The Principles of English Versification Part 8

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half a.s.suaged for Itylus, For the Thracian s.h.i.+ps and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

SWINBURNE, Atalanta in Calydon.

If the first two syllables be regarded as anacrusis, the first line would be trochaic, with a dactyl subst.i.tuted for a trochee in the second foot. The third line is apparently trochaic. But only three lines of the eight have a feminine or trochaic ending, and all except the third have iambic or rising rhythm in the first foot; so that it is more simple and natural to consider the last syllable of the first, third, and seventh lines as extra-metrical, and call the rhythm iambic-anapestic, or rising. Since the ?_? and ??_? are both rising rhythm they may be readily subst.i.tuted one for the other--the appearance of equal time values being preserved--without disturbing the musical flow of sounds.

Thus of the thirty-two feet in the eight lines, seventeen are iambs and eleven anapests, two are weak iambs (-_orous_, -_ylus_), one a spondee (_bright night_-), and one monosyllabic with a rest (? _Fills_).

Tennyson's Vastness may also be studied for its combinations of trochees, dactyls, and spondees. Here is one stanza:

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat.

Similar combinations, still freer, with frequent anacrusis as well, are characteristic of Swinburne's Hesperia; e. g.--

Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a maiden, Stung into storm by the speed of our pa.s.sage, and deaf where we past; And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy laden, As we burn with the fire of our flight; ah, love, shall we win at the last?

The first line of a poem is not always a good criterion of the metre of the whole poem--though Poe declared that it should be. For Tennyson's The Higher Pantheism is chiefly in triple falling rhythm, but it begins

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains.

The first stanza of Campbell's famous Battle of the Baltic runs:

Of Nelson and the North, Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand, In a bold determined hand, And the Prince of all the land Led them on.

Here the first line might be 3-stress or 2-stress; the second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth might have three stresses or four; the fifth five or six; the ninth two or one. It is not, in fact, until we reach the

Again! again! again!

of the fourth stanza that we are sure how the poem ought to be read. But Campbell was not a faultless artist. There is the same metrical ambiguity, however, in Tennyson's

Come into the garden, Maud,

until the second line shows us we should read it with three stresses, not four. There is a curious verse in Gay's Beggar's Opera which well ill.u.s.trates the necessity of consulting the context to determine the pattern, for it can, taken by itself, be scanned in three different ways:

How happy could I be with either.

Air x.x.xV.

viz., ?_???_??_??_?? or ?_????_??_?? or ?_???_????_??.

But sometimes it is difficult, if not impossible, to say whether a line or series of lines is in rising or falling rhythm, or what sort of foot is predominant--in other words, what is the formal metrical pattern.

This difficulty is, of course, no fault of the poet's: it lies in the complexity of the phenomena, and is after all a weakness of our power of a.n.a.lysis. In the spectrum blue merges into green, red into yellow, and though we invent names for various tints, others still escape cla.s.sification. And just as some verses combine iambic and anapestic (rising), or dactylic and trochaic (falling) movements, so others combine rising and falling rhythms. For example,

The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter.

PEAc.o.c.k, War-song of Dinas Vawr, from The Misfortunes of Elphin.

This may be trochaic with anacrusis or iambic with feminine endings, but neither quite adequately describes it. Is Sh.e.l.ley's To Night prevailingly iambic or trochaic? All of the twenty-five long lines end with an iamb, but only eleven begin with rising rhythm (thirteen begin with falling or trochaic rhythm, and one is ambiguous). Two of the short lines are definitely iambic, the other eight are doubtful, but apparently trochaic. If it is read as iambic, eleven of the hundred feet in the long lines will be 'irregular'; if it is read as trochaic, eleven likewise will be 'irregular.' Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso contain lines that are purely iambic, as

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

some that are purely trochaic, as

Whilst the landskip round it measures;

and others which are a combination, as

Bosom'd high in tufted trees.

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.

The melting voice through mazes running.

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

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

The metrical scheme appears to be

_???_??_??_??_??

_???_??_??_??_?

_???_??_??_??_??

_???_??_??_??_?

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

_???_??_????_??

_???_??_????_?

_???_??_????_??

_???_????_??_?

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

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

Oh! wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?

And wherefore doth your rout send forth a bitter shout?

And whence be the grapes of the wine-press that ye tread?[36]

And Mr. Kipling's The Last Chantey:

Thus said the Lord in the vault above the Cherubim, Calling to the angels and the souls in their degree: "Lo! Earth has pa.s.sed away On the smoke of Judgment Day.

That Our word may be established, shall We gather up the sea?"

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

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

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

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [35] Apparent paeons occur now and then, where the usual contraction would reduce them to triple time. Mr. Omond, Study of Metre, pp. 96, 97, gives among others these examples: The leaves they were _withering and_ sere. Our _memories were treacherous and_ sere. POE. The rags of the sail Are _flickering in_ ribbons within the fierce gale. Sh.e.l.lEY. A land that is _lonelier than_ ruin. SWINBURNE. [36] In the last stanza occurs the foot: _? ? ? ? ? she of the seven +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Rightly described, this movement is a discontinuous syncopation of fours and twos; the prevailing formal unit is _????, but it is varied now by _??_??, and now by simply _??, with the usual subst.i.tution of _??? for _??. It is an excellent exercise to a.n.a.lyze Jean Ingelow's Like a Laverock in the Lift and observe the pauses, holds, and subst.i.tutions.

The most notable are _?_?? for _???? (_we too, it's_), and _??_? (_la.s.s, my love_, l. 5; _thou art mine_, l. 6; _missed the mark_, l. 7, etc.).

The third line may be read

Like a laverock in the lift ? etc.