English Verse Part 45

(COVENTRY PATMORE: Ode ix. Printed 1868.)

Mr. Patmore's use of the irregular ode forms is of particular interest.

He made a special study of the form, and applied it more widely than is commonly done. His first odes were printed (not published) in 1868, and from one of these the present specimen is taken. Later (1877), in connection with _The Unknown Eros_, he set forth his view of the ode form, treating it not as lawless but as governed by laws of its own.

"Nearly all English metres," he said, "owe their existence as metres to 'catalexis,' or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis, are fixed. But the verse in which this volume is written is catalectic _par excellence_, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic pa.s.sion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the n.o.blest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character. Some persons, unlearned in the subject of this metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is 'lawless.' But it has its laws as truly as any other.

In its highest order, the lyric or 'ode,' it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter 'ode' by the occasional introduction of pa.s.sages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced ... by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme." (From Patmore's Prefatory Note to _The Unknown Eros_; quoted by William Sharp, in the Introduction to _Great Odes_, p. x.x.xii.)[40]

On the sh.o.r.es of a Continent cast, She won the inviolate soil By loss of heirdom of all the Past, And faith in the royal right of Toil!

She planted homes on the savage sod: Into the wilderness lone She walked with fearless feet, In her hand the divining-rod, Till the veins of the mountains beat With fire of metal and force of stone!

She set the speed of the river-head To turn the mills of her bread; She drove her ploughshare deep Through the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep.

To the South, and West, and North, She called Pathfinder forth, Her faithful and sole companion Where the flushed Sierra, snow-starred, Her way to the sunset barred, And the nameless rivers in thunder and foam Channeled the terrible canyon!

Nor paused, till her uttermost home Was built, in the smile of a softer sky And the glory of beauty yet to be, Where the haunted waves of Asia die On the strand of the world-wide sea.

(BAYARD TAYLOR: _National Ode_, strophe iii. 1876.)

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose Go honking northward over Tennessee; West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young, Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, With restless violent hands and casual tongue Moulding her mighty fates, The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; And like a larger sea, the vital green Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung Over Dakota and the prairie states.

By desert people immemorial On Arizonan mesas shall be done Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; Nor shall the primal G.o.ds lack sacrifice More splendid, when the white Sierras call Unto the Rockies straightway to arise And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, Unrolling rivers clear For flutter of broad phylacteries; While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, And Mariposa through the purple calms Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms Where East and West are met,-- A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set To say that East and West are twain, With different loss and gain: The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet....

... Ah no!

We have not fallen so, We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!

'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry Came up the tropic wind, 'Now help us, for we die!'

Then Alabama heard, And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho Shouted a burning word.

Proud state with proud impa.s.sioned state conferred, And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, East, west, and south, and north, Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young, Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, By the unforgotten names of eager boys Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung With the old mystic joys And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, But that the heart of youth is generous,-- We charge you, ye who lead us, Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!

Turn not their new-world victories to gain!

One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays Of their dear praise, One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, The implacable republic will require.

(WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY: _An Ode in Time of Hesitation_, strophes iii. and ix. 1900.)

C.--CHORAL

Different from either of the two cla.s.ses of odes already represented are the irregular choral measures used by a few English poets in translation or imitation of the odes of the Greek drama.

_Chorus._

O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious!

Living or dying thou hast fulfilled The work for which thou wast foretold To Israel, and now liest victorious Among thy slain self-killed; Not willingly, but tangled in the fold Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more Than all thy life had slain before.

_Semi-chorus._

While their hearts were jocund and sublime, Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine And fat regorged of bulls and goats, Chaunting their idol, and preferring Before our living Dread, who dwells In Silo, his bright sanctuary, Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent, Who hurt their minds, And urged them on with mad desire To call in haste for their destroyer.

They, only set on sport and play, Unweetingly importuned Their own destruction to come speedy upon them.

So fond are mortal men, Fallen into wrath divine, As their own ruin on themselves to invite, Insensate left, or to sense reprobate, And with blindness internal struck.

_Semi-chorus._

But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame, And as an evening dragon came, a.s.sailant on the perched roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.

So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teemed, Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most When most unactive deemed; And, though her body die, her fame survives, A secular bird, ages of lives.

(MILTON: _Samson Agonistes_, ll. 1660-1707. 1671.)

Of this pa.s.sage Mr. Swinburne says: "It is hard to realize and hopeless to reproduce the musical force of cla.s.sic metres so recondite and exquisite as the choral parts of a Greek play. Even Milton could not; though with his G.o.dlike instinct and his G.o.dlike might of hand he made a kind of strange and enormous harmony by intermixture of a.s.sonance and rhyme with irregular blank verse, as in that last t.i.tanic chorus of Samson which utters over the fallen Philistines the trumpet-blast and thunder of its triumphs." (_Essays and Studies_, pp. 162, 163.)

The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere; In the court of G.o.ds, in the city of men, And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen, In the still mountain air.

Only to Typho it sounds hatefully,-- To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown, Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone, To embed them in the sea.

Wherefore dost thou groan so loud?

Wherefore do thy nostrils flash, Through the dark night, suddenly, Typho, such red jets of flame?

Is thy tortured heart still proud?

Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash?

Still alert thy stone-crushed frame?

Doth thy fierce soul still deplore Thine ancient rout by the Cilician hills, And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore?

Do thy bloodshot eyes still weep The fight which crowned thine ills, Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep?

Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair, Where erst the strong sea-currents sucked thee down, Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest, Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair?

That thy groans, like thunder prest, Begin to roll, and almost drown The sweet notes whose lulling spell G.o.ds and the race of mortals love so well, When through thy caves thou hearest music swell?

But an awful pleasure bland Spreading o'er the Thunderer's face, When the sound climbs near his seat, The Olympian council sees; As he lets his lax right hand, Which the lightnings doth embrace, Sink upon his mighty knees.

And the eagle, at the beck Of the appeasing, gracious harmony, Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck, Nestling nearer to Jove's feet; While o'er his sovran eye The curtains of the blue films slowly meet.

And the white Olympus-peaks Rosily brighten, and the soothed G.o.ds smile At one another from their golden chairs, And no one round the charmed circle speaks.

Only the loved Hebe bears The cup about, whose draughts beguile Pain and care, with a dark store Of fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o'er; And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _Empedocles on Etna_, Act II. Song of Callicles. 1853.)

Wherefore to me, this fear-- Groundedly stationed here Fronting my heart, the portent-watcher--flits she?

Wherefore should prophet-play The uncalled and unpaid lay, Nor--having spat forth fear, like bad dreams--sits she On the mind's throne beloved--well-suasive Boldness?

For time, since, by a throw of all the hands, The boat's stern-cables touched the sands, Has pa.s.sed from youth to oldness,-- When under Ilion rushed the ship-borne bands.

And from my eyes I learn-- Being myself my witness--their return.

Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul, Itself its teacher too, chants from within Erinus' dirge, not having now the whole Of Hope's dear boldness: nor my inwards sin-- The heart that's rolled in whirls against the mind Justly presageful of a fate behind.

But I pray--things false, from my hope, may fall Into the fate that's not-fulfilled-at-all!

Especially at least, of health that's great The term's insatiable: for, its weight --A neighbor, with a common wall between-- Ever will sickness lean; And destiny, her course pursuing straight, Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen.

Now, when a portion, rather than the treasure Fear casts from sling, with peril in right measure, It has not sunk--the universal freight, (With misery freighted over-full,) Nor has fear whelmed the hull.

Then too the gift of Zeus, Two-handedly profuse, Even from the furrows' yield for yearly use Has done away with famine, the disease; But blood of man to earth once falling,--deadly, black,-- In times ere these,-- Who may, by singing spells, call back?

Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knew The way to bring the dead again.

But, did not an appointed Fate constrain The Fate from G.o.ds, to bear no more than due, My heart, outstripping what tongue utters, Would have all out: which now, in darkness, mutters Moodily grieved, nor ever hopes to find How she a word in season may unwind From out the enkindling mind.

(BROWNING: _Agamemnon_; chorus. 1877.)

Of the same general metrical character as the irregular odes are certain poems (like some of Patmore's) with no regularly organized structure and varying lengths of line. See, for example, Milton's verses _At a Solemn Music_ and _On Time_; Swinburne's _Thala.s.sius_ and _On the Cliffs_; and William Morris's _On a fair Spring Morning_. Compare, also, the effect of the irregular strophic forms in Southey's _Curse of Kehama_, Sh.e.l.ley's _Queen Mab_, and the like.[41]

FOOTNOTES:

[39] On English ode-forms, see the introductions to Mr. Gosse's _English Odes_ and Mr. William Sharp's _Great Odes_; also Schipper, vol. ii. p.

792.

[40] Mr. Patmore has used the same sort of verse for narrative poetry, with unusual daring but also with unusual success. For an example see his _Amelia_, included in the _Golden Treasury_, Second Series. The following pa.s.sage exhibits the metrical method of the poem at its best:

"And so we went alone By walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plume Shook down perfume; Trim plots close blown With daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen, Engross'd each one With single ardor for her spouse, the sun; Garths in their glad array Of white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay, With azure chill the maiden flower between; Meadows of fervid green, With sometime sudden prospect of untold Cowslips, like chance-found gold; And broadcast b.u.t.tercups at joyful gaze, Rending the air with praise, Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shout Of Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout; Then through the Park, Where Spring to livelier gloom Quickened the cedars dark, And, 'gainst the clear sky cold, Which shone afar Crowded with sunny alps oracular, Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom."