The Principles of English Versification Part 9

or

Like a laverock in the lift etc.

The former seems preferable.[37]

It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye, All the world, and we two, and Heaven be our stay.

Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!

All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side.

What's the world, my la.s.s, my love!--what can it do?

I am thine, and thou art mine; lift is sweet and new.

If the world have missed the mark, let it stand by, For we two have gotten leave, and once more we'll try.

Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!

It's we two, it's we two, happy side by side.

Take a kiss from me, thy man; now the song begins: "All is made afresh for us, and the brave heart wins."

When the darker days come, and no sun will shine, Thou shalt dry my tears, la.s.s, and I'll dry thine.

It's we two, it's we two, while the world's away.

Sitting by the golden sheaves on our wedding day.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [37] See Sidney Lanier's scansion of the first stanza, in his Science of English Verse, p. 228. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

How musical and effective this rhythm is, judgments will differ. It is clearly capable of great variety, but the large proportion of light syllables forces heavier stress on some of the accents, and the number of naturally heavy syllables which do not coincide with the metrical stress is excessive; and the almost inevitable result is a thumping which only the deftest manipulation can avoid.[38]

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ [38] An interesting variation of this rhythm (though perhaps to be related to the Middle English descendant of the Anglo-Saxon long line) occurs in Sh.e.l.ley's Prometheus Unbound, Act I, O sister, desolation is a difficult thing. Compare also Sh.e.l.ley's earlier poem, Stanzas--April, 1814; and for a more recent example: Ithaca, Ithaca, the land of my desire! I'm home again in Ithaca, beside my own hearth-fire. Sweet patient eyes have welcomed me, all tenderness and truth, Wherein I see kept sacredly, the visions of our youth. AMELIA J. BURR, Ulysses in Ithaca. +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Probably the most striking and successful use of the 4-beat movement is that of Meredith's Love in a Valley. So marked is the time element, with the compensatory lengthenings and pauses, that the poem almost demands to be chanted rather than read; but when well chanted it is peculiarly musical, and when ill read it is horribly ragged and choppy. The whole poem will repay study for the metrical subtleties, but the first stanza is sufficient to ill.u.s.trate the rhythm (there are normally four _???? in each line).[39]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [39] This metre has been used, e. g., by George Darley (1795-1846) in The Flower of Beauty (four stanzas) and (rather monotonously) by Charles Swain (1803-74) in Tripping down the Field-Path (cf. Stedman's Victorian Anthology, pp. 17, 76); and more recently by Mr. Alfred Noyes. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, Couch'd with her arms behind her golden head, Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.

Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: Then would she hold me and never let me go?

_Examples._ There occur examples of 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-stress iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic lines, sometimes used continuously and sometimes used in combinations with other lengths. But many of these are unusual, and may be found only by diligent search.[40]

Some have already been ill.u.s.trated in the previous section, others occur here and there throughout this volume, especially in the paragraphs on the stanza; some of the more important, however, are given below. But, of course, the line rhythm is significant mainly as a unit of the longer composition, and brief selections cannot well represent the rhythmic movement of a whole poem. Whenever possible the poem should be read complete.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [40] For a cla.s.sified collection see Alden, English Verse, pp. 24 ff. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Attempts have been made to characterize the different feet as slow or rapid, solemn or light, and so on, but they are generally unsuccessful.

For though certain measures seem to be inherently unsuitable for dignified themes, or for humorous subjects, there are always contrary instances to be adduced, and it is dangerous to be dogmatic. Anapests are said to be characteristically rapid, hurried, because they crowd more syllables than iambs do into a line; but anapests are often slow-moving, because there is frequent iambic subst.i.tution and because many important words--monosyllables, for the most part--have to do duty for light syllables metrically. Perfect anapests, like perfect dactyls, are comparatively few in English.

Two-stress and 6-stress anapestic:

Canst thou say in thine heart Thou hast seen with thine eyes With what cunning of art Thou wast wrought in what wise, By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies?

SWINBURNE, Hertha.[41]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [41] This whole poem abounds in subst.i.tutions. See Sh.e.l.ley's The Cloud, above, pages 59 f., which may be regarded as 2-and 3-stress anapestic lines, though two 2-stress lines are printed as one. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Three-stress anapestic:

If you go over desert and mountain, Far into the country of Sorrow, To-day and to-night and to-morrow, And maybe for months and for years; You shall come with a heart that is bursting For trouble and toiling and thirsting, You shall certainly come to the fountain At length,--to the Fountain of Tears.

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY, The Fountain of Tears.

Though the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me, And the love which my spirit hath painted It never hath found but in _thee_.

BYRON, Stanzas to Augusta.

Four-stress anapestic:

The a.s.syrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

BYRON, The Destruction of Sennacherib.

Five-stress anapestic. This is a peculiar metre, usually felt to be choppy and harsh. It has been said that no one can read Browning's Saul and follow both metre and meaning at the same time:

As I sang,-- Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool, silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, ...

Eight-stress anapestic. This is on the whole the longest line possible in English.[42] It is really a _tour de force_.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ [42] Tennyson's To Virgil, though it has nine stresses in each line and is therefore an exception to the statement made above, page 69, is shorter in respect of the number of syllables. There is, moreover, a poem, After Death, by f.a.n.n.y Parnell, consisting of fourteen 10-stress lines. The c.u.mbrousness of the rhythm is apparent in these two specimens--which are rather better than the others-- Ah, the harpings and the salvos and the shoutings of thy exiled sons returning! I should hear, though dead and mouldered, and the grave-damps should not chill my bosom's burning. The whole of this poem may be found in Sir Edward T. Cook's More Literary Recreations, p. 278. +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

The trochaic line is generally stiff and thumping. It does not admit of frequent subst.i.tutions, for many subst.i.tutions destroy the trochaic effect. It usually comes to an abrupt close because feminine endings are not easy or natural in English. Moreover, there are in the language so many dissyllabic words of trochaic movement that the resulting frequent coincidence of word and foot tends to produce monotony. Tennyson once said that when he wanted to write a poem that would be popular he wrote in trochaics. Certainly the stresses are more prominent in trochaic verse than in iambic or even anapestic; and the untrained ear likes its rhythms well marked.[43] The Locksley Hall poems are good examples:

Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Notable is Tennyson's skill in this 8-stress line in avoiding the natural break into 4 + 4. This break occurs regularly and is enforced by the rime in Poe's The Raven. One of the most successful metrically of purely trochaic poems is Browning's One Word More, a few lines of which are quoted on page 70.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [43] By a series of experiments C. R. Squire found a natural preference for duple over triple rhythms (though the triple rhythms seemed 'pleasanter'), and for trochaic and dactylic over iambic and anapestic. (Am. Journal of Psychology, vol. 12 (1901), p. 587.) +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Four-stress trochaic.

Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair?

Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are?

Be she fairer than the day, Or the flow'ry meads in May, If she think not well of me, What care I how fair she be?

WITHER, The Author's Resolution.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

KEATS, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern.

Five-stress trochaic.

Then the music touch'd the gates and died; Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited, As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbbed and palpitated; Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound, Caught the sparkles, and in circles, Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes, Flung the torrent rainbow round.

TENNYSON, The Vision of Sin.