Chapter 4

And oft, as if her head she bow'd;

some that are purely trochaic, as

Whilst the landskip round it measures;

and others which are a combination, as

Bosom'd high in tufted trees.Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.The melting voice through mazes running.

Again, how shall the following stanza from F. W. H. Myers's Saint Paul be classified?

Lo, if some strange intelligible thunderSang to the earth the secret of a star,Scarce could ye catch, for terror and for wonder,Shreds of the story that was peal'd so far.

The metrical scheme appears to be

_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷◡_̷

that is, 5-stress trochaic, with dactylic substitution in the first foot and truncation or catalexis of the last foot in the second and fourth lines; or perhaps iambic, with anapestic substitution in the second foot and a feminine ending in the first and third lines. But when many of these stanzas are read in succession, the movement is found to be

_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡◡_̷_̷◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡_̷◡◡_̷◡◡◡_̷◡_̷

that is, 4-stress falling rhythm, with intermixed duple, triple, and quadruple time.

This introduces a new question, whether English verse admits of a foot resembling the Greek paeon, _̷◡◡◡. The answer seems to be that theoretically it does not, but practically it does.[35]It would, doubtless,be more accurate to describe the foot as _̷◡◡`[A]◡, for some stress, however slight, is regularly felt on the third syllable. But the poets have had their way, and written what certainly try to be paeonic feet. Thus Macaulay's The Battle of Naseby begins:

Oh! wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north,With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?And wherefore doth your rout send forth a bitter shout?And whence be the grapes of the wine-press that ye tread?[36]

And Mr. Kipling's The Last Chantey:

Thus said the Lord in the vault above the Cherubim,Calling to the angels and the souls in their degree:"Lo! Earth has passed awayOn the smoke of Judgment Day.That Our word may be established, shall We gather up the sea?"

And Mr. E. A. Robinson's The Valley of the Shadow is in this same rhythm, the first four lines being almost perfectly regular:

There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.

Some have read Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's to the same tune, but at grave risk of destroying the music.

Rightly described, this movement is a discontinuous syncopation of fours and twos; the prevailing formal unit is _̷◡◡◡, but it is varied now by _̷◡_̷◡, and now by simply _̷◡, with the usual substitution of _̷◡◡ for _̷◡. It is an excellent exercise to analyze Jean Ingelow's Like a Laverock in the Lift and observe the pauses, holds, and substitutions. The most notable are _̷_̷◡ for _̷◡◡◡ (we too, it's), and _̷◡_̷ (lass, my love, l. 5;thou art mine, l. 6;missed the mark, l. 7, etc.). The third line may be read

Like a | laverock in the | lift ‸ etc.

Like a laverock | in the lift | etc.

The former seems preferable.[37]

It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,All the world, and we two, and Heaven be our stay.Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side.What's the world, my lass, my love!—what can it do?I am thine, and thou art mine; lift is sweet and new.If the world have missed the mark, let it stand by,For we two have gotten leave, and once more we'll try.Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!It's we two, it's we two, happy side by side.Take a kiss from me, thy man; now the song begins:"All is made afresh for us, and the brave heart wins."When the darker days come, and no sun will shine,Thou shalt dry my tears, lass, and I'll dry thine.It's we two, it's we two, while the world's away.Sitting by the golden sheaves on our wedding day.

It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,All the world, and we two, and Heaven be our stay.Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side.

What's the world, my lass, my love!—what can it do?I am thine, and thou art mine; lift is sweet and new.If the world have missed the mark, let it stand by,For we two have gotten leave, and once more we'll try.

Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride!It's we two, it's we two, happy side by side.Take a kiss from me, thy man; now the song begins:"All is made afresh for us, and the brave heart wins."

When the darker days come, and no sun will shine,Thou shalt dry my tears, lass, and I'll dry thine.It's we two, it's we two, while the world's away.Sitting by the golden sheaves on our wedding day.

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

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

Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,Couch'd with her arms behind her golden head,Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:Then would she hold me and never let me go?

Examples.There occur examples of 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-stress iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic lines, sometimes used continuously and sometimes used in combinations with other lengths. But many of these are unusual, and may be found only by diligent search.[40]Some have already been illustrated in the previous section, others occur here and there throughout this volume, especially in the paragraphs on the stanza; some of the more important, however, are given below. But, of course, the line rhythm is significant mainly as a unit of the longer composition, and brief selections cannot well represent the rhythmic movement of a whole poem. Whenever possible the poem should be read complete.

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

Two-stress and 6-stress anapestic:

Canst thou say in thine heartThou hast seen with thine eyesWith what cunning of artThou wast wrought in what wise,By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies?Swinburne, Hertha.[41]

Three-stress anapestic:

If you go over desert and mountain,Far into the country of Sorrow,To-day and to-night and to-morrow,And maybe for months and for years;You shall come with a heart that is burstingFor trouble and toiling and thirsting,You shall certainly come to the fountainAt length,—to the Fountain of Tears.Arthur O'Shaughnessy, The Fountain of Tears.Though the day of my destiny's over,And the star of my fate hath declined,Thy soft heart refused to discoverThe faults which so many could find;Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,It shrunk not to share it with me,And the love which my spirit hath paintedIt never hath found but inthee.Byron, Stanzas to Augusta.

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

Four-stress anapestic:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the seaWhen the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib.

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

As I sang,—Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool, silver shockOf the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, ...

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

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

Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings,That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

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

Four-stress trochaic.

Shall I, wasting in despair,Die because a woman's fair?Or make pale my cheeks with care'Cause another's rosy are?Be she fairer than the day,Or the flow'ry meads in May,If she think not well of me,What care I how fair she be?Wither, The Author's Resolution.Souls of Poets dead and gone,What Elysium have ye known,Happy field or mossy cavern,Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?Keats, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern.

Shall I, wasting in despair,Die because a woman's fair?Or make pale my cheeks with care'Cause another's rosy are?

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

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

Five-stress trochaic.

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

(Note here the substitutions for special imitative effect.)

Shelley's To a Skylark is in trochaic metre of 3-stress and 6-stress lines.

Dactylic lines are not common except in the imitations of the classical hexameter. Hood's familiar Bridge of Sighs in 2-stress lines, and Tennyson's still more familiar Charge of the Light Brigade (which is, however, only partly dactylic) are good illustrations.

Iambic lines are by very far the most frequent in English verse. No special examples need therefore begiven except of the less usual 6-stress and 7-stress lines. On blank verse see pages 133 ff.

The 6-stress line is called the alexandrine (probably from the name of an Old French poem in this metre). It is still the standard line in classical French verse; but the French alexandrine differs from the English, principally in having four stresses instead of six. In English it is usually awkward when used for long stretches, and tends to split into 3 + 3. Lowell called it "the droning old alexandrine." It was employed for several long poems in Middle English; and certain of the Elizabethans tried it: Surrey, Sidney, and Drayton—Drayton's Polyolbion (1613) contains about 15,000 alexandrines. It has not commended itself to modern poets, with one exception, for sustained work. Browning wrote his Fifine at the Fair (1872) in this measure; and while he succeeded in relieving it of some of its monotony, he only demonstrated again its unfitness, in English, for continuous use. A peculiar musical effect is obtained from it, however, by Mr. Siegfried Sassoon in his Picture-Show:

And still they come and go: and this is all I know—That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show,Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way,With glad or grievous hearts I'll never understandBecause Time spins so fast, and they've no time to stayBeyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand.

On the other hand, as the last line of the Spenserian and similar stanzas the alexandrine has proved very melodious and effective, largely by contrast with the shorter lines. A few isolated examples will illustratesome of its powers, but of course the whole stanza should be read together.

And streames of purple bloud new die the verdant fields.Spenser, Faerie Queen, I, 2, 17.Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.Ibid., I, 1, 34.Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep.With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowings speak his woes.Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, I, lxxvi.Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.Ibid., III, ii.As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.Keats, Eve of St. Agnes, xxvii.Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.Shelley, Revolt of Islam, I, iv.Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.Shelley, Adonais, xxi.With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.Ibid., xl.Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.Shelley, To a Skylark.The slender streamAlong the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.Tennyson, Lotos Eaters.

And streames of purple bloud new die the verdant fields.Spenser, Faerie Queen, I, 2, 17.

Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.Ibid., I, 1, 34.

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep.With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowings speak his woes.Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, I, lxxvi.

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.Ibid., III, ii.

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.Keats, Eve of St. Agnes, xxvii.

Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.Shelley, Revolt of Islam, I, iv.

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.Shelley, Adonais, xxi.

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.Ibid., xl.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.Shelley, To a Skylark.

The slender streamAlong the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.Tennyson, Lotos Eaters.

Alexandrines were occasionally in the eighteenth century (and more frequently in the late seventeenth) inserted among heroic couplets for variety and special effect, as in Pope's

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.Odyssey, XI, 737-738.

But Pope himself condemned the 'needless alexandrine'

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.Essay on Criticism, 357.

One of the oldest lines of modern English verse is the so-called septenary (septenarius), having had a nearly continuous tradition from the twelfth-century Poema Morale down (in its divided form) to the present. It began as a single line of seven stresses or fourteen syllables, and continued to be used as such through the Elizabethan period, and sporadically even later.[44]But on account of its customary pause after the fourth foot, it very early broke into two short lines of four and three stresses each, and thus the septenary couplet became the ballad stanza. For example,

And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sightWhen the unmeasur'd firmament bursts to disclose her light.Chapman, Iliad, VIII.

is essentially the same metre, though printed differently, as

The western wave was all aflame,The day was wellnigh done!Almost upon the western waveRested the broad, bright sun.Coleridge, Ancient Mariner, Part III.

The more notable long poems in septenaries are Warner's Albion's England (1586), Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1565, 1567), and Chapman's translation of the Iliad (1598-1611).

Couplet.The line unit is used sometimes singly and continuously, as in blank verse, and sometimes in groups usually held together by rime. These groups are called stanzas or strophes. The simplest stanza is, therefore, the couplet rimedaa.[45]Couplets are either unequal or equal in length.

The only much-used unequal couplet is the combination, now old-fashioned, of an alexandrine and a septenary, and called, from the number of syllables, Poulter's Measure, because, says Gascoigne (1575), "it gives xii. for one dozen and xiii. for another." Wyatt and Surrey and Sidney wrote in it; the older drama employed it occasionally; Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562) on which Shakespeare's play was based, is in this measure. The following example is by Nicholas Grimald (1519-62).

What sweet relief the showers to thirsty plants we see,What dear delight the blooms to bees, my true love is to me!As fresh and lusty Ver foul Winter doth exceed—As morning bright, with scarlet sky, doth pass the evening's weed—As mellow pears above the crabs esteemed be—So doth my love surmount them all, whom yet I hap to see!

It survives chiefly in the S.M. (short measure) of the hymn books and such stanzas as that used by Macaulay in his Horatius:

From Egypt's bondage come,Where death and darkness reign,We seek our new and better home,Where we our rest shall gain.——————————When the goodman mends his armor,And trims his helmet's plume;When the goodwife's shuttle merrilyGoes flashing through the loom;With weeping and with laughterStill is the story told,How well Horatius kept the bridgeIn the brave old days of old.

Other unequal couplets are found in Herrick's A Thanskgiving to God for his House (a4a2) and Browning's Love among the Ruins (a6a2).

The equal couplet is used both continuously and, more rarely except with long lines, as a single stanza. Sometimes two or three couplets are combined into a larger stanza. The usual forms of the couplet used continuously are the 4-stress or short couplet ("octosyllabic") and the 5-stress or heroic couplet ("decasyllabic").

Short Couplet.The short couplet in duple iambic-trochaic movement has proved its worth by its long history and the variety of its uses. The English borrowed it from the French octosyllabic verse, and employed it chiefly for long narrative poems. Chaucer used it in his earlier work, the Book of the Duchess, and the House of Fame; Butler in the serio-comicHudibras; Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, and Morris in their Romantic narrative verse. For lyric purposes it was used by Shakespeare and other dramatists, by Milton in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and since then by most of the greater and lesser poets. But its effect, especially in long poems, is often monotonous because of the rapid recurrence of the rimes, and its powers are somewhat limited. Except under expert handling it is likely to turn into a dog-trot, and it seems sometimes to lack dignity where dignity is required. On the whole it is better for swift movement, for the obvious reason that the line is short: the frequent repetition of the unit, both line and couplet, produces the effect of hurry.

Never has the short couplet revealed its flexibility to better advantage than in Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and in Coleridge's Christabel. In Christabel Coleridge believed he was inventing a new prosodic principle, that of counting the stresses rather than the syllables;[46]and though he erred with respect to the originality of his principle, he succeeded in getting a freer movement than the couplet had had since Chaucer. Some of the roughness of Chaucer's short couplets is probably due to the imperfections of our texts, and some also to the haste with which he wrote—it is in this metre that the fatal facility of certain poets has proved the worst bane—but the Chaucerian couplet stands as a prototype (though not literally a model) of the freer flow of Byron's[47]and Morris'scouplets, in contrast to those of Scott and Wordsworth, which resemble the stricter, syllable-counting couplets of Chaucer's friend Gower.

The chief drawbacks of the short couplet, besides monotony, are the tendency to diffuseness of language and looseness of grammatical structure (as in Chaucer and Scott, for instance), and rime-padding, i. e., the insertion of phrases and sometimes even irrelevant ideas, for the sake of the rime.

The chief sources of variety are substitution, pause, run-on lines, and division. The first is very apparent in the much-quoted passage in Christabel:

The night is chill; the forest bare;Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?There is not wind enough in the airTo move away the ringlet curlFrom the lovely lady's cheek—There is not wind enough to twirlThe one red leaf, the last of its clan,That dances as often as dance it can,Hanging so light, and hanging so high,On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

The pause offers more difficulties for the poet, and more opportunities; since the line is so short, and the rimes reinforce the regular metrical pause at the end of the line, important grammatical pauses cannot well occur in the middle of the line without danger of breaking the rhythm. The logical pause must, therefore, usually coincide with the metrical and thus emphasize unduly the line unit. Moreover, the quick return of the rime sound causes the couplet itself to be felt as a unit and produces what are called 'closed couplets,' inwhich the two lines contain an independent idea. To avoid irksome uniformity in this regard three devices are customary: to 'run-on' the meaning from one line to the next, thus momentarily obscuring the metrical pause, to 'run-on' the couplets themselves, and to divide the couplet so that the second verse belongs to a new sentence or independent clause.

And thus, when they appeared at last,And all my bonds aside were cast,These heavy walls to me had grownA heritage—and all my own!And half I felt as they were come5To tear me from a second home.With spiders I had friendship made,And watched them in their sullen trade;Had seen the mice by moonlight play—And why should I feel less than they?10We were all inmates of one place,And I, the monarch of each race,Had power to kill; yet, strange to tell!In quiet we had learned to dwell.My very chains and I grew friends,15So much a long communion tendsTo make us what we are:—even IRegained my freedom with a sigh.Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon.

In this passage, which is on the whole conservative and stiff in movement, observe (1) how the pause in the middle of ll. 4, 13, and 17 helps to vary the measure; (2) how many of the verses end with a logical as well as metrical pause; (3) how in ll. 3, 5,16, and 17 the meaning runs over without pause into the next lines; (4) how the first two couplets and the last two are run together, whereas the third and fourth are both closed and independent;and (5) how at ll. 9 and 10 the couplet is divided. This last device is not very frequent in the practice of any poet except Chaucer; it is well illustrated, however, in these lines from Shelley's With a Guitar to Jane:

All this it knows; but will not tellTo those that cannot question wellThe Spirit that inhabits it.It talks according to the witOf its companions; and no more ...

Two other means of varying the swing of the short couplet are to change the order of the rimes (as in the example above from Christabel) or introduce a third riming line (that is, to use triplets with the couplets), and to intermingle shorter lines, as Coleridge does occasionally in Christabel, and Byron at the beginning of The Prisoner of Chillon:

My hair is gray, but not with years,Nor grew it whiteIn a single night,As men's have grown from sudden fears.

Heroic Couplet.The 5-stress line, both rimed and unrimed, is the most flexible and best adapted to all kinds of subjects that English versification possesses. Its powers range through the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, the dignity of the sonnet, and the grandeur of Milton, to the satire of Pope and the informal conversational verse of Mr. Robert Frost. The 4-stress line is too short, the 6-stress is too long (when it does not split into two equal parts); the 5-stress seems to hit the golden average. It is less inclined to 'go' byitself, and therefore is suitable for slow movements; on the other hand, it is easily divided by pauses and hence is easily relieved of monotony and adjustable to almost all tempos.[48]

The earliest form, historically, of the 5-stress line in English was in rimed couplets; the first poet to use the rimed couplet continuously (as distinguished from occasional use in a stanza) was Chaucer.[49]Blank verse is a modification of the couplet by the simple omission of the rimes at the end.

The history of the heroic couplet may be divided into two periods, that of Chaucer and his followers, Gavin Douglas and Spenser, and that beginning with Marlowe, Chapman, and other Elizabethans and continuing down to the present. This division is peculiar, for it represents a double curve of development, the one comparatively short, the other long. Chaucer's couplet has all the marks of ease and freedom of a fully matured medium: great variety in the pauses, run-on lines and couplets, and divided couplets. (All the means of securing variety for the short couplet, explained above, applya fortiorito the heroic line.) Douglas, in large part, and Spenser pretty fully, adopted and preserved this unfettered movement, though the former anticipates here and there the neatbalance of the Popian couplet. Then the measure seems to have begun all over again, partly on account of an attack of syllable-counting, with close formal recognition of the line unit and the couplet unit, and gradually worked its way back to its original flexibility.[50]

The following characteristic examples illustrate the chief varieties of the couplet. (Again, they should be supplemented by the reading of longer passages. Pope's couplet, in particular, with its perfection of form according to a few well-marked formulas, reveals its great weakness, monotony, only in the consecutive reading of several pages.)

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sooteThe drought of Marche hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swich licour,Of which vertue engendred is the flour;Whan Zephyrus eek with his swete breethInspired hath in every holt and heethThe tendre croppes, and the yonge sonneHath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,And smale fowles maken melodye,That slepen al the night with open eye,So priketh hem nature in here corages;Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,To feme halwes, kouthe in sondry londes;And specially, from every shires endeOf Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,The holy blisful martir for to seeke,That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue.The Husbandman was meanly well contentTriall to make of his endevourment;And, home him leading, lent to him the chargeOf all his flocke, with libertie full large,Giving accompt of th' annuall increceBoth of their lambes, and of their woolly fleece.Thus is this Ape become a shepheard swaine,And the false Foxe his dog (God give them paine!)For ere the yeare have halfe his course out-run,And doo returne from whence he first begun,They shall him make an ill accompt of thrift.Spenser, Mother Hubberd's Tale.And in the midst a silver altar stood:There Hero, sacrificing turtles' blood,Kneel'd to the ground, veiling her eyelids close;And modestly they open'd as she rose:Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head;And thus Leander was enamoured.Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gaz'd,Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd,Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strook:Such force and virtue hath an amorous look.It lies not in our power to love or hate,For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.Marlowe, Hero and Leander.But when the far-off isle he touch'd, he wentUp from the blue sea to the continent,And reach'd the ample cavern of the Queen,Whom he found within; without seldom seen.A sun-like fire upon the hearth did flame;The matter precious, and divine the frame;Of cedar cleft and incense was the pile,That breathed an odour round about the isle.Herself was seated in an inner room,Whom sweetly sing he heard, and at her loom,About a curious web, whose yarn she threwIn with a golden shuttle. A grove grewIn endless spring about her cavern round,With odorous cypress, pines, and poplars crown'd.Chapman, Odyssey, V.

The Husbandman was meanly well contentTriall to make of his endevourment;And, home him leading, lent to him the chargeOf all his flocke, with libertie full large,Giving accompt of th' annuall increceBoth of their lambes, and of their woolly fleece.Thus is this Ape become a shepheard swaine,And the false Foxe his dog (God give them paine!)For ere the yeare have halfe his course out-run,And doo returne from whence he first begun,They shall him make an ill accompt of thrift.Spenser, Mother Hubberd's Tale.

And in the midst a silver altar stood:There Hero, sacrificing turtles' blood,Kneel'd to the ground, veiling her eyelids close;And modestly they open'd as she rose:Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head;And thus Leander was enamoured.Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gaz'd,Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd,Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strook:Such force and virtue hath an amorous look.It lies not in our power to love or hate,For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.Marlowe, Hero and Leander.

But when the far-off isle he touch'd, he wentUp from the blue sea to the continent,And reach'd the ample cavern of the Queen,Whom he found within; without seldom seen.A sun-like fire upon the hearth did flame;The matter precious, and divine the frame;Of cedar cleft and incense was the pile,That breathed an odour round about the isle.Herself was seated in an inner room,Whom sweetly sing he heard, and at her loom,About a curious web, whose yarn she threwIn with a golden shuttle. A grove grewIn endless spring about her cavern round,With odorous cypress, pines, and poplars crown'd.Chapman, Odyssey, V.

Though Chapman sometimes uses the pause and run-on lines freely, the regularity of the foot makes for a certain stiffness and inflexibility.

She, she is gone; she's gone; when thou know'st this,What fragmentary rubbish this world isThou know'st, and that it is not worth a thought;He honours it too much that thinks it nought.Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,Which brings a taper to the outward room,Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light,And after brings it nearer to thy sight;For such approaches doth heaven make in death.Donne, Anatomy of the World.

Donne's metres were notoriously careless—or deliberately irregular. They therefore stand somewhat out of place in the general trend of development.

O how I long my careless limbs to layUnder the plantain's shade, and all the dayWith amorous airs my fancy entertain;Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!No passion there in my free breast should move,None but the sweet and best of passions, love!There while I sing, if gentle Love be by,That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high;With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name,I'll make the list'ning savages grow tame.Waller, Battle of the Summer Islands.

Waller, though his lifetime (1605-87) embraces that of Milton, is the natural precursor of the eighteenth century. His couplets are almost all characteristic of eighteenth-century couplets, which seem to seek perfection within themselves. The aim of Waller, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson was primarily to exalt the couplet and extract from it all its potentialities, not to obscureit by varied pauses and run-on lines. Waller was praised by the best critics of his own and the following generation for the great 'sweetness' and smoothness of his verse.

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