Composition-Rhetoric Part 35

+116. The Stanza.+--Some of our verse is continuous like Milton's _Paradise Lost_ or Shakespeare's plays, but much of it is divided into groups called stanzas. The lines or verses composing a stanza are bound together by definite principles of rhythm and rhyme. Usually stanzas of the same poem have the same structure, but stanzas of different poems show a variety of structure.

Two of the most simple forms are the couplet and the triplet. They often form a part of a continuous poem, but they are occasionally found in divided poems.

1.

The western waves of ebbing day Roll'd o'er the glen their level way.

--Scott.

2.

A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid; Her satin snood, her silken plaid, Her golden brooch such birth betray'd.

--Scott.

A stanza of four lines is called a quatrain. The lines of quatrains show a variety in the arrangement of their rhymes. The first two lines may rhyme with each other and the last two with each other; the first and fourth may rhyme and the second and third; or the rhymes may alternate. Notice the example on page 208, and also the following:--

1.

I ask not wealth, but power to take And use the things I have aright.

Not years, but wisdom that shall make My life a profit and delight.

--Phoebe Cary.

2.

I count this thing to be grandly true: That a n.o.ble deed is a step toward G.o.d,-- Lifting the soul from the common sod To a purer air and a broader view.

--Holland.

A quatrain consisting of iambic pentameter verse with alternate rhymes is called an elegiac stanza.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

--Gray.

The Tennysonian stanza consists of four iambic tetrameter lines in which the first line rhymes with the fourth, and the second with the third.

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.

--Tennyson.

Five and six line stanzas are found in a great variety. The following are examples:--

1.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

--Sh.e.l.ley.

2.

And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring.

Let them smile as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.

--Holmes.

3.

The upper air burst into life; And a hundred fire flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about; And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between.

--Coleridge.

The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines: the first eight are iambic pentameters, and the last line is an iambic hexameter or Alexandrine.

Burns makes use of this stanza in _The Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night._ The following stanza from that poem shows the plan of the rhymes:--

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand a wall of fire around their much beloved isle.

EXERCISES

_A._ Scan the following:--

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From G.o.d, who is our home.

--Wordsworth.