English Verse Part 25

Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith; Billets that blaze substantial and slow; Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith; Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow; Then up they hoist me John in a chafe, Sling him fast like a hog to scorch, Spit in his face, then leap back safe, Sing 'Laudes' and bid clap-to the torch.

(BROWNING: _The Heretic's Tragedy._)

'Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.

And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:...

He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider-web.

(BROWNING: _Caliban upon Setebos._)

Master of the murmuring courts Where the shapes of sleep convene!

Lo! my spirit here exhorts All the powers of thy demesne For their aid to move my queen.

What reports Yield thy jealous courts unseen?

Vaporous, unaccountable, Dreamland lies forlorn of light, Hollow like a breathing sh.e.l.l.

Ah! that from all dreams I might Choose one dream and guide its flight!

I know well What her sleep should tell to-night.

(ROSSETTI: _Love's Nocturn._)

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.

(SWINBURNE: Chorus in _Atalanta in Calydon._)

Till, as with clamor Of axe and hammer, Chained streams that stammer and struggle in straits, Burst bonds that s.h.i.+ver, And thaws deliver The roaring river in stormy spates.

(SWINBURNE: _Winter in Northumberland._)

But, oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail; And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering, with a mazy motion, Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

(COLERIDGE: _Kubla Khan._)

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "Perfect rime" is a term applied to rimes between two words identical in form, but different in meaning. It is inadmissible in modern English verse, although it was considered entirely proper in Middle English times (compare Chaucer's--

"The holy blisful martir for to _seke_, That hem hath holpen, whan that they were _seke_."),

and is still common in French verse.

Schipper gives a separate paragraph also to "unaccented rime," where the similarity of sound belongs wholly to final, unstressed syllables.

Generally speaking, this is inadmissible in English verse. Schipper quotes from Thomas Moore:

"Down in yon summervale Where the rill flows, Thus said the Nightingale To his loved Rose."

It might be said, however, that the final syllables of "summervale" and "nightingale" are not wholly unstressed; moreover, they are in the first and third verses of the stanza, where rime is not indispensable.

Unaccented rime is most noticeable in some of the verse of the transition period in the sixteenth century, when the syllable-counting principle was so emphasized as to admit any license of accent so long as the proper number of syllables was observed. Thus, in the verse of Wyatt we find such rimes as "dreadeth" and "seeketh," "beginning" and "eclipsing," etc. See p. 10, above.

Imperfect rime, occurring where the vowel sounds are only similar, not identical, or where the consonants following them are not identical, is commonly regarded as an imperfection in verse form. The most common of these imperfect rimes are in cases where the spelling would indicate perfect rime (hence where, in many cases, the words rimed originally, but have separated in the changes of p.r.o.nunciation), such as _love_ and _move_, _broad_ and _load_, and the like. For a defence of these "rimes to the eye," and other imperfect rimes, with a study of their use by English poets, see articles by Prof. A. G. Newcomer in the _Nation_ for January 26 and February 2, 1899.

[12] Rime also appears in a short pa.s.sage in Cynewulf's _Elene_. Some have thought it a later interpolation, but Schipper thinks it indicates that Cynewulf was a Northumbrian. Grein believes him to have been the author also of the Riming Poem, but, as Rieger points out, the rimes of Cynewulf are of a much less systematic character. (On this see Wulcker's _Grundriss zur Geschichte der Angelsachsischen Literatur_, pp. 216, 217.)

[13] The second of these stanzas is said to have been added to Canning's song by Willian Pitt.

[14] See notes on the Septenary, in Part Two, p. 259.

[15] On the subject of Tone-color in English verse, see Guest's _English Rhythms_, chap. ii.; Lanier's _Science of English Verse_, part iii.

("Colors of English Verse"); Corson's _Primer of English Verse_ (chapter on "Poetic Unities"); Edmund Gurney's _Tertium Quid_ (essays on "Poets, Critics, and Cla.s.s-Lists" and "The Appreciation of Poetry"); Professor J. J. Sylvester's _Laws of Verse_ (London, 1870); G. L. Raymond's _Poetry as a Representative Art_ and _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music_; and Ehrenfeld's _Studien zur Theorie des Reims_.

PART TWO

I. FOUR-STRESS VERSE

English verse of four stresses is chiefly to be divided into two groups: that representing the primitive Germanic tendency to emphasize the element of accent rather than the counting of syllables, and that produced under foreign influence, showing comparative regularity in the number of syllables to the verse. The first group is made up of the various descendants of the original "long line," sometimes rimed and sometimes unrimed; the second group of forms of the familiar octosyllabic couplet. (Of modern verse only iambic measures are included here.)

A.--NON-SYLLABLE-COUNTING

The earliest English verse, like early Germanic verse generally, is based on the recurrence of strong accents, and is composed of a long line made up of two short lines, or half-lines, which are bound together by alliteration. As to the number of accents to be counted in the line, there are two theories, the "two-accent" and the "four-accent."

According to the first, we should count two accents to the half-line, and four to the long line; according to the second, we should count four to the half-line and eight to the long line. The distinction is not so marked, however, as would appear at first thought; for the two-accent theorists recognize a considerable number of secondary accents in addition to the princ.i.p.al ones, while the four-accent theorists recognize half the accents as being commonly weaker than the other half.

The four-accent theory is that of Lachmann, represented chiefly in more recent scholars.h.i.+p by ten Brink and Kaluza. Lachmann took, as the typical Germanic line, such a verse as this from the _Hildebrandlied_,--

"Garutun se iro guhama: gurtun sih iro suert ana;"

but admitted that the Anglo-Saxon line was a departure from the type in the direction of fewer accents. Ten Brink, however, found the full number of accents in the typical Anglo-Saxon line. "It is based upon a measure which belonged to the antiquity of all Germanic races, namely, the line with eight emphatic syllables, divided into equal parts by the cesura." (_English Literature_, trans. Kennedy, vol. i. pp. 21, 22.) The princ.i.p.al representative of the two-accent theory is Sievers, whose conclusions have been pretty generally accepted by English and American scholars. He admits that very many, perhaps most, Anglo-Saxon lines can be read with eight accents, but shows that there is still a large proportion (some eleven hundred in _Beowulf_) which cannot be so read without wrenching the natural reading. On this subject, see Westphal's _Allgemeine Metrik_, Sievers's _Altgermanische Metrik_, Kaluza's _Der Altenglische Vers_, and the articles by Sievers, Luick, and ten Brink in Paul's _Grundriss der Germanische Philologie_.

Aside from the two-part structure of the long line, the number of accents, and the alliteration, Anglo-Saxon verse is marked by the usual coincidence of the princ.i.p.al accents with long syllables. The unaccented parts of the line vary in both the number and length of the syllables.

In general, each half-line is divided into two feet, or measures; and, according to the structure of these feet, the ordinary half-lines of Anglo-Saxon verse have been reduced by Sievers to five fundamental types.

Type A is represented by such a half-line as "stium wordum."

Type B inverts the rhythm of A, as in the half-line "ne winterscur."

Type C is characterized by the juxtaposition of the two accents, as in the half-line "and for gangan."

Type D commonly has only the accented syllable in the first foot, while the second foot is characterized by a sort of dactylic rhythm, as in the half-lines "s?liende" and "flet innanweard."

Type E inverts the rhythm of D, as in the half-line "gylp-wordum spraec."[16]