The Principles of English Versification Part 12

Meantime the Grecians in a ring beheld The coursers bounding o'er the dusty field.

The first who marked them was the Cretan king; High on a rising ground, above the ring, The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey He well observ'd the chief who led the way, And heard from far his animating cries, And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes.

POPE, Iliad, XXIII.

Pope's couplets represent the acme of polish and metrical dexterity--a perfect instrument for wit and satire.[51] Thus in the mock-heroic Rape of the Lock these well-modeled couplets prove their mettle, but in the translation of Homer their fatal limitations are easily apparent.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [51] See Pope's own a.n.a.lysis of his system of verse in a letter to Cromwell, November 25, 1710. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!

How often have I paus'd on every charm, The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topt the neighboring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made....

Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made: But a bold peasantry, a country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

GOLDSMITH, The Deserted Village.

The departure from the petrified couplet was gradual and natural, and influenced greatly by the simpler language and content of the verses.

These two specimens show Goldsmith writing in two manners, only a few lines apart. Still freer are Cowper's couplets in his On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) and Crabbe in his earlier work, still practised the eighteenth-century couplet (in the Tales of the Hall, 1819, Crabbe varied it to a considerable degree), but the new spirit of the Romantic Movement leavened all the metrical forms, as it did the themes, of poetry.

Compare the following examples.

One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One heaven, one h.e.l.l, one immortality, And one annihilation.

Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Sh.e.l.lEY, Epipsychidion.

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons....

Sh.e.l.lEY, Julian and Maddalo.

'Twas far too strange and wonderful for sadness; Sharpening, by degrees, his appet.i.te To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light, The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly, But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy; A dusky empire and its diadems; One faint eternal eventide of gems.

Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold, Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told, With all its lines abrupt and angular.

KEATS, Endymion, II.

Ay, happiness Awaited me; the way life should be used Was to acquire, and deeds like you conduced To teach it by a self-revealment, deemed Life's very use, so long! Whatever seemed Progress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayed My reaching it--no pleasure. I have laid The ladder down; I climb not; still, aloft The platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft, I dared not entertain, elude me; yet Never of what they promised could I get A glimpse till now!

BROWNING, Sordello, III.

She thanked men,--good! but thanked Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say ...

BROWNING, My Last d.u.c.h.ess.

It hath been seen and yet it shall be seen That out of tender mouths G.o.d's praise hath been Made perfect, and with wood and simple string He hath played music sweet as shawm-playing To please himself with softness of all sound; And no small thing but hath been sometime found Full sweet of use, and no such humbleness But G.o.d hath bruised withal the sentences And evidence of wise men witnessing; No leaf that is so soft a hidden thing It never shall get sight of the great sun; The strength of ten has been the strength of one, And lowliness has waxed imperious.

SWINBURNE, St. Dorothy.

_Three-Line Stanza_

Stanzas of three lines riming _aaa_ (called tercets or triplets) are not very common. Familiar, however, is Herrick's Upon Julia's Clothes:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows That liquifaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see That brave vibration each way free; O how that glittering taketh me!

Other examples are: Threnos (in The Phnix and the Turtle), Herbert's Trinity Sunday, Quarles' Shortness of Life, Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Tennyson's The Two Voices, Swinburne's After a Reading, and Clear the Way; and (with a simple refrain) Cowper's To Mary:

The twentieth year is well-nigh past, Since first our sky was overcast; Ah, would that this might be the last!

My Mary!

Crashaw's Wishes to his Supposed Mistress rimes _a^{2}a^{3}a^{4}_.

Tennyson's 'O Swallow, Swallow' in The Princess is in unrimed triplets.

On the terza rima see below, page 164.

_Four-Line Stanza: Quatrain_

The most important quatrains are the ballad stanza, riming _a^{4}b^{3}c^{4}b^{3}_ or _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_ (the Common Measure of the hymnals), with the related Long Measure riming _abab^{4}_ or _abcb^{4}_; the In Memoriam stanza _abba^{4}_; and the elegiac quatrain _abab^{5}_. These are often combined into 8-and 12-line stanzas, as _abab bcbc^{5}_ (called the Monk's Tale stanza), _abab cdcd_, etc., sometimes with alternating long and short lines. And these, as well as longer stanzas, are frequently varied by the use of repet.i.tions and refrains.[52]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [52] For complete lists and examples of all the various stanzaic forms, the larger works of Alden and Schipper should be consulted. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The ballad stanza, with its frequent variations of internal rime and additional verses is excellently ill.u.s.trated by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Similar is Tennyson's Sir Galahad, a 12-line stanza of three quatrains, _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}cdc^{4}d^{3}efgf^{4}_. Another common variation is that of Hood's The Dream of Eugene Aram, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, and Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, _a^{4}b^{3}c^{4}b^{3}d^{4}b^{3}_. The musical roughness of the old ballads should be contrasted with the regularized modern imitations, such as Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus. Better imitations are Rossetti's Stratton Water and The King's Tragedy, Robert Buchanan's Judas Iscariot, and W.B. Yeats's Father Gilligan. Sometimes a shorter quatrain is printed as a long couplet and combined into larger stanzas, as in Mr. Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman (which has an additional variation in the inserted fourth and fifth lines):

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding-- Riding--riding-- The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

The variations in Tennyson's The Revenge should be carefully studied.

The ballad stanza is closely similar to the _abab^{4}_ and _abcb^{4}_ quatrains, and (as in the Sir Galahad mentioned just above) the two are sometimes united. All three were much used by Wordsworth and many minor poets for lyrics as well as narratives; the result is often an undignified tinkle that takes the popular ear and "makes the judicious grieve." The stanzaic unit is so easily carried in one's mind and so rapidly repeats itself, that there is little opportunity for the necessary pleasing surprises. But that the measure is capable of a simple expressive music is evident from such examples as Wordsworth's 'Lucy' poems. These stanzas, both alone and doubled (as in To Mary in Heaven), were favorites with Burns.

A striking musical effect was obtained by Swinburne in Dolores by shortening the last line of a double quatrain:

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.

Similar interesting variations are Coleridge's Love, _aba^{4}b^{3}_ and Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper.

The In Memoriam stanza (_abba^{4})_ is named after Tennyson's poem (though that was by no means its first use), because Tennyson gave it a peculiar melody, and, partly for this reason and partly from the length and subject of the poem, almost preempted it for elegiac purposes.[53]

Characteristic stanzas metrically are these:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair.

And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood.

Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [53] On its origin and the twenty-five poems in it by seventeen different poets, from Ben Jonson to Clough and Rossetti, before the publication of In Memoriam, see E. P. Morton in Modern Language Notes, 24 (1909), pp. 67 ff. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

One of the peculiarities of the stanza is the increased emphasis which the rime of the third verse receives from its proximity to that of the second; and this is noticeable both when there is a logical pause after the third verse and when there is none:

'Thou makest thine appeal to me: I bring to life, I bring to death: The spirit does but mean the breath: I know no more.' And he, shall he....

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

Run-on stanzas are very frequent; especially remarkable is the periodic movement of the four stanzas of Lx.x.xVI, leading up to the last line--

A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'