Remember me when I am gone away,Gone far away into the silent land;When you no more can hold me by the hand,Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.Remember me when no more day by dayYou tell me of our future that you plann'd:Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieve:For if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.
Remember me when I am gone away,Gone far away into the silent land;When you no more can hold me by the hand,Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by dayYou tell me of our future that you plann'd:Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieve:For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.
The first quatrain says: Remember me when I am gone and we can no longer meet and part as in life. The second quatrain adds: when we can no longer enjoy the companionship of mind, planning what might have been. The sestet continues: Nevertheless, do not let the memory of me become a burden, especially if you ever learn what was in my living thoughts.
Most sonnet writers, while regarding the form as in the abstract something almost sacred, have felt free to mould it in some measure to the immediate demands of their subject—not all, however, with the same success.[63]For the sonnet demands perfection, a single flaw almost cripples it; and few have the absolute command of language necessary to forge a single idea without irrelevance and without omission according to so strict a pattern. Those who are too subservient to the form weaken their poetic thought; those who, like Wordsworth often, are inobedient to the form, produce a poem which is imperfect because it is neither a sonnetnor not a sonnet. Few have come as near the true balance as Milton at his best. "A hundred Poets," says Sir William Watson,
A hundred Poets bend proud necks to bearThis yoke, this bondage. He alone could donHis badges of subjection with the airOf one who puts a king's regalia on.
A hundred Poets bend proud necks to bearThis yoke, this bondage. He alone could donHis badges of subjection with the airOf one who puts a king's regalia on.
And yet Milton, while preserving the rime scheme, generally disregards the thought divisions, and in half of his sonnets has the pause, not after the eighth line but within the ninth. Commenting on this division Wordsworth says: "Now it has struck me, that this is not done merely to gratify the ear by variety and freedom of sound, but also to aid in giving that pervading sense of intense unity in which the excellence of the sonnet has always seemed to me mainly to consist. Instead of looking at this composition as a piece of architecture, making a whole out of three parts, I have been much in the habit of preferring the image of an orbicular body—a sphere or dew-drop."
Such a close unity can easily be obtained from the Italian sonnet, as hundreds of examples prove,—Milton's On his Blindness is a striking case, with no full stop until the end of the fourteenth line,—but even better for this object is the rime scheme invented by Spenser and used in a hundred and twenty-one sonnets:ababbcbccdcdee. The Spenserian sonnet, however, has found no favor with later poets.
Certain variations in the Italian form are regularly admitted as legitimate. The quatrains must always rimeabba, but the sestet may rimecdecdeorcdcdcdorcdedceorcdedec, or almost any arrangement of two or three rimes which does not end in a couplet. And even this last caveat is sometimes disregarded by careful sonneteers. A greater liberty is to vary the rimes of the octave toabbaacca. The division of the sestet into two distinct tercets is very rarely maintained; and that of the octave into quatrains is frequently neglected with impunity. Thus the poet adjusts his theme to the strict rules of the sonnet much as he adjusts the natural rhythm of language to the strict forms of metre; the one inescapable requisite being that in neither may he lose hold of the fundamental pattern. But there is this difference, that the sonnet form is extraordinarily firm, and breaks if forced very far from normal.Howfar one may go can be determined only in special cases, for "the mighty masters are a law unto themselves, and the validity of their legislation will be attested and held against all comers by the splendour of an unchallengeable success" (Pattison).
The early Italian sonnets in English, those of Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, are very irregular: Sidney's nearly always end in a couplet and rime the octaveabbaabbaorababababorababbaba. Sometimes he uses such a scheme asababbababccbcc. Wyatt has one rimedabbaaccacddcee, and Surrey oneababababababaa.
Donne's Holy Sonnets (written about 1617, though not printed till 1633, 1635) were regular in form, and were practically the first English sonnets not concerned with love. Milton followed this tradition, and expanded it to further themes—his only successful poems in lighter mood are sonnets—occasional and political subjects—
... in his handThe thing became a trumpet, whence he blewSoul-animating strains—alas, too few!
... in his handThe thing became a trumpet, whence he blewSoul-animating strains—alas, too few!
On the formal side Milton handled the sonnet, as has been said, with the freedom of a master.
From the time of Milton's (1642-58) very few sonnets were written in England till towards the end of the eighteenth century. Then the form was revived, under the original impulse of the Wartons in the mid-century, by Bowles, and given a new life by Wordsworth and Keats. In 1850 Mrs. Browning published her Sonnets from the Portuguese, and in 1870 and 1881 Rossetti his sonnet-sequence, The House of Life. The latter contains on the whole the truest representatives of the Italian model.
The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale:The nightingale with feathers new she sings;The turtle to her make hath told her tale.Summer is come, for every spray now springs:The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;The fishes flete with new repaired scale.The adder all her slough away she slings;The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;The busy bee her honey now she mings;Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.And thus I see among these pleasant thingsEach care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!How silently, and with how wan a face!What, may it be that e'en in heavenly placeThat busy archer his sharp arrows tries!Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyesCan judge of love, thou feelst a lover's case,I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace,To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?Are beauties there as proud as here they be?Do they above love to be loved, and yetThose lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?Sir Phillip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, xxxi.Death, be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;And soonest our best men with thee do go—Rest of their bones and souls' delivery!Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!John Donne.Cyriack, this three-years-day these eyes, though clearTo outward view of blemish or of spot,Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;Not to their idle orbs doth sight appearOf sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,Or man, or woman. Yet I argue notAgainst Heav'ns hand or will, nor bate one jotOr heart or hope; but still bear up, and steerRight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?—The conscience, friend, to have lost them overpli'dIn liberty's defence, my noble task,Of which all Europe rings from side to side.This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask,Content, though blind, had I no better guide.Milton.Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass byA sight so touching in its majesty:This City now doth like a garment wearThe beauty of the morning; silent, bare,Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lieOpen unto the fields, and to the sky;All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.Never did sun more beautifully steepIn his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!The river glideth at his own sweet will:Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;And all that mighty heart is lying still!Wordsworth, Upon Westminster Bridge.Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow. NevermoreAlone upon the threshold of my doorOf individual life shall I commandThe uses of my soul, nor lift my handSerenely in the sunshine as before,Without the sense of that which I forbore—Thy touch upon the palm. The widest landDoom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mineWith pulses that beat double. What I doAnd what I dream include thee, as the wineMust taste of its own grapes. And when I sueGod for myself, He hears that name of thine,And sees within my eyes the tears of two.E. B. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese.Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve),That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,And her enchanted hair was the first gold.And still she sits, young while the earth is old,And, subtly of herself contemplative,Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,Till heart and body and life are in its hold.The rose and poppy are her flowers: for whereIs he not found, O Lilith! whom shed scentAnd soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so wentThy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,And round his heart one strangling golden hair.D. G. Rossetti, Body's Beauty.I met a traveler from an antique land,Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.Shelley, Ozymandias.
The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale:The nightingale with feathers new she sings;The turtle to her make hath told her tale.Summer is come, for every spray now springs:The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;The fishes flete with new repaired scale.The adder all her slough away she slings;The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;The busy bee her honey now she mings;Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.And thus I see among these pleasant thingsEach care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!How silently, and with how wan a face!What, may it be that e'en in heavenly placeThat busy archer his sharp arrows tries!Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyesCan judge of love, thou feelst a lover's case,I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace,To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?Are beauties there as proud as here they be?Do they above love to be loved, and yetThose lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?Sir Phillip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, xxxi.
Death, be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;And soonest our best men with thee do go—Rest of their bones and souls' delivery!Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!John Donne.
Cyriack, this three-years-day these eyes, though clearTo outward view of blemish or of spot,Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;Not to their idle orbs doth sight appearOf sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,Or man, or woman. Yet I argue notAgainst Heav'ns hand or will, nor bate one jotOr heart or hope; but still bear up, and steerRight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?—The conscience, friend, to have lost them overpli'dIn liberty's defence, my noble task,Of which all Europe rings from side to side.This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask,Content, though blind, had I no better guide.Milton.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass byA sight so touching in its majesty:This City now doth like a garment wearThe beauty of the morning; silent, bare,Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lieOpen unto the fields, and to the sky;All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.Never did sun more beautifully steepIn his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!The river glideth at his own sweet will:Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;And all that mighty heart is lying still!Wordsworth, Upon Westminster Bridge.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow. NevermoreAlone upon the threshold of my doorOf individual life shall I commandThe uses of my soul, nor lift my handSerenely in the sunshine as before,Without the sense of that which I forbore—Thy touch upon the palm. The widest landDoom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mineWith pulses that beat double. What I doAnd what I dream include thee, as the wineMust taste of its own grapes. And when I sueGod for myself, He hears that name of thine,And sees within my eyes the tears of two.E. B. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve),That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,And her enchanted hair was the first gold.And still she sits, young while the earth is old,And, subtly of herself contemplative,Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,Till heart and body and life are in its hold.The rose and poppy are her flowers: for whereIs he not found, O Lilith! whom shed scentAnd soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so wentThy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,And round his heart one strangling golden hair.D. G. Rossetti, Body's Beauty.
I met a traveler from an antique land,Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.Shelley, Ozymandias.
Here the rime scheme is peculiarly irregular, and the result is hardly a sonnet at all. Shelley's manuscript shows that the poem cost him a great deal of trouble.
English Sonnet. Out of the 'irregularities' and experiments of the early English sonneteers there rapidly developed a new form based on an entirely different principle of division, a series of three quatrainsabab,cdcd,efef, followed by a coupletgg. This looser structure, simpler in music and in arrangement of subject matter, soon became a favorite, was used by Surrey and by Sidney, and was adopted by Shakespeare for his hundred and fifty-four sonnets[64]—hence it issometimes called the Shakespearian sonnet. "With this key," said Wordsworth,
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.
But a sonnet in the stricter sense this 14-line stanza of course is not; for it does not aim to possess the balance, contrast, and functional organization of the Italian stanza. It has qualities of its own, however, which give it its own distinction; and, moreover, it is frankly what many sonnets of the stricter form, without the justification of a difficult and definitely organic structure, are: simply a poem of fourteen lines. For many of Wordsworth's and most of Mrs. Browning's sonnets, though they have the rime-scheme of the Italian, have the simple thought arrangement of the English sonnet.
Not many examples are necessary. Some, like the first two below, preserve the metrical division of the quatrains, with the couplet for an epigrammatic summary; others more or less obscure the division.
Combinations of the two sonnet forms not infrequently occur (as in the last example below), but they are not approved by the critics or the theorists, and generally they miss the excellences of both forms, however successful they may be in other respects.
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy mightTo that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the lightThat doth both shine and give us sight to see.O take fast hold! let that light be thy guideIn this small course which birth draws out to death,And think how evil becometh him to slideWho seeketh Heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.Then farewell, world! thy uttermost I see:Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!Sir Philip Sidney.That time of year thou may'st in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs that shake against the cold—Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expire,Consumed with that which it was nourished by.This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strongTo love that well which thou must leave ere long.Shakespeare, Sonnet 73.Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,Pressed by these rebel powers that thee array,Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?Why so large cost, having so short a lease,Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,And let that pine to aggravate thy store;Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;Within be fed, without be rich no more;So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men;And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.Shakespeare, Sonnet 146.When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee: and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate:For thy sweet love remembered such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.Shakespeare, Sonnet 29.O deep unlovely brooklet, moaning slowThrough moorish fen in utter loneliness!The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flowIn pulseful tremor, when with sudden pressThe huntsman fluskers through the rustled heather.In March thy sallow buds from vermeil shellsBreak satin-tinted, downy as the featherOf moss-chat, that among the purplish bellsBreasts into fresh new life her three unborn.The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clearAnd mournful-strange his human cry forlorn.While wearily, alone, and void of cheer,Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen,To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.David Gray, To a Brooklet.If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is forever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,A body of England's, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.Rupert Brooke, The Soldier.[65]
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy mightTo that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the lightThat doth both shine and give us sight to see.O take fast hold! let that light be thy guideIn this small course which birth draws out to death,And think how evil becometh him to slideWho seeketh Heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.Then farewell, world! thy uttermost I see:Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!Sir Philip Sidney.
That time of year thou may'st in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs that shake against the cold—Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expire,Consumed with that which it was nourished by.This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strongTo love that well which thou must leave ere long.Shakespeare, Sonnet 73.
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,Pressed by these rebel powers that thee array,Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?Why so large cost, having so short a lease,Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,And let that pine to aggravate thy store;Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;Within be fed, without be rich no more;So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men;And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.Shakespeare, Sonnet 146.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee: and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate:For thy sweet love remembered such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.Shakespeare, Sonnet 29.
O deep unlovely brooklet, moaning slowThrough moorish fen in utter loneliness!The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flowIn pulseful tremor, when with sudden pressThe huntsman fluskers through the rustled heather.In March thy sallow buds from vermeil shellsBreak satin-tinted, downy as the featherOf moss-chat, that among the purplish bellsBreasts into fresh new life her three unborn.The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clearAnd mournful-strange his human cry forlorn.While wearily, alone, and void of cheer,Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen,To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.David Gray, To a Brooklet.
If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is forever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,A body of England's, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.Rupert Brooke, The Soldier.[65]
Besides the stanzas described above, which are but the most familiar or most important of the great variety of regular English stanzas, there are others which, because they are peculiarly constructed or not regularly repeated, may be called Complex. Such are, for example, the 'trailing vine' stanzas of Spenser's Prothalamion (abba5a3bcbc5dded5ee3ff5) and Epithalamion (ababc5c3dcde5e3fggf5f4hh5), and also the simplerababcde5c3de5of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale.
Many of these complex stanzaic forms, moreover, belong in the tradition of the so-called Pindaric ode, imitated freely from the Greek choric odes of Pindar. The closer imitations are in fixed though complex stanzas regularly repeated, and are called Regular Pindarics. These have first a strophe of undetermined length, then an antistrophe identical in structure with the strophe, and then an epode, different in structure from the strophe and antistrophe. The second strophe and second antistrophe are identical metrically with the first, the second epode with the first epode; and so on. The best examples in English are Ben Jonson's Onthe Death of Sir H. Morrison, and Gray's Progress of Poesy and The Bard.[66]
About the middle of the seventeenth century, Cowley, misunderstanding the structure of Pindar's verse, invented another sort of Pindaric ode, which is called Irregular because, as he himself explained, "the numbers are various and irregular," and there was no formal stanzaic repetition. The lines were long or short according as the thought-rhythm demanded (or seemed to demand), and in respect to arrangement were not bound to any formal pattern. This freedom, under skilful control, may well produce felicitous results, but when not managed by poets of a strong and sure rhythmic sense—as it was not by the many Cowleyan imitators—it results merely in metrical license and amorphousness. "That for which I think this inequality of number is chiefly to be preferred," said Dr. Sprat, the first historian of the Royal Society, intending no sarcasm, "is its affinity with prose." But this argument, which is in part also that of the modern free-versifiers, is simply a confusion of two functions, the verse function and the prose function.
But before very long Cowley's invention found a true master in Dryden, whose To the Pious Memory of ... Mrs. Anne Killigrew (1686), Song for St. Cecelia's Day (1687), and Alexander's Feast (1697) are justly praised for their 'concerted music.' The example had in fact already been set by a still greater master; for Miltonwith his early experiments in unequal rimed lines (On Time and At a Solemn Music), his incomparable success with the irregular placing of rimes in Lycidas, and his choral effects both with and without rime in Samson Agonistes, had shown what English could do under proper guidance. Then, after Dryden, the regular Pindarics of Gray and certain of Collins' Odes helped to carry on the tradition down to Coleridge's Dejection, Monody on the Death of Chatterton, and Ode on the Departing Year, and its culmination in Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality ode (1807). After that, both in time and in interest, come Shelley's Mont Blanc (1816) (which he himself described as "an undisciplined overflowing of the soul") and Tennyson's On the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852) (which has at least Tennyson's almost unfailing technical dexterity). The work of Coventry Patmore in this kind of verse has not been generally approved. This is partly because of the subjects on which he wrote and partly because of his inability to compose lines of haunting melody—perhaps his deliberate avoidance of them. But in certain poems like The Azalea and The Toys the very intensity of the feeling both creates and sustains and in the end justifies the 'irregular' metre.
Perhaps three-fourths of the greatest English poetry is in the unrimed 5-stress line called blank verse—nearly all the Elizabethan drama, Paradise Lost, some of the best of Keats and Shelley, Wordsworth's Michael, The Prelude, The Excursion (the good withthe bad!), Tennyson's Princess and Idylls (notable poems of their age, though not to be ranked with 'the greatest'), and Browning's The Ring and the Book, together with most of the dramatic monologues. No other metrical form has such an interesting history; no other form has manifested so great a variety and adaptability for every kind of poetic thought and feeling. These two facts alone—its bulk and its variety—would justify a much fuller treatment than is possible here. But it will perhaps be sufficient to follow rapidly in outline the development of blank verse, with illustrations of the most significant stages, and then, in the following chapter, to devote more attention to blank verse than to rimed stanzas in the exposition of metrical harmonies and modulations.
The idea of writing unrimed verse was no doubt the most valuable result to English poetry of the academic attempts, towards the end of the sixteenth century, to write classical verse in English. It could be pointed out triumphantly that all the splendid poetry of classical antiquity—Homer and Lucretius and Virgil, Sappho and Catullus and Horace and Ovid—had been independent of rime; and whatever might be the disagreement on quantitative feet in English, it was impossible to deny that English could successfully copy this element of the great classical verse and recover, as Milton said, the ancient liberty "from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."
The movement had already begun in Italy with Trissino's Sophonisbe, written in 1515, the first modern tragedy. It reached England in the middle of thecentury with the influence of the Italian Renaissance brought chiefly by Wyatt and Surrey. Surrey translated two books of the Æneid (II and IV) into blank verse (published in 1557); Sackville and Norton adopted it for the first English tragedy, Gorboduc (1565); and then Gascoigne used it in his Steele Glas (1576) for general didactic and satiric purposes. Thus the beginning was made, and it remained only for the new form to justify itself by its children. Experiments continued, with the first great achievement in Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great.
The early examples show plainly both the influence of the parent couplet—for, as was said above, blank verse was written first as the old couplet without rime—and the syllable-counting principle: the line unit is prominent, there are comparatively few run-on lines or couplets, and some of Surrey's verse, for example, though it has the ten syllables then regarded as necessary, refuses to 'scan' according to more recent practice because the stresses are wholly irregular. On the other hand, there is often so great a regularity in coincidence of natural rhythm and metrical pattern, reinforced by some awkward wrenches of the conventional order of word and phrase, that the result is unpleasantly stiff and formal.
The Greeks' chieftains all irked with the warWherein they wasted had so many years,And oft repuls'd by fatal destiny,A huge horse made, high raised like a hill,By the divine science of Minerva:Of cloven fir compacted were his ribs;For their return a feigned sacrifice:The fame whereof so wander'd it at point.In the dark bulk they clos'd bodies of menChosen by lot, and did enstuff by stealthThe hollow womb with armed soldiers.There stands in sight an isle, high Tenedon,Rich, and of fame, while Priam's kingdom stood;Now but a bay, and road, unsure for ship.Surrey, Second Book of Virgil's Æneid.
The Greeks' chieftains all irked with the warWherein they wasted had so many years,And oft repuls'd by fatal destiny,A huge horse made, high raised like a hill,By the divine science of Minerva:Of cloven fir compacted were his ribs;For their return a feigned sacrifice:The fame whereof so wander'd it at point.In the dark bulk they clos'd bodies of menChosen by lot, and did enstuff by stealthThe hollow womb with armed soldiers.There stands in sight an isle, high Tenedon,Rich, and of fame, while Priam's kingdom stood;Now but a bay, and road, unsure for ship.Surrey, Second Book of Virgil's Æneid.
This is not so much monotonously regular as intolerably rough and unsteady.
For cares of kings, that rule as you have rul'd,For public wealth, and not for private joy,Do waste man's life and hasten crooked age,With furrowed face, and with enfeebled limbs,To draw on creeping death a swifter pace.They two, yet young, shall bear the parted reignWith greater ease than one, now old, aloneCan wield the whole, for whom much harder isWith lessened strength the double weight to bear.Gorboduc, Act I, sc. ii.The Nightingale, whose happy noble hart,No dole can daunt, nor fearful force affright,Whose chereful voice, doth comfort saddest wights,When she hir self, hath little cause to sing,Whom lovers love, bicause she plaines their greves,She wraies their woes, and yet relieves their payne,Whom worthy mindes, alwayes esteemed much,And gravest yeares, have not disdainde hir notes:(Only that king proud Tereus by his nameWith murdring knife, did carve hir pleasant tong,To cover so, his own foule filthy fault)This worthy bird, hath taught my weary Muze,To sing a song, in spight of their despight,Which work my woe, withouten cause or crime ...The Steele Glas.
For cares of kings, that rule as you have rul'd,For public wealth, and not for private joy,Do waste man's life and hasten crooked age,With furrowed face, and with enfeebled limbs,To draw on creeping death a swifter pace.They two, yet young, shall bear the parted reignWith greater ease than one, now old, aloneCan wield the whole, for whom much harder isWith lessened strength the double weight to bear.Gorboduc, Act I, sc. ii.
The Nightingale, whose happy noble hart,No dole can daunt, nor fearful force affright,Whose chereful voice, doth comfort saddest wights,When she hir self, hath little cause to sing,Whom lovers love, bicause she plaines their greves,She wraies their woes, and yet relieves their payne,Whom worthy mindes, alwayes esteemed much,And gravest yeares, have not disdainde hir notes:(Only that king proud Tereus by his nameWith murdring knife, did carve hir pleasant tong,To cover so, his own foule filthy fault)This worthy bird, hath taught my weary Muze,To sing a song, in spight of their despight,Which work my woe, withouten cause or crime ...The Steele Glas.
Note here the monotonous pauses, indicated by the original punctuation.
Marlowe, inheriting the defects of his predecessors,succeeded, by virtue of his "plastic energy and power of harmonious modulation" in recreating the measure. He found it "monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long [i. e., unstressed and stressed]. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate their form. He did not force his metre to preserve a fixed and unalterable type, but suffered it to assume most variable modulations, the whole beauty of which depended upon their perfect adaptation to the current of his ideal."[67]No metre responds so readily and so completely to a poet's endowment of genius as blank verse, and hence the secret of Marlowe's improvements over his predecessors is his superior poetic gift. He seems to have felt and thought and written with an enormous imaginative power; by making his verse an organic expression of this power he achieved an almost new medium, ranging in variety from the simplicity and pathos of—
Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer,Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer,That bloody man?
Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer,Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer,That bloody man?
to the "swelling bombast of bragging blank verse" (Thomas Nash's hostile phrase) in Tamburlaine—
No! for I shall not die.See, where my slave, the ugly monster, Death,Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear,Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart,Who flies away at every glance I give,And, when I look away, comes stealing on.Villain, away, and hie thee to the field!I and mine army come to load thy backWith souls of thousand mangled carcasses.Look, where he goes; but see, he comes again,Because I stay: Techelles, let us marchAnd weary Death with bearing souls to hell.Part II, Act V, sc. iii.
No! for I shall not die.See, where my slave, the ugly monster, Death,Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear,Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart,Who flies away at every glance I give,And, when I look away, comes stealing on.Villain, away, and hie thee to the field!I and mine army come to load thy backWith souls of thousand mangled carcasses.Look, where he goes; but see, he comes again,Because I stay: Techelles, let us marchAnd weary Death with bearing souls to hell.Part II, Act V, sc. iii.
But even in Marlowe the 'mighty line' is still felt as the unit. All his volubility, his extravagance, his passion, his occasional tenderness did but develop the line to its fullest possibilities; the larger unit of the long harmonious period or 'blank verse paragraph' is rare and exceptional with him, though credit is due him for foreshadowing this also:
Now, lords, our loving friends and countrymen,Welcome to England all, with prosperous winds;Our kindest friends in Belgia have we left,To cope with friends at home; a heavy caseWhen force to force is knit, and sword and glaiveIn civil broils make kin and countrymenSlaughter themselves in others, and their sidesWith their own weapons gored.Edward II, Act IV, sc. iv.
Now, lords, our loving friends and countrymen,Welcome to England all, with prosperous winds;Our kindest friends in Belgia have we left,To cope with friends at home; a heavy caseWhen force to force is knit, and sword and glaiveIn civil broils make kin and countrymenSlaughter themselves in others, and their sidesWith their own weapons gored.Edward II, Act IV, sc. iv.
Shakespeare's blank verse is the supreme manifestation of the measure for dramatic purposes. In his plays it modulates and adapts itself to the changing emotionsof every speaker, "from merely colloquial dialogue to strains of impassioned soliloquy, from comic repartee to tragic eloquence, from terse epigrams to elaborate descriptions." It is customary to distinguish three 'periods' in Shakespeare's blank verse, corresponding closely to his whole artistic development: first, the more formal, 'single-moulded' line of the early plays; second, the perfect freedom and mastery of the great tragedies; and, third, the daring liberties, verging on license, of the later plays. These distinctions have, of course, no more absolute value than all similar classifications of impalpable modifications, but they at least suggest the underlying truth that Shakespeare began as a beginner, and then, having mastered the difficulties and subtleties of the form, treated it with the easy familiarity of a master. To illustrate these developments adequately would require pages of quotation; but one may compare the restricted movement of such a passage as this from Two Gentlemen of Verona (III, i)—
Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care;Which to requite, command me while I live.This love of theirs myself have often seen,Haply when they have judg'd me fast asleep,And oftentimes have purpos'd to forbidSir Valentine her company and my court;But, fearing lest my jealous aim might err,And so unworthily disgrace the man,—A rashness that I ever yet have shunn'd,—I gave him gentle looks, thereby to findThat which thyself hast now disclos'd to me.
Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care;Which to requite, command me while I live.This love of theirs myself have often seen,Haply when they have judg'd me fast asleep,And oftentimes have purpos'd to forbidSir Valentine her company and my court;But, fearing lest my jealous aim might err,And so unworthily disgrace the man,—A rashness that I ever yet have shunn'd,—I gave him gentle looks, thereby to findThat which thyself hast now disclos'd to me.
with the fine modulations, fitting exactly the nuances of meaning in this from Hamlet (III, iii)—
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?In the corrupted currents of this worldOffence's gilded hand may shove by justice,And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itselfBuys out the law. But 'tis not so above.There is no shuffling, there the action liesIn his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,To give in evidence. What then? What rests?Try what repentance can. What can it not?
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?In the corrupted currents of this worldOffence's gilded hand may shove by justice,And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itselfBuys out the law. But 'tis not so above.There is no shuffling, there the action liesIn his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,To give in evidence. What then? What rests?Try what repentance can. What can it not?
or this from King Lear (II, iv)—
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!If it be you that stirs these daughters' heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women's weapons, water-drops,Stain my man's cheeks.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!If it be you that stirs these daughters' heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women's weapons, water-drops,Stain my man's cheeks.
and also with the flowing, slightly 'irregular' lines of this from The Tempest (II, i)—
But I feel notThis deity in my bosom. Twenty consciences,That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be theyAnd melt ere they molest! Here lies your brother,No better than the earth he lies uponIf he were that which now he's like, that's dead;Whom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it,Can lay to be for ever; whiles you, doing thus,To the perpetual wink for aye might putThis ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, whoShould not upbraid our course.
But I feel notThis deity in my bosom. Twenty consciences,That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be theyAnd melt ere they molest! Here lies your brother,No better than the earth he lies uponIf he were that which now he's like, that's dead;Whom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it,Can lay to be for ever; whiles you, doing thus,To the perpetual wink for aye might putThis ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, whoShould not upbraid our course.
The greater freedom of syncopation and substitution, of extra syllables and unusual pauses, which characterizes Shakespeare's later blank verse, became almost a norm with Beaumont and Fletcher, Shirley, Ford, and the Jacobean dramatists. They often carriedfreedom to the extreme limit, where an inch further would change verse into prose. They were capable, to be sure, of more careful regular verse, and wrote it when the occasion seemed to call for it; but partly from choice, and partly no doubt from haste or indifference or both, they made a very free blank verse their staple. Shakespeare had alternated prose and verse as the subject or tone required; the later dramatists seemed to seek a verse that might be, in a sense, midway between prose and verse. Thus they avoided a necessity of frequent change, except a loosening or tightening of the reins. To call this verse decadent is somewhat unjust. It is in truth a special form which is certainly well justified for certain subjects and occasions.
Why how darst thou meet me again thou rebel,And knowst how thou hast used me thrice, thou rascal?Were there not waies enough to fly my vengeance,No hole nor vaults to hide thee from my fury,But thou must meet me face to face to kill thee?I would not seek thee to destroy thee willingly,But now thou comest to invite me,And comest upon me,How like a sheep-biting rogue taken i'th' manner,And ready for the halter dost thou look now!Thou hast a hanging look thou scurvy thing, hast ne'er a knifeNor ever a string to lead thee to Elysium?BeaumontandFletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, V, i.By this you find I am to Millaine neerAlly'd; but more to tempt your fury onMy life, know 'twas my valiant father tookYour brother prisoner, and presented himWhere he receiv'd his death, my father thatSo oft hath humbled you in war, and madeHis victories triumph almost uponThe ruines of your state.Davenant, Love and Honour, V, iii.
Why how darst thou meet me again thou rebel,And knowst how thou hast used me thrice, thou rascal?Were there not waies enough to fly my vengeance,No hole nor vaults to hide thee from my fury,But thou must meet me face to face to kill thee?I would not seek thee to destroy thee willingly,But now thou comest to invite me,And comest upon me,How like a sheep-biting rogue taken i'th' manner,And ready for the halter dost thou look now!Thou hast a hanging look thou scurvy thing, hast ne'er a knifeNor ever a string to lead thee to Elysium?BeaumontandFletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, V, i.
By this you find I am to Millaine neerAlly'd; but more to tempt your fury onMy life, know 'twas my valiant father tookYour brother prisoner, and presented himWhere he receiv'd his death, my father thatSo oft hath humbled you in war, and madeHis victories triumph almost uponThe ruines of your state.Davenant, Love and Honour, V, iii.
When Milton composed Comus in 1634 it was natural for him to model his blank verse on the best of Shakespeare's and Ben Jonson's, rather than on that of the contemporary playwrights; for his finer taste, his more delicate ear, and his classical training and tendencies would at once lead him to reject the metrical laxities of Ford, Shirley, Davenant,and the other writers of 'broken down' blank verse. And though his language shows great familiarity with the later plays of Shakespeare, especially The Tempest, he admitted comparatively few of their metrical licenses and followed in the main the versification of the Midsummer Night's Dream and the earlier tragedies. There is generally a tendency to make the line the unit—but the verse paragraph or stanza effect is also present in nearly fully developed form, as witness the opening lines of the poem—weak or feminine endings are not frequent, alexandrines very few. The 'short fit of rhyming' (ll. 495 ff.), disapproved by Dr. Johnson, would be explained partly by the tradition of the masque and partly by the model of Shakespeare's comedies.
But the great Miltonic blank verse of Paradise Lost is not a copy of any master; it is a development and a consummation of two influences, the slow maturity of Milton's mind, deepened and broadened by the Commonwealth controversies "not without dust and heat," and the exalted sublimity of the yet unattempted theme of justifying God's management of human and divine affairs. His maturity brought him his great familiarity both in matter and in style with nearly all that was best in European literature, and his peculiarsubject, with only gods and angels (Adam and Eve are scarcely human, even after the fall) for characters and selected portions of eternity and infinity for time and place, gave him the tendency to artificiality and strain to the outmost verges of sublimity, and to extraordinary involution of phrase and idea—for all of which he must have a suitable prosody. He chose blank verse when the poetical fashion was for rime and described it, in words not altogether clear, as consisting "only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse to another."[68]Apt numbers, that is, appropriate rhythms, Milton's verse certainly has; but it is the last item, the great variety of movements subordinating the line-unit, and running-on of verses into longer periods, for which his blank verse is famous. Every page of Paradise Lost contains examples; some of the finest occur in the rhetorical display of the Pandemonic Council in Book II. Note the position of the pauses in the following passage, and then compare the specimens of early blank verse given above.