Chapter 6

Oh, wad some power the giftie gie usTo see oursel's as ithers see us!It wad frae monie a blunder free usAn' foolish notion:What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,An' e'en devotion!

(Burns:To a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet.1786.)

O goodly hand,Wherein doth standMy heart distract in pain;Dear hand, alas!In little spaceMy life thou dost restrain.

(Sir Thomas Wyatt: In Tottel'sSongs and Sonnets.pub. 1557.)

Old Ocean's praiseDemands my lays;A truly British theme I sing;

A theme so great,I dare compete,And join with Ocean, Ocean's king.

(Edward Young:Ocean, an Ode.1728.)

No more, no moreThis worldly shoreUpbraids me with its loud uproar!With dreamful eyesMy spirit liesUnder the walls of Paradise!

(Thomas Buchanan Read:Drifting.ab. 1850.)

In these stanzas a pair of long lines bind together the first and second parts of the composition, just as the short lines do in the originalrime couée.

Young was and is universally condemned for choosing this form of stanza for his odes. He was led to do so by his admiration for the passage in Dryden'sOde for St. Cecilia's Day, running:

"Assumes the god,Affects to nod,And seems to shake the spheres."

Here, said Young, Dryden was expressing "majesty"; hence, since he wished his odes to be majestic, he used the short, choppy measure throughout. (See his Introductory Essay to his Odes, in Chalmers'sEnglish Poets, vol. xiii.) On the other hand, the stanza as used by Read has been almost universally admired.

Hail, old Patrician Trees, so great and good!Hail, ye Plebeian Underwood!Where the poetic birds rejoice,And for their quiet nests and plenteous foodPay with their grateful voice.

(Cowley:Of Solitude.ab. 1650.)

To-night this sunset spreads two golden wingsCleaving the western sky;Winged too with wind it is, and winnowingsOf birds; as if the day's last hour in ringsOf strenuous flight must die.

(Rossetti:Sunset Wings.1881.)

Ye dainty Nymphs, that in this blessed brookDo bathe your breast,Forsake your watery bowers, and hither lookAt my request:And eke you Virgins that on Parnasse dwell,Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well,Help me to blazeHer worthy praise,Which in her sex doth all excel.

(Spenser:The Shepherd's Calendar, April.1579.)

You, that will a wonder know,Go with me,Two suns in a heaven of snowBoth burning be;All they fire, that do but eye them,But the snow's unmelted by them.

(Carew:In Praise of his Mistress.ab. 1635.)

Go, lovely Rose!Tell her, that wastes her time and me,That now she knows,When I resemble her to thee,How sweet and fair she seems to be.

(Waller:Go, lovely Rose.ab. 1650.)

The use of short lines somewhat intricately introduced among longer ones, is characteristic of the stanzas of the lyrical poets ofthe first part of the seventeenth century. It may perhaps be traced in part to the influence of Donne.

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smilesMiles and milesOn the solitary pastures where our sheepHalf-asleepTinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stopAs they crop.

(Browning:Love among the Ruins.1855.)

Compare with this (although it is not divided into stanzas) Herrick'sThanksgiving to God:

Lord, thou hast given me a cellWherein to dwell;A little house, whose humble roofIs weatherproof;Under the spars of which I lieBoth soft and dry.

When God at first made Man,Having a glass of blessings standing by,Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,Contract into a span.

(George Herbert:The Gifts of God.1631.)

The following specimens illustrate various forms of stanzas distinguished by arrangement of rime, without reference to the length of lines:

In vain, through every changeful yearDid Nature lead him as before;A primrose by a river's brimA yellow primrose was to him,And it was nothing more.

(Wordsworth:Peter Bell.1798.)

Survival of the fittest, adaptation,And all their other evolution terms,Seem to omit one small consideration,To wit, that tumblebugs and anglewormsHave souls: there's soul in everything that squirms.

(William Vaughn Moody:The Menagerie.1901.)

Mary mine that art Mary's Rose,Come in to me from the garden-close.The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,And we marked not how the faint moon grew;But the hidden stars are calling you.

(Rossetti:Rose Mary.1881.)

Hail seint michel, with the lange sper!Fair beth thi winges: up thi scholderThou hast a rede kirtil a non to thi fote.Thou ert best angle that ever god makid.This vers is ful wel i-wrogȝt;Hit is of wel furre y-brogȝt.

(Satire on the People of Kildare, from Harleian Ms. 913, in Guest'sEnglish Rhythms, Skeat ed., p. 616.)

What beauty would have lovely styled,What manners pretty, nature mild,What wonder perfect, all were filedUpon record in this blest child.And till the coming of the soulTo fetch the flesh, we keep the roll.

(Ben Jonson:Epitaph; Underwoods, liii.1616.)

She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies:And all that's best of dark or brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes;Thus mellowed to that tender lightWhich heaven to gaudy day denies.

(Byron:She Walks in Beauty.1815.)

I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

(Wordsworth:I wandered lonely as a cloud.1804.)

O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!Her eyes seen in her tears, tears in her eye;Both crystals, where they view'd each other's sorrow,—Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

(Shakspere:Venus and Adonis, st. 161. 1593.)

Humblest of herte, hyest of reverence,Benigne flour, coroune of vertues alle,Sheweth unto your rial excellenceYour servaunt, if I durste me so calle,His mortal harm, in which he is y-falle,And noght al only for his evel fare,But for your renoun, as he shal declare.

(Chaucer:Compleynte unto Pite.ab. 1370.)

And on the smale grene twistis satThe lytil suete nyghtingale, and songSo loud and clere, the ympnis consecratOf luvis use, now soft now lowd among,That all the gardynis and the wallis rongRyght of thaire song, and on the copill nextOf thaire suete armony, and lo the text.

(James I.of Scotland:The King's Quhair, st. 33. ab. 1425.)

For men have marble, women waxen, minds,And therefore are they form'd as marble will;The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kindsIs form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:Then call them not the authors of their ill,No more than wax shall be accounted evil,Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

(Shakspere:The Rape of Lucrece, st. 178. 1594.)

In a far country that I cannot name,And on a year long ages past away,A King there dwelt in rest and ease and fame,And richer than the Emperor is to-day:The very thought of what this man might sayFrom dusk to dawn kept many a lord awake,For fear of him did many a great man quake.

(William Morris:The Earthly Paradise; The Proud King.1868.)

The "rime royal" stanza is one of Chaucer's contributions to English verse, and about 14,000 lines of his poetry are in this form. Its use by King James in theKing's Quhairwas formerly thought to be the source of the name; but it seems more likely that the name, like the form, was of French origin, and is to be connected with such terms aschant royalandballat royal, familiar in the nomenclature of courtly poetry (see Schipper, vol. i. p. 426). The stanza was used by Chaucer with marvellous skill for purposes of continuous narrative, and was a general favorite among his imitators in the fifteenth century, being used by Lydgate, Occleve, Hawes, Dunbar, then by Skelton, and by Barclay in theShip of Fooles. It appears popular as late as the time of Sackville's part of theMirror for Magistrates(1563).[9]Later than Shakspere'sRape of Lucreceit is rarely found. (But see Milton's unfinished poem onThe Passion, where he used a form of the rime royal with concluding alexandrine.)

Strictly speaking, the "rime royal" is always in five-stress verse, but in the following specimen the same rime-scheme appears in the irregular six-or-seven-stress verse of one of the Mysteries.

The story sheweth further, that, after man was blyste,The Lord did create woman owte of a ribbe of man,Which woman was deceyvyd with the Serpentes darkned myste;By whose synn ower nature is so weake no good we can;Wherfor they were dejectyd and caste from thence thanUnto dolloure and myseri and to traveyle and payne,Untyll Godes spryght renuid; and so we ende certayne.

(Prologue to Norwich Whitsun Play of the Creation and Fall. In Manly'sSpecimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, vol. i p. 5.)

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leaveThat child, when thou hast done with him, for me!Let me sit all the day here, that when eveShall find performed thy special ministry,And time come for departure, thou, suspendingThy flight, may'st see another child for tending,Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

(Browning:The Guardian Angel.1855.)

The City is of Night; perchance of Death,But certainly of Night; for never thereCan come the lucid morning's fragrant breathAfter the dewy dawning's cold grey air;The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity;The sun has never visited that city,For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

(James Thomson:The City of Dreadful Night.1874.)

Trew king, that sittes in trone,Unto the I tell my tale,And unto the I bid a bone,For thou ert bute of all my bale:Als thou made midelerd and the mone,And bestes and fowles grete and smale.Unto me send thi socore sone,And dresce my dedes in this dale.

(Laurence Minot:Battle of Halidon Hill.1352.)

On Minot's lyrics see ten Brink'sHistory of English Literature, Kennedy translation, vol. i. p. 323.

Since love is such that as ye wotCannot always be wisely used,I say, therefore, then blame me not,Though I therein have been abused.For as with cause I am accused,Guilty I grant such was my lot;And though it cannot be excused,Yet let such folly be forgot.

(Sir Thomas Wyatt:That the power of love excuseth the folly of loving, ab. 1550.)

In a chirche þer i con knelÞis ender day in on morwenynge,Me lyked þe servise wonder wel,For þi þe lengore con i lynge.I seiȝ a clerk a book forþ bringe,Þat prikked was in mony a plas;Faste he souȝte what he schulde synge,And al wasDeo gracias!

(From the Vernon and Simeon MSS.; inAnglia, vii. 287.)

This Julius to the Capitolie wenteUpon a day, as he was wont to goon,And in the Capitolie anon him henteThis false Brutus, and his othere foon,And stikede him with boydekins anoonWith many a wounde, and thus they lete him lye;But never gronte he at no strook but oon,Or elles at two, but if his storie lye.

(Chaucer:The Monk's Tale, ll. 713-720. ab. 1375.)

This stanza is sometimes called the "Monk's Talestanza," from its use by Chaucer in that single tale of the Canterbury group. Although it has been little used by later poets, it may have given Spenser a suggestion for his characteristic stanza (see below, p.102).

Farewell! if ever fondest prayerFor other's weal availed on high,Mine will not all be lost in air,But waft thy name beyond the sky.'Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh:Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,When rung from guilt's expiring eye,Are in that word—Farewell!—Farewell!

(Byron:Farewell, if ever fondest prayer.1808.)

Will no one tell me what she sings?Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off things,And battles long ago:Or is it some more humble lay,Familiar matter of to-day?Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,That has been, and may be again!

(Wordsworth:The Solitary Reaper.1803.)

She sat, and sewed, that hath done me the wrongWhereof I plain, and have done many a day;And, whilst she heard my plaint in piteous song,She wished my heart the sampler, that it lay.The blind master, whom I have served so long,Grudging to hear that he did hear her say,Made her own weapon do her finger bleed,To feel if pricking were so good in deed.

(Sir Thomas Wyatt:Of his love that pricked her finger with a needle, in Tottel'sSongs and Sonnets. pub. 1557.)

Thisottava rimais a familiar Italian stanza made classic by Ariosto and Tasso, and introduced into England by Wyatt, together with the sonnet and other Italian forms. Professor Corson says, "Such a rhyme-scheme, especially in the Italian, with its great similarity of endings, is too 'monotonously iterative'; and the rhyming couplet at the close seems, as James Russell Lowell expresses it, 'to put on the brakes with a jar.'" (Primer of English Verse, pp. 89 f.)

O! who can lead, then, a more happie lifeThan he that with cleane minde, and heart sincere,No greedy riches knowes nor bloudie strife,No deadly fight of warlick fleete doth feare;Ne runs in perill of foes cruell knife,That in the sacred temples he may reareA trophee of his glittering spoyles and treasure,Or may abound in riches above measure.

(Spenser:Virgil's Gnat, ll. 121-128. 1591.)

For as with equal rage, and equal might,Two adverse winds combat, with billows proud,And neither yield (seas, skies maintain like fight,Wave against wave oppos'd, and cloud to cloud);So war both sides with obstinate despite,With like revenge; and neither party bow'd:Fronting each other with confounding blows,No wound one sword unto the other owes.

(Daniel:History of the Civil War, bk. vi. ab. 1600.)

Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,While the still morn went out with sandals gray;He touch'd the tender stops of various quills,With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills,And now was dropt into the western bay:At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue:To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

(Milton:Lycidas; Epilogue. 1638.)

This is a single stave of theottava rima, at the close of the varying metrical forms ofLycidas. Professor Corson says: "The Elegy having come to an end, theottava rimais employed, with an admirable artistic effect, to mark off the Epilogue in which Milton ... speaks in his own person."

They looked a manly, generous generation;Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick,Their accents firm and loud in conversation,Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,Showed them prepared, on proper provocation,To give the lie, pull noses, stab and kick;And for that very reason, it is said,They were so very courteous and well-bred.

(John Hookham Frere:The Monks and the Giants.1817.)

With every morn their love grew tenderer,With every eve deeper and tenderer still;He might not in house, field, or garden stir,But her full shape would all his seeing fill;And his continual voice was pleasanterTo her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

(Keats:Isabella.1820.)

As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,And wished that others held the same opinion;They took it up when my days grew more mellow,And other minds acknowledged my dominion:Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellowLeaf," and Imagination droops her pinion,And the sad truth which hovers o'er my deskTurns what was once romantic to burlesque.

(Byron:Don Juan, canto iv. st. 3. 1821.)

Of theottava rima, as used by Frere and Byron, Austin Dobson says: "It had already been used by Harrington, Drayton, Fairfax, and (as we have seen) in later times by Gay; it had even been used by Frere's contemporary, William Tennant; but to Frere belongs the honor of giving it the special characteristics which Byron afterward popularised inBeppoandDon Juan. Structurally theottava rimaof Frere singularly resembles that of Byron, who admitted thatWhistlecraftwas his 'immediate model.' ... Byron, taking up the stanza with equal skill and greater genius, filled it with the vigor of his personality, and made it a measure of his own, which it has ever since been hazardous for inferior poets to attempt." (Ward'sEnglish Poets, vol. iv. p. 240.) Byron may indeed be said—in the words of the present specimen—to have turned what was commonly a romantic stanza "to burlesque."

O hie honour, sweit hevinlie flour degest,Gem verteous, maist precious, gudliest.For hie renoun thow art guerdoun conding,Of worschip kend the glorious end and rest,But quhome in richt na worthie wicht may lest.Thy greit puissance may maist avance all thing,And poverall to mekill availl sone bring.I the require sen thow but peir art best,That efter this in thy hie blis we ring.

(Gawain Douglas:The Palace of Honour.ab. 1500.)

My love is like unto th' eternal fire,And I as those which therein do remain;Whose grievous pains is but their great desireTo see the sight which they may not attain:So in hell's heat myself I feel to be,That am restrained by great extremity,The sight of her which is so dear to me.O! puissant love! and power of great avail!By whom hell may be felt e'er death assail!

(Sir Thomas Wyatt:Of the extreme torment endured by the unhappy lover.ab. 1550.)

By this the Northerne wagoner had setHis sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starreThat was in Ocean waves yet never wet,But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farreTo all that in the wide deepe wandring arre;And chearefull Chaunticlere with his note shrillHad warned once, that Phœbus fiery carreIn hast was climbing up the Easterne hill,Full envious that night so long his roome did fill.

(Spenser:The Faerie Queene, bk. i. canto 2, st. 1. 1590.)

And more to lulle him in his slumber soft,A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowneOf swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne.No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,Might there be heard; but carelesse Quiet lyesWrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes.

(Spenser:ib.bk. i. canto 1, st. 41.)

This stanza, which Spenser invented for his own use and to which his name is always given, was apparently formed by adding an alexandrine to theababbcbcstanza of Chaucer. In it Spenser wrote the greater part of his poetry, and its use marks the Spenserian influence wherever found, especially among the poets of the eighteenth century,—Thomson, Shenstone, Beattie, and the like.

James Russell Lowell, in his Essay on Spenser, comments as follows: "He found theottava rima... not roomy enough, so first ran it over into another line, and then ran that added line over into an alexandrine, in which the melody of one stanza seems forever longing and feeling forward after that which is to follow.... Wave follows wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward by the next. In all this there is soothingness, indeed, but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses—now at the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth—he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous." (Works, vol. iv. pp. 328, 329.)

See also the chapters on the Spenserian stanza in Corson'sPrimer of English Verse, where its use for pictorial effects is interestingly discussed.

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,Forever flushing round a summer sky:There eke the soft delights, that witchinglyInstil a wanton sweetness through the breast,And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;But whate'er smacked of noyaunce, or unrest,Was far far off expelled from this delicious nest.

(Thomson:The Castle of Indolence, canto i. 1748.)

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,Emblem right meet of decency does yield:Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trowe,As is the hare-bell that adorns the field:And in her hand, for sceptre, she does wieldTway birchen sprays, with anxious fear entwined,With dark distrust and sad repentance filled,And stedfast hate, and sharp affliction joined,And fury uncontrolled and chastisement unkind.

(Shenstone:The Schoolmistress.1742.)

Thomson'sCastle of Indolence, although not published till 1748, seems to have been written and circulated before Shenstone'sSchoolmistress. Thomson caught the spirit of Spenser and his stanza better than any other imitator until the days of Keats. On the revival of the stanza at this period, see Beers'sEnglish Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, chap. iii., on "the Spenserians." Earliest of the group, according to Mr. Gosse, was Akenside'sVirtuoso(1737. SeeEighteenth Century Literature, p. 311).

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toilBe blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!And oh, may Heaven their simple lives preventFrom luxury's contagion, weak and vile!Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,A virtuous populace may rise the while,And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved Isle.

(Burns:The Cotter's Saturday Night.1785.)

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;A palace and a prison on each hand:I saw from out the wave her structures riseAs from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:A thousand years their cloudy wings expandAround me, and a dying glory smilesO'er the far times, when many a subject landLooked to the winged Lion's marble piles,Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

(Byron:Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv, st. i. 1818.)

A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,All garlanded with carven imag'riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

(Keats:Eve of St. Agnes.1820.)

Professor Corson remarks: "Probably no English poet who has used the Spenserian stanza, first assimilated so fully the spirit of Spenser, ... as did Keats; and to this fact may be partly attributed his effective use of it as an organ for his imagination in its 'lingering, loving, particularizing mood.'" (Primer of English Verse, p. 124.)

The splendors of the firmament of timeMay be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not;Like stars to their appointed height they climb,And death is a low mist which cannot blotThe brightness it may veil. When lofty thoughtLifts a young heart above its mortal lair,And love and life contend in it for whatShall be its earthly doom, the dead live thereAnd move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

(Shelley:Adonais, st. 44. 1821.)

With reference to his use of this stanza Shelley remarked, in the Preface toThe Revolt of Islam: "I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity: you must either succeed or fail.... But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure." Professor Corson (Primer of English Verse, p. 112) quotes Mr. Todhunter as saying: "Compare the impetuous rapidity and pale intensity of Shelley's verse with the lulling harmony, the lingering cadence, the voluptuous color of Spenser's, or with the grandiose majesty of Byron's.... InAdonais, indeed, a poem on which he bestowed much labor, he handles the stanza in a masterly manner, and endows it with an individual music beautiful and new."

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."In the afternoon they came unto a landIn which it seemed always afternoon.All round the coast the languid air did swoon,Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;And like a downward smoke, the slender streamAlong the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

(Tennyson:The Lotos-Eaters.1833.)

A fisher boy, that never knew his peerIn dainty songs, the gentle Thomalin,With folded arms, deep sighs, and heavy cheer,Where hundred nymphs, and hundred muses in,Sunk down by Chamus' brinks; with him his dearDear Thyrsil lay; oft times would he beginTo cure his grief, and better way advise;But still his words, when his sad friend he spies,Forsook his silent tongue, to speak in watry eyes.

(Phineas Fletcher:Piscatory Eclogues.ab. 1630.)

Fletcher was an imitator of Spenser, and here devises a stanza differing little from his master's. The final alexandrine is used with the same effect. For other instances of final alexandrines, doubtless used under the general influence of the Spenserian stanza, see the following specimens.

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