English Verse Part 9

She was cutting bread and b.u.t.ter."

_Eight-stress anapestic._

Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendor of winter had pa.s.sed out of sight, The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight; The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow, or of frost that out-lightens all flowers till it fade, That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night, Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made, March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.

(SWINBURNE: _March._)

_Eight-stress dactylic._

Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring.

(LONGFELLOW: _Golden Legend_, iv. 1851.)

The breathlessly continuous character of such long anapestic or dactylic lines may of course be interrupted, by way of relief, by the subst.i.tution of iambi or trochees. In the specimen from Swinburne such a resting-place is found in line 3, where a light syllable is omitted after _winds_. In the specimen from Longfellow the words _high-way_, _distant_, _human_, of course, fill the places of complete dactyls.

COMBINATIONS AND SUBSt.i.tUTIONS

i. _Verses in which different sorts of feet are more or less regularly combined_.

In the morning, O so early, my beloved, my beloved, All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease: 'Twas a thrush sang in my garden, "Hear the story, hear the story!"

And the lark sang "Give us glory!" and the dove said "Give us peace."

(JEAN INGELOW: _Give us Love and Give us Peace._)

Fair is our lot--O goodly is our heritage!

(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!) For the Lord our G.o.d Most High He hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth!

(KIPLING: _A Song of the English._)

In both these specimens the full accent regularly recurs in only the alternate feet. Thus while the first specimen is technically eight-stress trochaic, there are in the normal reading of it only four full accents to the line. In other words the first, third, fifth, and seventh feet are regularly pyrrhics. (See p. 55.) The same thing appears in the specimen from Kipling: _ye_, _and_, _in_ (in line 2) are accented only in a distinctly secondary fashion. Some have suggested, for such rhythms as these, the recognition of a foot made up of one stressed and three unstressed syllables. Lanier represents such measures (in _The Science of English Verse_) in four-eight time.

Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go.

(BROWNING: _Prospice._)

Here the tendency is to use iambi and anapests in alternate feet; see especially lines 2, 3, and 5.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The pa.s.sion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to G.o.d by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

(BROWNING: _Abt Vogler._)

Here we have a hexameter which is neither iambic nor anapestic, but a combination of the two rhythms. So in the following specimens dissyllabic and trisyllabic feet are used interchangeably.

When the lamp is shatter'd The light in the dust lies dead-- When the cloud is scatter'd The rainbow's glory is shed.

When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remember'd not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.

(Sh.e.l.lEY: _The Flight of Love._)

The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word Is soft at the least wave's lapse in a still small reach.

From bay unto bay, on quest of a goal deferred, From headland ever to headland and breach to breach, Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach.

(SWINBURNE: _The Seaboard._)

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-bird's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _The Armada_, vii.)

This life of ours is a wild aeolian harp of many a joyous strain, But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain.

(LONGFELLOW: _The Golden Legend_, iv.)

Come away, come away, Death, And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it!

My part of death, no one so true Did share it.

(SHAKSPERE: _Twelfth Night_, II. iv.)

The characteristic irregularity in this stanza is the variation from trochaic to iambic rhythm. In this case the variations are in part due, no doubt, to the fact that the words were written for music.

Maud with her exquisite face, And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky, And feet like sunny gems on an English green, Maud in the light of her youth and her grace, Singing of Death, and of Honor that cannot die, Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean And myself so languid and base.

(TENNYSON: _Maud_, I. v.)

In this specimen the characteristic rhythm of lines 1, 4, and 5 is dactylic, that of the remainder anapestic-iambic.

The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms With shrill notes of anger And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat Of the thundering drum Cries, hark! the foes come; Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.

The soft complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of helpless lovers, Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

(DRYDEN: _Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, 1687.)

In this famous stanza the rhythm changes for obvious purposes of imitative representation.

Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away?

Once she sate with you and me, On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, And the youngest sate on her knee.

She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well, When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.

She sighed, she looked up through the clear green sea; She said, "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little gray church on the sh.o.r.e to-day.

'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!

And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."

I said, "Go up, dear heart, through the waves; Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"

She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?