Or could we break our wayBy force, and at our heels all hell should riseWith blackest insurrection, to confoundHeaven's purest light, yet our great enemyAll incorruptible would on his throneSit unpolluted, and the ethereal mouldIncapable of stain would soon expelHer mischief, and purge off the baser fire,Victorious.II, 134-142.
Or could we break our wayBy force, and at our heels all hell should riseWith blackest insurrection, to confoundHeaven's purest light, yet our great enemyAll incorruptible would on his throneSit unpolluted, and the ethereal mouldIncapable of stain would soon expelHer mischief, and purge off the baser fire,Victorious.II, 134-142.
On its formal side, what makes Milton's versification as unique as it is admirable, is the instinctive and yet prescient skill with which the pause is continuously varied so as to keep the whole metrical structure in movement. There are no dead lines. There are no jerks or stoppages. His movement may best be described by quoting a passage which, like many others, is at once a description and an instance. It is aMystical dance, which yonder starry sphereOf planets and of fixt in all her wheelsResembles nearest, mazes intricate,Eccentric, intervolv'd, yet regularThen most, when most irregular they seem,And in their motions harmony divine.I ask the reader most particularly to notice that these six lines, like almost any short quotation that can be made from the poem, are broken from their context. They begin in the middle of a sentence, and end in the middle of a clause. The continuous periodic movement cannot be really shown by examples, just because it is continuous and periodic. If we except the speeches, each of which by the necessity of the case is more or less a definite and detachable unit, the periods flow into one another. Like the orbit of a planet, the movement of the verse never closes its ellipse and begins again. Each of the twelve books is a single organic rhythmical structure. But one cannot very well quote a whole book.Within that structure, the variation of pause and stress is similarly in continuous movement. As a general fact, this is instinctively felt in reading the poem; how rigorously the law of freedom is observed comes out even more surprisingly when brought to the test of figures. For movement of stress one instance may serve as a typical example. In Michael's description of the plagues of Egypt in the twelfth book, beginning—But first the lawless tyrant, who deniesTo know their God, or message to regard,Must be compelled by signs and judgments dire—the detailed roll of the plagues is all threaded on the wordmust. It recurs nine times, with studied and intricate variation of its place in the line: this is, taken by order, in the first, eighth, fifth, fourth, fifth, fifth, first, third, and fourth syllable. Again, as regards variation, in the whole ten thousand lines of the Paradise Lost there are less than five-and-twenty instances of the pause coming at the same point in the line for more than two lines consecutively. Facts like these are the formal index of what is the great organic principle of Milton's verse. That is, that like all organic structures, it is incalculable; it cannot be reduced to a formula.... His rhythm is perpetually integrating as it advances; and not only so, but at no point can its next movement be predicted, although tracing it backwards we can see how each phrase rises out of and carries on the rhythm of what was before it, how each comes in not only rightly, but as it seems inevitably. This secret he inherited from no English predecessor and transmitted to no follower.[69]
On its formal side, what makes Milton's versification as unique as it is admirable, is the instinctive and yet prescient skill with which the pause is continuously varied so as to keep the whole metrical structure in movement. There are no dead lines. There are no jerks or stoppages. His movement may best be described by quoting a passage which, like many others, is at once a description and an instance. It is a
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphereOf planets and of fixt in all her wheelsResembles nearest, mazes intricate,Eccentric, intervolv'd, yet regularThen most, when most irregular they seem,And in their motions harmony divine.
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphereOf planets and of fixt in all her wheelsResembles nearest, mazes intricate,Eccentric, intervolv'd, yet regularThen most, when most irregular they seem,And in their motions harmony divine.
I ask the reader most particularly to notice that these six lines, like almost any short quotation that can be made from the poem, are broken from their context. They begin in the middle of a sentence, and end in the middle of a clause. The continuous periodic movement cannot be really shown by examples, just because it is continuous and periodic. If we except the speeches, each of which by the necessity of the case is more or less a definite and detachable unit, the periods flow into one another. Like the orbit of a planet, the movement of the verse never closes its ellipse and begins again. Each of the twelve books is a single organic rhythmical structure. But one cannot very well quote a whole book.
Within that structure, the variation of pause and stress is similarly in continuous movement. As a general fact, this is instinctively felt in reading the poem; how rigorously the law of freedom is observed comes out even more surprisingly when brought to the test of figures. For movement of stress one instance may serve as a typical example. In Michael's description of the plagues of Egypt in the twelfth book, beginning—
But first the lawless tyrant, who deniesTo know their God, or message to regard,Must be compelled by signs and judgments dire—
But first the lawless tyrant, who deniesTo know their God, or message to regard,Must be compelled by signs and judgments dire—
the detailed roll of the plagues is all threaded on the wordmust. It recurs nine times, with studied and intricate variation of its place in the line: this is, taken by order, in the first, eighth, fifth, fourth, fifth, fifth, first, third, and fourth syllable. Again, as regards variation, in the whole ten thousand lines of the Paradise Lost there are less than five-and-twenty instances of the pause coming at the same point in the line for more than two lines consecutively. Facts like these are the formal index of what is the great organic principle of Milton's verse. That is, that like all organic structures, it is incalculable; it cannot be reduced to a formula.... His rhythm is perpetually integrating as it advances; and not only so, but at no point can its next movement be predicted, although tracing it backwards we can see how each phrase rises out of and carries on the rhythm of what was before it, how each comes in not only rightly, but as it seems inevitably. This secret he inherited from no English predecessor and transmitted to no follower.[69]
One may surely say that Milton extracted from blank verse all its possibilities of variety and movement so far as his subject matter permitted. He is lyrical, dramatic, didactic, and of course epic, in turn. He even showed that it is possible to imitate hollowly his own "planetary wheelings"—as though the instruments kept on playing and the music ceased.[70]
Since Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, though various poets have adapted it to their own uses, blank verse has shown only one significant development, the conversational, or so-called 'talking,' style. In the eighteenth century Milton's mannerismsdominated nearly all blank verse, both for good and for evil. What freedom Thomson allowed himself he got from Milton; most of Cowper's thin grandiosity he took from Milton; and much also of Wordsworth's false and empty elaboration which make the Prelude and Excursion so dull in places—the whole tribe of verses of which
And at the Hoop alighted, famous inn
And at the Hoop alighted, famous inn
is the pilloried example—came from the Miltonic tradition. Keats fell partially into the error, but was wise enough to recognize it. Shelley, with much of Milton's intensity and somewhat too of his sublimity, could successfully follow the great stride and at the same time preserve his own idiom. Tennyson, keeping both the freedom and as much of the "continuous planetary movement" as was consistent with his themes, softened the metre—weakened it, some will say—by his decorative tendency and indulgence in only half-concealed virtuosity.[71]And the famous Oxus ending of Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum is a studied reproduction of the Miltonic music in a lower key. But it was Landor who, taking a hint perhaps from Milton's unadorned didacticism of Paradise Regained and also from the straightforward verse used on occasion by the Elizabethan dramatists, showed the way to what has often been called a strictly contemporary development of blank verse, the talking style. Since this is lessfamiliar than most of the phenomena of blank verse, it will require fuller illustration.
The uneven line which separates blank verse and prose is easily apparent in such a passage as the following from Much Ado about Nothing (V, i)—
Leon.Some haste, my lord!—well, fare you well, my lord:—Are you so hasty now—Well, all is one.D. Pedro.Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.Ant.If he could right himself with quarrelling,Some of us would lie low.Claud.Who wrongs him?Leon.Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou.—Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword;I fear thee not.Claud.Marry, beshrew my hand,If it should give your age such cause of fear.In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.Leon.Tush, tush, man! never fleer and jest at me;I speak not like a dotard nor a fool;As under privilege of age, to bragWhat I have done being young, or what would do,Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy heed,Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me,That I am forc'd to lay my reverence by,And with gray hairs and bruise of many days,Do challenge thee to trial of a man....
Leon.Some haste, my lord!—well, fare you well, my lord:—Are you so hasty now—Well, all is one.
D. Pedro.Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.
Ant.If he could right himself with quarrelling,Some of us would lie low.
Claud.Who wrongs him?
Leon.Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou.—Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword;I fear thee not.
Claud.Marry, beshrew my hand,If it should give your age such cause of fear.In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.
Leon.Tush, tush, man! never fleer and jest at me;I speak not like a dotard nor a fool;As under privilege of age, to bragWhat I have done being young, or what would do,Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy heed,Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me,That I am forc'd to lay my reverence by,And with gray hairs and bruise of many days,Do challenge thee to trial of a man....
In the first part of this passage the language is the simple natural expression of prose, yet so devised that it also fits the metrical pattern. It is either prose or verse according to the way one reads it. But in Leonardo's long speech (after the first line, which is 'irregular') the verse pattern becomes more and more prominent, until in the last three lines it predominates over the natural utterance of the words and produces a certain stiffness. Here the two different mannersstand side by side: a natural simplicity so great that the metrical quality is almost obscured, beside a formality so obvious that the feeling of natural expression is partly lost. Now Milton, and after him Dryden and the eighteenth century, regarding poetry generally as a thing apart, followed the latter sort; but when the Romantic Revival brought poetry back to ordinary human life there reappeared, tentatively, of course, a simpler blank verse in Thomson, Crabbe, Cowper, and Wordsworth. A clear example is the opening of Landor's Iphigeneia and Agamemnon—
Iphigeneia, when she heard her doomAt Aulis, and when all beside the KingHad gone away, took his right hand, and said,"O father! I am young and very happy.I do not think the pious Calchas heardDistinctly what the Goddess spake. Old-ageObscures the senses. If my nurse, who knewMy voice so well, sometimes misunderstoodWhile I was resting on her knee both armsAnd hitting it to make her mind my words,And looking in her face, and she in mine,Might he not also hear one word amiss,Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?"
Iphigeneia, when she heard her doomAt Aulis, and when all beside the KingHad gone away, took his right hand, and said,"O father! I am young and very happy.I do not think the pious Calchas heardDistinctly what the Goddess spake. Old-ageObscures the senses. If my nurse, who knewMy voice so well, sometimes misunderstoodWhile I was resting on her knee both armsAnd hitting it to make her mind my words,And looking in her face, and she in mine,Might he not also hear one word amiss,Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?"
Again, compare Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh—
As it was, indeed,I felt a mother-want about the world,And still went seeking, like a bleating lambLeft out at night, in shutting up the fold,—As restless as a nest-deserted birdGrown chill through something being away, though whatIt knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was bornTo make my father sadder, and myselfNot overjoyous, truly. Women knowThe way to rear up children (to be just),They know a simple, merry, tender knackOf tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,And stringing pretty words that make no sense,And kissing full sense into empty words.
As it was, indeed,I felt a mother-want about the world,And still went seeking, like a bleating lambLeft out at night, in shutting up the fold,—As restless as a nest-deserted birdGrown chill through something being away, though whatIt knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was bornTo make my father sadder, and myselfNot overjoyous, truly. Women knowThe way to rear up children (to be just),They know a simple, merry, tender knackOf tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,And stringing pretty words that make no sense,And kissing full sense into empty words.
These are from the metrical point of view nearly identical with Mr. Robert Frost's talking verse, so often called a 'contribution' to verse technique—
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun;And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs.R. Frost, Mending Wall.[72]
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun;And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs.R. Frost, Mending Wall.[72]
The obvious difficulty is to maintain dignity along with relaxation—a feat which Mr. Frost and Mr. E. A. Robinson have occasionally accomplished. And from this it is but a step to the extreme simplicity of Miss Lowell's To Two Unknown Ladies—
If either of you much attracted meWe could fall back upon phenomenaAnd make a pretty story out of psychicBalances, but not to be too broadIn my discourtesy, nor prudish neither(Since, really, I can hardly quite supposeWith all your ghostliness you follow me),I feel no such attraction. Or if oneBows to my sympathy for the briefest space,Snap—it is gone! And, worst of all to tell,What broke it is not in the least dislikeBut utter boredom.Now....
If either of you much attracted meWe could fall back upon phenomenaAnd make a pretty story out of psychicBalances, but not to be too broadIn my discourtesy, nor prudish neither(Since, really, I can hardly quite supposeWith all your ghostliness you follow me),I feel no such attraction. Or if oneBows to my sympathy for the briefest space,Snap—it is gone! And, worst of all to tell,What broke it is not in the least dislikeBut utter boredom.Now....
Thus the wheel has come nearly full circle, but with a longer radius. For just as blank verse developed from the early Elizabethan—and pre-Elizabethan—strict formality to the laxity of the Jacobean dramatists and found a true balance of freedom and restraint in Milton, so from the monotonous eighteenth-century couplet (and it should be recalled that in the beginning blank verse sprang from the couplet) it has gradually enlarged its freedom into the extreme license from a metrical point of view of its adopted cousin free-verse. Already, moreover, there have been signs of a reaction against the extreme, and the wheel is coming to an artistic balance again.
Free-verse (or, as Miss Lowell prefers, 'unrhymed cadence') is a hydra-headed phenomenon. It can never be adequately discussed; for when one head is disposed of, two others appear in its place. Its origins are involved in obscurity and—what is worse—ignorance; and its practitioners and staunchest defenders are as variable in their points of view as it itself is in its rhythmic impulses.[73]
Behind all the utterances of friend and foe seems to lie the ultimate belief that the 'voluntary thraldom' of formal metrical patterns is a monstrous error which can only be removed by unrestricted appreciation and application of the natural rhythms of idea and of language. There is in every thought, however simple or subtle, in every feeling, however evanescent or profound, an inherent rhythm which is as a material body to the thought's or emotion's soul. This native, inevitable rhythm—one might call it therhythme juste, the exact rhythm—is the only fit expression for an intellectual or emotional idea; all others are foreign to it, tyrannous usurpations, in a word, impossible substitutions for it. To attempt, therefore, to twist these natural and exact rhythms to the formal predetermined patterns of traditional versification is a suicidal impertinence, foredoomed to failure.
Such a position has in theory much justice. It means briefly that the basis of poetical form should not be the metrical pattern freely varied yet always perceptible, but the natural organic rhythm of the ideas expressed; that is, there should be no harmonized difference between what have been explained above as thought rhythms, sound rhythms, and metrical rhythms, but all three should be one original and indivisible unit. This would make a combined thought-and-sound unit (breath group and logical-emotionalgroup) the foundation of verse, whereas this is really the characteristic of prose as distinguished from verse. These exact organic rhythms "differ from ordinary prose rhythms," says Miss Lowell, "in being more curved, and containing more stress"; which, though not very perspicuous, seems to mean that free-verse is more carefully cadenced, or, in other words, more nearly metrical, than ordinary prose. Perhaps it would be no injustice to the upholders of free-verse in its best manifestations to say that, while metre requires that beneath all variations the regular beat should never be missed, free-verse requires as much rhythm (i. e., regularity) as is possible without its becoming perceptible.
If this is true, or as near the manifold truth as one can get, then the free-verse movement in English is mainly a return to the cadenced prose of the seventeenth century with the additional trait of the appearance of verse. This is an important addition, however. It involves a careful recognition of what psychology calls the 'prose attitude' and the 'verse attitude,' and also (as has been suggested above) the peculiar union of prose with the spatial rhythm of verse. We read with ear and eye together, though with varying proportions of emphasis on the one or the other; for some 'vocalize' whatever they read, others read almost entirely with the eye. Since it is the eye that takes the earlier and quicker perception of printed language, we tend to judge by the appearance of a page whether it contains prose or verse. Columns of irregular but approximately equal line lengths, regular blocks of printing regularlyspaced and separated as stanzas, indentation of every second or every third line—these at once announce that the page contains verse. And they at the same time constitute an obvious spatial rhythm to the eye, and prepare the attention of eye and ear and mind for the approximate regularity of verse. Then, when so prepared, we unconsciously organize as fully as possible any irregularities that appear in the language and transform into actual verse the verse potentialities which pervade our speech.
Some kinds of free-verse, however, do not, so far as one can see, aim to be more than ordinary prose printed in segments more or less closely corresponding with the phrase rhythm or normal sound rhythms of language. It is then prose in actuality and verse in appearance—no more.
On the justification of this peculiar amalgam there is little agreement. No doubt for certain swift effects free-verse is the natural and most serviceable medium. Many short poems in this irregular form are like snapshots or like rapid sketches as compared with finished paintings. But the ultimate æsthetic judgment must be precisely that of the snapshot as compared with finished painting. Nature is always wrong, says the paradox; art depends upon a deliberate selection of details and structure. It balances freedom and restraint, variety and uniformity, one against the other; and even when it appears spontaneous it is but the result of an unconscious choice which is itself born of long training or of the mysterious faculty divine. In very little of what at present is called free-verse does art have areal place. It is all freedom and variety, with almost no restraint and uniformity: all stimulation and no repose. There is sometimes a rapid alternation of verse rhythm and prose rhythm, which, in Bacon's phrase, may cleave but not incorporate; they succeed each other but do not melt into each other. Now and again, to be sure, this uncertainty, this very irregularity, powerfully represents the thought and emotion of the poem; but nevertheless there can be little doubt that except in the limited field of instantaneous flashes the most adequate and pleasing medium is the skilfully varied regularity of formal verse.[74]
The many kinds of free-verse are recognizable chiefly by the greater or less feeling of metrical form lying behind them. For convenience they may be distinguished, according as verse or prose predominates, as (1) irregular unrimed metre, (2) very free blank verse, (3) unusual mingling of metre and prose, a kind of recitative, and (4) mere prose printed as verse, or what may be called free-versepar excellence. A few illustrations will help to make clear the distinctions.
Of the first sort are the unrimed choruses in Milton's Samson Agonistes, the metre of Southey's once-admiredThalaba and the Curse of Kehama, and parts of Shelley's Queen Mab. Here the lines are irregular in length (as in the 'irregular' Pindaric odes), but they are usually felt as truly metrical, though they do not repeat a single pattern.
This, this is he; softly a while;Let us not break in upon him.O change beyond report, thought, or belief!See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,With languished head unpropt,As one past hope, abandoned,And by himself given over,In slavish habit, ill-fitted weedsO'er-worn and soiled.Or do mine eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,That heroic, that renowned,Irresistible Samson?...Samson Agonistes, 115-126.The Fairy waved her wand:Ahasuerus fledFast as the shapes of mingled shade and mistThat lurk in the glens of a twilight groveFlee from the morning beam:The matter of which dreams are madeNot more endowed with actual lifeThan this phantasmal portraitureOf wandering human thought.Queen Mab, iii.Thou tyrannous over-mastering Spirit, Lucifer,Hear now thy guilt.The first in glory amongst us all wast thou;Nor did we grudge thee loyalty,When of old beneath thy leadership against Yahveh,And thereafter against the mild Galilean Godhead,We waged war for dominion over the minds of man.But perished now long since is the might of Yahveh;And his Son, a plaintive, impotent phantom, wailsOver that faith, withering, corrupted, petrified,For which he died vainly.R. C. Trevelyan, Lucifer Enchained.Green boughs stirring in slumberSigh at the lost remembranceOf Aulon,Golden-thighed, in the heart of the forest.Here, where the dripping leavesWhisper of passing feetTo the fragrant woodways,The moonlight floods the forsaken tangled boughsWith lonelinessFor Melinna, gone from the evening.Edward J. O'Brien, Hellenica.
This, this is he; softly a while;Let us not break in upon him.O change beyond report, thought, or belief!See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,With languished head unpropt,As one past hope, abandoned,And by himself given over,In slavish habit, ill-fitted weedsO'er-worn and soiled.Or do mine eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,That heroic, that renowned,Irresistible Samson?...Samson Agonistes, 115-126.
The Fairy waved her wand:Ahasuerus fledFast as the shapes of mingled shade and mistThat lurk in the glens of a twilight groveFlee from the morning beam:The matter of which dreams are madeNot more endowed with actual lifeThan this phantasmal portraitureOf wandering human thought.Queen Mab, iii.
Thou tyrannous over-mastering Spirit, Lucifer,Hear now thy guilt.The first in glory amongst us all wast thou;Nor did we grudge thee loyalty,When of old beneath thy leadership against Yahveh,And thereafter against the mild Galilean Godhead,We waged war for dominion over the minds of man.But perished now long since is the might of Yahveh;And his Son, a plaintive, impotent phantom, wailsOver that faith, withering, corrupted, petrified,For which he died vainly.R. C. Trevelyan, Lucifer Enchained.
Green boughs stirring in slumberSigh at the lost remembranceOf Aulon,Golden-thighed, in the heart of the forest.
Here, where the dripping leavesWhisper of passing feetTo the fragrant woodways,The moonlight floods the forsaken tangled boughsWith lonelinessFor Melinna, gone from the evening.Edward J. O'Brien, Hellenica.
Very free blank verse, when taken in small excerpts, often seems devoid of metrical regularity. The reason for this is that in long poems much greater freedom is possible because the ear and the attention, accustomed for longer periods to the formal pattern, hold it more easily where it becomes faint. Examples of this approximation to prose have been given above, pages 43, 44. The famous first lines of Paradise Lost, if printed after the contemporary fashion of free-verse, would by very few be recognized as blank verse; and the same is true of many passages throughout the poem, and indeed throughout all long poems in blank verse.
Of Man's first disobedienceAnd the fruit of that forbidden treeWhose mortal taste brought death into the world,And all our woe,With loss of Eden,Till one greater Man restore usAnd regain the blissful seat,Sing,Heavenly Muse,That on the secret top of HorebOr of SinaiDidst inspire that shepherd ...
Of Man's first disobedienceAnd the fruit of that forbidden treeWhose mortal taste brought death into the world,And all our woe,With loss of Eden,Till one greater Man restore usAnd regain the blissful seat,Sing,Heavenly Muse,That on the secret top of HorebOr of SinaiDidst inspire that shepherd ...
Among the finest free-verse in English are the Evening Voluntaries of Henley.[75]In these poems clearly metrical lines (sometimes only parts of lines) alternate with simple prose. The line length is now based on phrasal rhythm, and at other times on no discoverable principle except that of beginning a new line with some emphatic word.
White fleets of cloud,Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows.Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet windsSway the tall poplars.Pageants of colour and fragrance,Pass the sweet meadows, and viewlessWalks the mild spirit of May,Visibly blessing the world.Henley, Pastoral.Have the gods then left us in our needLike base and common men?Were even the sweet grey eyesOf Artemis a lie,The speech of Hermes but a trick,The glory of Apollonian hair deceit?Desolate we move across a desolate land,The high gates closed,No answer to our prayer;Naught left save our integrity,No murmur against FateSave that we are juster than the unjust gods,More pitiful than they.Richard Aldington, Disdain.
White fleets of cloud,Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows.Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet windsSway the tall poplars.Pageants of colour and fragrance,Pass the sweet meadows, and viewlessWalks the mild spirit of May,Visibly blessing the world.Henley, Pastoral.
Have the gods then left us in our needLike base and common men?Were even the sweet grey eyesOf Artemis a lie,The speech of Hermes but a trick,The glory of Apollonian hair deceit?
Desolate we move across a desolate land,The high gates closed,No answer to our prayer;Naught left save our integrity,No murmur against FateSave that we are juster than the unjust gods,More pitiful than they.Richard Aldington, Disdain.
Modern free-verse, or free-versepar excellence, which is mere prose with the spatial rhythm of verse, has been skilfully written by various contemporaries. Let a single example suffice. Such a bare but moving situation as that of Miss Lowell's Fool's Money Bags could no doubt be adequately presented in traditional metre, but perhaps not so directly as in her 'curved' prose—
Outside the long window,With his head on the stone sill,The dog is lying,Gazing at his Beloved.His eyes are wet and urgent,And his body is taut and shaking.It is cold on the terrace;A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,But the dog gazes through the glassAnd is content.The Beloved is writing a letter.Occasionally she speaks to the dog,But she is thinking of her writing.Does she, too, give her devotion to oneNot worthy?[76]
Outside the long window,With his head on the stone sill,The dog is lying,Gazing at his Beloved.His eyes are wet and urgent,And his body is taut and shaking.It is cold on the terrace;A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,But the dog gazes through the glassAnd is content.
The Beloved is writing a letter.Occasionally she speaks to the dog,But she is thinking of her writing.Does she, too, give her devotion to oneNot worthy?[76]
A good example of combined metre and confessed prose (not to be confused with the mingling of verse and prose illustrated on the previous page) with easy transitions from one form to the other may be seen in a poem called Spring by Mr. Clement Wood. The rapid change from verse to prose is, of course, familiar in Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists, sometimes even in a single speech.
As wide as are the possibilities of variety in native English verse, the poets have endeavored to extend its boundaries by the annexation of foreign prosodies from ancient Greece and Rome and from mediaeval France. In absolute contrast to free-verse, which is the denial of metrical formalism, this is the apotheosis of it. They admittedly place form above content and are satisfied (for the most part) with the mere exhilaration of dancing gracefully in chains.
A group of Elizabethan experimenters, among whom were Sidney and Spenser, sought diligently to compose in the quantitative metres of the classics; Puttenham, the author of one of the first English treatises on the Art of Poetry (1589), declared that by "leisurable travail" one might "easily and commodiously lead all those feet of the ancients into our vulgar language"; but while they may have satisfied themselves (Spenser certainly did not) these experimenters produced nothing of genuine significance. The result was candidly anticipated by Ascham, who said in the Schoolmaster (1570) that "carmen exametrumdoth rather trot and hobble than run smoothly in our English tongue." Thomas Nash confirms this opinion in his criticism of Stanyhurst's attempt to translate Virgil into hexameters: "The hexameter verse I grant to be a gentleman of an ancient house (so is many an English beggar); yet this clime of ours he cannot thrive in. Our speech is too craggy for him to set his plow in. He goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmires, up the hill in one syllable anddown the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gait which he vaunts himself with amongst the Greeks and Latins" (Four Letters Confuted). Coleridge's judgment was the same:
This is a galloping measure, a hop, and a trot, and a gallop.
This is a galloping measure, a hop, and a trot, and a gallop.
Thereafter, apart from isolated attempts, efforts were abandoned until the nineteenth century, when Southey, following William Taylor, who in turn had been induced by Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea to try a new principle of frankly substituting sentence stress or accent for length of syllable, wrote his Vision of Judgment (1821). Out of this revised experimenting came ultimately Longfellow's Evangeline (1847) and the Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) and Clough's Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (1848). These alone, not to mention the lesser imitations, were enough to discredit the movement metrically. Meanwhile Tennyson and Kingsley, followed later by William Watson, and still enthusiastically by the present Poet Laureate, undertook to harmonize syllabic length and stress by more or less occult processes. As a matter of learned experiment and debate these problems have a certain academic interest, but only the staunchest and (one may say) blindest adherents find in them any practical importance.
The storm centre of all classical adaptations has been the dactylic hexameter, the standard measure of Greek and Latin narrative poetry. The most nearly successful English hexameters are probably those of Kingsley's Andromeda (1858), which occupy a middleground between the purely accentual and the purely (so-called) quantitative experiments. An example of this and one of Mr. Bridges' quantitative hexameters must suffice. Though both have good qualities, neither approaches the melodic variety and dignity of Homer and Virgil, or even Ovid.[77]
Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward,Dwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired Æthiop people,Skilful with needle and loom, and the arts of the dyer and carver,Skilful, but feeble of heart; for they know not the lords of Olympus,Lovers of men; neither broad-browed Zeus, nor Pallas Athené,Teacher of wisdom to heroes, bestower of might in the battle;Share not the cunning of Hermes, nor list to the songs of Apollo.Andromeda.Now in wintry delights, and long fireside meditation,'Twixt studies and routine paying due court to the Muses,My solace in solitude, when broken roads barricade meMudbound, unvisited for months with my merry children,Grateful t'ward Providence, and heeding a slander against meLess than a rheum, think of me to-day, dear Lionel, and takeThis letter as some account of Will Stone's versification.R. Bridges, Wintry Delights.
Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward,Dwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired Æthiop people,Skilful with needle and loom, and the arts of the dyer and carver,Skilful, but feeble of heart; for they know not the lords of Olympus,Lovers of men; neither broad-browed Zeus, nor Pallas Athené,Teacher of wisdom to heroes, bestower of might in the battle;Share not the cunning of Hermes, nor list to the songs of Apollo.Andromeda.
Now in wintry delights, and long fireside meditation,'Twixt studies and routine paying due court to the Muses,My solace in solitude, when broken roads barricade meMudbound, unvisited for months with my merry children,Grateful t'ward Providence, and heeding a slander against meLess than a rheum, think of me to-day, dear Lionel, and takeThis letter as some account of Will Stone's versification.R. Bridges, Wintry Delights.
After the hexameter the most frequently imitated metre is the Sapphic strophe. Swinburne's Sapphics in Poems and Ballads are the best known; but though they are finely musical they do not pretend to give more than an echo of the Greek music.
All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of ironStood and beheld me.Then to me so lying awake a visionCame without sleep over the seas and touched me,Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,Full of the vision,Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalledShine as fire of sunset on western waters;Saw the reluctant....
All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of ironStood and beheld me.
Then to me so lying awake a visionCame without sleep over the seas and touched me,Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,Full of the vision,
Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalledShine as fire of sunset on western waters;Saw the reluctant....
Both Tennyson and Swinburne tried the Catullan hendecasyllabics. Tennyson's Milton, in alcaics, is famous, and has a well-marked Miltonic sound, but little of the sound of Horace's alcaics. Admirable also are the elegiac distichs of Watson's Hymn to the Sea—
Man whose deeds, to the doer, come back as thine own exhalationsInto thy bosom return, weepings of mountain and vale;Man with the cosmic fortunes and starry vicissitudes tangled,Chained to the wheel of the world, blind with the dust of its speed,Even as thou, O giant, whom trailed in the wake of her conquestsNight's sweet despot draws, bound to her ivory car.
Man whose deeds, to the doer, come back as thine own exhalationsInto thy bosom return, weepings of mountain and vale;Man with the cosmic fortunes and starry vicissitudes tangled,Chained to the wheel of the world, blind with the dust of its speed,Even as thou, O giant, whom trailed in the wake of her conquestsNight's sweet despot draws, bound to her ivory car.
Of the French lyrical metres that have been imitated in English, mainly for lighter themes, theballadeand therondeauare the most important. These and thevillanelle,triolet, andpantoumare not, like imitations of classical forms, semi-learned attempts to do in English what is foreign to the nature of the language, but games of skill in phrasing and riming, wholly legitimate once their artificiality is granted. For the impassioned overflowing of a sincere spirit they are unfitted, but forgrace, point, and delicate charm nothing could be better devised; and when occasionally they are used for the expression of genuine feeling, the unexpected union of lightness and seriousness has a peculiarly poignant effect.
Theballadein its commonest form consists of three 8-line stanzas rimingababbcbcand a 4-line stanza called 'envoy,'bcbc; the last line of each stanza being repeated as a refrain, and thea,b, andcrimes throughout the poem being the same. The lines contain usually either four or five stresses. The envoy is a sort of dedication, addressed traditionally to a "Prince." Variations of all kinds occur, encouraged by the difficulty of satisfying all the demands of the form. Examples may be found (with an excellent introduction) in Gleeson White's collection of Ballades and Rondeaus (Canterbury Poets), and Andrew Lang's Ballades of Blue China.
Rondeausandrondels(two forms of the same word) are written with greater freedom of variation. Their organic principle is the use of the first phrase or first line, twice repeated, as a refrain (R). The commoner model in English is:aabba,aabR,aabbaR, in which the first half of the first line constitutes the refrain. Another type rimesABba,abAB,abbaAB(the capital letters indicating the lines repeated). For examples see the reference above. Austin Dobson, Henley, and Swinburne have written successfully in this form.
Thetrioletis a sort of abbreviation of the second variety of rondeau. Its lines are usually short and rimeABaAabAB.
Thevillanelle, in its normal form, consists of five 3-line stanzas (aba) and a concluding 4-line stanza, all with but two rimes, the first line, moreover, being repeated as the sixth, twelfth, and eighteenth, the third line as the ninth, fifteenth, and nineteenth.
Thepantoumis of Eastern origin, but it came into English through the French. It is extremely rare. It consists of a series of quatrainsabab, with the second and fourth lines of each stanza repeated chainwise as the first and third of the next stanza. The closing stanza completes the chain by taking as its second and fourth lines the first and third of the first stanza.
From Italy have come, besides theottava rimaand the sonnet, two other metrical forms, thesestinaand theterza rima. The sestina is composed of six 6-line stanzas and a final 3-line stanza. Instead of rimes the end words of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in this order 1.2.3.4.5.6.—6.1.5.2.4.3.—3.6.4.1.2.5.—5.3.2.6.1.4.—4.5.1.3.6.2.—2.4.6.5.3.1.—and the last stanza 5.3.1. with 2.4.6. in the middle of the lines. Gosse, Swinburne, and Kipling have written sestinas; Swinburne one with the additional embellishment of rime.
Theterza rimais the metre of Dante's Divine Comedy. The rimes areaba,bcb,cdc, etc....yzy,zz. It has not been very successfully used in English, except in the stanzaic arrangement of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind,—aba,bcb,cdc,ded,ee. Other examples besides translations of Dante are short poems by Wyatt and Sidney, Browning's The Statue and the Bust, and Shelley's unfinished The Triumph of Life.
The terms melody, harmony, and modulation, being borrowed from music, are not to be applied too literally to the art of versification. They represent metaphorically, however, certain important qualities of verse which, with the exception of rime, cannot from their very impalpability be formally explained, but can only be suggested and partially described. They are not the determining and fundamental characteristics of verse—those have already been discussed—but rather its sources of incremental beauty, of richness and, subtle power. To draw an illustration from another art, they add light and shadow, fullness, roundness, depth of perspective, vividness, to what would else be simple line-drawing.
The language of ordinary prose has its own melody and harmony, its own sonorous rhythms, and its own delicate adjustments between sound and meaning. All these natural beauties verse inherits from prose and then adds the further beauties that result from the union of prose rhythms and the formal patterns of verse. Some of these qualities which are the peculiar enhancements of verse will now be examined.
The simplest and most tangible of these is rime in its various forms. Rime is, in its most general signification, the repetition, usually at regulated intervals,of identical or closely similar sounds. According to the circumstances of the identical or similar sounds, four varieties are distinguishable: (1)alliteration, or initial rime, when the sounds at the beginning of accented syllables agree, astale, attune; (2)consonance, when the vowel sounds differ and the final consonantal sounds agree, as tale, pull; (3)assonance, when the vowel sounds agree and the consonants differ, as tale, pain; and (4)rime proper, when both the vowels and the final consonants agree, as tale, pale.
Alliteration is a natural and obvious method of emphasis in English—and often difficult to avoid rather than to obtain. Popular sayings—wind and weather, time and tide, kith and kin, ever and aye, to have and to hold—are fond of it for its own sake. The early English, German, and Scandinavian prosodies made it a determining principle; and in the north of England it survived well into the fifteenth century; but since then it has been considered a too 'easy' kind of metrical ornament, one to be used sparingly and only for very special effects. "Apt alliteration's artful aid" is very well when it is apt and artful; but when some poets in their simplicity have gone so far as to "hunt the letter to the death," one cannot but condemn it, in John Burroughs' ironic phrase, as a "leprosy of alliteration." Most of the poets, however, have made skilful use of it, notably Tennyson and Swinburne, though the latter frequently overdid it, as in—
... rusted sheavesRain-rotten in rank lands.A Ballad of Death.
... rusted sheavesRain-rotten in rank lands.A Ballad of Death.
Very remarkable is the combination of rime and frequent alliteration in Browning's Abt Vogler.
Analogous to alliteration and perhaps to be classed as a by-form of it is the subtle use of the same sound in unstressed parts of neighboring words, as in—
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulfTamely endured a bridge of wondrouslength.Paradise Lost, II, 1027-28.
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulfTamely endured a bridge of wondrouslength.Paradise Lost, II, 1027-28.
Consonance is very similar to this latter form of alliteration. Its use is irregular and usually hidden. Note the alliteration and consonance in Milton's line, both thes's and then's—