Chapter 4 of 7 · 4360 words · ~22 min read

II.

(It will be observed that each of the couplets enclosed in square brackets is simply a blank-verse line, arbitrarily split. This is probably the result of the effort at rhymeless _stanza_. Observe the unbroken iambic rhythm--another danger.)

(_c_) Southey (_Thalaba_):

(Iambic lines of various lengths with trochaic and spondaic but no other substitution (there are anapæsts elsewhere). The couplet-six, or split Alexandrine, is intentional, but Southey expressly avoids split heroics.)

(_d_) Shelley (_Queen Mab_):

How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon With lips of lurid blue; The other, rosy as the morn When throned on ocean's wave It blushes o'er the world: Yet both so passing wonderful!

XXXVII. THE REVIVED BALLAD (PERCY TO COLERIDGE)

(_a_) Percy's imitation of equivalence and extension of scheme (_Sir Cawline_):

(Not bad; might have been improved by "_And_ the tears|.")

(_b_) Goldsmith (regularised sing-song):

(_c_) Southey (quite sound in principle, and not bad in effect; but a little more poetic powder wanted):

(_d_) Coleridge (the real thing in simpler and more complex form):

(The presence and absence of anapæstic substitution here, with its effect in each case, should be carefully studied.)

XXXVIII

Specimens of _Christabel_, with note on the application of the system to later lyric. (Some have said that in _Christabel_ "the consideration of feet is dropped altogether," and others, that it "cannot be analysed," or can only be so by the rough process of counting accents. Let us go and do it.)

(A five-lined ballad stanza, freely but regularly equivalenced with anapæsts. Line 3 may be four monosyllabic feet, or an iambic monometer--two feet,--according to the value put on the first note of the owl's cry.) The rest of the piece is _not_ in ballad stanza, but in octosyllabic couplet, again more or less freely but regularly equivalenced, and allowing itself occasional licences of rhyme-order, line-length, etc. Thus the succeeding lines are in two batches, where the substitution--anapæstic, trochaic, spondaic or monosyllabic--increases, dwindles, disappears and reappears _ad libitum_:

The whole of the rest follows suit, with occasional variations (_not_, save in one case perhaps, "irregularities"), as, for instance--

Ă̄nd || in ¦ si|lence ¦ pray|eth ¦ she. . . . . . . . From || the ¦ love|ly ¦ la|dy's ¦ cheek,

where a triple scansion might appear possible: (1) monosyllabic beginnings indicated by ||; (2) three-foot lines with anapæstic opening (|); and (3) the trochaic variation common in seventeenth-century poets (¦). A famous third line--

Bēau|tĭfŭ̄l | ĕ̄xcēed|ĭnglȳ,|

decides in favour of (1), for (2) and (3) would exceedingly spoil its beauty. There is sometimes almost _complete_ anapæstic substitution--

which is still further developed in the spell of Geraldine--

Ĭn thĕ tōuch | ŏf thĭs bō|sŏm thĕre wōrk|ĕth ă spēll.

(This, in couplet, is a little dangerous.)

_Note on the Application of the "Christabel" System to Nineteenth-Century Lyric generally._

It is most remarkable, but suggestive to a further extent of the fact that Coleridge did not entirely comprehend what he was doing, that _Christabel_, especially its opening stanza, supplies a complete key to the later nineteenth-century lyrical scansion which (_v. sup._ p. 27) he and others failed to understand in Tennyson. That opening stanza, placed side by side with the "Hollyhock Song" (see above again), will completely interpret it to any one who has eye and ear enough to mutate the _mutanda_. And when the connection and the interpretation have once been seized, there is nothing, from Shelley's apparently impulsive and instinctive harmonies to the most complicated experiments of Browning and Swinburne, which will not yield to the master keys of equivalent substitution and varying of line-length, subject to the general law of rhythmical uniformity, or at least symphonised change. It has been said, for instance, by the latest and most painful French student of English prosody, M. Verrier, that in Shelley's _Cloud_ "traditional metric renounces the attempt" to divide it into feet. Here is the division, made without its being necessary to think twice--hardly to think once--about a single article of it:

(Base anapæstic, and normal length dimeter; but shortened to three and two feet, thus--424243434343. The two last three-foot lines catalectic dimeter, or, to put the same thing in another way, the first threes plain, the last redundanced. Substitution of iamb or spondee for anapæst perfectly regular, and (to keep the anapæstic base specially marked against the iambic) not very much indulged in. "Showers" and "flowers" as well as probably "shaken" and "waken" used in their shortened or practically monosyllabic value. Nothing in the least incalculable, eccentric, or even difficult, on the foot system.)

XXXIX. NINETEENTH-CENTURY COUPLET (LEIGH HUNT TO MR. SWINBURNE)

(The examples given will be found to be all more or less of the enjambed variety. Not only has the other been much less practised, owing to reaction from the over-fondness of the eighteenth century for it, but that century, including the period of throwing back to Dryden,[46] practically found out all its considerable but limited possibilities.)

(_a_) Leigh Hunt (_Story of Rimini_):

Āll thĕ | sweet range-wood, flowerbed, grassy plot Francesca loved, but most of all this spot. Whenever she walk'd forth, wherever went About the grounds, to this at last she bent: Here she had brought a lute | ānd ă | few books. Here would she lie for hours, | ōftĕn | with looks More sorrowful by far, yet sweeter too; Sometimes with firmer comfort, where she drew From sense of in|jŭry̆'s sēlf | and truth sustained, Sometimes with rarest indignation gained, From meek, self-pitying mixtures of extremes, Of hope, and soft despair, and child|lī̆ke drēams, And all that promising calm smile we see In Nature's face when we look patiently.

(Various substitutions marked, as also in the following.)

(_b_) Keats (_Endymion_):

At this, from every side they hurried in, Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists, And doubling over head their little fists In backward yawns. But all were soon alive: For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive In nectar'd clouds and curls through water fair, So from the arbour roof down swell'd an air Ō̆dō̆r|ous and | enli|vening; mak|ing all To laugh, and play, and sing, and loudly call For their sweet queen: when lo! the wreathed green Disparted, and far upward could be seen Blue heaven, and a silver car, air-borne, Whose silent wheels, fresh wet from clouds of morn, Spun off a drizzling dew,--which falling chill On soft Adonis' shoulders, made him still Nestle and turn uneasily about.

(As in the seventeenth-century patterns, not much equivalence:--the paragraph effect, produced by enjambment and varied pause, being chiefly relied on to prevent monotony. Later, in _Lamia_, Keats tried, after study of Dryden, a less fluent pattern, with stop as well as enjambment, Alexandrine, and triplet.)

(_c_) Browning (_Sordello_):

As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot, Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black Enormous watercourse which guides him back To his own tribe again, where he is king; And laughs because he guesses, numbering The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch Of the first lizard wrested from its couch Under the slime (whose skin, the while, he strips To cure his nostril with, and festered lips, And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert-blast), That he has reached its boundary, at last May breathe;--thinks o'er enchantments of the South Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth, Eyes, nails, and hair; but, these enchantments tried In fancy, puts them soberly aside For truth, projects a cool return with friends, The likelihood of winning more amends Ere long; thinks that, takes comfort silently, Then, from the river's brink, his wrongs and he, Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon Off-striding for the Mountains of the Moon.

(Practically a long blank-verse paragraph with the addition of rhyme, which sometimes almost escapes notice.)

(_d_) M. Arnold (_Tristram and Iseult_):

The young surviving Iseult, one bright day, Had wander'd forth. Her children were at play In a green cir|cular hol|low in the heath Which borders the sea-shore--a country path Creeps over it from the till'd fields behind. The hollow's grassy banks are soft-inclined, And to one standing on them, far and near The lone unbroken view spreads bright and clear Over the waste. This cirque of open ground Is light and green; the heather, which āll rōund Creeps thickly, grows not here; but the pale grass Is strewn with rocks, and many a shiver'd mass Of vein'd white-gleaming quartz, and here and there Dōttĕd with holly-trees and juniper.

(An admirable following of Keats's model; the rhymes not too much kept out of view, and suggestions of trochaic and spondaic as well as trisyllabic substitution deftly used. For some strange reason he never returned to it, but left it for William Morris to develop, completely and most effectively, in _Jason_ and _The Earthly Paradise_.)

(_e_) Tennyson very seldom tried the couplet, but when he did, as in "The Vision of Sin," he achieved it magnificently:

I had a vision when the night was late: A youth came riding toward a palace gate. He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown But that his heavy rider kept him down. And from the palace came a child of sin, And took him by the curls and led him in, Where sat a company with heated eyes, Expecting when a fountain should arise: A sleepy light upon their brows and lips-- As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse, Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes-- Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes, By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.

(Observe how fine this couplet is, and how _personal_. We have seen how Keats studied Dryden: this is as if Dryden had studied Keats.)

(_f_) Mr. Swinburne (_Tristram of Lyonesse_):

(In this splendid metre the characteristics of stopped and enjambed couplet are to a great extent combined. Considerable anapæstic substitution to gain speed.)

XL. NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLANK VERSE (WORDSWORTH TO MR. SWINBURNE)

(_a_) Wordsworth ("Yew Trees"):

Beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries--ghostly shapes May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, Sīlĕnce | and Foresight, Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow;--there to celebrate, As in a na|tural tem|ple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring | from Glaramara's inmost caves.

(The student should notice the difference, slight but distinctly perceptible, from the Miltonic model.)

(_b_) Shelley (_Alastor_):

Soft mossy lawns Beneath these canopies extend their swells, Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jas|mine, A soul-dissolving odour, to invite To some more lovely mys|tery. Through | the dell, Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, Like va|porous shapes | half seen; beyond, a well, Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, Images all the woven boughs above, And each depending leaf, and every speck Of azure sky, darting between their chasms,

(There are actually seven lines more before the paragraph comes at once to a line-end and a full stop in punctuation. Note also the Thomsonian mid-stops; the Wordsworthian atmosphere (cf. citation above); the actual or suggested trisyllables; the actual redundance in "jas|mine," and the suggested one in "chas|m.")

(_c_) Browning--early (_Pauline_):

Sun-treader!--life and light be thine for ever! Thou art gone from us; years go by, and spring Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful, Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise, But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties, Like mighty works which tell some spirit there Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, Till, its long task completed, it hath risen And left us, never to return, and all Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain. The air seems bright with thy past presence yet, But thou art still for me as thou hast been When I have stood with thee as on a throne With all thy dim creations gathered round Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them, And with them creatures of my own were mixed, Like things half-lived, catching and giving life.

(Wordsworthian-Shelleyan, but with a greater touch of dramatic soliloquy in it. Redundance, but no trisyllabics.)

(_d_) Browning--later (_Mr. Sludge_, "_The Medium_"):

(This unhesitating trisyllabic substitution sometimes reaches the very dangerous adjustment of trochee-anapæst, as in--

Gūilty̆ | fŏr thĕ whīm's | sā̆ke! Gūil|ty̆ hĕ sōme|how thinks.

_The Ring and the Book._)

(_e_) Tennyson--early (_Lover's Tale_):

Glēams ŏf the water-circles as they broke, Flīckĕred | like doubtful smiles about her lips, Qūivĕred | a flying glory in her hair, Lēapt lĭke a passing thought across her eyes. And mine, with one that will not pass till earth And heaven pass too, dwell on _my_ heaven--a face Most starry fair, but kindled from within As 'twere with dawn.

(Substitution trochaic only, except for "heaven"--always ambiguous in value.)

(_f_) Tennyson--standard middle (_Ulysses_):

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

(Verse-paragraph completely achieved by variation of pause and different weighting of line, with, again, little or no trisyllabic substitution.)

Tennyson--later (_The Holy Grail_):

"There rose a hill that none but man could climb, Scarr'd with a hundred wintry wa|tercourses-- Storm at the top, and when we gain'd it, storm Round us and death; for ev|ery mo|ment glanced His silver arms and gloom'd: so quick and thick The lightnings here and there to left and right Struck, till the dry old trunks about us, dead, Yea, rotten with a hundred years of death, Sprang into fi|re: and at | the base we found On either hand, as far as eye could see, A great black swamp and of an evil smell, Part black, part whiten'd with the bones of men, Not to be crost, save that some ancient king Had built a way, where, link'd with many a bridge, A thousand piers ran into the great Sea. And Ga|lahad fled | along them bridge by bridge, And ev|ery bridge | as quickly as he crost Sprang into fire and vanish'd, tho' I yearn'd To fol|low; and thrice | above him all the heavens Open'd and blazed with thunder such as seem'd Shoutings of all the sons of God: and first At once I saw him far on the great Sea, In silver-shining armour starry-clear; And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung Clothed in white samite or a lu|minous cloud. And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat, If boat it were--I saw not whence it came. And when the heavens o|pen'd and blazed | again Roaring, I saw him like a silver star-- And had he set the sail, or had the boat Become a living creature clad with wings? And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung Redder than any rose, a joy to me, For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn. Then in a moment when they blazed again Opening, I saw the least of little stars Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star I saw | the spiri|tual cit|y and all | her spires And gateways in a glory like one pearl-- No larger, tho' the goal of all the saints-- Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot A rose-red sparkle to the cit|y, and there Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail, Which never eyes on earth again shall see."

(Paragraph still more ambitious and elaborate, with much trisyllabic substitution and some redundance.)

XLI. THE NON-EQUIVALENCED OCTOSYLLABLE OF KEATS AND MORRIS

(_a_) Keats (_Eve of St. Mark_):

Upon a Sabbath day it fell; Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell, That called the folk to evening-prayer; The city streets were clean and fair From wholesome drench of April rains; And on the western window-panes The chilly sunset faintly told Of unmatured green valleys cold, Of the green thorny bloomless hedge, Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge, Of primroses by sheltered rills, And daisies on the aguish hills. Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell: The silent streets were crowded well With staid and pious companies, Warm from their fire-side orat'ries, And moving, with demurest air, To even-song and vesper prayer. Each archèd porch, and entry low, Was filled with patient folk and slow, With whispers hush, and shuffling feet, While played the organ loud and sweet.

(_b_) Morris (_The Ring given to Venus_):

By then his eyes were opened wide. Already up the grey hillside The backs of two were turned to him: One, like a young man tall and slim, Whose heels with rosy wings were dight; One like a woman clad in white, With glittering wings of many a hue, Still changing, and whose shape none knew. In aftertime would Laurence say That though the moonshine, cold and grey, Flooded the lonely earth that night, These creatures in the moon's despite Were coloured clear, as though the sun Shone through the earth to light each one-- And terrible was that to see.

(Here the effect is entirely achieved by dividing the couplets, with full stops or strong pauses at the end of the first line, and running the sense of the second into the first of the next; by considerable variations of internal pause, and by placing emphatic or brightly coloured words at different spots. Equivalence is practically limited to such things as "glittering," "aguish," "many a," etc., where it is at minimum strength.)

XLII. THE CONTINUOUS ALEXANDRINE (DRAYTON AND BROWNING)

(_a_) Drayton (_Polyolbion_):

Whenas the pliant Muse, with fair and even flight, Betwixt her silver wings is wafted to the Wight,-- That Isle, which jutting out into the sea so far, Her offspring traineth up in exercise of war; Those pirates to put back, that oft purloin her trade, Or Spaniards or the French attempting to invade. Of all the southern isles she holds the highest place, And evermore hath been the great'st in Britain's grace. Not one of all her nymphs her sovereign fav'reth thus, Embracèd in the arms of old Oceanus. For none of her account so near her bosom stand, 'Twixt Penwith's furthest point and Goodwin's queachy sand.

(_b_) Browning (_Fifine at the Fair_):

O trip and skip, Elvire! Link arm in arm with me! Like husband and like wife, together let us see The tumbling troop arrayed, the strollers on their stage, Drawn up and under arms, and ready to engage.

(Printing of lines disjoined to show the _extra_ stress which Browning lays on the middle pause, and which, though not universal, is general throughout the poem. The case is rather the other way with Drayton. He _observes_ the pause, which is indeed the law of the line; but he does not seem to avail himself of it much as a prosodic or rhetorical instrument.)

XLIII

_The Dying Swan_ of Tennyson, scanned entirely through to show the application of the system. (It brings out a scheme of _dimeters_ wholly iambic at the lowest rate of substitution, wholly anapæstic at the highest, mixed between. A few instances occur of the other usual and regular licences--trochaic and spondaic substitution, monosyllabic feet (_or_ catalexis) and one or two of brachycatalexis, three feet instead of four. And it is to be specially noted that the poet uses these, not at random, but so as to swell and raise his rhythm, proportionately and progressively, from the slow motion and scanty syllabising of the opening scene-stanza to the "flood of eddying song" at the close. This process is entirely unaccounted for on the bare "four-stress" system.)