English Verse Part 47

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, G.o.d-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose t.i.tan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset.

(TENNYSON: _Milton; Alcaics._)

O you chorus of indolent reviewers, Irresponsible, indolent reviewers, Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem All composed in a metre of Catullus, All in quant.i.ty, careful of my motion, Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him, Lest I fall unawares before the people, Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.

Should I flounder awhile without a tumble Thro' this metrification of Catullus, They should speak to me not without a welcome, All that chorus of indolent reviewers.

Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble, So fantastical is the dainty metre.

Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.

(TENNYSON: _Hendecasyllabics._)

On the first of these stanzas of Tennyson, compare his stanzas to Maurice, and note, p. 77, above. With the hendecasyllabics, compare the "Phaleuciakes" of Sidney, p. 331, above, and "Hendecasyllabics" in Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_.

Tennyson took no little interest in the relations of cla.s.sical and English metres, and seems to have believed in the possibility of genuine English quant.i.tative verse. He did not, however, regard it as of practical value, and treated his own experiments as trifles. In his Memoirs, written by his son, Tennyson is said to have observed that he knew the quant.i.ty of every English word except _scissors_, a mysterious saying which may be set beside Southey's declaration that _Egypt_ is the only spondee in the English language. His son also preserves an extemporaneous line composed by Tennyson to ill.u.s.trate the observance of quant.i.ty "regardless of accent":

"All men alike hate slops, particularly gruel;"

and a sapphic stanza, also extemporized, quant.i.tative but conforming to common accent:

"Faded ev'ry violet, all the roses; Gone the glorious promise; and the victim, Broken in this anger of Aphrodite, Yields to the victor."

(_Memoir_, vol. ii. p. 231.)

G.o.d, on verdurous Helicon Dweller, child of Urania, Thou that draw'st to the man the fair Maiden, O Hymenaeus, O Hymen, O Hymenaeus!

(ROBINSON ELLIS: _Poems of Catullus_, LXI. 1871.)

Mr. Ellis's translations from Catullus are all "in the metres of the original," and are among the most interesting specimens of modern cla.s.sical versifying. "Tennyson's Alcaics and Hendecasyllabics," he said in his Preface, "suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless the ancient quant.i.ty was reproduced also." Of special interest is the imitation of the "almost unapproachable" galliambic verse of the _Attis_ (pp. 49-53):

"When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orient Scann'd l.u.s.trous air, the rude seas, earth's ma.s.sy solidity, When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime, Then arous'd was Attis; o'er him sleep hastily fled away To Pasithea's arms immortal with a tremulous hovering."

As Mr. Ellis observes, the metre of Tennyson's _Boadicea_ was modelled on this of Catullus. Compare also Mr. George Meredith's _Phaethon_, "attempted in the galliambic measure":

"At the coming up of Phbus, the all-luminous charioteer, Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial mult.i.tudes, And with shadows dappled, men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent; For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black."

--Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled Shine as fire of sunset on western waters; Saw the reluctant

Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her, Looking always, looking with necks reverted, Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder Shone Mitylene.

(SWINBURNE: _Sapphics_, in _Poems and Ballads_.)

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love?

What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?

What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave, Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

(SWINBURNE: _Choriambics_, in _Poems and Ballads_, Second Series, 1878.)

Swinburne's imitations of cla.s.sical measures are frankly accentual, with no effort to introduce fixed quant.i.ties into English.

B.--DACTYLIC HEXAMETER

Lady, reserved by the heavens to do pastors' company honor, Joining your sweet voice to the rural Muse of a desert, Here you fully do find this strange operation of love, How to the woods Love runs, as well as rides to the palace, Neither he bears reverence to a prince nor pity to beggar, But (like a point in midst of a circle) is still of a nearness, All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Dorus and Zelmane_, in the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was evidently trying to write genuinely quant.i.tative hexameters.

Thus "of love," in the third line, may be regarded as a quant.i.tative spondee (the _o_ being followed by two consonants), although the _of_ would not naturally be stressed. In like manner it is very possible that "pallace" was spelled with two _l_'s in order to make the first syllable seem long.

Sidney's hexameters are the first in literary verse which have come down to us; but there must have been earlier efforts at least by the time of Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ (1570), which vigorously attacked "our rude beggerly ryming, brought first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, ... and at last receyved into England by men of excellent wit in deede, but of small learning, and less judgement in that behalfe." (Arber Reprint, p.

145.) One hexameter distich by a contemporary and friend of Ascham's, Master Watson of Cambridge, is handed down to us by Webbe, as being "common in the mouthes of all men":

"All travellers doo gladlie report great praise to Ulisses For that he knewe manie mens maners, and saw many citties."

(_Discourse of English Poetrie_, p. 72.)

But the Queene in meane while with carks quandare deepe anguisht, Her wound fed by Venus, with firebayt smoldred is hooked.

Thee wights doughtye manhood leagd with gentilytye n.o.bil, His woords fitlye placed, with his hevnly phisnomye pleasing, March throgh her hert mustring, al in her brest deepelye she printeth.

Theese carcking cratchets her sleeping natural hynder.

Thee next day foloing Phbus dyd clarifye brightlye Thee world with l.u.s.ter, watrye shaads Aurora remooved, When to her deere sister with woords haulf gyddye she raveth.

"Sister An, I merveyle, what dreams me terrefye napping, What newcom travayler, what guest in my harborye lighted?

How brave he dooth court yt? what strength and coorrage he carryes?

I beleve yt certeyn (ne yet hold I yt vaynelye reported) That fro the great linnadge of G.o.ds his pettegre shooteth."

(RICHARD STANYHURST: Vergil's _aeneid_, bk. iv. 1582.)

Stanyhurst's _Vergil_ is one of the curiosities of Elizabethan literature, not only from its verse-form but from its spelling and diction. The translator declares himself a disciple of Ascham, in his antipathy to rimed verse; "What Tom Towly is so simple," he asks, "that wyl not attempt too bee a _rithmoure_?" In an address to the Learned Reader he explains his system of English quant.i.tative prosody. In 1593 Stanyhurst's hexameters were severely noticed in a pa.s.sage by Thomas Nash directed primarily against the cla.s.sical versifying of Gabriel Harvey. "The hexamiter verse," said Nash, "I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English begger), yet this clyme of ours he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running upon quagmiers, up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts himselfe with among the Greeks and Latins.... Master Stannyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule lumbring boystrous wallowing measure, in his translation of Virgil." (Works of Nash, Grosart edition, vol. ii.

pp. 237, 238.)

Stanyhurst was also ridiculed by Joseph Hall, in the Satires of his _Virgidemiarum_ (1597):

"Another scorns the home-spun thread of rhymes, Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times: Give me the numbred verse that Virgil sung, And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue: Manhood and garboiles shall he chaunt with chaunged feet And head-strong dactyls making music meet.

The nimble dactyl striving to out-go, The drawling spondees pacing it below.

The lingring spondees, labouring to delay, The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay.

Whoever saw a colt wanton and wild Yok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field, Can right areed how handsomely besets Dull spondees with the English dactylets."

(CHALMERS'S _English Poets_, vol. v. p. 266.)

Compare the lines of Chapman, in his _Hymn to Cynthia_, where he says that

"sweet poesy Will not be clad in her supremacy With those strange garments (Rome's hexameters) As she is English; but in right prefers Our native robes."

See also, in Arber's edition of Stanyhurst in the _English Scholar's Library_, an account of another work in hexameters, published anonymously in 1599: the _First Booke of the Preservation of King Henry the VII_. This writer admired Stanyhurst's effort, but desired "him to refile" his verses into more polished English:

"If the Poet Stanihurst yet live and feedeth on ay-er, I do request him (as one that wisheth a grace to the meter) With wordes significant to refile and finely to polishe Those fower _aeneis_, that he late translated in English."

In the same connection the writer tells us definitely what is to be hoped from the "trew kind of Hexametred and Pentametred verse." "First it will enrich our speach with good and significant wordes: Secondly it will bring a delight and pleasure to the skilfull Reader, when he seeth them formally compyled: And thirdly it will incourage and learne the good and G.o.dly Students, that affect Poetry, and are naturally enclyned thereunto, to make the like: Fourthly it will direct a trew Idioma, and will teach trew Orthography."[44]

t.i.tyrus, happilie thou lyste tumbling under a beech tree, All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs l.u.s.tilie chaunting: We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remooved, And fro our pastures sweete: thou t.i.tyr, at ease in a shade plott Makst thicke groves to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.