English Verse Part 23

Perishing gloomily, Spurred by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest.-- Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast.

Owning her weakness, Her evil behaviour, And leaving, with meekness, Her sins to her Saviour!

(THOMAS HOOD: _The Bridge of Sighs._)

Roll the strong stream of it Up, till the scream of it Wake from a dream of it Children that sleep, Seamen that fare for them Forth, with a prayer for them; Shall not G.o.d care for them, Angels not keep?

Spare not the surges Thy stormy scourges; Spare us the dirges Of wives that weep.

Turn back the waves for us: Dig no fresh graves for us, Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep.

(SWINBURNE: _Winter in Northumberland_, xiv.)

Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame.

But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him: The thorn-tree had a mind to Him When into the woods he came.

(SIDNEY LANIER: _A Ballad of Trees and the Master._)

_Broken rime._

There first for thee my pa.s.sion grew, Sweet, sweet Matilda Pottingen!

Thou wast the daughter of my tu- tor, law-professor at the U- niversity of Gottingen.

Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu!

That kings and priests are plotting in; Here doomed to starve on water gru- el, never shall I see the U- niversity of Gottingen.

(GEORGE CANNING: Song in _The Rovers; Anti-Jacobin_, June 4, 1798.[13])

Winter and summer, night and morn, I languish at this table dark; My office-window has a corn- er looks into St. James's Park.

(THACKERAY: Ballads, _What Makes my Heart to Thrill and Glow?_)

_Internal rime._

Internal rime may be regarded on the one side as only a matter of the division of the verse, since if it occurs regularly at the medial cesura, it practically breaks the verse into two parts. On the other side, if used only sporadically, it is a matter of tone-color. It sometimes appears, however, in forms which ent.i.tle it to recognition by itself. The earliest of these forms is the "Leonine rime," which is said to have taken its name from Leoninus of St. Victor, who in the twelfth century wrote elegiacs (hexameters and pentameters) in which the syllable preceding the cesura regularly rimed with the final syllable.

Obviously lines of this kind would easily break up into riming half-lines. Similarly, in septenary verse internal rime was often used together with end-rime, with a resulting resolution into short-line stanzas riming either _aabb_ or _abab_.[14] The following specimen from a celebrated ballad shows the popular use of a somewhat complex system of internal rime.

Be it right or wrong, these men among on women do complaine, Affirming this, how that it is a labour spent in vaine, To love them wele, for never a dele they love a man agayne.

For lete a man do what he can, ther favour to attayne, Yet yf a newe to them pursue, ther furst trew lover than Laboureth for nought, and from her thought he is a bannisshed man.

(_Ye Nutbrowne Maide._ From Arnold's Chronicle, printed ab. 1502. In Flugel's _Neuenglisches Lesebuch_, vol. i. p. 167.)

Haill rois maist chois till clois thy fois greit micht, Haill stone quhilk schone upon the throne of licht, Vertew, quhais trew sweit dew ouirthrew al vice, Was ay ilk day gar say the way of licht; Amend, offend, and send our end ay richt.

Thow stant, ordant as sanct, of grant maist wise, Till be supplie, and the hie gre of price.

Delite the t.i.te me quite of site to dicht, For I apply schortlie to thy devise.

(GAWAIN DOUGLAS: _A ballade in the commendation of honour and verteu_; at the end of the _Palace of Honor_.)

Douglas, like his countryman Dunbar, was something of a metrical virtuoso, and his use of internal rime in this ballade is one of his most remarkable achievements. In the first stanza there are two internal rimes in each line, in the second three, and in the third (here quoted) four.

I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good, But sure I think that I can drink With him that wears a hood.

Though I go bare, take ye no care, I nothing am a-cold, I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old.

(Drinking Song in _Gammer Gurton's Needle_.)

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow stream'd off free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

(COLERIDGE: _Rime of the Ancient Mariner._)

The splendor falls on castle walls, And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

(TENNYSON: Song in _The Princess_, iv.)

England, queen of the waves whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found?

Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned ....

England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy glory, free, Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he worships thee; None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _The Armada_, vii.)

Here the third and eighth syllables of each verse rime, giving the effect of a separate melody only half heard under that of the main rime-scheme. This is especially subtle where there is no possible pause after the riming word, as in the "sing" of the last line quoted.

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?--weep now or nevermore!

See on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!

Come, let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung: An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young, A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

(POE: _Lenore._)

I did not take her by the hand, (Though little was to understand From touch of hand all friends might take,) Because it should not prove a flake Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.

I did not listen to her voice, (Though none had noted, where at choice All might rejoice in listening,) Because no such a thing should cling In the wood's moan at evening.

(ROSSETTI: _Penumbra._)

(See also _Love's Nocturn_, p. 146, below.)

B. AS A SPORADIC ELEMENT (TONE-COLOR)

This division includes the use made of the qualities of sound for the purpose of adding to the melodiousness of verse, or of expressing in some measure the ideas to be conveyed by means of the very sounds employed. Sometimes this takes the form of alliteration, differing from that of early English verse only in that it follows no regular structural laws. On the other hand, it may take the form of _onomatopia_, the figure of speech in which sound and sense are closely related,--as in descriptive words like _buzz_, _hiss_, _murmur_, _splash_, and the like. The term Tone-color is formed by a.n.a.logy with the German _Klangfarbe_, an expression apparently due to the feeling that the sound-qualities of speech have somewhat the same function as the various colors in a picture. It is unquestionably true that the selection of sounds, whether vowel or consonantal, has much to do with the melodious effect of very much poetry. The poet may choose the different sound-qualities (so far as the sense permits) just as the musician may choose the varying qualities of the different instruments in the orchestra or the different stops in the organ.

Strictly speaking, this matter of Tone-color is not a part of verse-form in the same sense as matters of rhythm, rime, and the like; for it may appear in prose as well as in verse, and is not in any case reducible to formal principles or laws. Yet its use in actual verse is so important, and it is so closely related to the use of sound-quality in the form of rime and alliteration, that it seems well to include it here.[15]

Dr. Guest treats sounds as having in themselves the suggestion of more or less definite ideas, this suggestiveness being explainable by physical causes. Thus the trembling character of _l_ suggests trepidation, as in "Double, double, toil and trouble." _R_ suggests harsh, grating, or rattling noises; the sibilants are appropriate to the expression of shrieks, screams, and the like; _b_ and _p_, because of the compression of the lips, suggest muscular effort; _st_, from a sudden stopping of the _s_, suggests fear or surprise; _f_ and _h_ also fear, because of their whispering quality. Hollow sounds (_au_, _ow_, _o_, and the like) suggest depth and fulness.

Guest quotes in this connection an interesting pa.s.sage from Bacon's _Natural History_ (ii. 200): "There is found a similitude between the sound that is made by inanimate bodies, or by animate bodies that have no voice articulate, and divers letters of articulate voices; and commonly men have given such names to those sounds as do allude unto the articulate letters; as trembling of hot water hath resemblance unto the letter _l_; quenching of hot metals with the letter _z_; snarling of dogs with the letter _r_; the noise of screech-owls with the letter _sh_; voice of cats with the diphthong _eu_; voice of cuckoos with the diphthong _ou_; sounds of strings with the diphthong _ng_.

A. W. Schlegel went even farther in suggesting a subtle symbolism in sounds apart from descriptive qualities. Thus he regarded _a_ as suggestive of bright red, and as symbolizing youth, joy, or brightness (as in the words _Strahl_, _Klang_, _Glans_); _i_ as suggestive of sky-blue, symbolic of intimacy or love; and so with other vowel sounds.