The Principles of English Versification Part 15

Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale.

The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.

And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!

How silently, and with how wan a face!

What, may it be that e'en in heavenly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feelst a lover's case, I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace, To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?

Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?

Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?

SIR PHILLIP SIDNEY, Astrophel and Stella, x.x.xi.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so: For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.

From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go-- Rest of their bones and souls' delivery!

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

JOHN DONNE.

Cyriack, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear To outward view of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Not to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heav'ns hand or will, nor bate one jot Or heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

--The conscience, friend, to have lost them overpli'd In liberty's defence, my n.o.ble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask, Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

MILTON.

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pa.s.s by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear G.o.d! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

WORDSWORTH, Upon Westminster Bridge.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life shall I command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore-- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue G.o.d for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

E. B. BROWNING, Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve), That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flowers: for where Is he not found, O Lilith! whom shed scent And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?

Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent, And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

D. G. ROSSETTI, Body's Beauty.

I met a traveler from an antique land, Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those pa.s.sions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Sh.e.l.lEY, Ozymandias.

Here the rime scheme is peculiarly irregular, and the result is hardly a sonnet at all. Sh.e.l.ley's ma.n.u.script shows that the poem cost him a great deal of trouble.

_English Sonnet_. Out of the 'irregularities' and experiments of the early English sonneteers there rapidly developed a new form based on an entirely different principle of division, a series of three quatrains _abab_, _cdcd_, _efef_, followed by a couplet _gg_. This looser structure, simpler in music and in arrangement of subject matter, soon became a favorite, was used by Surrey and by Sidney, and was adopted by Shakespeare for his hundred and fifty-four sonnets[64]--hence it is sometimes called the Shakespearian sonnet. "With this key," said Wordsworth,

Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

But a sonnet in the stricter sense this 14-line stanza of course is not; for it does not aim to possess the balance, contrast, and functional organization of the Italian stanza. It has qualities of its own, however, which give it its own distinction; and, moreover, it is frankly what many sonnets of the stricter form, without the justification of a difficult and definitely organic structure, are: simply a poem of fourteen lines. For many of Wordsworth's and most of Mrs. Browning's sonnets, though they have the rime-scheme of the Italian, have the simple thought arrangement of the English sonnet.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [64] Two of these are irregular, the 99th, with fifteen lines (_ababacdcdefefgg_) and the 126th with twelve (_aabbccddeeff_). Milton's On the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespear, still traditionally miscalled a sonnet, resembles the latter, with its _aabbccddeeffgghh_ or eight couplets. The 16-line stanza of Meredith's Modern Love (_abbacddceffeghhg_) is sometimes loosely called a sonnet. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Not many examples are necessary. Some, like the first two below, preserve the metrical division of the quatrains, with the couplet for an epigrammatic summary; others more or less obscure the division.

Combinations of the two sonnet forms not infrequently occur (as in the last example below), but they are not approved by the critics or the theorists, and generally they miss the excellences of both forms, however successful they may be in other respects.

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide In this small course which birth draws out to death, And think how evil becometh him to slide Who seeketh Heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell, world! thy uttermost I see: Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs that shake against the cold-- Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 73.

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Pressed by these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more; So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men; And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 146.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee: and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate: For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 29.

O deep unlovely brooklet, moaning slow Through moorish fen in utter loneliness!

The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press The huntsman fluskers through the rustled heather.

In March thy sallow buds from vermeil sh.e.l.ls Break satin-tinted, downy as the feather Of moss-chat, that among the purplish bells b.r.e.a.s.t.s into fresh new life her three unborn.

The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear And mournful-strange his human cry forlorn.

While wearily, alone, and void of cheer, Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen, To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.

DAVID GRAY, To a Brooklet.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

RUPERT BROOKE, The Soldier.[65]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [65] Quoted by permission of Dodd, Mead & Co., owners of the copy-right. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

_Complex Stanzas: the Ode_

Besides the stanzas described above, which are but the most familiar or most important of the great variety of regular English stanzas, there are others which, because they are peculiarly constructed or not regularly repeated, may be called Complex. Such are, for example, the 'trailing vine' stanzas of Spenser's Prothalamion (_abba^{5}a^{3}bcbc^{5}dded^{5}ee^{3}ff^{5}_) and Epithalamion (_ababc^{5}c^{3}dcde^{5}e^{3}fggf^{5}f^{4}hh^{5}_), and also the simpler _ababcde^{5}c^{3}de^{5}_ of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale.