English Narrative Poems Part 1

English Narrative Poems.

by Various.

INTRODUCTION

Narrative poetry is distinguished from other types of verse in that it aims to relate a connected series of events and, therefore, deals primarily with actions, rather than with thoughts or emotions. This definition, however, simple as it appears to be in theory, is often difficult to apply as a test because other matter is blended with the pure narrative. In any story where the situation is made prominent, description may be required to make clear the scene and explain movements to the reader; thus _Enoch Arden_ begins with a word picture of a sea-coast town. Again it is often necessary to a.n.a.lyze the motives which actuate certain characters, and so it becomes necessary to introduce exposition of some sort into the plot. The poems in this collection serve to enforce the lesson that the four standard rhetorical forms--narration, description, exposition, and argumentation--are constantly being combined and welded in a complicated way. In cases where these various literary elements are apparently in a tangle, a cla.s.sification, if it be made at all, must be based on the design of the poem as a whole, and the emphasis and proportion given to the respective elements by the author. If the stress is laid on the recounting of the events which make up a unified action, and if the other factors are made subordinate and subsidiary to this end, then the poem in question belongs to the narrative group.

The antiquity of the narrative as a form of literature is undisputed.

Indeed it has been established with a reasonable degree of certainty that poetry in its very beginnings was narrative and in its primitive state must have been a sort of rude, rhythmical chant, originated and partic.i.p.ated in by the tribe as a whole, and telling of the exploits of G.o.ds or legendary heroes. In the course of time there arose the _minstrel_, who, acting first as chorus leader, became eventually the representative of the tribe and its own special singer. When we reach a somewhat more advanced stage of civilization, we find regularly appointed bards reciting their lays in the hall of the chieftain or urging on the warriors to battle with rehearsals of past victories.

Originally these bards simply repeated the old oral traditions handed down as common property, but the opportunity for the display of individual genius soon induced them to try variations on the current themes and to compose versions of their own. With this advance of individualism, poetry became gradually more complex. Various elements, lyrical, descriptive, and dramatic, a.s.sumed some prominence and tended to develop separate forms. This differentiation, however, did not impair the vigor of the story-telling spirit, and a constant succession of narrative poems down to the present day evidences how productive and characteristic a feature of our literature this form has been.

Obviously it is impracticable to undertake here even a brief summary of the history of English narrative poetry and of the influences to which it has been responsive. Something may, nevertheless, be done to map out roughly a few divisions which may be of a.s.sistance in bringing this material into orderly shape for the student. Many efforts at systematic cla.s.sification have been made, and a few fairly well-marked types have been defined. In spite of this fact, the task still presents insuperable obstacles over which there has been futile controversy. One type is likely to run into another in a way which is uncomfortably baffling.

Then there are numerous nondescript works whose proper place seems determinable by no law of poetics. The fact is that, here at least, narrow distinctions are bound to be unsatisfactory. The critic finds it imperative to avoid dogmatism lest he lay himself open to attack; his only refuge is in the general statement which may be suggestive even if it is not exact.

Of the fixed types, two of the best known, the _Epic_ and the _Ballad_, were among the earliest to be created. The Epic in its original form was a long poem of uniform metre, serious in tone and elevated in style, introducing supernatural or heroic characters and usually dealing with some significant event in racial or national history. In its first or primitive shape it was anonymous, a spontaneous outgrowth of popular feeling, though perhaps arranged and revised at a later date by some conscious artistic hand. Such a primitive Epic is the old English _Beowulf_: it is thoroughly objective; in it no clew to definite authorship can be detected; in it personality is buried in the rush of incident and the clash of action. When, with the broadening of the scope of poetry, the individual writer displaced the tribe as the preserver of folk-lore, the new order of things evolved the so-called artificial Epic as represented by Milton's _Paradise Lost_. Here the conventional Epic style and material is kept; the universe is the stage, and the figures upon it are imposing and grand; but behind the poem is a single personality whose mood colors and modifies the whole. The Epic is no longer entirely racial or national, but individual; and we have the introduction of such pa.s.sages as Milton's reference to his own blindness in Book Three.

Akin to the Epic is the Mock Epic, which appropriates the Epic machinery and Epic style to use them in dealing with trivialities. In Pope's _The Rape of the Lock_, the most artistic Mock Epic in English, the theft of a single lock of hair becomes an act of national and supernatural interest and a game of cards is described as if it were a mighty battle.

Almost parallel with and closely resembling the development of the Epic is that of the _Ballad_. Like the primitive Epic in anonymity and impersonality, the Ballad was much shorter, had rime and stanzas, and dealt, as a rule, with incidents of less importance. Not so formal or pretentious as the Epic, it was easily memorized even by the peasant, and handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Favorite subjects were the legends of Robin Hood, the misfortunes of n.o.bles, and the incidents of Border warfare. Mixed in many of them was a tendency toward superst.i.tion, a survival of the belief in ghosts, magicians, and talking animals. Numerous examples gathered by antiquaries may be found in the edition of old English Ballads in this series; among the better known are _The Wife of Usher's Well_ and _Chevy Chase_. Later poets naturally adapted the Ballad form to their own uses, and so we have the artificial Ballad, ill.u.s.trated by Cowper's _The History of John_ _Gilpin_, Longfellow's _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, and Swinburne's _May Janet_. In these poems many of the trite expressions so peculiar to the primitive Ballad are retained; but, like the artificial Epic, the work is no longer communal, but individual, in origin and bears the stamp of one mind animated by an artistic purpose.

In discussing the Epic and the Ballad one is on fairly safe ground, but between these types one finds a vast amount of poetry, evidently narrative, which suggests perplexing problems. Much of it may be made to come under what we term loosely the _Metrical Romance_. This t.i.tle is often narrowed by scholars to apply strictly to a poetical _genre_, arising in the Middle Ages and brought into England by the Norman-French, which deals in a rambling way with the marvellous adventures of wandering knights or heroes. Its plot, in which love and combat are conspicuous features, is enveloped in a kind of glamour, an atmosphere of unreality. It drew its material from many diverse sources: from the legends of Troy and the stories of cla.s.sical and Oriental antiquity; from the tales of the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne and his paladins; from the Celtic accounts of King Arthur and the Table Round.

Since its characters, sometimes not without anachronism, embodied the chivalric ideals of courtesy and loyalty to ladies, hatred of paganism, and general conduct according to a prescribed but unwritten code, its appeal was made for the most part to the courtier and the aristocrat,--though it must be added that many of the robuster Charlemagne romances acquired currency with the humbler cla.s.ses and were sung in the cottage of the peasant. The fact that the greater number of these Metrical Romances were mere redactions, taken from foreign models, makes them seem deficient in English interest. Still, several of the best were of native composition, an excellent example being the well-known _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_.

But even in spite of a few slight advantages to be gained, it seems unwise to restrict the Metrical Romance too closely. What we are accustomed to call, rather vaguely, romance is a persistent quality in narrative poetry, and is not limited to the literature of any particular age or rank of society. A cursory examination will disclose many evidences of the romantic spirit in both the Epic and the Ballad. And certainly Scott's _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Keats's _The Eve of St. Agnes_, Longfellow's _Evangeline_, and many other poems on similar themes must remain uncla.s.sified unless we designate them broadly as Metrical Romances. Of course, it is not essential that they should be pigeon-holed and put away with the right label affixed. However, one or two observations on the subject-matter with which works of this nature deal may a.s.sist us in avoiding embarra.s.sing confusion. Sometimes the Metrical Romance (using the term in its broader sense) deals with authenticated incidents of history. In such cases, the narrative, founded as it is on matters of fact, is compelled to preserve substantial accuracy with regard to the events which it uses for a structure. The fancy is thus partly curbed through the necessity of not departing radically from the truth. This restraint, logically enough, does not prevent the introduction of fict.i.tious characters or episodes; but in the strict historical poem, as in the historical novel, it does require adherence to chronology and a just representation of the period in which the action takes place. Occasionally this form approaches a poetical paraphrase, as in Rossetti's _The White Ship_. The nineteenth century was singularly prolific in works of this sort; notable among such works are Scott's _Marmion_, Tennyson's _The Revenge_, and Longfellow's _Paul Revere's Ride_. If the basis of the poem is mythological, we have a further species of the Metrical Romance. The stories cl.u.s.tered around the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of unsophisticated peoples are perennially attractive and offer a fruitful field to the poet. In the setting there is frequent opportunity for elaborate description, and there is often, as in Tennyson's _Oenone_ and William Morris's _Atalanta's Race_, ornamentation used by the author that is more than ordinarily remarkable. For such poetry the Greek and Latin writers furnish a wealth of material for imitation. Nor have the myths of other races been neglected in recent years. Matthew Arnold's _Balder Dead_ has its inspiration in the Norse _Eddas_ and has its opening scene in Valhalla where Odin, father of the G.o.ds, presides over the immortals.

William Morris's _Sigurd the Volsing_ is an adaptation of the myths of the early Germans.

It is not aside from the point to refer here to the few poems in which the subject-matter of the Metrical Romance is used, strangely enough, as a means of teaching moral ideas. Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ presents such an anomaly. In it conventional chivalric heroes undergo surprising and impossible adventures, battling and loving as in the legends of Charlemagne and Arthur. Indeed, in the _Faerie Queene_, Arthur himself appears as the protagonist. But these knights and ladies are, we learn, merely animated vices and virtues and are such, because, as Spenser takes pains to tell us, the poem, though romantic in mood, is allegorical in intention, its aim being "to fashion a gentleman or n.o.ble person in vertuous and gentle discipline." The author in using his characters as agents of moral instruction creates a type as much by itself as _Pilgrim's Progress_ is in prose. Modern examples less conspicuous for visible allegorical intention are Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_, in which Arthurian material is once more revived with something of an ethical purpose.

There is still to be taken up a large body of poems, usually, though not always, shorter than the Metrical Romances, which deal with the situations of common life and with the humbler members of society. By some authorities the term Metrical Tale has been applied to such compositions; though it is hardly exact or specific, since the word "tale" is usually made synonymous with "story" and therefore does not connote a limited subject-matter. We may accept it in a provisional way as a convenient technical term for our purposes. The Metrical Tale, then, as contrasted with the Metrical Romance, attempts a realistic portrayal of the natural sorrows, losses, or pains which belong to our everyday experience. The emotions of which it treats are fundamentally strong and keep the style and versification from becoming overelaborated. The Metrical Tale may be humorous as in Chaucer's _The Miller's Tale_, or may be pathetic and tragic as in Tennyson's _Enoch Arden_ or Wordsworth's _Michael_. In these poems it will be observed that the diction and phraseology are exceedingly simple. But here, too, candor requires the admission that the alleged difference between the Romance and the Tale is likely to bring on a charge of inconsistency.

_Enoch Arden_, just now mentioned, abounds in romantic episodes, though Enoch and Philip and Annie dwell in a little fishing village. Why, if Chaucer chose to call his masterpiece the _Canterbury Tales_, should any one take the liberty of questioning his nomenclature? The query is well founded; and yet the reader must recognize a wide gulf in tone and spirit between _The Knight's Tale_ and _The Reeve's Tale_. Call it, if you will, the distinction between idealism and realism; at any rate it exists, and ought to be made plain even at the risk of confronting dilemmas of another sort.

Having a kind of relationship to what we call arbitrarily the Metrical Tale is the Beast Fable in verse, in which animals and birds are endowed with reason and speech. The excuse for the Beast Fable is an ethical one, and the story, often humorous, is merely a vehicle for instruction,--a fact evident enough from the so-called moral appended to most Beast Fables. The best Beast Fables in English are those of John Gay.

It is beyond the scope of this introduction to make any but a pa.s.sing reference to the forms of versification which have been used in narrative poetry. In general, the range of metres is wide and varied, though a few common lines and stanzas occur with much frequency. Blank Verse, a favorite Epic measure used by Milton in _Paradise Lost_, has also been effective in the Metrical Romance (Arnold's _Sohrab and Rustum_) and the Metrical Tale (Wordsworth's _Michael_). It is peculiarly fitting to longer poems of a serious character. The Heroic Couplet, made up of two rimed iambic pentameters, was invented by Chaucer and tried in many of the _Canterbury Tales_. It has since become very common, being the measure of such widely different poems as Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_, Pope's _The Rape of the Lock_, and Keats's _Lamia_. Octosyllabic verse is frequently found,--sometimes in rimed couplets as in Scott's _Marmion_, less often unrimed as in Longfellow's _Hiawatha_. In the couplet form it is especially suited to war poetry where a rapid movement is desirable. The standard four-lined ballad stanza with rimed alternate lines has continued in popularity with the artificial ballad writers and has been used in such poems as Wordsworth's _Lucy Gray_ and Longfellow's _The Wreck of the Hesperus_.

Most complicated of all the narrative stanzaic forms is the Spenserian stanza, devised by Spenser for his _Faerie Queene_ and imitated by Keats in _The Eve of St. Agnes_. It has a stateliness which makes it well adapted to dignified themes. In some few examples there is a metre wholly irregular and following the movement of the story, as in Tennyson's _The Revenge_ and Browning's _Herve Riel_.

The discussion of narrative methods may be left to the will and discretion of the teacher. A study of the separate poems here presented will show that while the four almost indispensable elements of narration--plot, setting, characters, and motive--may usually be found, their use and emphasis vary greatly according to the theories and personalities of the authors. The employment of such arts of construction as suspense and climax may be discovered by the individual student, who should also test each poem for its unity, coherence, and proportion. In a collection such as this there is ample room for instructive criticism and comparison. But narrative poems may well be read for the interest they excite. If a narrative poem fails in this respect, it is all but condemned from the start. It is hoped that these examples may show the student that _poetry_ is not always dull and lifeless; that it may possess at times all the features which make literature attractive as well as inspiring.

The editors are grateful for a.s.sistance rendered them by Mr. A. W.

Leonard and Mr. Archibald Freeman, both instructors in Phillips Academy, Andover, Ma.s.sachusetts.

WILLIAM COWPER

THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN

SHOWING HOW HE WENT FARTHER THAN HE INTENDED, AND CAME HOME SAFE AGAIN

John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and renown, A trainband captain eke[1] was he Of famous London town.

John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear, 5 "Though wedded we have been These twice ten tedious years, yet we No holiday have seen.

"To-morrow is our wedding day, And we will then repair 10 Unto the Bell at Edmonton[2]

All in a chaise and pair.

"My sister, and my sister's child, Myself, and children three, Will fill the chaise; so you must ride 15 On horseback after we.[3]"

He soon replied, "I do admire Of womankind but one, And you are she, my dearest dear, Therefore it shall be done. 20

"I am a linendraper bold, As all the world doth know, And my good friend the calender[4]

Will lend his horse to go."

Quoth Mrs. Gilpin, "That's well said; 25 And for that wine is dear, We will be furnished with our own, Which is both bright and clear."

John Gilpin kiss'd his loving wife; O'erjoyed was he to find, 30 That, though on pleasure she was bent, She had a frugal mind.

The morning came, the chaise was brought, But yet was not allow'd To drive up to the door, lest all 35 Should say that she was proud.

So three doors off the chaise was stay'd, Where they did all get in; Six precious souls, and all agog[5]

To dash through thick and thin. 40

Smack went the whip, round went the wheels, Were never folks so glad, The stones did rattle underneath, As if Cheapside[6] were mad.

John Gilpin at his horse's side 45 Seized fast the flowing mane, And up he got, in haste to ride, But soon came down again;

For saddletree[7] scarce reach'd had he His journey to begin, 50 When, turning round his head, he saw Three customers come in.

So down he came; for loss of time, Although it grieved him sore, Yet loss of pence, full well he knew, 55 Would trouble him much more.

'Twas long before the customers Were suited to their mind, When Betty screaming came down stairs, "The wine is left behind!" 60

"Good lack!" quoth he--"yet bring it me, My leathern belt likewise, In which I bear my trusty sword When I do exercise."

Now Mistress Gilpin (careful soul!) 65 Had two stone bottles found, To hold the liquor that she loved, And keep it safe and sound.

Each bottle had a curling ear, Through which the belt he drew, 70 And hung a bottle on each side, To make his balance true.

Then over all, that he might be Equipp'd from top to toe, His long red cloak, well brush'd and neat, 75 He manfully did throw.

Now see him mounted once again Upon his nimble steed, Full slowly pacing o'er the stones, With caution and good heed. 80

But finding soon a smoother road Beneath his well shod feet, The snorting beast began to trot, Which gall'd him in his seat.

So, "fair and softly," John he cried, 85 But John he cried in vain; That trot became a gallop soon, In spite of curb and rein.