
This fourteen lines, as an examination will discover, might be written
in three four-line stanzas with an additional two lines as an
epigrammatic envoy. In fact it can scarcely be called a sonnet at all,
and the last two lines come out with such force as to offend the ear
accustomed to the more modern form.
The sonnet by Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," is an
excellent illustration of the change in the rhyming system and emphasis.
"Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
The first eight lines rhyme: a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a; the last six: c, d,
c, d, c, d. Thus the sonnet halts only at one place, the interval
between the eighth and the sixth lines, where the rest is welcome, while
the emphasis, instead of coming out so brazenly at the end, reaches its
climax in the next to the last line, dying away gradually. The order of
the eight lines in the modern sonnet is almost invariably unchanged, but
the sestet is varied as the movement of the thought dictates.
As to sonnet construction little can be said here or, if one wished to
go into detail, so much could be said that it would fill this volume a
dozen times. Keats, Wordsworth and Rossetti, to say nothing of a dozen
or more modern sonneteers, are safe models to follow. One trifling
suggestion seems in order. There are so many really good sonnets now
that a second-rate production is a drug on the market. Except as an
exercise it is altogether superfluous. A first-class sonnet must be
grounded first on an idea and then rewritten and worked over until the
idea has found a fit setting. Commonplaceness either in the idea or its
expression is alike fatal.
VII
THE BALLADE AND OTHER FRENCH FORMS