VI. IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!No poorest in thy borders but may nowLift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more,Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee.But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

(Lowell:Harvard Commemoration Ode, strophe xii. 1865.)

This is undoubtedly the finest of odes by American poets, and remains one of the glories of new-world poetry. Its irregular measures were designed by Mr. Lowell to fit the poem for public reading (see his letter to Mr. Gosse on the subject, quoted in the Appendix to Gosse'sSeventeenth Century Studies).

In the Year of the great Crime,When the false English nobles and their Jew,By God demented, slewThe Trust they stood thrice pledged to keep from wrong,One said, Take up thy Song,That breathes the mild and almost mythic timeOf England's prime!But I, Ah, me,The freedom of the fewThat, in our free Land, were indeed the free,Can song renew?Ill singing 'tis with blotting prison-bars,How high soe'er, betwixt us and the stars;Ill singing 'tis when there are none to hear;And days are nearWhen England shall forgetThe fading glow which, for a little while,Illumes her yet,The lovely smileThat grows so faint and wan,Her people shouting in her dying ear:Are not jays twain worth two of any swan!Harsh words and brief asks the dishonor'd Year.

(Coventry Patmore: Ode ix. Printed 1868.)

Mr. Patmore's use of the irregular ode forms is of particular interest. He made a special study of the form, and applied it more widely than is commonly done. His first odes were printed(not published) in 1868, and from one of these the present specimen is taken. Later (1877), in connection withThe Unknown Eros, he set forth his view of the ode form, treating it not as lawless but as governed by laws of its own. "Nearly all English metres," he said, "owe their existence as metres to 'catalexis,' or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis, are fixed. But the verse in which this volume is written is catalecticpar excellence, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character. Some persons, unlearned in the subject of this metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is 'lawless.' But it has its laws as truly as any other. In its highest order, the lyric or 'ode,' it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter 'ode' by the occasional introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced ... by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme." (From Patmore's Prefatory Note toThe Unknown Eros; quoted by William Sharp, in the Introduction toGreat Odes, p. xxxii.)[40]

On the shores of a Continent cast,She won the inviolate soilBy loss of heirdom of all the Past,And faith in the royal right of Toil!She planted homes on the savage sod:Into the wilderness loneShe walked with fearless feet,In her hand the divining-rod,Till the veins of the mountains beatWith fire of metal and force of stone!She set the speed of the river-headTo turn the mills of her bread;She drove her ploughshare deepThrough the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep.To the South, and West, and North,She called Pathfinder forth,Her faithful and sole companionWhere the flushed Sierra, snow-starred,Her way to the sunset barred,And the nameless rivers in thunder and foamChanneled the terrible canyon!Nor paused, till her uttermost homeWas built, in the smile of a softer skyAnd the glory of beauty yet to be,Where the haunted waves of Asia dieOn the strand of the world-wide sea.

(Bayard Taylor:National Ode, strophe iii. 1876.)

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild gooseGo honking northward over Tennessee;West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie,And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young,Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,With restless violent hands and casual tongueMoulding her mighty fates,The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;And like a larger sea, the vital greenOf springing wheat shall vastly be outflungOver Dakota and the prairie states.By desert people immemorialOn Arizonan mesas shall be doneDim rites unto the thunder and the sun;Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrificeMore splendid, when the white Sierras callUnto the Rockies straightway to ariseAnd dance before the unveiled ark of the year,Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,Unrolling rivers clearFor flutter of broad phylacteries;While Shasta signals to Alaskan seasThat watch old sluggish glaciers downward creepTo fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,And Mariposa through the purple calmsGazes at far Hawaii crowned with palmsWhere East and West are met,—A rich seal on the ocean's bosom setTo say that East and West are twain,With different loss and gain:The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet....... Ah no!We have not fallen so,We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cryCame up the tropic wind, 'Now help us, for we die!'Then Alabama heard,And rising, pale, to Maine and IdahoShouted a burning word.Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,East, west, and south, and north,Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young,Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,By the unforgotten names of eager boysWho might have tasted girls' love and been stungWith the old mystic joysAnd starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,But that the heart of youth is generous,—We charge you, ye who lead us,Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!Turn not their new-world victories to gain!One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the baysOf their dear praise,One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,The implacable republic will require.

... Ah no!We have not fallen so,We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cryCame up the tropic wind, 'Now help us, for we die!'Then Alabama heard,And rising, pale, to Maine and IdahoShouted a burning word.Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,East, west, and south, and north,Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young,Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,By the unforgotten names of eager boysWho might have tasted girls' love and been stungWith the old mystic joysAnd starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,But that the heart of youth is generous,—We charge you, ye who lead us,Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!Turn not their new-world victories to gain!One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the baysOf their dear praise,One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,The implacable republic will require.

(William Vaughn Moody:An Ode in Time of Hesitation, strophes iii. and ix. 1900.)

Different from either of the two classes of odes already represented are the irregular choral measures used by a few English poets in translation or imitation of the odes of the Greek drama.

Chorus.O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious!Living or dying thou hast fulfilledThe work for which thou wast foretoldTo Israel, and now liest victoriousAmong thy slain self-killed;Not willingly, but tangled in the foldOf dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoinedThee with thy slaughtered foes, in number moreThan all thy life had slain before.Semi-chorus.While their hearts were jocund and sublime,Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wineAnd fat regorged of bulls and goats,Chaunting their idol, and preferringBefore our living Dread, who dwellsIn Silo, his bright sanctuary,Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent,Who hurt their minds,And urged them on with mad desireTo call in haste for their destroyer.They, only set on sport and play,Unweetingly importunedTheir own destruction to come speedy upon them.So fond are mortal men,Fallen into wrath divine,As their own ruin on themselves to invite,Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,And with blindness internal struck.Semi-chorus.But he, though blind of sight,Despised, and thought extinguished quite,With inward eyes illuminated,His fiery virtue rousedFrom under ashes into sudden flame,And as an evening dragon came,Assailant on the perched roostsAnd nests in order rangedOf tame villatic fowl, but as an eagleHis cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.So Virtue, given for lost,Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,Like that self-begotten birdIn the Arabian woods embost,That no second knows nor third,And lay erewhile a holocaust,From out her ashy womb now teemed,Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous mostWhen most unactive deemed;And, though her body die, her fame survives,A secular bird, ages of lives.

Chorus.

O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious!Living or dying thou hast fulfilledThe work for which thou wast foretoldTo Israel, and now liest victoriousAmong thy slain self-killed;Not willingly, but tangled in the foldOf dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoinedThee with thy slaughtered foes, in number moreThan all thy life had slain before.

Semi-chorus.

While their hearts were jocund and sublime,Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wineAnd fat regorged of bulls and goats,Chaunting their idol, and preferringBefore our living Dread, who dwellsIn Silo, his bright sanctuary,Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent,Who hurt their minds,And urged them on with mad desireTo call in haste for their destroyer.They, only set on sport and play,Unweetingly importunedTheir own destruction to come speedy upon them.So fond are mortal men,Fallen into wrath divine,As their own ruin on themselves to invite,Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,And with blindness internal struck.

Semi-chorus.

But he, though blind of sight,Despised, and thought extinguished quite,With inward eyes illuminated,His fiery virtue rousedFrom under ashes into sudden flame,And as an evening dragon came,Assailant on the perched roostsAnd nests in order rangedOf tame villatic fowl, but as an eagleHis cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.So Virtue, given for lost,Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,Like that self-begotten birdIn the Arabian woods embost,That no second knows nor third,And lay erewhile a holocaust,From out her ashy womb now teemed,Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous mostWhen most unactive deemed;And, though her body die, her fame survives,A secular bird, ages of lives.

(Milton:Samson Agonistes, ll. 1660-1707. 1671.)

Of this passage Mr. Swinburne says: "It is hard to realize and hopeless to reproduce the musical force of classic metres so recondite and exquisite as the choral parts of a Greek play. Even Milton could not; though with his godlike instinct and his godlike might of hand he made a kind of strange and enormous harmony by intermixture of assonance and rhyme with irregular blank verse, as in that last Titanic chorus of Samson which utters over the fallen Philistines the trumpet-blast and thunder of its triumphs." (Essays and Studies, pp. 162, 163.)

The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere;In the court of gods, in the city of men,And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen,In the still mountain air.Only to Typho it sounds hatefully,—To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown,Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone,To embed them in the sea.Wherefore dost thou groan so loud?Wherefore do thy nostrils flash,Through the dark night, suddenly,Typho, such red jets of flame?Is thy tortured heart still proud?Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash?Still alert thy stone-crushed frame?Doth thy fierce soul still deploreThine ancient rout by the Cilician hills,And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore?Do thy bloodshot eyes still weepThe fight which crowned thine ills,Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep?Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair,Where erst the strong sea-currents sucked thee down,Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest,Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair?That thy groans, like thunder prest,Begin to roll, and almost drownThe sweet notes whose lulling spellGods and the race of mortals love so well,When through thy caves thou hearest music swell?But an awful pleasure blandSpreading o'er the Thunderer's face,When the sound climbs near his seat,The Olympian council sees;As he lets his lax right hand,Which the lightnings doth embrace,Sink upon his mighty knees.And the eagle, at the beckOf the appeasing, gracious harmony,Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck,Nestling nearer to Jove's feet;While o'er his sovran eyeThe curtains of the blue films slowly meet.And the white Olympus-peaksRosily brighten, and the soothed gods smileAt one another from their golden chairs,And no one round the charmed circle speaks.Only the loved Hebe bearsThe cup about, whose draughts beguilePain and care, with a dark storeOf fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o'er;And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.

But an awful pleasure blandSpreading o'er the Thunderer's face,When the sound climbs near his seat,The Olympian council sees;As he lets his lax right hand,Which the lightnings doth embrace,Sink upon his mighty knees.And the eagle, at the beckOf the appeasing, gracious harmony,Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck,Nestling nearer to Jove's feet;While o'er his sovran eyeThe curtains of the blue films slowly meet.And the white Olympus-peaksRosily brighten, and the soothed gods smileAt one another from their golden chairs,And no one round the charmed circle speaks.Only the loved Hebe bearsThe cup about, whose draughts beguilePain and care, with a dark storeOf fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o'er;And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.

(Matthew Arnold:Empedocles on Etna, Act II. Song of Callicles. 1853.)

Wherefore to me, this fear—Groundedly stationed hereFronting my heart, the portent-watcher—flits she?Wherefore should prophet-playThe uncalled and unpaid lay,Nor—having spat forth fear, like bad dreams—sits sheOn the mind's throne beloved—well-suasive Boldness?For time, since, by a throw of all the hands,The boat's stern-cables touched the sands,Has passed from youth to oldness,—When under Ilion rushed the ship-borne bands.And from my eyes I learn—Being myself my witness—their return.Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul,Itself its teacher too, chants from withinErinus' dirge, not having now the wholeOf Hope's dear boldness: nor my inwards sin—The heart that's rolled in whirls against the mindJustly presageful of a fate behind.But I pray—things false, from my hope, may fallInto the fate that's not-fulfilled-at-all!Especially at least, of health that's greatThe term's insatiable: for, its weight—A neighbor, with a common wall between—Ever will sickness lean;And destiny, her course pursuing straight,Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen.Now, when a portion, rather than the treasureFear casts from sling, with peril in right measure,It has not sunk—the universal freight,(With misery freighted over-full,)Nor has fear whelmed the hull.Then too the gift of Zeus,Two-handedly profuse,Even from the furrows' yield for yearly useHas done away with famine, the disease;But blood of man to earth once falling,—deadly, black,—In times ere these,—Who may, by singing spells, call back?Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knewThe way to bring the dead again.But, did not an appointed Fate constrainThe Fate from gods, to bear no more than due,My heart, outstripping what tongue utters,Would have all out: which now, in darkness, muttersMoodily grieved, nor ever hopes to findHow she a word in season may unwindFrom out the enkindling mind.

And from my eyes I learn—Being myself my witness—their return.Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul,Itself its teacher too, chants from withinErinus' dirge, not having now the wholeOf Hope's dear boldness: nor my inwards sin—The heart that's rolled in whirls against the mindJustly presageful of a fate behind.But I pray—things false, from my hope, may fallInto the fate that's not-fulfilled-at-all!

Especially at least, of health that's greatThe term's insatiable: for, its weight—A neighbor, with a common wall between—Ever will sickness lean;And destiny, her course pursuing straight,Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen.Now, when a portion, rather than the treasureFear casts from sling, with peril in right measure,It has not sunk—the universal freight,(With misery freighted over-full,)Nor has fear whelmed the hull.Then too the gift of Zeus,Two-handedly profuse,Even from the furrows' yield for yearly useHas done away with famine, the disease;But blood of man to earth once falling,—deadly, black,—In times ere these,—Who may, by singing spells, call back?Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knewThe way to bring the dead again.But, did not an appointed Fate constrainThe Fate from gods, to bear no more than due,My heart, outstripping what tongue utters,Would have all out: which now, in darkness, muttersMoodily grieved, nor ever hopes to findHow she a word in season may unwindFrom out the enkindling mind.

(Browning:Agamemnon; chorus. 1877.)

Of the same general metrical character as the irregular odes are certain poems (like some of Patmore's) with no regularly organized structure and varying lengths of line. See, for example, Milton's versesAt a Solemn MusicandOn Time; Swinburne'sThalassiusandOn the Cliffs; and William Morris'sOn a fair Spring Morning. Compare, also, the effect of the irregular strophic forms in Southey'sCurse of Kehama, Shelley'sQueen Mab, and the like.[41]

FOOTNOTES:[39]On English ode-forms, see the introductions to Mr. Gosse'sEnglish Odesand Mr. William Sharp'sGreat Odes; also Schipper, vol. ii. p. 792.[40]Mr. Patmore has used the same sort of verse for narrative poetry, with unusual daring but also with unusual success. For an example see hisAmelia, included in theGolden Treasury, Second Series. The following passage exhibits the metrical method of the poem at its best:"And so we went aloneBy walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plumeShook down perfume;Trim plots close blownWith daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,Engross'd each oneWith single ardor for her spouse, the sun;Garths in their glad arrayOf white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,With azure chill the maiden flower between;Meadows of fervid green,With sometime sudden prospect of untoldCowslips, like chance-found gold;And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,Rending the air with praise,Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shoutOf Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout;Then through the Park,Where Spring to livelier gloomQuickened the cedars dark,And, 'gainst the clear sky cold,Which shone afarCrowded with sunny alps oracular,Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom."[41]The easy abuse of these irregular measures is amusingly parodied by Mr. Owen Seaman, in a burlesque of an ode of Mr. Le Gallienne's:"Is this the Seine?And am I altogether wrongAbout the brain,Dreaming I hear the British tongue?Dear Heaven! what a rhyme!And yet 'tis all as goodAs some that I have fashioned in my time,Likebudandwood;And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neaterMetre."(The Battle of the Bays, p. 37.)

[39]On English ode-forms, see the introductions to Mr. Gosse'sEnglish Odesand Mr. William Sharp'sGreat Odes; also Schipper, vol. ii. p. 792.

[40]Mr. Patmore has used the same sort of verse for narrative poetry, with unusual daring but also with unusual success. For an example see hisAmelia, included in theGolden Treasury, Second Series. The following passage exhibits the metrical method of the poem at its best:"And so we went aloneBy walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plumeShook down perfume;Trim plots close blownWith daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,Engross'd each oneWith single ardor for her spouse, the sun;Garths in their glad arrayOf white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,With azure chill the maiden flower between;Meadows of fervid green,With sometime sudden prospect of untoldCowslips, like chance-found gold;And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,Rending the air with praise,Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shoutOf Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout;Then through the Park,Where Spring to livelier gloomQuickened the cedars dark,And, 'gainst the clear sky cold,Which shone afarCrowded with sunny alps oracular,Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom."

"And so we went aloneBy walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plumeShook down perfume;Trim plots close blownWith daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,Engross'd each oneWith single ardor for her spouse, the sun;Garths in their glad arrayOf white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,With azure chill the maiden flower between;Meadows of fervid green,With sometime sudden prospect of untoldCowslips, like chance-found gold;And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,Rending the air with praise,Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shoutOf Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout;Then through the Park,Where Spring to livelier gloomQuickened the cedars dark,And, 'gainst the clear sky cold,Which shone afarCrowded with sunny alps oracular,Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom."

[41]The easy abuse of these irregular measures is amusingly parodied by Mr. Owen Seaman, in a burlesque of an ode of Mr. Le Gallienne's:"Is this the Seine?And am I altogether wrongAbout the brain,Dreaming I hear the British tongue?Dear Heaven! what a rhyme!And yet 'tis all as goodAs some that I have fashioned in my time,Likebudandwood;And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neaterMetre."(The Battle of the Bays, p. 37.)

[41]The easy abuse of these irregular measures is amusingly parodied by Mr. Owen Seaman, in a burlesque of an ode of Mr. Le Gallienne's:

"Is this the Seine?And am I altogether wrongAbout the brain,Dreaming I hear the British tongue?Dear Heaven! what a rhyme!And yet 'tis all as goodAs some that I have fashioned in my time,Likebudandwood;And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neaterMetre."

(The Battle of the Bays, p. 37.)

While English verse is generally admitted to be based on a different system from that of Greek and Latin poetry (the element of accent obscuring that of quantity in English prosody, as the element of quantity obscures that of accent in classical prosody), there have been repeated attempts to introduce the more familiar classical measures into English. Most of these attempts have been academic and have attracted the attention only of critics and scholars; a few have interested the reading public.

Imitations of classical verse in English may conveniently be divided into two classes: imitations of lyrical measures, and imitations of the dactylic hexameter. The latter group is of course much the larger, especially in modern poetry. It will appear that the classical measures might also be divided into two groups according to another distinction: those attempting to observe the quantitative prosody of the original language, and those in which the original measure is transmuted into frankly accentual verse.

The original impulse toward this classical or pseudo-classical verse was a product of the Renaissance, when all forms of art not based on Greek and Latin models were suspected. Rime, not being found in the poetry of the classical languages, was treated as a product of the dark ages,—the invention of "Goths and Huns." See Roger Ascham'sSchoolmaster(1570) for the most characteristic representative of this phase of thought in England. The new forms of verse were, naturally enough, first tried in Italy. Schipper traces the beginning of the movement to Alberti (1404-1484). A century later Trissino wrote hisSophonisbeandItalia Liberatain unrimed verse, in professed imitation of Homer, and was looked upon as the inventor ofversi sciolti, that is,verses "freed" from rime (compare the remarks of Milton in the prefatory note toParadise Lost). In 1539 Claudio Tolomei wroteVersi e Regole della Poesia Nuova, a systematic attempt to introduce the classical versification. He also wrote hexameters and sapphics. In France there were similar efforts in the sixteenth century. Mousset translated Homer into hexameters in 1530, and A. de Baïf, a member of the "Pleiade" (1532-1589), devised some French hexameters which he calledvers baïfins. The English experiments were worked out independently, and yet under the same neo-classical influences. On this subject, see Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 2-12, 439-464.

Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reasonIn this strange violence, to make resistanceWhere sweet graces erect the stately bannerOf Virtue's regiment, shining in harnessOf Fortune's diadems, by Beauty mustered:Say, then, Reason, I say, what is thy counsel?

(Sir Philip Sidney:Phaleuciakes, from theArcadia, ab. 1580.)

This is the measure commonly called "Phalæcian." Compare Tennyson's imitation of it, in his Hendecasyllabics quoted below.

O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness!O how much I do like your solitariness!Where man's mind hath a freed considerationOf goodness to receive lovely direction.Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host,And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is.

(Sir Philip Sidney:Asclepiadics, from theArcadia. ab. 1580.)

This is the measure now called "Lesser Asclepiadean."

My Muse, what ails this ardorTo blaze my only secrets?Alas, it is no gloryTo sing my own decay'd state.Alas, it is no comfortTo speak without an answer;Alas, it is no wisdomTo show the wound without cure.

(Sir Philip Sidney:Anacreontics, from theArcadia. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was a member of the little group of classical students who called themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing classical measures into English verse. Others of the group were Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser, from whose correspondence most of our information regarding the movement is derived. (See the letters in Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works, vol. i. pp. 7-9, 20-24, 35-37, 75-76, 99-107.) Spenser's only known efforts in the same direction are also preserved in this correspondence; a poem in twenty-one iambic trimeters, and this "tetrasticon":—

"See yee the blindfoulded pretie god, that feathered archer,Of lovers miseries which maketh his bloodie game?Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coovered his face?Trust me, least he my loove happely chaunce to beholde."

It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than Sidney did, to follow the classical rules of quantity in making his verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the classical versification are perhaps the most successful, to modern taste, of all those made in the Elizabethan period. Among the other songs in theArcadiawill be found sapphics and hexameters.

See especially Spenser's letter of April, 1580, and Harvey's reply (op. cit., vol. i. pp. 35, 99), for notable passages indicating the seriousness with which the members of the "Areopagus" were trying toorm English verse so as to bring it under the rules of classical prosody. The relations of quantity and accent were not understood, as indeed they may be said still not to be understood for the English language. Spenser suggests, in a frequently quoted passage, that in the wordcarpenterthe middle syllable is "short in speech, when it shall be read long in verse,"—that is, because the vowel is followed by two consonants; hence it "seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one legge after her.... But it is to be wonne with custome, and rough words must be subdued with use." Harvey resented the idea that the common pronunciation of words could be departed from in order to conform them to arbitrary metrical rules, and in his reply said: "You shall never have my subscription or consent ... to make your Carpēnter our Carpĕnter, an inche longer or bigger, than God and his Englishe people have made him.... Else never heard I any that durst presume so much over the Englishe ... as to alter the quantitie of any one sillable, otherwise than oure common speache and generall receyved custome woulde beare them oute." But while all English verse must be consistent with "the vulgare and naturall mother prosodye," Harvey does not despair of finding a system that shall be at the same time "countervaileable to the best tongues" in making possible quantitative verse. The whole passage is well worth reading. The best account of the movement toward classical versification in the days of the "Areopagus" will be found in Professor Schelling'sPoetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth(Publications of the University of Pennsylvania).

O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke,For to bathe there your pretty breasts at all times:Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe.And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass,Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth:Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre.

O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke,For to bathe there your pretty breasts at all times:Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe.

And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass,Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth:Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre.

(William Webbe: Sapphic Verse, inA Discourse of English Poetrie. 1586.)

Webbe was another of those who believed "that if the true kind of versifying in immitation of Greekes and Latines, had been practised in the English tongue, ... it would long ere this have aspyred to as full perfection, as in anie other tongue whatsoever." So he added to hisDiscourse(see Arber Reprint, pp. 67-84) a discussion of the principles of quantitative prosody, and some specimens of what might be done by way of experiment.[42]The Sapphics from which the present specimen is taken are a paraphrase of Spenser's praise of Elizabeth in the fourth eclogue of theShepherd's Calendar. (For a specimen of Webbe's hexameters, see p.334, below.)

Greatest in thy wars,Greater in thy peace,Dread Elizabeth;Our muse only truth,Figments cannot use,Thy ritch name to deckThat itselfe adorns:But should now this ageLet all poesye fayne,Fayning poesy couldNothing faine at allWorthy halfe thy fame.

(Thomas Campion: Iambic Dimeter, "an example Lyrical," inObservations in the Art of English Poesie. 1602.)

Rose-cheekt Lawra comeSing thou smoothly with thy beawtie'sSilent musick, either otherSweetely gracing.Lovely formes do floweFrom concent devinely framed,Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie'sBirth is heavenly.

Rose-cheekt Lawra comeSing thou smoothly with thy beawtie'sSilent musick, either otherSweetely gracing.

Lovely formes do floweFrom concent devinely framed,Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie'sBirth is heavenly.

(Thomas Campion: Trochaic Dimeter,ib.)

The full title of Campion's work was: "Observations in the Art of English Poesie; wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the English toong will receive eight severall kinds of numbers, proper to it selfe, which are all in this booke set forth, and were never before this time by any man attempted." Campion, like other classical versifiers, condemned rime as a barbarity; but in imitating the classical measures he does not violate the normal English accent, so that his verses read smoothly in English rhythm. Curiously enough, he includes among his innovations an iambic measure which proves to be ordinary decasyllabic verse:

"Goe numbers boldly passe, stay not for aydeOf shifting rime, that easie flatterer,Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile".

Professor Schelling exclaims: "Where could the musical Doctor have kept his ears all this time? to propose this measure thusinnocently for the drama, when the English stage had been ringing with his 'licentiate iambics' for more than two decades!"

The second of the specimens quoted above Campion describes as a dimeter "whose first foote may either be a Sponde or Trochy: the two verses following are both of them Trochaical, and consist of foure feete, the first of either of them being a Spondee or Trochy, the other three only Trochyes. The fourth and last verse is made of two Trochyes. The number is voluble and fit to expresse any amorous conceit." (See also another of Campion's measures, in Part One, p.27.)[43]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries few, if any, notable English poems were written in the classical measures. Goldsmith, in one of his essays (xviii, on Versification), maintained the possibility of reducing English words to the classical prosody, and said: "We have seen several late specimens of English hexameters and sapphics so happily composed that, by attaching them to the idea of ancient measure, we found them in all respects as melodious and agreeable to the ear as the works of Virgil and Anacreon, or Horace." But whose these were it seems to be impossible to say.

Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going?Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order—Bleak blows the blast;—your hat has got a hole in't,So have your breeches!Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud onesWho in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives andScissors to grind O!"

Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going?Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order—Bleak blows the blast;—your hat has got a hole in't,So have your breeches!

Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud onesWho in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives andScissors to grind O!"

(CanningandFrere:Sapphics; the Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, in theAnti-Jacobin, November, 1797).

These "Sapphics" were a burlesque of some by Southey in similar stanzas, opening:

"Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snow fell,Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked,When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey,Weary and way-sore."

"In this poem," said theAnti-Jacobin, not unjustly, "the pathos of the matter is not a little relieved by the absurdity of the metre."

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,God-gifted organ-voice of England,Milton, a name to resound for ages;Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,Tower, as the deep-domed empyreanRings to the roar of an angel onset.

(Tennyson:Milton; Alcaics.)

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,Look, I come to the test, a tiny poemAll composed in a metre of Catullus,All in quantity, careful of my motion,Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,Lest I fall unawares before the people,Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.Should I flounder awhile without a tumbleThro' this metrification of Catullus,They should speak to me not without a welcome,All that chorus of indolent reviewers.Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,So fantastical is the dainty metre.Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe meToo presumptuous, indolent reviewers.

(Tennyson:Hendecasyllabics.)

On the first of these stanzas of Tennyson, compare his stanzas to Maurice, and note, p.77, above. With the hendecasyllabics, compare the "Phaleuciakes" of Sidney, p.331, above, and "Hendecasyllabics" in Swinburne'sPoems and Ballads.

Tennyson took no little interest in the relations of classical and English metres, and seems to have believed in the possibility of genuine English quantitative verse. He did not, however, regard it as of practical value, and treated his own experiments as trifles. In his Memoirs, written by his son, Tennyson is said to have observed that he knew the quantity of every English word exceptscissors, a mysterious saying which may be set beside Southey's declaration thatEgyptis the only spondee in the English language. His son also preserves an extemporaneous line composed by Tennyson to illustrate the observance of quantity "regardless of accent":

"All men alike hate slops, particularly gruel;"

and a sapphic stanza, also extemporized, quantitative but conforming to common accent:

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