English Verse Part 48

(WILLIAM WEBBE: Vergil's First Eclogue, in _A Discourse of English Poetrie_. 1586.)

Webbe prefaces his hexameters with a reference to those made by Gabriel Harvey, and says: "I for my part, so farre as those examples would leade me, and mine owne small skyll affoorde me, have blundered upon these fewe; whereinto I have translated the two first aeglogues of Virgill: because I thought no matter of my owne invention, nor any other of antiquitye more fitte for tryal of thys thyng, before there were some more speciall direction, which might leade to a lesse troublesome manner of wryting." (Arber Reprint, p. 72.)

Thou, who roll'st in the firmament, round as the shield of my fathers, Whence is thy girdle of glory, O Sun! and thy light everlasting?

Forth thou comest in thy awful beauty; the stars at thy rising Haste to their azure pavilions; the moon sinks pale in the waters; But thou movest alone; who dareth to wander beside thee?

Oaks of the mountains decay, and the hard oak crumbles asunder; Ocean shrinks and again grows; lost is the moon from the heavens; Whilst thou ever remainest the same to rejoice in thy brightness.

(WILLIAM TAYLOR: Paraphrase of _Ossian's Hymn to the Sun_. 1796.)

When English hexameters were revived at the end of the eighteenth century, it was in good part under German influence. Bodmer, Klopstock, and Voss, followed later by Goethe, made the German hexameter popular; and William Taylor of Norwich, who in many ways helped to familiarize his countrymen with German literature, became interested in the form. In 1796, the year of Goethe's _Hermann und Dorothea_, he contributed to the _Monthly Magazine_ an article called "English Hexameters Exemplified,"

in which occurred the paraphrase from Ossian here quoted. Taylor pointed out that the hexameter of the Germans was purely accentual. They were "obliged, by the scarceness of long vowels and the rifeness of short syllables in their language, to tolerate the frequent subst.i.tution of trochees for spondees in their hexameter verse; and they scan, like other modern nations, by emphasis, not by position." (Quoted in J. W.

Robberds's _Memoir of William Taylor of Norwich_, vol. i. pp. 157 ff.) Most later writers of English hexameters have followed the line here indicated, and have frankly abandoned the effort to represent the quant.i.ties of cla.s.sical prosody.

Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the Sun, the rejoicer!

Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget not, Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold thee!

Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation?) Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamoured!

(COLERIDGE: _Hymn to the Earth._ 1799.)

Coleridge made several experiments in hexameters at this time, and planned, together with Southey, a long hexameter poem on Mohammed. To Wordsworth he sent an experiment of the same kind in a lighter vein:

"Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table; Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing, Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic, Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forked left hand, Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger, Read with a nod of the head in a humoring recitativo; And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.

This is a galloping measure, a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!"

(Wordsworth's _Memoirs_, quoted in Coleridge's Poems, Aldine edition, vol. ii. p. 307.)

Coleridge also translated from Schiller the well-known distich describing and exemplifying the elegiac verse of Ovid:

"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."

This distich, it is interesting to find, was revised by Tennyson so as to represent the measure quant.i.tatively rather than accentually:

"Up springs hexameter, with might, as a fountain arising, Lightly the fountain falls, lightly the pentameter."

Lift up your heads, ye gates; and ye everlasting portals, Be ye lift up! Behold, the Worthies are there to receive him,-- They who, in later days or in elder ages, enn.o.bled Britain's dear name. Bede I beheld, who, humble and holy, Shone like a single star, serene in a night of darkness.

Bacon also was there, the marvellous Friar; and he who Struck the spark from which the Bohemian kindled his taper; Thence the flame, long and hardly preserved, was to Luther transmitted,-- Mighty soul; and he lifted his torch, and enlightened the nations.

(SOUTHEY: _A Vision of Judgment_, ix. 1821.)

Southey followed the example of William Taylor in attempting to construct hexameters "which would be perfectly consistent with the character of our language, and capable of great richness, variety and strength," yet which should not profess to follow "rules which are inapplicable to our tongue." (Preface to _Vision of Judgment_, Southey's Works, ed. 1838, vol. x. p. 195.)[45] In the same Preface he briefly reviewed the history of earlier efforts to introduce the cla.s.sical measures into English. It is to be feared that Southey's hexameters are to be counted among the worst of modern times.

Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure, Sat the lovers and whispered together, beholding the moon rise Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows.

Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

Thus was the evening pa.s.sed. Anon the bell from the belfry Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightway Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household.

(LONGFELLOW: _Evangeline_, Part. I. 1847.)

_Evangeline_ is undoubtedly the most popular and widely read poem in English hexameters, and may be said to have revived the vogue of the measure in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet its metrical qualities have not pleased most careful critics. Matthew Arnold said that the reception which the poem met with indicated that the dislike for the metre "is rather among professional critics than among the general public. Yet," he went on to say, "a version of Homer in hexameters of the _Evangeline_ type would not satisfy the judicious, nor is the definite establishment of this type to be desired." (_On Translating Homer_, Macmillan ed., p. 284.) Mr. Arnold had previously suggested that the "lumbering effect" of such hexameters as Longfellow's is "caused by their being much too dactylic"; more spondees should be introduced.

The editor of the Riverside edition of _Evangeline_ remarks interestingly: "The measure lends itself easily to the lingering melancholy which marks the greater part of the poem. The fall of the verse at the end of the line and the sharp recovery at the beginning of the next will be snares to the reader, who must beware of a jerking style of delivery.... A little practice will enable one to acquire that habit of reading the hexameter which we may liken, roughly, to the climbing of a hill, resting a moment on the summit, and then descending the other side."

Longfellow's hexameters were criticised most severely by his countryman, Edgar Poe. Poe denied the possibility of any adequate representation of the cla.s.sical hexameter in English, largely because of the impossibility of using English spondees. The only genuine hexameters he knew, he declared, were some he had himself made, running:

"Do tell! when may we hope to make men of sense out of the Pundits, Born and brought up with their snouts deep down in the mud of the Frog-pond?"

(See Poe's Works, ed. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. vi. p. 104.)

Another interesting American experiment in hexameters is found in the _Home Pastorals_ of Bayard Taylor (1869-1874). Taylor modeled his verses after those of the Germans, particularly Goethe's in _Hermann und Dorothea_. See, for example, the opening lines of _November_:

"Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,-- Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,-- Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top, Breathing the reek of withered reeds, or the drifted and sodden Splendors of woodland, as whoso piously groaneth in spirit: 'Vanity, verily; yea, it is vanity, let me forsake it!'"

But as the light of day enters some populous city, Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal, High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gas-lamps-- All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in Narrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys:-- He that goes forth to his walks, while speeding to the suburb, Sees sights only peaceful and pure; as laborers settling Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber; Humble market-carts, coming in, bringing in, not only Flower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon after Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters Up at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the doorway, School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel, Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly tripping;...

Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires; So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric-- All its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway out-works-- Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty.

(ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH: _The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_. 1848.)

Clough's hexameters are quite unlike any others in English poetry, both in their metrical quality and in their use for serio-comic verse. As Matthew Arnold observed, they are "excessively, needlessly rough," but their free, garrulous effect has a charm of its own. Clough also wrote some hexameters intended to be strictly quant.i.tative. (For a detailed criticism of the verse of the _Bothie_, see Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_, 1901 ed., Appendix J.)

It was Clough's hexameters, together with some "English Hexameter Translations" by Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Lockhart (1847), that chiefly encouraged Matthew Arnold to believe that the measure might be well adapted to a translation of Homer. "The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forego." (_Ib._, p. 210.) Mr. James Spedding replied to Mr. Arnold's suggestion, from the point of view of the cla.s.sical scholar, urging that only hexameters purely quant.i.tative could properly represent those of Vergil. He ill.u.s.trated his views by an amusing "hexametrical dialogue,"

conducted alternately in Vergilian measure and "in that of Longfellow."

Of the former are the lines:

"Verses so modulate, so tuned, so varied in accent, Rich with unexpected changes, smooth, stately, sonorous, Rolling ever forward, tidelike, with thunder, in endless Procession, complex melodies--pause, quant.i.ty, accent, After Virgilian precedent and practice, in order Distributed--could these gratify th' Etonian ear-drum?"

(JAMES SPEDDING: _Reviews and Discussions_, 1879. p. 327.)

Arnold, however, wisely declined to be led into a discussion of the relations of accent and quant.i.ty in English. "All we are here concerned with," he said, "is the imitation, by the English hexameter, of the ancient hexameter _in its effect upon us moderns_.... The received English type, in its general outlines, is, for England, the necessary given type of this metre; it is by rendering the metrical beat of its pattern, not by rendering the accentual beat of it, that the English language has adapted the Greek hexameter.... I look with hope towards continued attempts at perfecting and employing this rhythm; but my belief in the immediate success of such attempts is far less confident than has been supposed." (See the whole pa.s.sage, _On Translating Homer_, pp. 275-284.)

The hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, quoted by Arnold, are these:

Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia; Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember; Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders, Kastor fleet in the car,--Polydeukes brave with the cestus,-- Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants.

Are they not here in the host, from the sh.o.r.es of loved Lakedaimon, Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters, Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of heroes, All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?

--So said she. They long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lakedaimon.

(From _English Hexameter Translations_, p. 242.)

Arnold also ill.u.s.trated his doctrine in some hexameters of his own, which have not usually been regarded as a happy experiment. They run in part as follows:

"Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles!

But thy day of death is at hand; nor shall we be the reason-- No, but the will of heaven, and Fate's invincible power.

For by no slow pace nor want of swiftness of ours Did the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus; But that prince among G.o.ds, the son of the lovely-haired Leto, Slew him fighting in front of the fray, and glorified Hector.

But, for us, we vie in speed with the breath of the West-Wind, Which, men say, is the fleetest of winds; 'tis thou who art fated To lie low in death, by the hand of a G.o.d and a mortal."

(_Ib._, p. 234.)

Tennyson evidently viewed with small respect these various efforts to render Homer in English hexameters. See his lines beginning:

"These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer!

No--but a most burlesque barbarous experiment."