"In Angel Court“In Angel Court the sunless airGrows faint and sick; to left and right,The cowering houses shrink from sight,Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare.“Misnamed, you say, for surely rareMust be the Angel shapes that lightIn Angel Court.“Nay, the Eternities are there.Death by the doorway stands to smite;Life in its garrets leaps to light;And Love has climbed the crumbling stairIn Angel Court.”
"In Angel Court
“In Angel Court the sunless airGrows faint and sick; to left and right,The cowering houses shrink from sight,Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare.“Misnamed, you say, for surely rareMust be the Angel shapes that lightIn Angel Court.“Nay, the Eternities are there.Death by the doorway stands to smite;Life in its garrets leaps to light;And Love has climbed the crumbling stairIn Angel Court.”
Villon has varied the rondeau so as to use for a refrain a single syllable. This form, though not so flexible as the others, has its use and is very apt for obtaining certain effects.
The Triolet
In the matter of triolets Austin Dobson is again an authority, though his experiments in this form are scarcely as successful as his ballades and rondeaus.
“TO ROSE”Austin Dobson“In the school of CoquettesMadam Rose is a scholar:O, they fish with all netsIn the school of Coquettes!When her brooch she forgets’Tis to show her new collar:In the school of CoquettesMadam Rose is a scholar.”
“TO ROSE”
Austin Dobson
“In the school of CoquettesMadam Rose is a scholar:O, they fish with all netsIn the school of Coquettes!When her brooch she forgets’Tis to show her new collar:In the school of CoquettesMadam Rose is a scholar.”
Here the first line is also the fourth and the seventh, while the second is duplicated in the last. This is another of the two-rhyme forms.
The triolet seems simple enough, and, for that matter, a certain kind of triolet can be written by the ream. But to put the eight lines together in such a way that the refrain comes in freshly each time, is often a day’s work. In a muchlighter vein it is permissible to pun in the repeated lines so that the last repetition comes in with a different meaning.
Though intended for the delicately humorous the triolet is sober-going enough to carry a thread of sentiment. Nothing could be daintier or more suggestively pathetic than these lines by H. C. Bunner:
“A pitcher of mignonette,In a tenement’s highest casement:Queer sort of a flower-pot—yetThat pitcher of mignonetteIs a garden in heaven setTo the little sick child in the basement—The pitcher of mignonette,In the tenement’s highest casement.”
The Rondel
“READY FOR THE RIDE”H. C. Bunner“Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride,As in the old days when he rode with her,With joy of Love that had fond Hope to brideOne year ago had made her pulses stir.“Now shall no wish with any day recur(For Love and Death part year and year full wide),Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride,As in the old days when he rode with her.“No ghost there lingers of the smile that diedOn the sweet pale lip where his kisses were... Yet still she turns her delicate head aside,If she may hear him come with jingling spurThrough the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride,As in the old days when he rode with her.”
“READY FOR THE RIDE”
H. C. Bunner
“Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride,As in the old days when he rode with her,With joy of Love that had fond Hope to brideOne year ago had made her pulses stir.“Now shall no wish with any day recur(For Love and Death part year and year full wide),Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride,As in the old days when he rode with her.“No ghost there lingers of the smile that diedOn the sweet pale lip where his kisses were... Yet still she turns her delicate head aside,If she may hear him come with jingling spurThrough the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride,As in the old days when he rode with her.”
This variant of the rondeau contains fourteen lines of which the first two are twice repeated as refrains. But two rhymes are employed.
The Villanelle
“A VILLANELLE AT VERONA”Austin Dobson,In theCentury Magazine“A voice in the scented night,A step where the rose trees blow,—O Love and O Love’s delight!“Cold star at the blue vault’s height,What is it that shakes you so?A voice in the scented night.“She comes in her beauty bright,She comes in her young love’s glow,O Love and O Love’s delight!“She bends from her casement white,And she hears it hushed and low,A voice in the scented night.“And he climbs by that stairway slightHer passionate Romeo:O Love and O Love’s delight!“And it stirs us still in spiteOf its ‘ever so long ago,’That voice in the scented night;O Love and O Love’s delight!”
“A VILLANELLE AT VERONA”
Austin Dobson,
In theCentury Magazine
“A voice in the scented night,A step where the rose trees blow,—O Love and O Love’s delight!“Cold star at the blue vault’s height,What is it that shakes you so?A voice in the scented night.“She comes in her beauty bright,She comes in her young love’s glow,O Love and O Love’s delight!“She bends from her casement white,And she hears it hushed and low,A voice in the scented night.“And he climbs by that stairway slightHer passionate Romeo:O Love and O Love’s delight!“And it stirs us still in spiteOf its ‘ever so long ago,’That voice in the scented night;O Love and O Love’s delight!”
The second lines of each stanza rhyme and the first and third lines of the first stanza are alternated as refrains.
The sestina has six six-line stanzas and an envoy: in the stanzas the final words of each line remain the same throughout, though the order is changed. In the three-line envoy the six words must appear again and in an establishedorder. The sestina is a trifle too long to quote, but one of the best and sanest examples is to be found in Kipling’s Seven Seas—“The Sestina of the Tramp Royal.” Swinburne’s sestinas though “poetic” are very cloudy in meaning.
The pantoum, another involved arrangement, is made up of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of the first verse are used as the first and third lines of the second verse, and so onad infinitumuntil the weary author ends by repeating the first and third lines of the whole production as the second from the last and the last of the concluding stanza.
There is great good for the beginner in writing these French forms even if he takes up the work only as an exercise. Their construction is so certain and fixed that an error is glaring. Though it may be brow-wrinkling to build a ballade, it is a simple matter to see its faults.
There is also value in these forms for the advanced student. They embody suggestions for new stanza forms and fresh verse in general. The use of theballade variant may be found in Kipling. When varied the triolet may give exactly the right ring for some idea which refuses to fit itself into the conventional molds. When one has served his apprenticeship he may arrange and rearrange as he sees fit, bending the stanza to his purpose. Of the forms he is not the slave but the master.
A varietyof verse which has great vogue now and which has so developed as to be considered almost as individual as the rondeau or sonnet is the modern “song.”
Formerly the “song” was written to music or at least written that it might be set to music, but now it must sing itself. It may dress in sober iambics if it pleases, but there must be a lilt and go to the words to suggest music. Among the best examples of this form open to the reader are the songs of Robert Burns. Though written to fit old Scotch airs the words themselves suggest a melody to any one with the slightest ear for music. For instance:
“My luve is like a red, red roseThat’s newly sprung in June:My luve is like the melodieThat’s sweetly played in tune.“As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,So deep in luve am I:And I will luve thee still, my dear,Till a’ the seas gang dry.“Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,And the rocks melt in the sun:I will luve thee still, my dear,While the sands o’ life shall run.“And fare thee weel, my only luve!And fare thee weel awhile:And I will come again, my luve,Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”
Though not the author of much printed verse Robert Louis Stevenson has written more than one singing stanza:
“Bright is the ring of wordsWhen the right man rings them,Fair is the fall of songsWhen the singer sings them.Still they are carolled and said—On wings they are carried—After the singer is deadAnd the maker buried.”
Going to the works of W. E. Henley we find much very singable verse. Inthe quoted example he has used in the chorus the suggestion of an old Scotch stanza:
“Oh Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay,And I wish from my heart it’s there I was to-day:I wish from my heart I was far away from here,Sitting in my parlor and talking to my dear.For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be,Our topsails are hoisted and we’ll away to sea.Oh, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree,They’re all growing green in the old countree.”
Austin Dobson in a longer poem makes use of the following stanza:
“Across the grass I see her pass;She comes with tripping pace,—A maid I know, the March winds blowHer hair across her face;—With a hey, Dolly! ho Dolly!Dolly shall be mine,Before the spray is white with MayOr blooms the eglantine.”
In all of Kipling the singing quality is dominant. He is to be marked especially because in his songs he has combined the old meters so as to give the effect of absolute novelty. The Scotch poets of Burns’ time and before, offer many excellent chances for imitation and study. Shakespeare’s occasional songs are always true. A seldom quoted poem of Lord Byron’s is full of melody:
“So we’ll go no more a rovingSo late into the night,Though the heart be still as loving,And the moon be still as bright.“For the sword outwears its sheath,And the soul wears out the breast,And the heart must pause to breathe,And love itself have rest.“Though the night was made for lovingAnd the day returns too soon,Yet we’ll go no more a rovingBy the light of the moon.”
Just exactly where the singing quality of a song lies it is hard to tell. It is not altogether in the open vowels or themeter or the flow of thought, though dependent on all three. It is impossible to formulate any rule for the construction of the song except the general laws of good taste. The only plan is to try and try again until the result contains something of the singing quality. Very often it is helpful to fit the words to some air imaginary or otherwise which runs in the head. The song may be long or short, tell little or a great deal. In practice, as a rule, it is less than twenty-four lines in length and expresses a single thought or emotion. Its only two essentials are that it be graceful and that it sing.
Vers de Société
Vers de société,“society verse,” is a development of the last century; almost, one might say, of the last twenty-five years. In that time there has been composed a great volume of this sort of verse upon which a number of the minor poets have based their claims to remembrance. It is difficult to definevers de société; in fact, the only way it can be described is through examples. Its characteristics are a gracefulness of thought and style, a fluency in expression, a vein of delicate humor or sentiment and a subject which falls within the limits of “polite conversation.” It sparkles or should sparkle with clever turns of thought andat times even descends to a sort of punning. No attempt is made to reach the sublime, but seriousvers de sociétéis often written and is the more effective because of its contrasted setting. The ballade, rondeau and triolet are favorite expressions of this style of verse, for in general its writers seek difficult stanza forms with rhymes natural but never hackneyed.
As an exercise its making is both profitable and difficult. On trial, it will be found no easy matter to write line after line of every-day English into balanced verse that is not commonplace, but once well done it is a much easier task to find a market.
Calverley’s “Fly Leaves” approach the classic ofvers de société. Austin Dobson has worked in a more serious vein. Praed has written some delightfully easy specimens of the style, while in America John G. Saxe, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a number of contemporary writers are responsible for an extensive output ranking well up with England’s.
The Dramatic Interlude
The serious drama in verse nowadays is a drug on the market as far as selling power is concerned, unless we except the plays of Stephen Phillips. There is, however, a sort of dramatic interlude which is not only marketable but much more easily and pleasantly written; a composition on the general order of Dobson’s “Proverbs in Porcelain.” A study of the “Proverbs” will go further for an understanding of the subject than pages of explanation.
They are written in iambic tetrameter which is kept from singsongness by the action of the dialogue. The characters seldom end their speeches at the end of the line but rather in the middle, and the line is filled out by the first words of the next speaker.
These little play fragments, built in the form of a delicate comedy, are not long enough to exhaust either writer or reader and are even to be met with now and then in our modern magazines. Their value for the verse maker lies inthe premium which they put upon ease and naturalness of expression, though in addition they present a novel exercise to the student who is tired of writing his narratives in conventional verse. The “Proverbs” are suggested not as models to copy absolutely but rather as the base of variations which the verse maker may devise to suit his theme.
Nonsense Verse
Nonsense verse in its present development is a fairly modern growth. It began with the limerick which first reached the public under the kindly patronage of Mother Goose:
“There was an old man of Bombay,Who pulled at a pipe made of clay,But a long-legged snipeFlew away with the pipeWhich vexed that old man of Bombay.”
With this as a beginning the limerick has spread far and wide. It has secured a place in modern nonsense verse corresponding to that of the sonnet in moreserious efforts. There are even limerick fiends who pride themselves on their writing of limericks and others whose collections of the form total up in the thousands.
It is very seldom that one sees a limerick now with the first and last lines identical. As a rule the last line differs from the first and ends in a new rhyme. The following taken fromLiferepresents the apotheosis of the limerick:
“A German from over the RhineWhen asked at what hour he would dine,Replied, ‘At Five, Seven,Eight, Ten and Eleven,Four, Six and a Quarter to Nine!’”
Edward Lear, an English writer, began the popularization of the limerick in his nonsense books about 1850 and since his time it has been experimented with by many of the cleverest writers now before the public.
But nonsense verse is not confined to this one form. Passing from the work of Lear we come to Lewis Carroll’s verse in “Alice in Wonderland.” Nothing ofits kind better than “Jabberwocky” has ever been written, and it would be a bold verse maker who would try to improve on “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” or any of the other “Alice poems.”
In a different way, though perhaps as amusing, is the Gelett Burgess style of nonsense verse typified in his noble quatrain to the Purple Cow:
“I never saw a purple cow,I never hope to see one;But this I’ll tell you anyhowI’d rather see than be one.”
Some years ago the college humorous publications originated a bloodthirsty conceit which touched the doings of Little Willie:
“Little Willie yesterdayWhen the baby went to playFilled him full of kerosene.Gee! but isn’t Willie mean!”
Since then the murderous adventures of “Little Willie” have been countless.
They are all cannibalistic but rather catchy.
The awful thing about nonsense verse is the very fine line that divides a masterpiece from utter drivel. Nonsense verse is very good or very bad. When it plays along the edges it is very pleasing but when it oversteps it becomes rot.
The Humorous Ballad
A step higher in the ladder is the Humorous Ballad. The “Comic Ballad” we have had with us from the days of Robin Hood, but W. S. Gilbert in his “Bab Ballads” reached heights before his time unsuspected. By the use of catchy stanzas and unusual rhymes he made the type a thing of art. Most readers are familiar with the “Yarn of the Nancy Bell,” in which the solitary sailor sings:
“Oh, I am the cook and the captain boldAnd the mate of the Nancy brig;And the bos’n tight and the midshipmiteAnd the crew of the captain’s gig.”
Since the publication of the “Bab Ballads” a great deal of verse has beenproduced along the same general lines. Mr. Wallace Irwin’s “Nautical Ballads of a Landsman” are the most notable additions of recent years.
A workingknowledge of some foreign language—say French or German—is often very profitable to the verse maker. With a dictionary and a couple of text books he can make very good translations of the poetry of the language—work which may not bring a money return but which as an exercise is both interesting and valuable. The process is not complicated, though a good verse translation may be made as hard a task as any falling to the lot of the literary worker.
Take a poem that strikes the fancy; read it and reread till every word is clear and then shape the translation into a stanza and meter as near the original as possible. If there are four three-line stanzas in the original, build the translation into four three-line stanzas as closelyline for line as the ease of the verse will permit. In translating from the German the original meter can be followed accent for accent, though this is impossible with the French, whose syllables are without emphasis, and would scarcely be advisable with any of the more complicated Latin meters.
At first it is a good idea to make the English verse rigorously exact in its meaning—to study every word until the verse not only rhymes and runs with some degree of naturalness, but also is a correct rendering of the cold facts. This is not so hard as it seems if one sits down and thinks the right word out, and it gives opportunity for an excellent overhauling of the vocabulary.
Any one who has had a high-school course in Latin can experiment with Virgil, turning it either into couplets like Pope’s Iliad or into the more appropriate meter used by Longfellow in his Evangeline. With a dictionary and a literal translation it is easy enough to puzzle out Horace, who is more modern in his thought and who is, in a way, theancestor of our presentvers-de-sociétéwriters. There is also this advantage in the translation of Horace: One finds a chance to compare his translation with the work of many others, for Horace has been more widely translated than any other poet unless we except the Biblical writers. The fame of Father Prout rests largely on his renderings of Horace. Austin Dobson has translated several of the odes into the French forms and many other poets have turned their hand to the task.
Among the Germans, Heine is a favorite with English translators, though many of his songs from their shortness and delicacy are hard to express properly. Goethe and Schiller have also been much translated and any collection of German poetry will show a dozen poems with which one has become familiar through the English versions.
Among the French it is difficult to specify any particular authors, as they have not been so widely translated as the Germans. Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Paul Verlaine are,perhaps, as well known as any other of the more modern writers.
In making translations with a view to the artistic side the result is apt to differ from the exercise which aims only at accuracy. For practice one should render line for line as nearly as possible. When one can do this it is allowable to take more liberties and reproduce the poem, not line for line as it stands, but rather as the author might have written it had he composed in English; to preserve the meter and general arrangement but to sacrifice details when necessary to the spirit of the poem. When the two qualities can be combined and a poem is translated in such a way that the lines correspond and yet do not crowd out the poetry the result is a masterpiece. But such things very rarely happen and require not only hard work but a flash of inspiration and good luck as well.
Very often a poem can be imitated from its mother tongue. A stanza or two may be expanded into a ballade in English containing an elaboration of theoriginal thought. It is perfectly allowable to offer a composition of this sort for sale provided the source is acknowledged.
Towrite good verse one must read good verse. The world has spun too long for a man to succeed who depends wholly on his own ideas; he must profit by the work of others. The more poetry and the more kinds of poetry the verse maker reads the broader his knowledge of the subject becomes. First it touches his vocabulary, then his rhymes and meters and lastly his methods.
Though all good literature is helpful in this way, the book which gives the most enjoyment is very apt to bring the most profit. But it should not be forgotten that many authors are unpopular because of a hasty first impression. A rainy day and a disagreeable companion will spoil the effect of the prettiest scenery in the world, and a bad dinner and a headachemay turn a masterpiece into a lasting abomination. Any poet whose work has lived must possess some quality which is worth appreciating if not acquiring. Given a fair trial without prejudice he will speak for himself.
It is not in the compass of this chapter to list the “Poets Who Should Be Reverenced.” It is better for the verse maker to experiment and select his patron saints for himself. Yet attention may be called to certain accepted masters with whose work even the beginner should be familiar.
At the head of the list stands the Bible. The beauty and simplicity of its speech fully explain how this book has inspired generation after generation of poets. Job, Isaiah, the Psalms and the writings of Solomon are in themselves a treasury of phrase and suggestion.
Shakespeare is to be read for the poetry of his lines and picturesque word-grouping if for nothing else. For that matter, the songs of all the Elizabethan dramatists are worthy of study and restudy. They have a lilt and a lightnesswhich make them live even now when so many literary fashions have passed away.
The old English ballads, to be found in Percy’s Reliques, Allingham’s Ballad Book and most collections of English Literature, are a help toward understanding the construction of a spirited narrative poem. Kipling’s “Ballad of East and West” shows how effectively this sort of treatment can be applied to a modern theme.
Robert Herrick is worth while for the grace and delicacy of his poems; with him might be classed the better efforts of Lovelace and Sir John Suckling.
Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is perhaps the best example we have of continuous blank verse. It should be read but not imitated, at least not imitated too much. It is hard to distinguish good blank verse from bad and it is so easy to write the bad.
Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast” deserves a perpetual bookmark for the remarkable success with which the trend of emotion is interpreted by the rhythm.“The Bells,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is another example of this treatment and is held by some critics to be equally good.
Pope’s verse and that of his age generally is too cleverly artificial to be of much use to a modern, though his mastery of the epigrammatic couplet might be profitably noted.
As an exemplification of finished workmanship Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” stands alone.
Robert Burns, for the swing of his songs and the flavor of his words, should be read continually. Much of his Scotch vocabulary might be used, judiciously, in English verse.
In the “Eve of St. Agnes,” Keats has revealed possibilities in the Spenserian stanza of which Spenser himself was not aware, and the “Ode to a Nightingale” and the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” have a classic beauty which can be recognized though not successfully copied.
Of the more modern poets Browning’s strange, uncouth phrasing is full of power; Tennyson’s mastery is shown in his exquisite choice of words, andSwinburne’s meters and rhymes are worth close application.
And so one might go on for a dozen pages and still have an incomplete list. It is not what one reads but how one reads. The books wait on the shelves and through reading and through reading only can one cultivate that most necessary though indefinable quality—Good Taste.
Forone whose verse runs easily and whose occasional sales are an encouragement, this last chapter is perhaps unnecessary. Yet there may come times in routine, monotonous production when even he loses in interest, and with this loss his work falls off in quality. It is only through interest and desire that anything has ever been accomplished, and if these are not sustained the work must stay at a low level. Even the seasoned writer must look forward to his work if he wishes to improve.
For the beginner whose airy verse does not trip but rather lumbers, who is unable to write anything worthy of sale and whose ideas refuse to be crowded into the right number of feet, it might be an excellent thing occasionally to dropall thought of pentameters and amphibrachs and go back to the old-fashioned rhymed alphabet.
“A is for AntThat lives in the ground,B is for Bear—A terror when found——”
and so on through the twenty-six harmless letters. It is an exercise in ingenuity if nothing else and if the writer has any skill at drawing it could be converted into a delightful gift for a five-year-old. Lear, the author of the Nonsense books, did not think it beneath his dignity to write six of these alphabets in varying stanza forms.
A little harder, but still not too hard, is the limerick, examples of which are given inChapter IX. As a gift, a series of illustrated limericks on people you know would have the merit of novelty at least.
To see one’s productions in print is always an incentive to better work. The type is cheering even when its legibility reveals several faults unnoticed inmanuscript. Most small newspapers are glad to publish fairly good verse when the poet is willing to let it go for nothing. Be sure that rhyme and meter are correct and then send it in and let the General Public stand from under.
If it is a lack of verse ideas that bothers you, try a drama. Write it in blank verse and crowd the action with incidental songs. This is not for publication, of course; not even to show your dearest friend, but just for practice. Put in a troubadour if you like, or anything else a romantic imagination may suggest, and let them sing themselves hoarse in every scene. In this prosaic century you might not be able to write a stirring love song, but if you become thoroughly identified with the characters, your troubadour or your fair lady would be bound to get off something creditable. The plot of the drama is a thing of no consequence; it may have as much or as little as you choose. Write the scenes as the mood strikes you and when you have lost interest think of it only as an exercise.
Tennyson’s “Maud” shows how a narrative poem may be treated in a series of lyrics and suggests imitation. The German poets, as well as some English writers, have song cycles, a series of poems all bearing on one central theme. A pedestrian trip; the life of a bird couple; the coming of winter, and innumerable other subjects lie close at hand suitable for such treatment. Henley’s city types and hospital sketches lead the way for similar verses of things familiar to you.
Very often a line from a piece of prose or verse sticks in the memory. Utilize the line by making it the refrain of a ballade or the ending of some similar verse form. Browning composed his “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” around that single line taken from a song in “King Lear.” It is possible to go even further and with a stanza—say from some Elizabethan song—construct about it the completed poem. Rossetti has done this with one of Ophelia’s songs in “Hamlet.”
But keep up your interest and workfor the love of working. There is drudgery in the learning of anything, but with verse one can at least make it interesting drudgery. Never give up; never be satisfied; and with all English literature to rove in, don’t stick in a rut.
Now a general summing up for the verse maker—a summing up that applies just as much to painting or modeling as it does to verse writing.
Remember always that you are your own master and that your highest development must always come from yourself. On all matters of taste you are the court of last resort to decide for the hurt or betterment of your soul. So it is necessary in the beginning to be just with yourself. If your verses are not good, throw them away or rewrite them. If they are good not only when written but after they have been laid aside for a month; if the rhymes are true and the meter perfect; if the words run naturally and clearly and embody a real idea, then you may be sure that you have something worthy of editorial consideration at least. If the idea is old and put in theform that has endured, lo! these many generations—“love,” “dove,” “kiss,” “bliss,” very probably it will not be accepted. When it comes back from five magazines be fair enough to recognize that perhaps the fault lies with you and lay the masterpiece away for another two months. Then examine it fair-mindedly and try to see just where it falls short of perfection. But you must be you own worst or rather best critic. Admit it when you are wrong and when you are right hold your opinion against all comers.
You must decide whether to write much verse or little. Sometimes improvement comes best with a great deal of carelessly constructed stuff. Again a smaller and more carefully regulated output is better. As a general thing, if your ear is correct and your verse comes easily, the better way is to write little and write carefully, spending your time on a few lines. If, however, your rhymes come hard and your expression is not fluent, try a larger output not so carefully revised.
Analyze and imitate.
Make the mechanical construction correct. Two rhyming words with you should be either good or bad; you should not recognize half-way rhymes. If they are not worthy to be classed with the best, throw them out utterly. Even in your exercises do not tolerate a false rhyme or a line lacking in syllables.
Do not attempt too hard a thing at first. You will only be disappointed. Do not write a ballade until you can write a limerick. Work up gradually.
And you must not become discouraged. If you write day in and day out, you are bound to improve, though the work of Wednesday be no better than that of Tuesday or even of Saturday. Progress goes in jumps. Nine times we fail and on the tenth trial we succeed.
We cannot all be artists but we can all be good workmen. And the better we are able to handle our materials the better we shall be able, if it is in us, to produce something worth while.
MARKET FOR VERSE
Thereis no market nowadays for the long poem except from writers of established reputation. As a rule the shorter the verse the better its chance of acceptance. Verse humorous is easier to dispose of than verse serious because there is a wider field.Puck,Judge,Life,Smart Set,Ainslee’s,Harper’s,Century, and an army of others are always willing to buy really amusing verse.
Serious verse is sold in lesser quantities, but the price is better—when the production is bought by a high-class publication. TheAtlantic Monthlyis always on the lookout for new writers and other magazines are prompt to recognize what pleases them even in thework of a newcomer. Perhaps the most standard popular forms of serious verse are the sonnet and the short love lyric.
Many editors are glad to buy quatrains and even couplets to fill out a page when a longer form would be rejected. The well-written triolet is also sure of a hearing for this same reason.
Newspapers pay little or nothing for verse except when a special writer is put on the staff to supply a column of verse a day. Occasionally some topical stanza which agrees with the editorial policy will be accepted from an outsider. It may be pointed out here that very often the humor or appropriateness of a production will overbalance faults in the rhyme and meter. In serious verse an exception of this sort will rarely be found and a thing must stand or fall on its real merits.
There is no sure way to determine the market except by personal investigation. Read the magazines till you find out where the editor’s preference lies and then try him with something of your own, written not in imitation but on the samegeneral lines. Do not send out your verse in a hit-or-miss fashion. Separate the limericks and the love songs and send them each to their appointed editor.
In spite of the protestations of interested publishers the reading public does not interest itself in the volume of “collected poems.” A book of this sort is rarely looked at unless it runs very much out of the ordinary or comes as the product of some well-known author.
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
This is not intended in any way to be an exhaustive list. It merely suggests the field which each student is bound to explore for himself.
Technique of Verse.
The Rhymester—Tom Hood. Concise; with rhyming dictionary appendix.
Science of Verse—Sidney Lanier. Worth while for the advanced student.
—The Poetic Principle,
—Philosophy of Compensation,
—Rationale of Verse. Essays by Edgar Allan Poe; to be found in his collected works. Very interesting as showing the methods and viewpoint of a great poet.
Collections of Poetry.
Ward’s English Poets. Four volumes ranging from Chaucer to Tennyson.
Oxford Book of English Verse. One large volume containing the work of many of the living writers as well as selections from all the standard poets.
—Victorian Anthology.
—American Anthology. Both compiled by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Valuable because they contain examples of the best work of to-day’s verse makers.
The Sonnet.
Examples of the sonnet are to be found in almost any collection of verse. The older magazines, especially theAtlantic Monthly, use the form continually. The best known sonnet series are:
Astrophel and Stella—Sir Philip Sidney.
Sonnets of Shakespeare.
House of Life—Rossetti.
Sonnets from the Portuguese—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
French Forms.
Examples are to be found in the collected poems of Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, W. E. Henley and H. C. Bunner, to mention only the more prominent. The Ballade Book, edited by Gleeson White, Ex Libris Series, contains examples of all the forms and is probably the most convenient collection to be had.
The Song.
In this connection see Burns, Moore, Tennyson, together with Scotch collections and the work of W. B. Yeats and other modern Irish writers. For rhythm and a different sort of “song” see Kipling. The Vagabondia Series by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey are worth buying. Occasional poems, falling under this head, are to be found in almost any volume of the poets.
Vers de Société.
About the best single book is a volume in the Leisure Hour Series entitled “Versde Société.” It gives an excellent idea of the field covered. Among the strongest writers of this style of verse are Austin Dobson, C. S. Calverley, Andrew Lang, W. M. Praed and H. C. Bunner. Perhaps the best known English writer of to-day is Owen Seaman, whose work appears weekly inPunch.
Nonsense Verse.
Mother Goose.
The Burgess Nonsense Book—Gelett Burgess.
A Nonsense Anthology—Carolyn Wells.
A Parody Anthology—Carolyn Wells.
Humorous Ballads.
Bab Ballads—W. S. Gilbert.
Grimm Tales Made Gay—Guy Wetmore Carryl.
Nautical Ballads of a Landsman—Wallace Irwin.
Translations.
It is difficult to quote any translator in particular who is worth while. Mosttranslators are not poets and most poets have not been translators. The book of solid translation is generally very mediocre and tiresome. Translations of the greatest foreign poets are to be found in any fair-sized public library. Longfellow, Swinburne, Rossetti, Dobson, Lang and a few others have left occasional translations which are models of the best of this work.