English Verse Part 2

At every trifle scorn to take offence, That always shows great pride, or little sense: Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.

Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; For fools admire, but men of sense approve: As things seem large which we through mist descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, ll. 384-393.)

Louder, louder chant the lay-- Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Tell them youth and mirth and glee Run a course as well as we; Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk, Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk; Think of this, and rise with day, Gentle lords and ladies gay!

(SCOTT: _Hunting Song_.)

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cl.u.s.ter, knots of Paradise.

(TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall_.)

Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow, Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow.

(SWINBURNE: _March_.)

ii. _Verse showing irregular intervals between accents_

Gegrette a gumena gehwylcne, hwate helm-berend, hindeman sie, sw?se gesias: "Nolde ic sweord beran, w?pen to wyrme, gif ic wiste hu wi am agl?cean elles meahte gylpe wigripan, swa ic gio wi Grendle dyde; ac ic ?r heau-f?res hates wene, orees ond attres; foron ic me on hafu bord ond byrnan. Nelle ic beorges weard oferfleon fotes trem, ac unc sceal weoran aet wealle, swa unc wyrd geteo, Metod manna gehwaes. Ic eom on mode from, aet ic wi one gu-flogan gylp ofersitte.

(_Beowulf_, ll. 2516-2528. ab. 700.)

Ich herde men upo mold make muche mon, hou he be itened of here tilyynge: G.o.de yeres & corn boe be agon, ne kepe here no sawe ne no song synge.

Nou we mote worche, nis er non oer won, mai ich no lengore lyue wi mi lesinge.

Yet er is a bitterore bit to e bon, for euer e fure peni mot to e kynge.[4]

(_The Farmer's Complaint_, ab. 1300; in Boddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p. 102, and Wright's _Political Songs_, p. 149.)

I will speake out aloude, I care not who heare it: Sirs, see that my harnesse, my tergat and my s.h.i.+eld Be made as bright now as when I was last in fielde, As white as I shoulde to warre againe to-morrowe; For sicke shall I be but I worke some folke sorow.

Therefore see that all s.h.i.+ne as bright as Sainct George, Or as doth a key newly come from the smiths forge.

(N. UDALL: _Ralph Roister Doister_, IV. iii. 13-19. 1566.)

To this, this Oake cast him to replie Well as he couth; but his enemie Had kindled such coles of displeasure, That the good man noulde stay his leasure, But home him hasted with furious heate, Encreasing his wrath with many a threat: His harmefull Hatchet he hent in hand, (Alas! that it so ready should stand!) And to the field alone he speedeth, (Aye little helpe to harme there needeth!) Anger nould let him speake to the tree, Enaunter his rage mought cooled bee; But to the roote bent his st.u.r.die stroake, And made many wounds in the waste Oake.

(SPENSER: _Shepherd's Calendar, February_. 1579.)

Through many a dark and dreary vale They pa.s.sed, and many a region dolorous, O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death-- A universe of death, which G.o.d by curse Created evil, for evil only good; Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, II. 618 ff. 1667.)

The night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek-- There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

(COLERIDGE: _Christabel_, Part I. 1816.)

In his Preface to this poem Coleridge said: "The metre of the _Christabel_ is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle; namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or pa.s.sion." The verse is accurately described, but it has frequently been pointed out as curious that Coleridge should have spoken of it as "founded on a new principle," when the principle in question was that of native English verse from the earliest times.[5]

For other specimens of verse showing irregularity in the number of syllables between the accents, see Part Two, under Non-syllable-counting Four-stress Verse.

iii. _Silent Time-intervals between Syllables (Pauses)_

(a) Pauses not filling the time of syllables.

Most English verses of more than eight syllables are divided not only into the time-intervals between the accents, but also into two parts (which Schipper calls "rhythmical series") by the _Cesura_. The Cesura is a pause not counted out of the regular time of the rhythm, but corresponding to the pauses between "phrases" in music, and nearly always coinciding with syntactical or rhetorical divisions of the sentence.

The medial cesura is the typical pause of this kind, dividing the verse into two parts of approximately equal length. In much early English verse, and in French verse, this medial cesura is almost universal; in modern English verse (and in that of some early poets, notably Chaucer) there is great freedom in the placing of the cesura, and also in omitting it altogether. The importance of this matter in the history of English decasyllabic verse will appear in Part Two.

In the early Elizabethan period the impression was still general that there should be a regular medial cesura. Spenser seems to have been the first to imitate the greater freedom of Chaucer in this regard. See the Latin dissertation on Spenser's verse of E. Legouis (_Quomodo E. Spenserus_, etc., Paris, 1896), and the summary of its results by Mr. J. B. Fletcher in _Modern Language Notes_ for November, 1898. "Spenser," says Mr. Fletcher, "revived for 'heroic verse' the neglected variety in unity of his self-acknowledged master, Chaucer." In Gascoigne's _Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English_ (1575), we find: "There are also certayne pauses or restes in a verse whiche may be called Ceasures.... In mine opinion in a verse of eight sillables, the pause will stand best in the middest, in a verse of tenne it will be placed at the ende of the first foure sillables; in a verse of twelve, in the midst.... In Rithme royall, it is at the wryters discretion, and forceth not where the pause be untill the ende of the line." This greater liberty allowed the rime royal is doubtless due to the influence of Chaucer on that form. For Gascoigne's practice in printing his verse with medial cesura, even without regard to rhetorical divisions, see the specimen given below.

Another interesting Elizabethan account of the cesura is found in Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589), where the writer compares the verse-pause to a stop made by a traveler at an inn for rest and refreshment. (Arber's Reprint, p. 88.)

_Specimen of French alexandrine, showing the regular medial cesura:_

Trois fois cinquante jours le general naufrage Degasta l'univers; en fin d'un tel ravage L'immortel s'emouvant, n'eut pas sonne si tot La retraite des eaux que soudain flot sur flot Elles gaignent au pied; tous les fleuves s'abaissant.

Le mer rentre en prison; les montagnes renaissent.

(DU BARTAS: _La Premiere Semaine_. 1579.)

See further, on the character of the French alexandrine and its medial cesura, in Part Two, under Six-stress Verse.

_Specimen of early blank verse printed with regular medial cesura:_

O Knights, O Squires, O Gentle blouds yborne, You were not borne, al onely for your selves: Your countrie claymes, some part of al your paines.

There should you live, and therein should you toyle, To hold up right, and banish cruel wrong, To helpe the pore, to bridle backe the riche, To punish vice, and vertue to advaunce, To see G.o.d servde, and Belzebub supprest.

You should not trust, lieftenaunts in your rome, And let them sway, the scepter of your charge, Whiles you (meane while) know scarcely what is don, Nor yet can yeld, accompt if you were callde.

(GASCOIGNE: _The Steel Gla.s.s_, ll. 439 ff. 1576.)

For specimens of regular medial cesura, and of variable cesura, in modern verse, see under the Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in Part Two.

The Cesura is called _masculine_ when it follows an accented syllable.

(For examples, see previous specimen from Gascoigne.) It is called _feminine_ when it follows an unaccented syllable. Two varieties of the feminine cesura are also distinguished: the Lyric, when the pause occurs inside a foot; _e.g._:

"This wicked traitor, whom I thus accuse;"

the Epic, when the pause occurs after an extra (hypermetrical) light syllable; _e.g._:

"To Canterbury with ful devout corage."

"But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives."

The "epic" cesura is quite as characteristic of dramatic blank verse as of epic.

The pause occurring at the end of a line is equally regular with the medial pause, and corresponds in the same way to a phrase-pause in music. It is an element of the same character, then, as the cesura, though not bearing the same name. It coincides less closely than the cesura with syntactical and rhetorical pauses. When there is no corresponding syntactical or rhetorical pause at the end of the line (in other words, when the metrical pause marking the end of the verse cannot be prominently represented in reading without interfering with the expression of the sense), the line is said to be "run-on." Such an ending is also called _enjambement_. The importance of this distinction between "end-stopped" and "run-on" lines will appear in the notes on the Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in Part Two.