Of these the false Achitophel was first;A name to all succeeding ages curst:For close designs and crooked counsels fit;Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;Restless, unfix'd in principles and place;In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace:A fiery soul which, working out its way,Fretted the pigmy body to decay,And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I.All human things are subject to decay,And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, youngWas call'd to empire and had govern'd long;In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute,Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute.This aged prince, now flourishing in peaceAnd blest with issue of a large increase,Worn out with business, did at length debateTo settle the succession of the State.Dryden, MacFlecknoe.
Of these the false Achitophel was first;A name to all succeeding ages curst:For close designs and crooked counsels fit;Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;Restless, unfix'd in principles and place;In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace:A fiery soul which, working out its way,Fretted the pigmy body to decay,And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I.
All human things are subject to decay,And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, youngWas call'd to empire and had govern'd long;In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute,Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute.This aged prince, now flourishing in peaceAnd blest with issue of a large increase,Worn out with business, did at length debateTo settle the succession of the State.Dryden, MacFlecknoe.
It is interesting, from a metrical point of view, to compare Chaucer's couplets with Dryden's where he is translating Chaucer, e. g., in the Knight's Tale and Palamon and Arcite.
Between 1664 and 1678 it became the fashion, partly as a reaction against the liberties of the late Elizabethan blank verse, and partly under French influence, to write drama in heroic couplets. But the undertaking soon proved abortive.
Others for Language all their care express,And value books, as women men, for dress;Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;The sense, they humbly take upon content.Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;The face of nature we no more survey,All glares alike, without distinction gay:But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;It gilds all objects, but it alters none.Pope, Essay on Criticism.Meantime the Grecians in a ring beheldThe coursers bounding o'er the dusty field.The first who marked them was the Cretan king;High on a rising ground, above the ring,The monarch sat: from whence with sure surveyHe well observ'd the chief who led the way,And heard from far his animating cries,And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes.Pope, Iliad, XXIII.
Others for Language all their care express,And value books, as women men, for dress;Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;The sense, they humbly take upon content.Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;The face of nature we no more survey,All glares alike, without distinction gay:But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;It gilds all objects, but it alters none.Pope, Essay on Criticism.
Meantime the Grecians in a ring beheldThe coursers bounding o'er the dusty field.The first who marked them was the Cretan king;High on a rising ground, above the ring,The monarch sat: from whence with sure surveyHe well observ'd the chief who led the way,And heard from far his animating cries,And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes.Pope, Iliad, XXIII.
Pope's couplets represent the acme of polish and metrical dexterity—a perfect instrument for wit and satire.[51]Thus in the mock-heroic Rape of the Lock these well-modeled couplets prove their mettle, but in the translation of Homer their fatal limitations are easily apparent.
Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green,Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!How often have I paus'd on every charm,The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm,The never-failing brook, the busy mill,The decent church that topt the neighboring hill,The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,For talking age and whispering lovers made....Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;A breath can make them, as a breath has made:But a bold peasantry, a country's pride,When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.Goldsmith, The Deserted Village.
Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green,Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!How often have I paus'd on every charm,The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm,The never-failing brook, the busy mill,The decent church that topt the neighboring hill,The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,For talking age and whispering lovers made....
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;A breath can make them, as a breath has made:But a bold peasantry, a country's pride,When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.Goldsmith, The Deserted Village.
The departure from the petrified couplet was gradual and natural, and influenced greatly by the simpler language and content of the verses. These two specimens show Goldsmith writing in two manners, only a few lines apart. Still freer are Cowper's couplets in his On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) and Crabbe in his earlier work, still practised the eighteenth-century couplet (in the Tales of the Hall, 1819, Crabbe varied it to a considerable degree), but the new spirit of the Romantic Movement leavened all the metrical forms, as it did the themes, of poetry. Compare the following examples.
One hope within two wills, one will beneathTwo overshadowing minds, one life, one death,One heaven, one hell, one immortality,And one annihilation.Woe is me!The winged words on which my soul would pierceInto the height of Love's rare universeAre chains of lead around its flight of fire—I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!Shelley, Epipsychidion.I rode one evening with Count MaddaloUpon the bank of land which breaks the flowOf Adria towards Venice: a bare strandOf hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,Matted with thistles and amphibious weedsSuch as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,Abandons....Shelley, Julian and Maddalo.'Twas far too strange and wonderful for sadness;Sharpening, by degrees, his appetiteTo dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;A dusky empire and its diadems;One faint eternal eventide of gems.Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,With all its lines abrupt and angular.Keats, Endymion, II.Ay, happinessAwaited me; the way life should be usedWas to acquire, and deeds like you conducedTo teach it by a self-revealment, deemedLife's very use, so long! Whatever seemedProgress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayedMy reaching it—no pleasure. I have laidThe ladder down; I climb not; still, aloftThe platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft,I dared not entertain, elude me; yetNever of what they promised could I getA glimpse till now!Browning, Sordello, III.She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say ...Browning, My Last Duchess.It hath been seen and yet it shall be seenThat out of tender mouths God's praise hath beenMade perfect, and with wood and simple stringHe hath played music sweet as shawm-playingTo please himself with softness of all sound;And no small thing but hath been sometime foundFull sweet of use, and no such humblenessBut God hath bruised withal the sentencesAnd evidence of wise men witnessing;No leaf that is so soft a hidden thingIt never shall get sight of the great sun;The strength of ten has been the strength of one,And lowliness has waxed imperious.Swinburne, St. Dorothy.
One hope within two wills, one will beneathTwo overshadowing minds, one life, one death,One heaven, one hell, one immortality,And one annihilation.Woe is me!The winged words on which my soul would pierceInto the height of Love's rare universeAre chains of lead around its flight of fire—I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!Shelley, Epipsychidion.
I rode one evening with Count MaddaloUpon the bank of land which breaks the flowOf Adria towards Venice: a bare strandOf hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,Matted with thistles and amphibious weedsSuch as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,Abandons....Shelley, Julian and Maddalo.
'Twas far too strange and wonderful for sadness;Sharpening, by degrees, his appetiteTo dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;A dusky empire and its diadems;One faint eternal eventide of gems.Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,With all its lines abrupt and angular.Keats, Endymion, II.
Ay, happinessAwaited me; the way life should be usedWas to acquire, and deeds like you conducedTo teach it by a self-revealment, deemedLife's very use, so long! Whatever seemedProgress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayedMy reaching it—no pleasure. I have laidThe ladder down; I climb not; still, aloftThe platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft,I dared not entertain, elude me; yetNever of what they promised could I getA glimpse till now!Browning, Sordello, III.
She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say ...Browning, My Last Duchess.
It hath been seen and yet it shall be seenThat out of tender mouths God's praise hath beenMade perfect, and with wood and simple stringHe hath played music sweet as shawm-playingTo please himself with softness of all sound;And no small thing but hath been sometime foundFull sweet of use, and no such humblenessBut God hath bruised withal the sentencesAnd evidence of wise men witnessing;No leaf that is so soft a hidden thingIt never shall get sight of the great sun;The strength of ten has been the strength of one,And lowliness has waxed imperious.Swinburne, St. Dorothy.
Stanzas of three lines rimingaaa(called tercets or triplets) are not very common. Familiar, however, is Herrick's Upon Julia's Clothes:
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flowsThat liquifaction of her clothes!Next, when I cast mine eyes, and seeThat brave vibration each way free;O how that glittering taketh me!
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flowsThat liquifaction of her clothes!
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and seeThat brave vibration each way free;O how that glittering taketh me!
Other examples are: Threnos (in The Phœnix and the Turtle), Herbert's Trinity Sunday, Quarles' Shortnessof Life, Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Tennyson's The Two Voices, Swinburne's After a Reading, and Clear the Way; and (with a simple refrain) Cowper's To Mary:
The twentieth year is well-nigh past,Since first our sky was overcast;Ah, would that this might be the last!My Mary!
The twentieth year is well-nigh past,Since first our sky was overcast;Ah, would that this might be the last!My Mary!
Crashaw's Wishes to his Supposed Mistress rimesa2a3a4.
Tennyson's 'O Swallow, Swallow' in The Princess is in unrimed triplets.
On the terza rima see below, page 164.
The most important quatrains are the ballad stanza, riminga4b3c4b3ora4b3a4b3(the Common Measure of the hymnals), with the related Long Measure rimingabab4orabcb4; the In Memoriam stanzaabba4; and the elegiac quatrainabab5. These are often combined into 8-and 12-line stanzas, asabab bcbc5(called the Monk's Tale stanza),abab cdcd, etc., sometimes with alternating long and short lines. And these, as well as longer stanzas, are frequently varied by the use of repetitions and refrains.[52]
The ballad stanza, with its frequent variations of internal rime and additional verses is excellently illustrated by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Similar is Tennyson's Sir Galahad, a 12-line stanza of threequatrains,a4b3a4b3cdc4d3efgf4. Another common variation is that of Hood's The Dream of Eugene Aram, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, and Rossetti's Blessed Damozel,a4b3c4b3d4b3. The musical roughness of the old ballads should be contrasted with the regularized modern imitations, such as Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus. Better imitations are Rossetti's Stratton Water and The King's Tragedy, Robert Buchanan's Judas Iscariot, and W.B. Yeats's Father Gilligan. Sometimes a shorter quatrain is printed as a long couplet and combined into larger stanzas, as in Mr. Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman (which has an additional variation in the inserted fourth and fifth lines):
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,And the highwayman came riding—Riding—riding—The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,And the highwayman came riding—Riding—riding—The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.
The variations in Tennyson's The Revenge should be carefully studied.
The ballad stanza is closely similar to theabab4andabcb4quatrains, and (as in the Sir Galahad mentioned just above) the two are sometimes united. All three were much used by Wordsworth and many minor poets for lyrics as well as narratives; the result is often an undignified tinkle that takes the popular ear and "makes the judicious grieve." The stanzaic unit is so easily carried in one's mind and so rapidly repeats itself, that there is little opportunity for the necessary pleasing surprises. But that the measure is capable of a simple expressive music is evident from such examplesas Wordsworth's 'Lucy' poems. These stanzas, both alone and doubled (as in To Mary in Heaven), were favorites with Burns.
A striking musical effect was obtained by Swinburne in Dolores by shortening the last line of a double quatrain:
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewelHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;The heavy white limbs, and the cruelRed mouth like a venomous flower;When these are gone by with their glories,What shall rest of thee then, what remain,O mystic and sombre Dolores,Our Lady of Pain.
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewelHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;The heavy white limbs, and the cruelRed mouth like a venomous flower;When these are gone by with their glories,What shall rest of thee then, what remain,O mystic and sombre Dolores,Our Lady of Pain.
Similar interesting variations are Coleridge's Love,aba4b3and Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper.
The In Memoriam stanza (abba4)is named after Tennyson's poem (though that was by no means its first use), because Tennyson gave it a peculiar melody, and, partly for this reason and partly from the length and subject of the poem, almost preëmpted it for elegiac purposes.[53]Characteristic stanzas metrically are these:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,These leaves that redden to the fall;And in my heart, if calm at all,If any calm, a calm despair.And all we met was fair and good,And all was good that Time could bring,And all the secret of the SpringMoved in the chambers of the blood.Now fades the last long streak of snow,Now burgeons every maze of quickAbout the flowering squares, and thickBy ashen roots the violets blow.
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,These leaves that redden to the fall;And in my heart, if calm at all,If any calm, a calm despair.
And all we met was fair and good,And all was good that Time could bring,And all the secret of the SpringMoved in the chambers of the blood.
Now fades the last long streak of snow,Now burgeons every maze of quickAbout the flowering squares, and thickBy ashen roots the violets blow.
One of the peculiarities of the stanza is the increased emphasis which the rime of the third verse receives from its proximity to that of the second; and this is noticeable both when there is a logical pause after the third verse and when there is none:
'Thou makest thine appeal to me:I bring to life, I bring to death:The spirit does but mean the breath:I know no more.' And he, shall he....I sometimes hold it half a sinTo put in words the grief I feel;For words, like Nature, half revealAnd half conceal the Soul within.
'Thou makest thine appeal to me:I bring to life, I bring to death:The spirit does but mean the breath:I know no more.' And he, shall he....
I sometimes hold it half a sinTo put in words the grief I feel;For words, like Nature, half revealAnd half conceal the Soul within.
Run-on stanzas are very frequent; especially remarkable is the periodic movement of the four stanzas of LXXXVI, leading up to the last line—
A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'
A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'
"By the rhyme-scheme of the quatrain," says Corson, "the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza is reduced, the second and third verses being the most closely braced by the rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to the sweet continuity of flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read, aloud, of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and fourth,verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding rhymes more emphatic. There are as many as ninety-one such stanzas.... The poem could not have laid hold of so many hearts as it has, had the rhymes been alternate, even if the thought-element had been the same."[54]Examples for this experiment are:
To-night the winds begin to riseAnd roar from yonder dropping day:The last read leaf is rolled away,The rooks are blown about the skies. XV, 1.I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all. XXVII, 4.
To-night the winds begin to riseAnd roar from yonder dropping day:The last read leaf is rolled away,The rooks are blown about the skies. XV, 1.
I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all. XXVII, 4.
Compare the slightly different effect of the same stanza printed as two lines, in Wilde's The Sphinx:
The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him comeOdorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme.He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed,He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty, and the waters sank.
The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him comeOdorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme.He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed,He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty, and the waters sank.
The name 'elegiac stanza' for theabab5quatrain comes apparently from its appropriate use by Gray in the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, but it is not altogether fitting; for it is simply the quatrain movement of the English sonnet, where no lament is intended, and it was employed effectively by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, and has been often employedsince, without elegiac feeling. For examples see the stanza from Gray, page 55, and the sonnets on pages 129 f. An especially interesting modification is that of Tennyson's Palace of Art,a5b4a5b3.
Five-line stanzas are formed in various ways, e. g.,aaaba,aabba,aabab,abbba,ababa,ababb, etc., in lines of three, four, five, etc., stresses.
Six-line stanzas are formed by similar combinations; the most frequent is the quatrain + couplet, called, from Shakespeare's poem, the Venus and Adonis stanza,ababcc5(compare the end of the English sonnet and the ottava rima).[55]Familiar examples are Wordsworth's To a Skylark and his fine Laodamia.
Since them art dead, lo! here I prophesy:Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:It shall be waited on with jealousy,Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;Ne'er settled equally, but high or low;That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.Venus and Adonis.
Since them art dead, lo! here I prophesy:Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:It shall be waited on with jealousy,Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;Ne'er settled equally, but high or low;That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.Venus and Adonis.
The same rimes with 4-stress verses are also common,[56]for example, Wordsworth's
I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Another important 6-line stanza is the tail-rime orrime couée, a stanza much used in the Middle English romances and chosen by Chaucer for his parody, Sir Thopas. Harry Bailey, mine host of the Canterbury pilgrims, called it 'doggerel rime.' The simple and probably normal form isaa4b3cc4b3oraa4b3aa4b3, which to save space in the manuscripts was written thus:
Variations are extremely common: theaaa4b2ccc4b2of Wordsworth's To the Daisy,aaaa4b2ccc4b3of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott,aa3b2ccc3b2of S. F. Smith's America,aaa3b2ccc3b2of Drayton's Agincourt, and the so-called Burns stanza, in which Burns wrote some fifty poems,aaa4b2a4b2, e. g., To a Mouse and Address to the Deil.
The most important 7-line stanza is therime royaleor Chaucer (or Troilus) stanza,ababbcc5. In the Parlement of Foules, the Man of Law's Tale, and Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer made it a splendid vehicle both for narrative and for reflective analysis, for humor, satire, description, and all the gamut of emotions; in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries James I, Lydgate and Hoccleve, Henryson and Dunbar, and Skelton, Hawes and Barclay employed it,largely in imitation of Chaucer; Wyatt used it in his Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus; and Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece. Since then it has not proved attractive to the poets—though no reason for its disuse is obvious—except Wordsworth (in his translations of Chaucer) and Morris, Chaucer's latest disciple.
And by the hond ful oft he wolde takeThis Pandarus, and into gardyn lede,And swich a feste, and swiche a proces makeHym of Criseyde, and of hire wommanhede,And of hire beaute, that, withouten drede,It was an heven his wordes for to here,And thanne he wolde synge in this manere.Troilus and Criseyde, Bk. III.So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care,Holds disputation with each thing she views,And to herself all sorrow doth compare;No object but her passion's strength renews;And as one shifts, another straight ensues:Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words;Sometime 'tis mad and too much talk affords.Rape of Lucrece.Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhymeBeats with light wing against the ivory gate,Telling a tale not too importunateTo those who in the sleepy region stay,Lulled by the singer of an empty day.Morris, Earthly Paradise.
And by the hond ful oft he wolde takeThis Pandarus, and into gardyn lede,And swich a feste, and swiche a proces makeHym of Criseyde, and of hire wommanhede,And of hire beaute, that, withouten drede,It was an heven his wordes for to here,And thanne he wolde synge in this manere.Troilus and Criseyde, Bk. III.
So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care,Holds disputation with each thing she views,And to herself all sorrow doth compare;No object but her passion's strength renews;And as one shifts, another straight ensues:Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words;Sometime 'tis mad and too much talk affords.Rape of Lucrece.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhymeBeats with light wing against the ivory gate,Telling a tale not too importunateTo those who in the sleepy region stay,Lulled by the singer of an empty day.Morris, Earthly Paradise.
In comparison with the formality of Shakespeare's and the evenness of Morris's, the ease and smoothness of Chaucer's stanza are striking. Wyatt's stanzas are musical in their way.
Eight-line stanzas are variously formed—chiefly by the doubling of quatrains, sometimes with different rimes, asababcdcd, sometimes preserving one or another or both rimes, asababbcbc,abcbdbeb,ababacac,abababab, etc. Other varieties areabcdabcd(Rossetti) andaaabcccb(tail-rime), andaabbccdd.
One of the commonest 8-line stanzas is that imported from Italy and calledottava rima,abababcc. It has been charged with tediousness, and tedious it may become if not sedulously varied. It was introduced, along with so much else from Italy, by Wyatt, and was then employed for different purposes by Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, and others.[57]At the close of the eighteenth century it enjoyed a rebirth. "It had already been used by Harrington, Drayton, Fairfax (in his translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered), and ... in later times by Gay; and it had even been used by Frere's contemporary, William Tennant; but to Frere belongs the honour of giving it the special characteristics which Byron afterwards popularized in Beppo and Don Juan.... Byron, taking up the stanza with equal skill and greater genius, filled it with the vigour of his personality, and made it a measure of his own, which it has ever since been hazardous for inferior poets to attempt."[58]Byron had first adopted the stanza in his translation of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, which is itself inottava rime. Beppo was writtenin 1817, and Don Juan begun in the next year. In 1819 the first four cantos of Don Juan were published; in 1820 Keats published his Isabella, and Shelley wrote his Witch of Atlas, both in the same metre.
Those giant mountains inwardly were moved,But never made an outward change of place;Not so the mountain-giants—(as behovedA more alert and locomotive race),Hearing a clatter which they disapproved,They ran straight forward to besiege the placeWith a discordant universal yell,Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell.J. H. Frere, The Monks and the Giants.To the kind of reader of our sober climeThis way of writing will appear exotic;Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic,And revell'd in the fancies of the time,True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic,But all these, save the last, being obsolete,I chose a modern subject as more meet.Byron, Don Juan, IV, vi.A lovely Lady garmented in lightFrom her own beauty: deep her eyes as areTwo openings of unfathomable nightSeen through a temple's cloven roof; her hairDark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar;And her low voice was heard like love, and drewAll living things towards this wonder new.Shelley, The Witch of Atlas.
Those giant mountains inwardly were moved,But never made an outward change of place;Not so the mountain-giants—(as behovedA more alert and locomotive race),Hearing a clatter which they disapproved,They ran straight forward to besiege the placeWith a discordant universal yell,Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell.J. H. Frere, The Monks and the Giants.
To the kind of reader of our sober climeThis way of writing will appear exotic;Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic,And revell'd in the fancies of the time,True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic,But all these, save the last, being obsolete,I chose a modern subject as more meet.Byron, Don Juan, IV, vi.
A lovely Lady garmented in lightFrom her own beauty: deep her eyes as areTwo openings of unfathomable nightSeen through a temple's cloven roof; her hairDark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar;And her low voice was heard like love, and drewAll living things towards this wonder new.Shelley, The Witch of Atlas.
By far the most important of 9-line stanzas, and one of the finest of all stanzas in English poetry, is theababbcbc5c6invented by Spenser—a double quatrain of5-stress lines plus an alexandrine. This particular octave had been used by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, and is sometimes referred to as the Monk's Tale stanza: the stroke of metrical genius lay in adding the 'supplementary harmony' of the alexandrine, by which the whole stanza climbs to a majestic close or ebbs in a delightful decrescendo as the poet wills.[59]The long swing of nine verses on three rimes, with the combined effect of the interwoven rimes (ababandbcbc) united by the couplet in the middle, culminating in the unequal couplet at the close, the extraordinary opportunity of balancing and contrasting the rime sounds, and of almost infinitely varying the pauses—all these render the Spenserian stanza incomparable for nearly every sort of poetic expression.
After the Faerie Queene, the chief poems in this metre are: Shenstone's The Schoolmistress (1742), Thomson's The Castle of Indolence (1748), Burns'sThe Cotter's Saturday Night (1786), Scott's Don Roderick (1811), Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818 et seq.), Shelley's Laon and Cythna (The Revolt of Islam) (1817, 1818), and Adonais (1821), Keats's Eve of St. Agnes (1820), and the opening of Tennyson's Lotos Eaters (1833).
From the following examples only a limited conception can be gained of the stanza's varied capabilities. Long passages should be read together—and read, for this purpose, with more attention to the sound than to the meaning—in order that the peculiarities of handling of the different poets may be felt.
A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,The cruell marks of many a bloody fielde;Yet armes till that time did he never wield.His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.Faerie Queen, I, i, 1.With loftie eyes, halfe loth to looke so lowe,She thancked them in her disdainefull wise;Ne other grace vouchsafed them to showeOf Princesse worthy; scarse them bad arise.Her Lordes and Ladies all this while deviseThemselves to setten forth to straungers sight:Some frounce their curled heare in courtly guise;Some prancke their ruffes; and others trimly dightTheir gay attyre; each others greater pride does spight.Ibid., I, iv, 14.The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay:Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,In springing flowre the image of thy day.Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly sheeDoth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee,That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may.Lo! see soone after how more bold and freeHer bared bosome she doth broad display;Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away.Faerie Queen, II, xii, 74.Or like the hell-borne Hydra, which they faineThat great Alcides whilome overthrew,After that he had labourd long in vaineTo crop his thousand heads, the which still newForth budded, and in greater number grew.Such was the fury of this hellish Beast,Whitest Calidore him under him downe threw;Who nathemore his heavy load releast,But aye, the more he rag'd, the more his powre increast.Ibid., VI, xii, 32.O ruthful scene! when from a nook obscureHis little sister did his peril see:All playful as she sate, she grows demure;She finds full soon her wonted spirits free,She meditates a prayer to set him free:Nor gentle pardon could this dame deny(If gentle pardons could with dames agree)To her sad grief that swells in either eyeAnd wrings her so that all for pity she could die.Shenstone, The Schoolmistress.And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace;O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams,That played, in waving lights, from place to place,And shed a roseate smile on nature's face.Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array,So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space;Ne could it e'er such melting forms display,As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.James Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, I, xliv.The chearfu' supper done, wi' serious face,They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride:His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,He wales a portion with judicious care;And 'Let us worship God!' he says, with solemn air.Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night.Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way betweenHeights which appear as lovers who have partedIn hate, whose mining depths so intervene,That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,Love was the very root of the fond rageWhich blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:Itself expired, but leaving them an ageOf years all winters,—war within themselves to wage.Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, xciv.
A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,The cruell marks of many a bloody fielde;Yet armes till that time did he never wield.His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.Faerie Queen, I, i, 1.
With loftie eyes, halfe loth to looke so lowe,She thancked them in her disdainefull wise;Ne other grace vouchsafed them to showeOf Princesse worthy; scarse them bad arise.Her Lordes and Ladies all this while deviseThemselves to setten forth to straungers sight:Some frounce their curled heare in courtly guise;Some prancke their ruffes; and others trimly dightTheir gay attyre; each others greater pride does spight.Ibid., I, iv, 14.
The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay:Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,In springing flowre the image of thy day.Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly sheeDoth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee,That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may.Lo! see soone after how more bold and freeHer bared bosome she doth broad display;Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away.Faerie Queen, II, xii, 74.
Or like the hell-borne Hydra, which they faineThat great Alcides whilome overthrew,After that he had labourd long in vaineTo crop his thousand heads, the which still newForth budded, and in greater number grew.Such was the fury of this hellish Beast,Whitest Calidore him under him downe threw;Who nathemore his heavy load releast,But aye, the more he rag'd, the more his powre increast.Ibid., VI, xii, 32.
O ruthful scene! when from a nook obscureHis little sister did his peril see:All playful as she sate, she grows demure;She finds full soon her wonted spirits free,She meditates a prayer to set him free:Nor gentle pardon could this dame deny(If gentle pardons could with dames agree)To her sad grief that swells in either eyeAnd wrings her so that all for pity she could die.Shenstone, The Schoolmistress.
And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace;O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams,That played, in waving lights, from place to place,And shed a roseate smile on nature's face.Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array,So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space;Ne could it e'er such melting forms display,As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.James Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, I, xliv.
The chearfu' supper done, wi' serious face,They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride:His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,He wales a portion with judicious care;And 'Let us worship God!' he says, with solemn air.Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night.
Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way betweenHeights which appear as lovers who have partedIn hate, whose mining depths so intervene,That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,Love was the very root of the fond rageWhich blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:Itself expired, but leaving them an ageOf years all winters,—war within themselves to wage.Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, xciv.
(Childe Harold begins with many deliberate imitations of Spenser's language and style, but soon neglects them. Here perhaps more than in any other metre the tone and subject of the poem determine the movement of the stanza. The above is but one example of Byron's great variety.)
The One remains, the many change and pass;Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly;Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,Stains the white radiance of eternity,Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,If thou wouldst be with them that thou dost seek!Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weakThe glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.Shelley, Adonais, lii.The ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;And so it chanced, for many a door was wide,From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:The level chambers, ready with their pride,Were flowing to receive a thousand guests:The carvéd angels, ever eager-eyed,Stared, where upon their head the cornice rests,With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.Keats, Eve of St. Agnes, iv.
The One remains, the many change and pass;Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly;Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,Stains the white radiance of eternity,Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,If thou wouldst be with them that thou dost seek!Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weakThe glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.Shelley, Adonais, lii.
The ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;And so it chanced, for many a door was wide,From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:The level chambers, ready with their pride,Were flowing to receive a thousand guests:The carvéd angels, ever eager-eyed,Stared, where upon their head the cornice rests,With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.Keats, Eve of St. Agnes, iv.
During the earlier half of the seventeenth century a small group of poets, imitating Spenser both in substance and in external manner, introduced a number of stanzas, some of them not to be admired, whose chief characteristic is the alexandrine for a last line—e. g.,abababcc5c6,ababcc5c6,ababbcc5c6, andababbc5c6(which last is that of Milton's On the Death of a Fair Infant, The Passion, and the introduction to On the Morning of Christ's Nativity). Another modification is that of Milton's Ode itself,aa3b5cc3b5d4d6. Matthew Prior attempted to improve the Spenserian stanza in his Ode on the Battle of Ramillies by a rime scheme (suggested perhaps by the English sonnet)ababcdcde5e6—of which Dr. Johnson says: "He has altered the stanza of Spenser, as a house is altered by building another house in its place of a different form." Still farther from the Spenserian original, but probably a development from it, is Shelley's To a Skylarkabab3b6(mainly in falling rhythm); and an extension of this last is Swinburne's Hertha (see above, page 81)abab2b6in triple rising rhythm.
A sonnet is a moment's monument,—Memorial from the Soul's eternityTo one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,Of its own arduous fulness reverent:Carve it in ivory or in ebony,As Day or Night may rule, and let Time seeIts flowering crest impearled and orient.A sonnet is a coin: its face revealsThe soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:—Whether for tribute to the august appealsOf Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.Dante Gabriel Rosetti.The sonnet is a world, where feelings caughtIn webs of phantasy, combine and fuseTheir kindred elements 'neath mystic dewsShed from the ether round man's dwelling wrought;Distilling heart's content, star-fragrance fraughtWith influences from breathing firesOf heaven in everlasting endless gyresEnfolding and encircling orbs of thought.John Addington Symonds.A sonnet is a wave of melody:From heaving waters of the impassioned soulA billow of tidal music one and wholeFlows, in the "octave"; then, returning free,Its ebbing surges in the "sestet" rollBack to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.Theodore Watts-Dunton.It is the pure white diamond Dante broughtTo Beatrice; the sapphire Laura woreWhen Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core;The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wroughtFor his own soul, to wear for evermore.Eugene Lee-Hamilton.[60]
A sonnet is a moment's monument,—Memorial from the Soul's eternityTo one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,Of its own arduous fulness reverent:Carve it in ivory or in ebony,As Day or Night may rule, and let Time seeIts flowering crest impearled and orient.A sonnet is a coin: its face revealsThe soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:—Whether for tribute to the august appealsOf Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
The sonnet is a world, where feelings caughtIn webs of phantasy, combine and fuseTheir kindred elements 'neath mystic dewsShed from the ether round man's dwelling wrought;Distilling heart's content, star-fragrance fraughtWith influences from breathing firesOf heaven in everlasting endless gyresEnfolding and encircling orbs of thought.John Addington Symonds.
A sonnet is a wave of melody:From heaving waters of the impassioned soulA billow of tidal music one and wholeFlows, in the "octave"; then, returning free,Its ebbing surges in the "sestet" rollBack to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.Theodore Watts-Dunton.
It is the pure white diamond Dante broughtTo Beatrice; the sapphire Laura woreWhen Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core;The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wroughtFor his own soul, to wear for evermore.Eugene Lee-Hamilton.[60]
The only English stanza that can be said to rival the Spenserian in artistic merit is the sonnet: but the two are for very different purposes, the one being nearly always used in long, clearly connected series, generally narrative, the other nearly always as an independent poem. Even when sonnets are written in 'sequences,' the relation of the individual sonnets to each other is rarely very close; the unity of the whole sequence (as in Rossetti's House of Life, for example, or Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese) is one merely of general tone and subject. Some of Shakespeare's sonnets are bound together by an intimate unity like stanzas of one poem; others are completely detached. Occasionally a poem is composed of three or four sonnet-stanzas, as Leigh Hunt's The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit, but even then each sonnet remains an independent whole.
The word 'sonnet,' borrowed with the metrical form from Italy in the late sixteenth century,[61]was at first used loosely for almost any short poem on love not obviously a 'song'; but soon the term became restricted to a poem of fourteen 5-stress iambic lines arranged according to one of two definite rime schemes or their modifications. These two rime schemes arethe original Italianabba abba cde cdeand the Englishabab cdcd efef gg.
Italian Sonnet.The organization of the subject matter of an Italian sonnet is (at least theoretically) as fixed as that of the rimes. The whole should aim to convey without irrelevant detail a single thought or feeling. The first quatrain,abba, should introduce the subject; the second,abba, should develop it to a certain point, at which a pause occurs; such is the octave. The sestet continues in the first tercet,cde, the thought or feeling in a new direction or from a new point of view, and in the second,cde, brings it to a full conclusion.[62]The rime sounds of the octave and those of the sestet should be harmonious but not closely similar.
It stands to reason that very few poets have enslaved themselves to such an imperious master without assuming certain liberties. Very few sonnets of any poetic value can be found conforming strictly to all these requirements. But the general purport of the formal division may be seen in Christina Rossetti's poignant "Remember"—