LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 A STUDY 
 OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 BY 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 * \ 
 
 PROFESSOR. IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF 
 
 ARTS AND LETTERS 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO DALLAS 
 
 BAN FRANCISCO 
 Cije i-viuersiijc $tcfi55 Cambrilige
 
 MV1 
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQII, BY BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 PRINTED IN THB U.S.A
 
 TO 
 
 W. C. BROWNELL 
 
 CRITIC OF POETS AND, 
 
 PROSE-MASTERS
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 IT is now about thirty years since I prepared an 
 American edition of a little book by the younger Tom 
 Hood, which purported to set forth the rules of rime 
 (the " Rhymester," Appleton & Co., 1882) ; and it 
 is just twenty years since I first gave a course in 
 metrical rhetoric to a class of undergraduates in 
 Columbia College. And I have long felt the need of 
 a simple text-book for the beginner, which would 
 serve as an introduction to the study of English versi- 
 fication. There are many volumes devoted to the 
 analysis of poetry, but there are few which confine 
 themselves wholly to the problems of prosody; and 
 scarcely any one of these is exactly adapted to the 
 needs of the novice who knows little or nothing 
 about the principles of the metrical art. The subject 
 is treated casually and cursorily in many grammars 
 and in many rhetorics ; but the main purpose of these 
 books is to help the student to express himself accu- 
 rately and satisfactorily in prose. 
 
 This is the simple text-book for the beginner that I 
 have undertaken in the present volume. It is a text-book 
 of metrical rhetoric. Its aim is to explain to the inquirer 
 the technic of verse-making and to show him how the 
 poets have been able to achieve their effects. It seta 
 forth what I believe to be the fundamental principle 
 of the art, that all poetry is to be said or sung, and 
 that its appeal is to the ear and not to the eye. This
 
 vi PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 principle is here asserted, unhesitatingly ; and from it 
 all the practices of modern English versification are 
 here derived. No other principle is even discussed, 
 and all controversy has been rigorously eschewed. 
 The student will not be confused by any attempt to 
 refute any other theory; and his time will not be 
 wasted by the confutation of any code long ago dises- 
 tablished. 
 
 The main object of this book is to provide the stu- 
 dent with an understanding of the mechanism of verse, 
 that he may have a richer appreciation of poetry. 
 The metrical mastery of Chaucer and of Milton, of 
 Pope and of Tennyson, will be more keenly relished 
 by the lover of poetry when he has attained to an 
 insight into the methods whereby this mastery was 
 achieved. But while this is its primary intent, the 
 book has also a secondary purpose, to encourage 
 teachers to give courses in metrical rhetoric, not with 
 any vain hope that they will be able to train poets, 
 but with the firm belief that exercise in verse is the 
 best possible aid to easy flexibility in prose-writing. 
 Verse-making is an admirable gymnastic; and the 
 necessity of mating his words in rime and of adjust- 
 ing them to rhythm enriches the student's vocabulary 
 and increases his control over it. Constant practice in 
 composing in stanzas prescribed by the instructor will 
 not tend to puff up the young writer with the conceit 
 that he is a poet. On the contrary, it is likely to take 
 down his vanity by showing him how easy it is to 
 acquire the elements of verse-making and by calling 
 his attention to the technical dexterity possessed by 
 the great craftsmen in verse. Indeed, there is no 
 better corrective of undue pride, there is no more
 
 PREFATORY NOTE vii 
 
 potent inciter of modesty, than the frequent attempt 
 to pattern ourselves on the masters and to discover 
 how lamentably we fall short of our lofty and unap- 
 proachable models, 
 
 B. M. 
 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 IN THE CITY OF NEW YORE.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE STUDY OF VERSE ...... 1 
 
 II. RHYTHM 8 
 
 III. METER 31 
 
 IV. RIME 49 
 
 V. TONE-COLOB 73 
 
 VI. THE STANZA 102 
 
 VII. THE SONNET 126 
 
 VIII. OTHER FIXED FORMS ..... 144 
 
 IX. RIMELESS STANZAS 176 
 
 X. THE COUPLET 200 
 
 XI. BLANK VERSE 225 
 
 XII. POETIC LICENSE ....... 244 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A: SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY .... 263 
 
 B: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS ... 266 
 
 INDEX . . . 269
 
 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STUDY OF VERSE 
 
 As logic does not supply yon with arguments, but only defines the 
 mode in which they are to be expressed or used, so versification does not 
 teach you how to write poetry, but how to construct verse. It may be 
 a means to the end, but it does not pretend to assure its attainment. 
 Versification and logic are to poetry and reason what a parapet is to 
 a bridge : they do not convey you across, but prevent you from falling 
 over. TOM HOOD : The Rules of Rhyme. 
 
 THIS is not a handbook of poetics ; and its aim is not 
 to consider the several departments of poetry, epic 
 and lyric and dramatic. It does not deal with simile and 
 metaphor, nor does it seek to open the mind of the 
 student to the nobler beauties of poetry. It is intended 
 to be an introduction to the study of versification, of 
 the metrical mechanism which sustains poetry, and 
 which differentiates poetry from prose. 
 
 It is devoted solely to the technic of the art of 
 verse. It is an examination of the tools of the poet's 
 trade. Although poets are said to be born and not 
 made, there is no doubt that they have to be made 
 after they are born. It is not a fact that the born poet 
 warbles native wood-notes wild ; he has to serve an ap- 
 prenticeship to his craft ; he has to acquire the art of 
 verse ; he has to master its technic and to spy out its 
 secrets. The poet is like the painter, who, as Sir
 
 2 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Joshua Reynolds declared, " is a painter only as he 
 can put in practice what he knows, and communicate 
 those ideas by visible representation." 
 
 In his ignorance, the layman may be led to despise 
 technic ; but this is a blunder of which the true artist 
 is never guilty. Indeed, the true artist cherishes tech- 
 nic ; he is forever thinking about it and enlarging his 
 knowledge of it. He delights in discussing its prob- 
 lems ; and when he is moved to talk about his art, 
 technic is ever the theme of his discourse. The trea- 
 tises on painting, for example, written by painters, by 
 Reynolds or by La Farge, are full of technical criti- 
 cism ; and so are the essays on poetry, written by the 
 poets themselves. The processes of their art are con- 
 sidered with unfailing zest by Pope and Wordsworth, 
 by Coleridge and Poe. In fact, the artists are all aware 
 that technic is almost the only aspect of their art 
 which can be discussed profitably ; and every layman 
 can see that it is the only aspect which the artists 
 often care to talk about. The other part, no doubt 
 the loftier part, the poet's message to humanity, 
 this is too ethereal, perhaps too personal, too intimate, 
 too sacred, to bear debate. 
 
 Every work of art can be considered from two 
 points of view. It has its content and it has its form. 
 We may prefer to pay attention to what the artist has 
 to say, or we may examine rather how he says it. The 
 content of his work, what he has to say to us, is the 
 more important, of course, but this must depend on 
 his native gift, on his endowment ; and it is more or 
 less beyond his control. He utters what he must utter ; 
 and he voices what he is inspired to deliver. But the 
 form in which he clothes this message, how he says
 
 THE STUDY OF VERSE 3 
 
 what he has to say, this is what he may choose to 
 make it, no more and no less. This depends on him 
 and on him alone ; it is not a gift but an acquisition ; 
 it is the result of his skill, of the trouble he is willing 
 to take, of his artistic integrity, of his desire to do his 
 best always, and never to quit his work until he has 
 made it as perfect as he can. 
 
 This technical dexterity can be had for the asking ; 
 or, at least, it can be bought with a price. It is the 
 reward of intense interest, of incessant curiosity, of 
 honest labor. And it is worth all that it costs, since 
 we cannot really separate form and content, as we some- 
 times vainly imagine. What the poet has to say is in- 
 extricably intertwined with the way in which he saya 
 it, and our appreciation of his ultimate message is en- 
 hanced by our delight in his method of presenting it. 
 In fact, our pleasure in his work is often due quite as 
 much to the sheer artistry of his presentation as it is 
 to the actual value of his thought and of his emotion. 
 We might even go further and venture the assertion 
 that it is by style alone that the poet survives, since 
 his native gift profits him little unless he so presents 
 his message that we cannot choose but hear. And, as 
 Professor Bradley declared in one of his "Oxford 
 Lectures on Poetry," " when poetry answers to its 
 idea. and is purely or almost purely poetic, we find the 
 identity of form and content, and the degree of purity 
 may be tested by the degree in which we feel it hope- 
 less to convey the effect of a poem or passage in any 
 form but its own." 
 
 There is benefit, therefore, for all of us in an en- 
 deavor to understand the mechanism of the poet's art, 
 to gain an elementary acquaintance with its processes,
 
 4 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 to learn as much as we may about its delightful mys- 
 teries, just as we must acquire a certain acquaint- 
 ance with the conditions of building before we can 
 gain a real insight into the beauty of architecture. 
 This knowledge will increase our enjoyment of poetry, 
 for it will give us a twofold interest, in the manner 
 as well as in the matter. The more we know about 
 versification, the better equipped we are to perceive the 
 skill with which the poet has wrought his marvels 
 and also to feel deeply his charm and his power. The 
 more we know, the better we shall understand the real 
 nature of poetic inspiration. " It is very natural," so 
 Reynolds declared in another of his " Discourses on 
 Painting," " for those who are unacquainted with the 
 cause of anything extraordinary to be astonished at 
 the effect, and to consider it as a kind of magic. They 
 who have never observed the gradation by which art 
 is acquired, who see only what is the full result of long 
 labor and application of an infinite number and in- 
 finite variety of acts, are apt to conclude, from their 
 entire inability to do the same at once, that it is not 
 only inaccessible to themselves, but can be done by 
 those only who have some gift of the nature of in- 
 spiration bestowed upon them." 
 
 This book is intended, not so much for those who 
 may desire to write verse, as it is for those who wish 
 to gain an insight into the methods of the poets that 
 they may have a keener and a deeper appreciation of 
 poetry ; and yet its suggestions are available also for 
 those who may feel themselves moved to speak in num- 
 bers. Attention may be called to the fact that it never 
 pretends to declare how verse ought to be written ; 
 all that it endeavors to do is to show how verse has
 
 THE STUDY OF VERSE 5 
 
 been written by the poets who have enriched our litera- 
 ture. If any laws emerge into view, these are the re- 
 sult of a modest attempt to codify the practice of the 
 poets themselves and to deduce the underlying princi- 
 ples. It is never the privilege of the critic to lay down 
 arbitrary rules for any art; it is his duty to examine 
 what the great artists have given us, and to discover, 
 if he can, the subtle means whereby they achieved 
 their masterpieces. And it is a humble examination 
 of this kind which is undertaken in this inquiry. 
 
 As this is the main object of the present volume, 
 the reader must not expect to find here things not 
 germane to this intent. He will not have his attention 
 distracted by any investigation into the origins of 
 English verse. He will not be called upon to consider 
 the conflicting theories of English prosody. He will 
 not be confused by constant references to the very dif- 
 ferent metrical system which was employed by the 
 Greek and the Latin poets. These things are discussed 
 at length in many other books ; and in this book they 
 would be out of place. To consider them in these 
 pages would interfere with the main purpose of the 
 present volume, which is to provide the lover of poetry 
 with an elementary knowledge of the principles that 
 govern modern English versification. 
 
 Exact definition tends to precision of thought ; and 
 an acquaintance with technical terms is necessary to 
 any scientific investigation. As Professor Mayor has 
 declared, " the use of Prosody is to supply a technical 
 language by which each specimen of verse is brought 
 before us ; to distinguish the different kinds of verse, 
 to establish a type of each, by reference to which ex- 
 isting varieties may be compared ; and, finally, to
 
 6 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 state the laws of composition which have been ob- 
 served by those whom the world recognizes as poets. 
 Then from this we may draw practical rules of art for 
 the poet or the reader." 
 
 An acquaintance with the technical terms, a know- 
 ledge of the rules of the art, will not suffice to make any 
 one of us a poet. But an ignorance of the underlying 
 principles of verse will prevent now any one, how- 
 ever gifted by nature, from attaining eminence as a 
 poet. The earlier verse-writers had to work by instinct 
 only at first, guided by their intuitive feeling for 
 rhythm ; in time their successors had the solid support 
 of tradition ; and to-day every poet can profit by a study 
 of the means whereby his great predecessors wrought 
 their marvels. No doubt, delicacy of ear still guides 
 him more securely than any rule of thumb ; and yet 
 he will find assistance in a knowledge of the science 
 of verse which underlies the art of poetry. Appren- 
 tice poets may now find this science set forth more 
 or less accurately in the treatises of the critics, or they 
 may absorb it for themselves by reverent study of the 
 great masters of verse. 
 
 It is true that versification is only the carved vase 
 which holds the precious wine of poetry ; and yet with- 
 out the vase the wine would be spilled and wasted. 
 On the other hand, the vase itself stands empty unless 
 the poet has within himself that which will fill it 
 worthily. Amiel asserted that the group of French 
 poets in the nineteenth century who were known as the 
 Parnassians " sculptured urns of agate and of onyx ; 
 but what do these urns contain ? Ashes ! " Yet the 
 blunder of these Parnassians was not in the curious 
 care with which they carved their urns of agate and
 
 THE STUDY OF VERSE 7 
 
 of onyx ; it was in their failure to fill the urns with 
 an elixir worthy of receptacles thus adorned. It was 
 their fault or their misfortune that they had nothing 
 better than ashes to pour into their urns. 
 
 Still, after all, the urns themselves had their own 
 beauty. Every lover of poetry could cite numberless 
 lyrics which delight him by their art alone, by their 
 melody, by their merely external fascination, without 
 regard to their content, to their ultimate meaning. In- 
 deed, there are not a few lovely lyrics in our language 
 the meaning of which is doubtful or even vague and 
 intangible. They charm our ears with their music, 
 even if they fail to appeal to our intellect. They live 
 by melody, and almost by melody alone. And if this is 
 a fact, surely it is well worth our while to seek for an 
 understanding of the principles of an art which can 
 work these marvels. 
 
 If there are a few lyrics which survive by form 
 rather than by content, none the less is it true that 
 hi poetry form and content are inseparable ; and 
 poetry demands for its full appreciation an under- 
 standing of versification. Indeed, Professor Bradley 
 does not go too far when he asserts that " the value 
 of versification, when it is indissolubly fused with 
 meaning, can hardly be exaggerated. The gift for 
 feeling it, even more perhaps than the gift for feeling 
 the value of style, is the specific gift for poetry, as dis- 
 tinguished from the other arts." And Leigh Hunt went 
 even further, for he insisted that " versification itself 
 becomes part of the sentiment of a poem. ... I know 
 of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine 
 poetry ; no poetry of a mean order accompanied with 
 verse of the highest."
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 RHYTHM 
 
 Our new empiricism, following 1 where intuition leads the way, com- 
 prehends the functions of vibrations : it perceives that every movement 
 of matter, seized upon by universal force, is vibratory ; that vibrations, 
 and nothing else, convey through the body the look and voice of na- 
 ture to the soul ; that thus alone can one incarnate individuality ad- 
 dress its fellow; that, to use old Bunyan's imagery, these vibrations 
 knock at the ear-gate, and are visible to the eye-gate, and are sentient 
 at the gates of touch of the living temple. The word describing their 
 action is in evidence ; they ' ' thrill ' ' the body, they thrill the soul, 
 both of which respond with subjective, interblending vibrations, ac- 
 cording to the keys, the wave-lengths of their excitants. EDMUKD 
 CLARENCE STEDMAN : The Nature and Elements of Poetry. 
 
 IN any consideration of versification, we need to begin 
 by reminding ourselves that poetry is always intended 
 to be said or sung. Its appeal is primarily to the ear 
 and only secondarily to the eye. At first, poetry was 
 certainly sung, because it came into being long before 
 the invention of the art of writing. After a while, 
 poetry was both said and sung ; it was recited, either 
 with or without the accompaniment of music. Only 
 after long centuries, during which it survived on the 
 tongue and in the ear, was it written down to reach 
 the eye also. " To pass from hearing literature to read- 
 ing it is to take a great and dangerous step," said 
 Stevenson ; " with not a few, I think, a large propor- 
 tion of their pleasure then comes to an end, . . . they 
 read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear never 
 again the chime of fair words or the march of the 
 stately syllable." Even now, the real approach of
 
 RHYTHM 9 
 
 poetry to the soul of man is through his ears ; and 
 we do not feel its full force until we speak it our- 
 selves or hear it from others. It might almost be as- 
 serted that poetry is like music, in which the notation 
 in black and white is only a device to preserve it and 
 to transmit it ; and that like music, poetry does not 
 fully exist until it is heard. As a result of this re- 
 semblance to music, poetry is likely to lose something 
 of its power when the poet thinks rather of his readers 
 than of his hearers. 
 
 Therefore, the true principles of versification can 
 be seized only when we keep this fact always in mind, 
 that the poet has intended his lines to be heard by 
 the ear, to be spoken or chanted or sung by one for 
 the pleasure of others. His verses, lyric or dramatic 
 as they may be, are meant to be spoken and so they 
 must adjust themselves to the vocal organs of man ; 
 and they are meant to be heard and so they must be 
 measured to the capacity of the human ear. Indeed, 
 nearly all the elements of the art of versification are 
 the direct result of this condition of oral delivery. 
 
 The most important of these elements is rhythm. 
 All nature is rhythmic. The tides rise and fall ; day , 
 follows night ; and the seasons recur one after the 
 other, year by year. Human nature is rhythmic also ; 
 and emotion, which is the subject-matter of poetry, 
 tends always to express itself rhythmically. Passionate 
 language has its marked beats. Primitive man casts 
 his war-songs and his love-songs into a rude but em- 
 phatic rhythm. The wail of the tribe over its dead is 
 rhythmic ; and so is the crooning of the mother over 
 her babe in the cradle by her side. The chant of tri- 
 umph has its rise and fall. In all these examples, the
 
 10 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 character of the rhythm may be open to question , 
 but the existence of the rhythm itself is beyond dis- 
 pute. Lowell singled out for praise the song of De- 
 borah and Barak : " Awake, awake, Deborah ! 
 Awake, awake, utter a song ! Arise, Barak, and lead 
 thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam ! " 
 
 This rhythmic utterance in moments of poignant 
 emotion is spontaneous even to-day in our children. 
 A few years ago the young daughter of a friend of 
 mine was stricken to the heart by the crushing of 
 a cherished doll under a rocking-chair. When the 
 mother returned she found the little girl so pitiful 
 and pathetic that she took the child in her arms and 
 asked what had happened. And then the little 
 daughter broke out in this lament : 
 
 My dolly is dead ! My dolly is dead ! 
 
 I loved my dolly, and I did n't want her to die ! 
 
 But she died, and I buried her. 
 
 And I wanted to bury her 
 
 In the worst place I could find ; 
 
 So I looked all over the flat 
 
 For the very worst place I could find. 
 
 And I buried her in the pail 
 
 In the pail under the sink in the kitchen, 
 
 In the pail where we put the old dinners 
 
 And the old breakfasts and my crusts when I won't 
 
 eat 'em : 
 
 And I buried her there. 
 It was the very worst place I could find. 
 I buried her on top of the dinner 
 And under the breakfast, 
 
 And there 's oatmeal where her head ought to be. 
 And Annie will put her on the dumbwaiter, 
 And she '11 send her down to the janitor, 
 And the janitor will put her into the barrel, 
 And he '11 put the barrel out on the sidewalk ;
 
 RHYTHM 11 
 
 And the man will come along with the wagon, 
 And he '11 empty her into the wagon, 
 And he '11 drive her down to the dock, 
 And he '11 dump her into the river, 
 And she '11 go floating down the river 
 Without any head and without any legs 
 And I did n't want her to die ! 
 My dolly, my dolly, my dolly, 
 Is dead and I 've buried her, 
 And I did n't want her to die i 
 
 This childish dirge is curiously like the bold and 
 formless lyric outpourings of savages. It is wildly 
 rhythmic, not regular, not artificial, instinctive rather 
 than artistic. It has even the repetition and redupli- 
 cation and overt cataloging which often characterize 
 the chants of primitive races. 
 
 Even in the less spontaneous and more consciously 
 artistic paragraphs of the great orators, we can often 
 feel the rise and fall of rhythm, sometimes only in a 
 single sentence and sometimes carried through a long 
 passage. For instance, in a speech of John Bright's 
 delivered during the Crimean war, he said that " the 
 angel of death has been abroad through the land : we 
 may almost hear the beating of his wings." It would 
 be easy to adduce other examples from the orations 
 which are charged with sweeping emotion. 
 
 Certain of the novelists have now and again availed 
 themselves of this same device to enhance the pathos 
 of the situation they were setting forth. Dickens, in 
 particular, could rarely resist the temptation to drop 
 into very obvious rhythm whenever he stood by the 
 death-bed or the tomb of one of his characters. Here, 
 for example, is the concluding paragraph of " Nicholas 
 Nickleby " : " The grass was green above the dead
 
 12 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 boy's grave, trodden by feet so small and light, that 
 not a daisy drooped its head beneath their pressure. 
 Through all the spring and summer-time garlands of 
 fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, rested upon 
 the stone." 
 
 In general, prose is for daily use in this workaday 
 world ; and it becomes rhythmic when it has to express 
 emotion, that is to say, only on special occasions. But 
 even when it is properly rhythmic we do not like to have 
 it encroach on the borders of actual verse. We feel that 
 prose is one thing and that verse is another ; and 
 therefore a delicate ear is annoyed by the excessive 
 regularity of the rhythm in Dickens's elegies. It is 
 a little too obvious, and it offends us as out of place 
 in prose. The fundamental difference between the 
 rhythms appropriate to prose and those appropriate to 
 verse lies in the fact that the latter conform to a sim- 
 ple pattern and that the former do not. If a writer 
 of prose forces us to perceive his pattern by limiting 
 it, as Dickens does, he loses the ample freedom proper 
 to prose, and he suffers this loss without achieving the 
 special merit of verse. In prose, our ear delights in 
 the vague suggestion of a pattern, which is too large 
 for us to grasp, even though we take pleasure in it. 
 In verse, the poet spreads the pattern before us, in- 
 vites our attention to it ; he awakes in us the expect- 
 ancy that its elements will recur at regular intervals ; 
 and it is partly by the gratification of this expectancy 
 that he gives us pleasure. This pattern is the result 
 of reducing rhythm to measure ; and it is this metrical 
 rhythm which the writer of prose must avoid unless 
 he is willing to annoy our ears. The orator and the 
 novelist may deal with the same subject-matter as the
 
 RHYTHM 13 
 
 poet, but they must not infringe on his method. Their 
 diction may be as impassioned as his, as lofty in 
 phrasing, as elevated in imagination ; but they must 
 avoid that formal regularity which we hold to be the 
 privilege of the poet alone. 
 
 This formal regularity is what constitutes English 
 verse ; and it is easy to analyze. When we read a line 
 of English poetry we cannot help noticing that certain 
 syllables are bolder or longer or more emphatic than 
 others. In Longfellow's 
 
 Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
 
 these more important syllables are the first of every 
 pair ; and in Drake's 
 
 When Freedom from her mountain height, 
 
 they are the second in every pair. We may indicate 
 the rise and fall of these syllables in Longfellow's line 
 by suggesting that it more or less resembles 
 
 Ttimty, tumty, tumty, twnty, 
 while in Drake's line it is 
 
 litum, titum, titum, titum. 
 In Byron's line 
 
 And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
 
 the more important syllables are the third in each 
 group of three ; and the scheme of the line is 
 
 Titilum, tititum, tititum, titifum. 
 
 If we read as one line Hood's 
 
 Make no deep scrutiny into her mutiny, 
 the important syllables are the first in each group of 
 three ; and the scheme is 
 
 Twmtity, tumtity, tumtity, tumtity.
 
 14 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 That these syllables have an importance superior to 
 the other syllables in the same lines is undeniable. 
 This importance may be due to the fact that they are 
 either more emphatic or longer in time of utterance. 
 But are these differences in tone or in accent the only 
 difference between them? Here we enter on one of 
 the most disputed questions in versification. The more 
 important syllables may differ in length, in the time 
 we take to utter them, that is to say, in quantity. 
 They may differ also in emphasis, in stress, that is to 
 say, in accent. They may differ further in pitch, in 
 their melodic tone. Or the difference may sometimes 
 be due to a combination of time, stress and pitch, for 
 a syllable may be at once longer than the syllables 
 which precede and follow, while it is also more sharply 
 accented, as well as higher in pitch. We may be in 
 doubt as to the cause of the superior importance of 
 these syllables, but we never deny the fact that for 
 some reason they are more important. And this supe- 
 rior importance of certain syllables over other sylla- 
 bles in the same line, whatever its cause may be, is the 
 basis of English versification. There is no profit in 
 here entering on the discussion as to the cause of this 
 superior importance ; and hereafter in this book these 
 syllables of superior importance will be called long^ 
 even though they may owe their value to other ele- 
 ments than mere duration of time. In like manner, 
 the syllables of inferior importance will be called 
 short, even though they may contain long vowels. And 
 for the sake of convenience a long syllable will be 
 marked or indicated by the sign - and a short syllable 
 by the sign v. 
 
 If now we substitute these signs for tumty and
 
 RHYTHM 15 
 
 tumtity, we find that Longfellow's line " Tell me not, 
 in mournful numbers," may be represented thus : 
 
 Drake's " When Freedom from her mountain height " 
 will be translated into these symbols : 
 
 V , V 5 V > V 
 
 Byron's " And the sheen of their spears was like stars 
 on the sea" has this scheme: 
 
 V V J V V ) V V ) V V 
 
 And Hood's " Make no deep scrutiny into her mu- 
 tiny " has this : 
 
 w> v v 
 
 Thus we see that each of these lines is made by the 
 fourfold repetition of the same unit. Each of these 
 units we call a foot. In Longfellow's line this unit is 
 - v, a long followed by a short ; and by tradition this 
 foot is called a trochee. In Drake's line the unit is ^ -, 
 a short followed by a long ; and this foot is called an 
 iamb or iambus. In Byron's line the unit is v v -, 
 two shorts followed by a long ; and the name of this 
 foot is anapest. In Hood's line the unit is - v v, a 
 long followed by two shorts, a foot which is known as 
 a dactyl. These terms, trochee, iamb, anapest, and 
 dactyl, have been taken over from Latin versification, 
 although they there represent feet not really corre- 
 sponding to the English feet which bear the same names. 
 These four are probably the only feet possible in 
 English versification, because in English, which is a 
 strongly accented language, we seem to be unable to 
 utter three syllables in succession without making one
 
 16 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 of them more important than the other two, longer or 
 more emphatic. Doubtless a few examples of three 
 short syllables in succession may be discovered by a 
 diligent examination of the whole body of English 
 poetry ; but they are very few. 
 
 In fact, our speech is so accentual that we find it 
 almost impossible to give exactly equal emphasis to 
 two syllables in the same foot ; and we are therefore 
 deprived of the use of the spondee, made up of two 
 longs, , a foot which was most useful in the versifi- 
 cation of the Greeks and Romans. More than one 
 English word taken by itself seems to be a spondee, 
 baseball, for instance, and stronghold ; but when such 
 words are used in verse, either the first syllable or the 
 second is likely to be so lengthened or emphasized 
 that we have a trochee or an iambus. Spondees can 
 be discovered in English verse, especially in Milton, 
 but they are infrequent. Two other feet known to 
 classic meter are the amphibrach, v - w, a short, a long, 
 and a short ; and the amphimacer, _ w -, a long, a 
 short, and a long. But neither of these has established 
 itself in English verse ; and when either of them has 
 been attempted, the result is very doubtfully dis- 
 tinguishable from a sequence of dactyls or anapests. 
 Even Coleridge, a master of metrics, was not able to 
 construct an English amphibrach and an English am- 
 phimacer which should set itself off sharply from the 
 anapest. Here is his ingenious attempt to exemplify 
 the several feet : 
 
 Trochee trips from long to short ; 
 
 From long to long in solemn sort 
 
 Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot, yet ill able 
 
 Ever to come np with Dactyl trisyllable.
 
 RHYTHM 17 
 
 Iambics march from short to long ; 
 
 With a leap and a bound, the swift Anapests throng ; 
 
 One syllable long with a short at each side 
 
 Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride : 
 
 First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer 
 
 Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred racer. 
 
 To scan a line is to divide it into its constituent 
 feet, to mark the longs and the shorts, to count the 
 feet and to declare their character. All verse in the 
 English language can be scanned with the aid of the 
 trochee and the iambic, the anapest and the dactyl. 
 When we scan Longfellow's line we find that it con- 
 sists of four trochees ; and therefore we describe it as 
 trochaic tetrameter. When a line has two feet we 
 call it dimeter ; with three feet it is trimeter ; with 
 four it is tetrameter ; with five, pentameter ; with six, 
 hexameter, and with seven, heptameter. When Drake's 
 line is scanned it is seen to be iambic tetrameter; 
 Byron's is anapestic tetrameter ; and Hood's is dac- 
 tylic tetrameter. When we scan Gray's 
 
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day 
 we find this scheme 
 
 and we declare that the line is iambic pentameter. And 
 if we examine the first line of Baring Gould's hymn, 
 
 Onward, Christian soldiers ! 
 we discover that the scheme is 
 
 and we decide that it is trochaic trimeter. Austin 
 Dobson's 
 
 Too hard it is to sing 
 
 In these untunef ul times I
 
 18 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 declares itself at once as iambic trimeter : 
 
 v I v 
 
 and Budyard Kipling's 
 
 We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a 
 surplice-peg 
 
 is obviously anapestic heptameter, although it contains 
 iambics as well as anapests, as the translation into 
 symbols discloses at once : 
 
 And this apparent irregularity, this commingling of 
 anapests and iambics, leads us to another point of 
 prime significance. Verse consists of a regular ar- 
 rangement of feet, of a pattern which can be taken 
 in by the ear without undue tension. In any single 
 foot the ear permits many liberties with the short syl- 
 lables ; but it tolerates only a little license with the 
 long syllable. If there are in a line the required num- 
 ber of long syllables, of emphatic beats, the ear is not at 
 all particular about the less important short syllables. 
 These may be inserted or even on occasion omitted 
 altogether, without interfering with the rhythm, with 
 the swing of the line as the ear expects to receive it. 
 For example, an iambic pentameter may have an added 
 syllable at the end almost without our noting it, as in 
 Shakspere's 
 
 To be, or not to be: that is the question. 
 
 Or the final short syllable of a terminal trochee may 
 be dropped without spoiling the expected pattern, as 
 in Longfellow's " Psalm of Life " :
 
 RHYTHM 19 
 
 Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
 Life is but an empty dream ! v] 
 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 
 And things are not what they seem. [ w ] 
 
 Here the rhythm is trochaic ; and its flow is not broken 
 by the dropping out of these short syllables at the end 
 of the second and fourth lines. We may translate 
 these lines into symbols, enclosing the dropped sylla- 
 bles in brackets. 
 
 V I V I V I V 
 
 w I w I v I [wj 
 
 w I w I v| v 
 
 v I v I w I |_wj 
 
 These lines still retain their four emphatic beats ; and 
 so long as the ear can perceive these beats it is satis- 
 fied. These beats carry the tune, so to speak. The ear 
 not only permits variation of feet inside the frame- 
 work of beats, it is even delighted when this is so 
 adroitly done as to evade the monotony of strict regu- 
 larity. For example, the ear authorizes the poet to sub- 
 stitute a trochee for an iambus in the first foot of an 
 iambic pentameter, as in Shakspere's 
 
 O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend. 
 
 w I v | v I v |v 
 
 And it does not protest when a similar substitution is 
 made hi one of the other feet, as in the fourth foot of 
 Shakspere's 
 
 A kingdom for a stage, princes to act. 
 
 v I v I v I v Iv 
 
 The ear does not protest because it is not sharply con- 
 scious of the substitution. It expects the five long syl-
 
 20 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 lables to occur substantially in the established order ; 
 and if this expectation is fulfilled, it is more or less 
 unconscious of the minor irregularity. In iambic meters, 
 it allows not only the occasional substitution of a tro- 
 chee but the frequent substitution of anapests. So in 
 anapestic meters, it is willing to accept an occasional 
 iambus. Indeed, in many ballads there is such an in- 
 termixture of the iambus and of the anapest that it is 
 almost impossible to decide whether the rhythm is 
 really iambic or anapestic. In the older traditional 
 ballads, the iambus predominates, but there is a free 
 infusion of anapests, as in this line from " Sir Patrick 
 Spens": 
 
 To send us out, at this time of the year. 
 
 i V I V W | V W 
 
 These traditional ballads were, many of them, composed 
 early in the history of English poetry by unknown 
 bards, who were guileless of critical theory, and who 
 sang their stanzas into being to please the ears of 
 their own artless contemporaries. The traditional nurs- 
 ery-rimes are equally spontaneous ; and they cast an 
 equal illumination upon the natural methods of Eng- 
 lish versification. If we examine certain of the primi- 
 tive nursery-rimes we can see that the untutored lyr- 
 ists unhesitatingly dropped out short syllables, never 
 doubting that the ears of their young hearers would 
 carry the tune securely in spite of this omission. One 
 of the most familiar of nursery-rimes begins 
 
 Hark ! Hark ! 
 The dogs do bark 
 The beggars are come to town.
 
 RHYTHM 21 
 
 The second and the third lines reveal to us that the 
 rhythm is iambic; and this shows us that a short syl- 
 lable has been suppressed in both of the feet of the first 
 line. If we translate the three lines into symbols we 
 have this : 
 
 Take another nursery-rime quite as well known : 
 
 Pease porridge hot, 
 
 Pease porridge cold, 
 Pease porridge in the pot 
 
 Nine days old. 
 
 We all remember how this is to be spoken, with ita 
 marked pauses and with its accompanying clapping of 
 the hands. We see that the rhythm is trochaic ; and 
 although many of the short syllables are missing, the 
 place of each one of them is taken by a pause, by a 
 silence, by a rest (as it would be called in musical no- 
 tation). And yet our memory assures us that these 
 silences do not interfere with the carrying of the tune. 
 The four lines might be represented in this way : 
 
 -[w] l- 
 
 Perhaps the omissions can be made more evident by 
 noting the omissions in the lines themselves : 
 
 Pease [] | porridge | hot [w] 
 Pease [w] I porridge | cold [ v ] 
 
 Pease [w] I porridge | in the | pot [ v ] 
 Nine [v] I days [w] | old [ w ]
 
 22 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 An even more striking illustration of the instinctive 
 ease with which short syllables may be suppressed, if 
 their places are taken by pauses, by rests, can be found 
 in another nursery-rime, that which invites us to 
 sing a song of sixpence. One line of this, 
 
 Now was n't that a dainty dish to set before the King ? 
 makes it plain that we have here an iambic heptameter 
 
 And yet at the end of the little ballad we are told 
 about the maid in the garden hanging out the clothes, 
 and we are informed that 
 
 Down came a blackbird and snipt off her nose. 
 And we find ourselves forced to translate this thus : 
 
 [w] Down | [<./] came I a black I [ v ] bird | and suipt | [w] 
 off | her nose. 
 
 [v]-| [v]-|w-| [w]-| v-l [v]- Iv- 
 
 Thus represented the line seems to the eye arbitrary, 
 not to say awkward ; and yet the untrained ear of a 
 child has never had any difficulty in feeling the full 
 force of the rhythm. If the emphatic syllables assert 
 themselves, if the successive beats of the line are clearly 
 perceptible, then the ear can carry the tune, even if 
 the silences, the pauses, the rests, are frequent. The 
 line is still divided into a series of equal periods; and 
 it is this series of equal periods that the ear expects 
 and demands. The eye may be puzzled ; but the ear 
 is satisfied. 
 
 This device of boldly dropping out a short syllable 
 in order to add weight to the long syllable, which then
 
 RHYTHM 23 
 
 stands forth alone, has been utilized not only by the 
 simple makers of ballads and of nursery-rimes but also 
 by the greater poets of our language. Tennyson was 
 a devoted student of versification, and he found hia 
 profit in all the ingenious devices of the adroit crafts- 
 men who had preceded him. In one of his briefer lyrics, 
 he may have taken a hint from the unknown writer of 
 the nursery-rune about the beggars coming to town: 
 
 Break, break, break, 
 
 On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! 
 And I would that my tongue could utter 
 
 The thoughts that arise in me. 
 
 In reading this stanza, with due regard to its inten- 
 tion, we feel that each of the four lines is equal in 
 the time of delivery and in the number of beats. Thus 
 there is a harmonious and satisfactory effect on the ear, 
 although the eye may inform us that there are only 
 three syllables in the first line while there are nine in 
 the third. The line with three syllables is equal to the 
 line of nine syllables because it has intervals of silence 
 equivalent in duration of time to the syllables it lacks. 
 The stanza is really anapestic trimeter ; and it may be 
 thus represented: 
 
 LW wj I [w vj I LW v] 
 
 w v I [vj v I [wj v 
 
 V V I W W I L W J w I v 
 |_WJ W I W V I L V J w ~ 
 
 In one of his "Cavalier Tunes" called "Marching 
 Along," Browning got a series of vigorous effects by 
 the repeated use of this device of substituting rests for 
 actual syllables : 
 
 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 
 Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing :
 
 24 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 
 And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, 
 Marched them along, fifty-score strong, 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 On examination, these lines are seen to be dactylic 
 tetrameter, but with a free dropping out of the shorter 
 syllables, which are not missed, since their places are 
 taken by equivalent pauses, the rhythm therefore flow- 
 ing on unbroken. Here is the translation into sym- 
 bols: 
 
 w v I |_v wj I w v I L^ vj 
 
 w v I ww/l v v I |_w vj 
 
 v I - [v] v I - v v I - [v v] 
 v I - v w 1 - v w t - TV v] 
 
 v _v 
 
 Another peculiarity is to be noted both in Tenny- 
 son's stanza and in Browning's : syllables that may 
 seem to be suppressed in one line sometimes appear in 
 another. At the end of Tennyson's third line, we find 
 utter, which gives the line a short syllable too much ; 
 but at the beginning of the fourth line we find that 
 there is a short syllable too little. Perhaps the rhythm 
 has been carried over from one line to the next. So at 
 the beginning of Browning's third and fourth lines, 
 we find a short syllable and, which is not needed in 
 the first foot of either of these lines, but which stands 
 instead of one of the two short syllables omitted at the 
 ends of the lines preceding these two. This is evidence 
 that the poets were not composing their lines one by 
 one, and that they were thinking rather of their 
 stanzas as wholes. These suppressions and insertions 
 may seem abnormal to the eye which is looking for
 
 RHYTHM 25 
 
 exact symmetry ; but they are quite normal to the ear 
 which is held by the swing of the rhythm. 
 
 It should always be remembered that poets com- 
 pose their lyrics not only for the ear, but also by the 
 ear. Sometimes a poet does not write down his song 
 until he has made it up in his head, chanting it to 
 himself and fitting it to the tune that is running in his 
 own ears. Scott, for example, often beat out his bold 
 ballads while he was on horseback. Tennyson composed 
 in the open air on the slopes of the hills of Haslemere ; 
 afterwards he tested what he had done when he put 
 it down in black and white ; but it owed its rhythmic 
 ease to the earlier labor far from his desk. Composing 
 to please his own ear, first of all, and then the 
 ears of all who might speak his lines, the poet does not 
 care whether the printed poem happens to conform 
 to academic rules which are the result of the mistaken 
 belief that poetry should appeal primarily to the 
 eyes, a belief that no true poet has ever held. 
 Professor Gummere has reminded us that Coleridge 
 and Wordsworth, Scott and Tennyson, all read their 
 verses in " a kind of chant " ; and Hazlitt has recorded 
 that in the case of the three older poets, this " acted as 
 a spell upon the hearer." And then Professor Gummere 
 adds the needed explanation that "this chant was 
 not singsong ; singsong simply shows the feet, baldly 
 asserts meter, while rhythmical reading does justice 
 to cadence and the harmonious movement of the 
 verse." 
 
 The poet may even choose to print his lines in a 
 form which will possibly at first puzzle the eyes of 
 those who seek to declare its metrical scheme; and 
 this he does unhesitatingly if he has made sure that
 
 26 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 the rhythm is easily apprehended by the ear. Here is 
 the opening stanza of one of Poe's most beautiful 
 lyrics, " For Annie " : 
 
 Thank Heaven ! the crisis, 
 
 The danger is past, 
 And the lingering illness 
 
 Is over at last 
 And the fever called " Living " 
 
 Is conquered at last. 
 
 The ear seizes the rhythm of this at once, and is per- 
 fectly satisfied with it, however much the eye may be 
 at a loss to declare just what the apparently irregular 
 meter really is. This perplexity is due to the fact that 
 the eye sees six lines as the poet has printed his poem, 
 whereas the ear catches only three, each of which is 
 an anapestic tetrameter. The transcription into signs 
 shows this clearly : 
 
 _w w w w 
 
 w I w v 
 w I w w I w 
 
 V I V V I 
 V V I W W I V 
 
 The actual scheme is clearly revealed when we put 
 these symbols into three lines : 
 
 [_v J v I v w I v w I w v 
 w v I w w I w w I w v 
 
 I v w I w v I w v 
 
 In his suggestive essay on the " Rationale of Verse," 
 Poe adduced a most striking example of a poet's lack
 
 RHYTHM 27 
 
 of regard for the eye of the reader. He quoted the 
 opening lines of Byron's " Bride of Abydos " (in which 
 the British bard was echoing Goethe) : 
 
 Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle 
 
 Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, 
 
 Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, 
 
 Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? 
 
 Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 
 
 Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; 
 
 Where the light winga of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, 
 
 Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gtil in her bloom; 
 
 Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
 
 And the voice of the nightingale never is mute. 
 
 The American poet-critic then asked how these 
 lines are to be scanned. The first is obviously dac- 
 tylic, but the last is as obviously anapestic, and more 
 than one of the others is doubtful in its apparent irreg- 
 ularity. If the lines are considered severally, we are 
 at a loss to declare the rhythm in which this beautiful 
 prelude is written. But Byron did not compose them 
 severally; he composed them continuously, or rather 
 he composed the passage as a whole regardless of its 
 division into lines. He was appealing to the ears of 
 the hearer and not to the eyes of the reader, certain 
 that the ears can carry the tune without regard to 
 any division into lines for the purposes of print. Con- 
 sidering the passage as a whole, we observe that the 
 rhythm is dactylic from beginning to end, even in 
 those lines which, taken by themselves, may seem to 
 be anapestic. The syllables which appear to be 
 missing at the end of the first line are to be found at 
 the beginning of the second ; and those missing at 
 the end of the second are to be found at the begin- 
 ning of the third ; and so on.
 
 28 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 In other words, the poet is free to select his pattern 
 at will. He may choose a trochaic or an iambic rhythm, 
 a dactylic or an anapestic. Having decided on the 
 number of his beats, of his long syllables, he must ac- 
 custom our ears to the pattern he has resolved upon. 
 When this tune has rung in our ears he must sustain 
 it with his long syllables, but he is at liberty to vary 
 his short syllables at will, and even to suppress them, 
 if these changes do not interfere with the tune of the 
 verse. When we have once perceived the pattern, we 
 are willing enough to allow the poet the privilege of any 
 variation which does not interfere with the tune which 
 he has given us to carry in our heads. 
 
 Sometimes he profits by this liberty at his peril 
 because he cannot always make sure that we are going 
 to take his lines in exact accordance with his metrical 
 intent. He may have supposed that his suppression of 
 a short syllable, his substitution of a trochee for an 
 iambus would not interrupt the flow of the rhythm. 
 And he may have been at fault in this supposition, 
 since for some reason unforeseen by him, the sup- 
 pression or the substitution may call attention to 
 itself and thus break the current of the rhythm. If 
 this happens the poet can find no excuse in pointing 
 out that the license he took was authorized by the 
 practice of some earlier master of verse. If the mis- 
 fortune befalls him, he cannot claim exemption by 
 citing precedents. It is by the result of his own 
 work that the poet must be judged. If his lines fail 
 to fall agreeably on the ear, then is the poet himself 
 at fault. 
 
 The poet, no less than the prose-writer, is bound to 
 observe what Herbert Spencer called the principle of
 
 RHYTHM 29 
 
 Economy of Attention. At any moment any one of 
 us has just so much attention to give to the man who 
 is addressing us. Some of this attention is neces- 
 sarily taken up by the effort of seizing what he is 
 saying ; and therefore the less his manner attracts our 
 notice, the more attention we shall have to bestow upon 
 his matter. The more clearly and the more simply he 
 can deliver his message, the more amply can we re- 
 ceive it. The poet has something to say to us and 
 he employs verse to convey this to our ears ; therefore 
 whenever the verse itself arrests our attention we 
 have just so much the less to bestow upon what he has 
 to say. If he has once set the tune and aroused in us 
 the interest of expectancy for a definite rhythm, then 
 whenever he violates this accepted rhythm he forces 
 us suddenly to consider his instrument, and our in- 
 terest is thereby at once distracted from his meaning. 
 Therefore, it is safer for the poet to vary his lines 
 very cautiously and to keep in mind always the 
 limitations of the human ear, since it is only 
 through the ear that he can move the soul of his 
 fellow-man. 
 
 And we as readers must do our part also. We 
 must read verse aloud as the poet meant us to 
 read it, as he read it himself when he sang it into 
 being. " We must restore to poetry its primary 
 intention as cadenced and melodious verse," so Pro- 
 fessor Gummere has declared. " What is a lyric with- 
 out its rhythmical values ? What is the wild water of 
 a brook when it is dammed into a duckpond ? The 
 very tropes and figures depend upon this charm of 
 movement, like flashes of light thrown back by the 
 hurrying waves. Yet we are so afraid of singsong, and
 
 30 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 even more afraid of the pathetic and sentimental, 
 that we suppress all cadences, and come out trium- 
 phant with a hybrid sort of performance that reminds 
 one of a bird which should flap its wings without 
 flying."
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 METER 
 
 Here, at the outset, we find precisely what differentiates verse from 
 prose. These two possess much in common. Their ideals are often sim- 
 ilar ; their subjects may be identical ; their cadences sometimes coin- 
 cide. Yet there is an essential difference, which has seldom been rightly 
 stated, and which is a difference of mechanical method. The units of 
 prose are diverse, irregular in length, rarely conformed to a common 
 pattern. In verse, on the other hand, succession is continuous. Some- 
 thing recurs with regularity. This is the distinctive note of verse, 
 making its structure differ from that of prose ; no other absolute line 
 of demarcation can be drawn. Typical recurrence, uniform repetition, 
 is the prime postulate of meter. T. S. OMOND : A Study of Meter. 
 
 WE have seen that the habits of the English language 
 are such as to make it practically impossible to write 
 English verse except in one of the four rhythms which 
 we call iambic, trochaic, anapestic and dactylic. And 
 the practice of the poets reveals that any poem in our 
 language must be in one or another of these rhythms. 
 The poet, having accustomed our ear to the rhythm he 
 has chosen, must keep to the pattern of his choice. He 
 must give us the succession of beats in the order he has 
 promised them to us. He may make varied substitu- 
 tions and frequent suppressions inside his lines, but he 
 must preserve always the expected framework of the 
 chosen form. That is to say, he must decide once for 
 all, whether he will compose in an iambic rhythm or a 
 trochaic, an auapestic or a dactylic. 
 
 Of these four rhythms, the iambic has ever been the 
 favorite. Indeed, there seem to have been periods when 
 it was the only rhythm known. In King James' rules
 
 82 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 for writing verse, published in 1585, only the iambus 
 is considered, as if it was the sole possible rhythm. Even 
 in Greek, Aristotle held the iambic to be the most col- 
 loquial, since " conversational speech runs into iambic 
 form more frequently than into any other kind of 
 verse." Probably nine tenths of English poetry is iam- 
 bic ; this is the basis of the blank verse of Shakspere's 
 plays and of Milton's epic, of most ballads old and new, 
 of the heroic couplet of Dryden and of Pope, of the 
 sonnet, and of a large majority of the hymns. Even in 
 the nineteenth century, when poets were eager in de- 
 vising new stanzaic arrangements, most of them clung 
 to the iambus. Perhaps this immense popularity is due 
 to the simplicity of the rhythm, with its short followed 
 by a long, in accord with the rhetorical precept of put- 
 ting the emphasis at the end. Perhaps it is due to the 
 fact that when the iambic is once established in the ear 
 of the listener, the poet can avoid monotony by a wide 
 variety of substitutions and suppressions. 
 
 Although iambic and trochaic rhythms consist in a 
 similar succession of alternating longs and shorts, the 
 iambic is far bolder ; it is more masculine ; it has a 
 direct vigor, which seems often to be lacking to the 
 trochaic. The iambic apparently has a majesty of its 
 own which fits it for loftier themes. The trochaic is 
 gentler, sweeter, more feminine, adapted for consola- 
 tion rather than for reinvigoration. It is inferior in 
 terseness and in sharpness. 
 
 The anapestic rhythm had served chiefly for satire 
 and for humor, until the nineteenth century, when Eng- 
 lish poets began to appreciate it and to employ it for 
 nobler topics. It was the favorite of Swinburne, who 
 handled it with superb freedom and mastery.
 
 METER 83 
 
 The dactylic rhythm is least used of the four, al- 
 though Hood proved that it had advantages of its own, 
 and although Browning employed it with clear under- 
 standing of its special characteristics. 
 
 In rimeless verse a poet might let any one of these 
 rhythms flow on indefinitely, breaking off only when 
 he had come to the end of his topic. But this un 
 broken flow is too fatiguing for the ear; and there- 
 fore poems are divided into lines, so that the ear can 
 have intervals of rest. When a rhythm is thus cut 
 into sections we have meter, for we can measure 
 every line by the number of times the foot happens to 
 be repeated. In the verse of the modern languages, 
 the ends of the lines are generally distinguished by 
 rimes, a device unknown to the ancients. In some 
 modern languages, especially in French which lacks 
 boldness of accent, these terminal rimes are so im- 
 portant as to be almost essential. But in English, al- 
 though rime is useful, it is not necessary; and the 
 poets of our language have adventured themselves in 
 many forms of unrimed verse. 
 
 Whether there is or is not a terminal rime, there 
 is generally a pause of some sort to mark the end of 
 the line ; and there is often a full stop, although the 
 more accomplished masters of meter reveal their dex- 
 terity in carrying over the sense from line to line 
 while still keeping the structure distinct. Here again 
 the appeal is to the ear and not to the eye ; the poet 
 may choose to print his lines to suit his own whim ; 
 but the way in which he presents them does not de- 
 termine the metrical scheme. That is decided by the 
 ear of the listener and not by the eye of the reader. 
 We may even disregard the arrangement of the rimes
 
 34 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 in deciding what the meter really is. For example, 
 Shelley chose to write this as six lines : - 
 
 Arethusa arose 
 
 From her couch of snows 
 In the Acroceraunian mountains, 
 
 From cloud and from crag, 
 
 With many a jag 
 Shepherding her bright fountains. 
 
 And Scott chose to write this as four lines : 
 
 Who spilleth life, shall forfeit life, 
 
 So bid my lord believe ; 
 That lawless love is guilt above, 
 
 This awful sign receive. 
 
 While Macaulay was satisfied to set this down as 
 only two lines : 
 
 Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are ; 
 And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre. 
 
 But however different these three on the printed 
 page may appear to the eye, the ear recognizes them 
 at once as identical. They are all three of the iambic 
 heptameter, modulated by occasional anapests. And 
 when we translate them into symbols we see that 
 Shelley's 
 
 V W I W 
 
 V V I W 
 W I W V I V W I V 
 
 V I W 
 
 V I W W 
 W I V I W I V 
 
 and Scott's 
 
 v Iv I v I w 
 
 V I V I V 
 
 v I w Iv I v" 
 w I v I w
 
 The differing typographical presentations and the dif- 
 fering rime-schemes may be disregarded since the 
 effect upon the ear is identical in all three cases. 
 Other examples of the advisability of disregarding the 
 way in which the poet may have written his lines have 
 been given in the second chapter, from Poe's " For 
 Annie " and from Byron's " Bride of Abydos." In all 
 these poems, the way in which the poet has preferred 
 to present these lines to the eye of the reader is not 
 really the way in which he composed them for his 
 own ear and for the ears of his future readers. 
 
 There is no limit to the number of feet which may 
 be included in a single line, except in so far as excessive 
 length may impose an undue burden on the ear and 
 make it more difficult to carry the tune. Swinburne 
 wrote a ballade in anapestic hexameter : 
 
 There are cliffs to be climbed on land, there are ways to be 
 
 trodden and ridden ; but we 
 Strike out from the shore as the heart invites and beseeches, 
 
 athirst for the foam. 
 
 And once he even ventured on a long-drawn ana- 
 pestic octameter, which called for twenty-four syllables 
 in every line : 
 
 Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the 
 splendor of winter had passed out of sight, 
 
 The ways of the woodland were fairer and stranger than dreams 
 that fulfil us in sleep with delight.
 
 36 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Richard Hovey essayed a line of nine iambics : 
 
 Let him await Another who shall come and sit in the Siegi 
 
 Perilous, 
 And live. In Him shall he behold how light can look in dark 
 
 ness and forgive. 
 
 Yet in practice the poets have rarely chosen to em- 
 ploy any line longer than the heptameter ; and the 
 pentameter has been used more often than any other 
 measure ; it is the meter of the heroic couplet, of blank 
 verse and of the sonnet. The reason for the popularity 
 of these meters is physiological ; the pentameter and 
 the heptameter adjust themselves to the normal 
 breathing and are delivered by the voice, easily and 
 without conscious effort. The tetrameter exactly ac- 
 cords with the rate of breathing of the average man ; 
 and this accounts for its " fatal facility." 
 
 This principle was worked out by Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes in his suggestive paper on the " Physiology 
 of Versification." The average man breathes twenty 
 times a minute ; and in a minute the average man 
 will read aloud about twenty lines of " Hiawatha" 
 or of " Marmion " ; that is to say, he will probably 
 pronounce one line to each expiration of the breath, 
 taking advantage of the pause at its close to breathe 
 in again. " The only effort required is that of vocal- 
 izing and articulating; the breathing takes care of 
 itself, not even demanding a thought except where 
 the sense may require a pause in the middle of a line. 
 The very fault found with these octosyllabic lines is 
 that they slip away too fluently, and run easily into a 
 monotonous singsong." We need only recite a brief 
 passage from either Scott's poem or Longfellow's to
 
 METER 37 
 
 assure ourselves that this adverse criticism is well 
 founded. Here is an extract from " Marmion " : 
 
 Thin curling in the morning air, 
 
 The wreaths of failing smoke declare 
 
 To embers now the brands decayed, 
 
 Where the night-watch their fires had made. 
 
 They saw, slow rolling on the plain, 
 
 Full many a baggage-cart and wain, 
 
 And dire artillery's clumsy car, 
 
 By sluggish oxen tugged to war. 
 
 In Longfellow's " Hiawatha," the singsong effect 
 is probably intensified by the trochaic rhythm and 
 also to some slight extent by the deliberate repeti* 
 
 tions : 
 
 But the fearless Hiawatha 
 Heeded not her woman's warning ; 
 Forth he strode into the forest, 
 At each stride a mile he measured ; 
 Lurid seemed the sky above him, 
 Lurid seemed the earth beneath him, 
 Hot and close the air around him, 
 Filled with smoke and fiery vapors, 
 As of burning woods and prairies, 
 For his heart was hot within him, 
 Like a living coal his heart was. 
 
 The iambic pentameter line, so Holmes declared, 
 will probably be read at the rate of about fourteen 
 lines a minute. " If a breath is allowed to each line the 
 respiration will be longer and slower than natural, and 
 a sense of effort and fatigue will soon be the conse- 
 quence " ; but this is rarely felt because there is a 
 break or a pause generally about the middle of the 
 line, which serves as a breathing-place. "This gives a 
 degree of relief, but its management requires care in 
 reading." Probably the immense popularity of the
 
 38 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 pentameter is in part due to the fact that it is not so 
 easy that it slips into singsong, and in part that it can 
 be adjusted readily to the natural processes of the 
 vocal apparatus. 
 
 The iambic heptameter, which is the "common 
 meter" of the hymn-books and the meter of most 
 of the ballads, and which is perhaps the most popu- 
 lar of English meters after the pentameter, is also 
 satisfactory from a physiological point of view, since 
 the fourteen syllables of the normal iambic line sub- 
 divide themselves into sections of eight and six, allow- 
 ing a longer pause at the end of the line. Even when 
 a fair share of anapests has been substituted here and 
 there for the normal iambs, there are still not more 
 syllables in the section than can readily be uttered 
 by a single breath, as can be observed by reading aloud 
 the quotations from Shelley, Scott and Macaulay. 
 
 Since verse is written to be spoken and to be heard, 
 to be read aloud and not merely to be read, it is not 
 difficult to see why the iambic hexameter has never 
 been a favorite with the poets of our language. Dr. 
 Holmes declared that it was " almost intolerable, from 
 its essentially unphysiological character. One can read 
 the ten-syllable line in a single expiration without any 
 considerable effort. One instinctively divides the four- 
 teen-syllable line so as to accommodate it to the respi- 
 ratory rhythm. But the twelve-syllable line is too much 
 for one expiration and not enough for two." Here are 
 a few lines from Drayton's " Polyolbion " which will 
 serve to show the justice of these remarks : 
 
 The naiads and the nymphs extremely overjoyed, 
 And on the winding banks all busily employed,
 
 METER 39 
 
 Upon this joyful day, some dainty chaplets twine: 
 Some others chosen out, with fingers neat and fine, 
 Brave diadems do make ; some baldrics up do bind : 
 Some garlands : and to some the nosegays were assigned. 
 
 Browning chose iambic hexameter for his " Fifine 
 at the Fair " ; and perhaps the unfortunate meter is 
 one reason why this poem has never attained an equal 
 popularity with many of his other poems. 
 
 Dr. Holmes asserted that this critical test of poetry 
 by the stop-watch, and its classification according to 
 its harmonizing more or less exactly with a great vital 
 function, is exactly scientific ; but he warned us that 
 we must not overlook the personal equation. A man 
 "of ample chest and of quiet temperament may 
 breathe habitually only fourteen times a minute, and 
 find the iambic pentameter to correspond with his re- 
 spiratory rhythm, and thus easier than any other for 
 him to read. A person of narrower frame and more 
 nervous habit may breathe oftener than twenty times 
 in a minute, and find the seven-syllable verse of 
 Dyer's ' Grongar Hill ' fits his respiration better 
 than" the tetrameter of Scott and Longfellow. In 
 childhood, before we have attained to the full-lunged 
 power of our maturity and when our breathing is 
 quicker than it is later, we find the briefer meters 
 easiest ; and perhaps this accounts for the frequency 
 of dimeter and of trimeter in our nursery-rimes : 
 
 Goosey, goosey, gander, 
 Where do you wander ? 
 and 
 
 Little Miss Muffet 
 
 Sat on a tuffet 
 
 Eating her curds and whey.
 
 40 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 As these nursery-rimes are artfully adjusted to 
 the undeveloped breathing apparatus of the very 
 young, so the patriotic chants of the several nations 
 are never too long in meter, being gaged to the 
 average of human respiration, as we perceive when 
 we consider " Yankee Doodle " and " God Save the 
 King," the " Marseillaise " and " What is the German 
 Fatherland ? " " Nothing in poetry," Dr. Holmes in- 
 sisted, " is widely popular that is not calculated 
 with strict reference to the respiratory function." 
 And then he made the striking suggestion that " the 
 unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to the or- 
 ganic rhythm is perhaps a more pervading fact than 
 we have been in the habit of considering it. One can 
 hardly doubt that Spenser breathed habitually more 
 slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had a quicker 
 respiration than Homer. And this difference, which 
 we conjecture from their rhythmical instincts, if our 
 conjecture is true, probably, almost certainly, charac- 
 terized all their vital movements." It would be inter- 
 esting to push this suggestion further and to consider 
 how much light the favorite meters of Tennyson and of 
 Browning, of Swinburne and of Longfellow, of Whit- 
 man and of Kipling, may shed on their physiological 
 organization. A French student of versification has 
 insisted that the hexameter of the Greeks and Latins 
 and the so-called alexandrine of the French (iambic 
 hexameter) mark the limit of single expiration of the 
 human voice; and that therefore no longer line can 
 ever succeed in winning a wide popularity. 
 
 When the poet has chosen his meter and when he 
 has established in our ears the expectancy proper to it, 
 he is free to vary the strict monotony of the line, by
 
 METER 41 
 
 additions, by substitutions, by suppressions, and by 
 shifting his central pause. He may do these things at 
 his pleasure for our pleasure, within the sole restric- 
 tion that he must not disappoint our ear of its expect- 
 ancy. He must not violently force us to read any 
 line unnaturally, by misplacing a normal accent or by 
 unduly prolonging a syllable. He must so compose 
 that when we read for the meaning we are reading 
 also for the meter. Emerson declared that it was the 
 secret of Shakspere's verse "that the thought con- 
 structs the tune, so that reading for the sense will 
 best bring out the rhythm." If a line satisfies the ear, 
 when it is read naturally with full regard to its con- 
 tent, then it is a good line prosodically ; since there can 
 be no other test. If it fails to satisfy the ear, as we 
 read it aloud, then the fault might be ours, for we 
 may have read it wrong ; but on the other hand the 
 fault might be the poet's, for he may not have been 
 able to impose on us the rhythmic sequence he in- 
 tended. It is the poet's duty not only to feel his 
 rhythm himself, but so to transmit it that we cannot 
 fail to feel it also. If he does not succeed in this, he 
 violates the principle of Economy of Attention ; he 
 interrupts the current of sympathy ; he throws us off 
 the track. Herbert Spencer notes that we are put out 
 by halting versification : " Much as at the bottom 
 of a flight of stairs, a step more or less than we 
 counted upon gives us a shock, so, too, does a mis- 
 placed accent, or a supernumerary syllable," in the 
 wrong place. And this is in accord with the advice 
 given by Boileau in his " Art of Poetry " : 
 
 Write what your reader may be pleased to hear, 
 And for the measure bare a careful ear ;
 
 42 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 On easy numbers fix your happy choice; 
 Of jarring sounds avoid the odious noise; 
 The fullest verse, and the most labored sense 
 Displease us if the ear once take offence. 
 
 We have seen already that in the iambic penta- 
 meter the poet is at liberty to add a short syllable at 
 the end of his line : 
 
 To be, or not to be : that is the question. 
 
 We have seen also that he can substitute a trochee 
 for an iambus in the opening foot : 
 
 O f5r a Muse of fire, that would ascend, 
 or in almost any other foot in the line : 
 A kingdom for a stage, prince's to act. 
 
 He may also substitute a spondee for an iambus, as 
 Milton often does : 
 
 O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, 
 With head, hands, wings or feet, pursues his way ; 
 And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. 
 
 So strongly accentual is our language that two con- 
 secutive long syllables in any iambic line are likely to be 
 read as an iambus by our unconscious shortening of 
 the first of the two or by our unconscious lengthening 
 of the second. And yet in these lines of Milton's it is 
 almost impossible not to feel that the foot is really a 
 spondee, infrequent and unnatural as that foot may be 
 in English verse. If we read for the meaning only, 
 without in any way forcing the rhythm, rough and 
 dense in the first line and hands and wings in the 
 second, are long syllables, of equal weight. Milton is 
 ever a marvelous metrist, bending sounds to do his
 
 METER 43 
 
 bidding as no other English poet has ever been able 
 to do. 
 
 Milton, Pope and Tennyson are the three English 
 poets whose artistry in verse is most certain. Their 
 theories of poetry were very different ; but each of 
 them was a deliberate and conscious artificer. " Again 
 and again," wrote Wordsworth in a letter, " I must 
 repeat that the composition of verse is infinitely more 
 of an art than men are prepared to believe, and ab- 
 solute success in it depends upon innumerable minu- 
 tiae. . . . Milton talks of pouring easy his unpre- 
 meditated verse. It would be odious and untrue to 
 say there is anything like cant in this, but it is not 
 true to the letter and tends to mislead. I could point 
 out five hundred passages in Milton upon which labor 
 has been bestowed." In nothing is Milton's art more 
 obvious than in the skill with which he modulates his 
 lines, keeping the tune intact for the ear of the listener 
 and yet delighting this ear by the delicately chosen 
 variations of accent. Without breaking his rhythm he 
 can substitute trochees and spondees for iambs ; and 
 he can change the march of his line to accommodate it 
 more expressively to his thought, making the sound 
 echo the sense. There is no English poet whose ver- 
 sification better repays the most careful study ; and 
 it is wonderful to discover how he can achieve massive 
 effects by apparently simple devices. His verse justifies 
 itself to the ear ; but it is so dextrously adapted to the 
 ear that it has often puzzled the eyes of the theorists 
 who have sought to apply an arbitrary method of 
 syllable-counting, into which Milton's large and free 
 lines frequently fail to fit. 
 
 While Milton is the mighty master, the verse of
 
 44 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 many other poets rewards analysis. Especially to be 
 noted is the pleasure the poet gives our ears when he 
 modifies his tempo to accord with a change in the 
 thought he is expressing. Emerson, for example, is often 
 careless in his versification, not bestowing on it the 
 unhasting and unresting attention which characterizes 
 Milton's composition. Yet, on occasion, Emerson at- 
 tains to a lofty level of lyric beauty : 
 
 Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But It carves the bow of beauty there, 
 And tne ripples iii rime the oar forsake. 
 
 A part of the ease and melody of the last line of this 
 quatrain is the result of the substitution of the two 
 lighter anapests for the more sedate and stately iambs. 
 There are fourteen feet in the quatrain and all but 
 three are emphatically iambic. The three anapests 
 occur at exactly the right intervals to lighten the 
 movement most felicitously. And consider also this 
 quatrain of Browning's : 
 
 OvSr the sea our galleys went, 
 With cleaving prows in order brave, 
 T5 speeding wind and 3, boTmding wave, 
 A gallant armament. 
 
 Something of the buoyancy of the first line is due 
 to the substitution of a trochee for an iambus in the 
 first foot ; and the two anapests in the third line, so a 
 critic has declared, "give life and rapidity to the motion 
 which the first two lines picture as vigorous and steady." 
 The return to strict iambics in the final line " restores 
 the original impression and enriches it with the added 
 notion of security."
 
 METER 45 
 
 Attention has been called in the preceding chapter 
 to the fact that the short syllables of a foot may be 
 omitted at the beginning of a line or at the end or 
 even within the line. It may be well to adduce other 
 examples. Especially in dactylic rhythm either one or 
 both of the short syllables at the ends of the lines may 
 be suppressed with the result of enriching the verse by 
 a variety which pleases the ear. We may take, for 
 example, this stanza of Hood's " Bridge of Sighs," 
 written in dactylic dimeter: 
 
 One more Unfortunate, 
 
 Weary of breath, [w vj 
 Rashly importunate, 
 
 Gone to her death ! [v v] 
 Take her up tenderly, 
 
 Lift her with care ; [w w] 
 Fashioned so slenderly, 
 
 Young, and so fair ! [ w v] 
 
 The suppression of the two final short syllables which 
 is only casual in Hood's poem may be consistent, as in 
 this stanza of Austin Dobson's " On a Fan," written 
 in dactylic trimeter : 
 
 Ah, but things more than polite [v 
 
 Hung on this toy, voyez-vous ! [ w 
 Matters of state and of might, [ w vl 
 
 Things that great ministers do ; [w <J] 
 
 Things that, may be, overthrew [^ J] 
 Those in whose brains they began ; [ w w] 
 
 Here was the sign and the cue, [^ v] 
 This was the Pompadour's fan ! [\s v] 
 
 Although the short syllables of the iambus and of 
 the dactyl are those which are most likely to be sup- 
 pressed, sometimes even the long syllable of the iambus 
 may be omitted, its place being taken by an equivalent
 
 40 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 rest. Of this as good an example as any may be found 
 in one of Macaulay's stirring ballads : 
 
 And how can man die better [-] than facing fearful odds, 
 For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods ? 
 
 Another example, from Austin Dobson, shows the 
 suppression of the long syllable in three lines out of 
 
 four : 
 
 The ladies of St. James's [_] 
 
 Go swinging to the play ; 
 Their footmen run before them, [-] 
 
 With a " Stand by ! Clear the way ! " 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 She takes her buckled shoon, 
 When we go out a-courting [_] 
 
 Beneath the harvest-moon. 
 
 One frequently employed method of lightening verse 
 is to add a short syllable at the end of an iambic line, 
 thereby permitting a double rime, which relieves the 
 monotony of the emphatic termination of the ordinary 
 iamb. Sometimes this added syllable is at the end of 
 the first and third lines, as in this stanza of Pea- 
 cock's " Love and Age " : 
 
 You grew a lovely roseate maiden, 
 
 And still our early love was strong ; 
 Still with no care our days were laden, 
 
 They glided joyously along; 
 And I did love you very dearly 
 
 How dearly, words want power to show; 
 I thought your heart was touched as nearly ; 
 
 But that was fifty years ago. 
 
 Or the extra syllable which makes the double rime 
 may be appended to the second and fourth lines, as iu 
 this stanza of Praed's " Belle of the Ball-room " :
 
 METER 47 
 
 She smiled on many, just for fun, 
 
 I knew that there was nothing in it I 
 I was the first the only one 
 
 Her heart had thought of for a minute, 
 I knew it, for she had told me so, 
 
 In phrase which was divinely molded; 
 She wrote a charming hand, and oh ! 
 
 How sweetly all her notes were folded ! 
 
 The methods of avoiding monotony most often to be 
 observed are the use of double and treble rimes, the 
 shifting of the pause which occurs toward the middle 
 of a line and the interchange of one foot for another 
 at exactly that point in the line where the substitution 
 helps to bring out the thought. Sometimes as we 
 have already seen these substitutions may be so 
 free and so frequent that we are almost in doubt 
 whether a rhythm is really iambic or anapestic, as 
 in this stanza from a ballad of Scott's : 
 
 Oh ! I lo'e weel my Charlie's name, 
 
 Though some there be that abhor him; 
 But oh ! to see the deil gang hame 
 
 Wi' a' the whigs before him ! 
 fv v] Over the water, and over the sea, 
 
 And over the water to Charlie; 
 Come weal, come wo, we '11 gather and go, 
 
 And live and die with Charlie. 
 
 Here there is no question but that the result is 
 pleasing to the ear ; and while we may choose to mark 
 off the iambs and the anapests for our own informa- 
 tion, their intermingling matters little. As King James 
 declared more than three centuries ago, "your ear 
 must be the only judge and discerner." What the 
 poet needs above all else is a natural ear for the tunes 
 of verse. Without this, he will unceasingly blunder
 
 48 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 and annoy us with the harshness of his lines. With it, 
 he has the root of the matter in him ; and he can then 
 go forward resolutely to acquire an added skill in 
 handling the subtleties of metrical technic. " For if 
 Nature be not the chief worker in this art," to quote 
 from King James once more, " rules will be but a band 
 to Nature, and will make you within a short space 
 weary of the whole art ; whereas if Nature be chief and 
 bent to it, rules will be a help and staff to Nature."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 RIME 
 
 Whate'er yon write of, pleasant or sublime, 
 Always let sense accompany your rime ; 
 Falsely they seem each other to oppose, 
 Rime must be made with reason's law to close ; 
 And when to conquer her you bend your force, 
 The mind will triumph in the noble cause ; 
 To reason's yoke she quickly will incline, 
 Which, far from hurting, renders her divine. 
 
 BOILBAU, Art of Poetry (as translated by Soame). 
 
 IN all modern languages poetry is generally rimed; 
 and even in English, in spite of our possession of 
 blank verse, a metrical instrument of surpassing 
 power and variety, most of our verse is in rime. 
 Although there is not yet any absolute agreement 
 upon its rules, we may venture to define rime in Eng- 
 lish as an identity of the vowel-sound in the last long 
 foot and of all the sounds that follow it, preceded by 
 a difference in the consonant sound that conies before 
 this final long vowel. Thus charm and alarm are rimes, 
 charming and alarming, charmingly and alarmingly. 
 There must be a distinct difference in the consonant 
 sound that precedes; cent and descent, meant and 
 lament are not generally accepted in English as good 
 rimes. Although it would not be difficult to cite from 
 distinguished poets examples of the effort to pass off as 
 rimes pairs of words in which there is no change 
 in the consonant preceding the vowel of the final long 
 syllable, there is an almost unanimous opinion that
 
 60 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 this is contrary to the best traditions of English 
 poetry. Yet it is only fair to note that Lowell links 
 recompense and expense, Austin Dobson unites Mentor 
 and tormentor, Byron ties together philanthropic and 
 misanthropic. It may be well to mention also that the 
 principle that the accord shall be on the vowel of the 
 final long syllable is violated by Walt Whitman who 
 mates exulting and daring, crowding and turning, and 
 by Poe who conjoins dead and tenanted. 
 
 A rime on one syllable only, turn and discern, is 
 called single, or masculine. A rime on two syllables, 
 turning and discerning, is called double, or feminine. 
 A rime on three syllables, beautiful and dutiful^ is 
 called triple. 
 
 A single rime is the natural termination of iambic 
 and of anapestic rhythms : 
 
 Here was a type of the true elder race, 
 
 And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face; 
 
 and 
 
 The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold ; 
 His cohorts were gleamiiig in silver and gold. 
 
 The double rime is the natural termination of tro- 
 chaic rhythms : 
 
 And the people ah, the people, 
 They that dwell up in the steeple. 
 
 And the triple is the natural termination of dactylic 
 rhythms : 
 
 Ere her limbs frigidly 
 Stiffen too rigidly. 
 
 But the iambic and anapestic rhythms may have an
 
 RIME 51 
 
 added short syllable, and in this case they have double 
 
 rimes : 
 
 The time I 've lost in wooing, 
 In watching and pursuing; 
 
 and 
 
 Let the wind take the green and the gray leaf 
 
 Cast forth without fruit upon air ; 
 Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf 
 
 Blown loose from the hair. 
 
 In like manner the short syllable may be dropped at 
 the end of a trochaic rhythm, and then we have a single 
 rime : 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, w] 
 And departing leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time. [ W J 
 
 And in a dactylic rhythm either one or both of the 
 short syllables at the end of the line may be omitted, 
 with the result that in the first case we have a double 
 rime and in the second a single rime : 
 
 Still, for all slips of hers, 
 
 One of Eve's family 
 Wipe those poor lips of hers 
 
 Oozing so clammily. 
 Loop up her tresses [V] 
 
 Escaped from the comb, [w sj 
 Whilst wonderment guesses [vj 
 
 Where was her home ? [ w vj 
 
 Since poetry must be considered always as something 
 to be said or sung, there should be absolute identity 
 of sound in the vowels and consonants which make 
 up a rime. The ear is the judge, not the eye, and 
 therefore identity of spelling is not sufficient. Height 
 does not rime with eight ; but it does rime with
 
 62 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 sight, bite, indict and proselyte. One does not rime 
 with gone or with tone or with shone ; but it does 
 rime with son and with dun. Tomb is no rime for 
 comb or bomb or rhomb ; but it mates perfectly with 
 doom and spume and rheum. Our English orthogra- 
 phy is chaotic in its disregard of the proper phonetic 
 representation of the sounds of our language ; and, 
 therefore it is the worst of guides for the poet who 
 seeks to delight our ears. If he is tempted to link to- 
 gether two words which lack the needful identity of 
 sound, whether they are or are not identical in spelling, 
 he violates at once the principle of Economy of Atten- 
 tion. He fails to provide the listeners with the specific 
 pleasure he has led them to anticipate. He has with- 
 drawn their interest for a moment from his meaning 
 to his machinery. "While they are asking themselves 
 whether what he has given them was meant for a 
 rime or not, and whether it really is a rime, the 
 current of their sympathy is cut off. He may feel that 
 he is forced by the paucity of pairing words at his 
 command to take the nearest approach to a rime 
 that he can lay his hand on ; but he does this at his 
 peril. The listeners may forgive this, if the poem as a 
 whole appeals to them and pleases them ; but none the 
 less are they likely to feel that this false rime is a 
 blemish, just as they would resent his forcing the ac- 
 cent upon some syllable where it does not naturally 
 belong. A false rime affects a sensitive ear like a 
 false note in music. 
 
 It may be that this insistence upon rigid identity 
 of sound is a counsel of perfection, and that it sets 
 up too exalted a standard. And it is a fact that many 
 poets of high distinction have on occasion fallen from
 
 RIME 53 
 
 grace and descended to marry pairs of words which 
 protested more or less violently against the wedding. 
 Poe linked valleys and palace ; Mrs. Browning con- 
 joined remember and chamber ; Bret Harte tied to- 
 gether rarest and heiress; "YVhittier united Eva and 
 give her; Kipling weds abroad and lord; Browning 
 coupled windows and Hindus, as well as spider and 
 consider ; Keats combined critics and prickets; Ten- 
 nyson put together pair and her ; and Emerson went 
 so far as to join in matrimony woodpecker and hear. 
 
 It cannot be denied that these poets are great in 
 their several degrees in spite of these atrocious rimes, 
 more or less resented by every one who has a sensitive 
 ear for the melody of verse. The moment we admit 
 that the appeal of poetry is primarily to the ear, we 
 must confess that " a rime to the eye " is an absurd- 
 ity. Rime is a uniformity of sound; and as the 
 younger Tom Hood aptly remarked, " You do not 
 match colors by the nose or sounds by the eye." 
 
 There is something to be said, however, in behalf 
 of certain inadequate rimes which are traditional, 
 which have been employed by poets in every genera- 
 tion, and which may be said to be accepted by con- 
 vention. These are pairs of words like ever and river ', 
 shadow and meadow, heaven and even, love and prove. 
 Of course, they are not really rimes at all ; and yet 
 unless some such pairing is allowed, ever and shadow, 
 heaven and love are likely to go often unmarried, be- 
 cause of the lack of fit mates in our language for these 
 words which are a necessary part of the poet's vocab- 
 ulary. The only exact rimes to love are glove and 
 dove, above and shove ; and the only exact rimes to 
 heaven are leaven and seven and eleven. Now shove
 
 54 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 is not a fit bride for love ; and in serious verse it is 
 not often that heaven will mate itself spontaneously 
 either with seven or eleven. There is a certain cogency 
 in the plea that the union of shadow and meadow 
 and these other marriages of reason have been "le- 
 gitimated by custom," as has been claimed by one 
 writer, who asserted that " river has just got to rime 
 with ever or the game cannot be played." Yet it might 
 be urged in rebuttal that this plea could be advanced 
 only by a lover of poetry long familiarized with the 
 custom he defends, and that young readers, generation 
 after generation, will feel a certain shock of dissatis- 
 faction the first time these unhappy marriages are 
 announced to them. The one safe rule is to abide by 
 the rigor of the game and to avoid anything which 
 may offend the ear of any one. 
 
 For if we once abandon the belief that rimes ought 
 to be rigorously exact to the ear of the listener, if we 
 once accept any heresy of "allowable rimes," then 
 we have lost the true faith and we have parted with 
 the sole compass that can guide us. At first we may 
 wink at the minor infraction of the letter of the law 
 and accept the tying together of ever and river, for 
 example, and of love and prove; and then we shall 
 find it harder to resist the insidious claim of the 
 " rime to the eye," which would permit the mating 
 of eight and sleight. Having gone so far on the wrong 
 road, there is little to prevent us from ending our un- 
 fortunate journey in a state of mind which might at 
 last allow us to tolerate the pairing of bean and ocean 
 and of plague and ague, because of their identity of 
 orthography. That way madness lies. And we shall 
 do well to keep to the strait and narrow path. " A
 
 RIME 55 
 
 barbarous phrase," so Ben Jonson once declared, and 
 perhaps he would have included a barbarous rime, 
 *<hath often made me out of love with a good sense, 
 and doubtful writing hath wracked me beyond my 
 patience." 
 
 When we set up the test of exact repetition of sound, 
 we should be willing to abide by it, and to be satisfied 
 with a rime which is perfect in our ordinary pro- 
 nunciation, not insisting upon pedantic precision of 
 speech. Our unfortunate spelling is continually sug- 
 gesting to us that it is our duty to strive for an ex- 
 actness of articulation which we none of us attain 
 and which indeed we could hardly achieve without an 
 absurd over-insistence on trifles. For example, Tenny- 
 son has been censured for riming flower and hour 
 on the theory tk&t flower is a dissyllable and hour a 
 monosyllable. Now, whether either or both of these 
 words can be called monosyllabic or dissyllabic is be- 
 side the question, since the average man of cultivated 
 speech pronounces them in such manner that they 
 rime perfectly. 
 
 Swinburne has linked riot and quiet : 
 
 Here, where the world is quiet, 
 
 Here, where all trouble seems 
 Dead winds' and spent waves' riot, 
 
 In doubtful dream of dreams. 
 
 To the eye quiet and riot seem to differ in the 
 vowel-sound ; but in the ear both of them take an ob- 
 scure sound for which we have no exact symbol in our 
 alphabet. This same obscure sound occurs again in 
 Tennyson's riming of Devon and Heaven ; and any 
 objection to this may be dismissed as merely pedantic 
 purism.
 
 56 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Perhaps Browning was a little too colloquial when 
 he chose to rime barret and parrot : 
 
 Margheritone of Arezzo, 
 
 With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret, 
 Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, 
 
 You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot ? 
 
 Barret is an unusual word, an auglicization of the 
 Italian barretta, and some of us would be inclined to 
 give it a sharp e, like that in let, whereas the o in 
 parrot has another obscure sound in normal speech, a 
 sound which, whatever it is, is certainly not identical 
 with the e in let. In the same poem Browning under- 
 takes to rime scaffold with baffled : 
 
 Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold 
 Is broken away, and the long-pent fire, 
 
 Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled 
 Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire ? 
 
 Here again it is a question as to exactly what our 
 normal pronunciation is. Do we really sound the o in 
 scaffold or do we so obscure it that the word is a fit 
 mate for baffled? As to this, opinions will undoubt- 
 edly differ; and if this is the case, Browning has 
 risked the possibility of diverting our attention from 
 his story to his rime. The principle to be borne in 
 mind always is that rime should seem natural and 
 easy, that it should appear absolutely effortless, and 
 even inevitable. It should resemble the attire of a 
 well-bred woman, or the style of a strong writer, in 
 that it never attracts attention to itself. This princi- 
 ple Browning seems to have violated when he rimes 
 mistress and this tress :
 
 RIME 57 
 
 Nay but you, who do not love her, 
 
 Is sbe not pure gold, my mistress f 
 Holds earth aught speak truth above her ? 
 
 Aught like this tress, all, and this tress. 
 
 Here we may detect a certain forcing of the words 
 for the sake of the rime ; and the same strain is to be 
 observed in a stanza of Tennyson's : 
 
 Came wet-shod alder from the wave, 
 
 Came yews, a dismal cotery ; 
 Each plucked his one foot from the grave, 
 
 Pousseting with a sloe-tree. 
 
 Especially to be avoided is any rime which sug- 
 gests vulgarity of pronunciation. When Holmes links 
 Elizas and Advertisers, we cannot help wondering 
 whether he was in the habit of pronouncing the for- 
 mer Elizers ; and when Whittier rimes Eva with re- 
 ceive her, we feel that this is possible only to one who 
 is willing to pronounce Eva as though it was eever. 
 This same unfortunate slip of taste was made by Mrs. 
 Browning : 
 
 Now grant my ship some smooth haven win her; 
 I follow Statius first, and then Corinna. 
 
 Browning himself once rimed / and enjoy, which 
 might tempt a hostile critic to suggest that the poet 
 was in the habit of consorting with Yankee rustics, 
 some of whom still say enjy. Wordsworth, who in- 
 sisted that the vocabulary of everyday life should 
 serve as the diction of poetry, once so far forgot him- 
 self as to rime brethren with tethering. The dropping 
 of the final g of the present participle is not uncom- 
 mon in literary circles in London to-day ; and yet it
 
 58 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 has a flavor of rusticity. It suggests not the poet care- 
 ful of his utterance, but the villager, careless of his 
 speech. To those who are in the habit of sounding the 
 final g in words ending with ing, this dropping of the 
 g is distinctly offensive. It is an annoying vulgarism, 
 wholly out of place in poetry of serious intent. Yet it 
 may be found again and again in any anthology of the 
 British poets of the nineteenth century, although it is 
 far less frequent in American verse. Scott puts together 
 Hevellyn and yelling; Rossetti has laughing and 
 half in; and Wordsworth descends to coming and 
 omen which is as inexcusable as brethren and teth- 
 ering. Poe protested against the length of the license 
 Mrs. Browning allowed herself in the vain effort to 
 conjoin Eden and succeeding, taming and overcame 
 him, coming and woman, children and bewildering. 
 
 Of course, the dropping of the final g is perfectly 
 proper in dialect verse, wherein the poet has proposed 
 to reproduce the exact pronunciation of the unedu- 
 cated. And it is not out of place in broadly comic 
 verse, although even here it would be better to indi- 
 cate the intended pronunciation to the reader's eye by 
 substituting an apostrophe for the final g which is not to 
 be spoken, invitirf and come right in, for example. 
 Possibly some of us would make this correction for 
 ourselves when we read aloud the lilting lyric in praise 
 of the Bells of Shandon, 
 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 Of the river Lee, 
 
 and we might almost attempt an Irish brogue, so con- 
 vincingly Hibernian is the tone of the poem :
 
 RIME 59 
 
 I 've heard bells tollin 1 
 Old Adrian's mole in, 
 Their thunder roUin' 
 
 From the Vatican. 
 And cymbals glorious 
 Swinging uproarious 
 In the gorgeous turrets 
 
 Of Notre Dame. 
 
 Here we are asked to receive the final syllable of 
 Vatican as a rime to Dame. There is no need to in- 
 quire whether the a in can and the a in Dame are prop- 
 erly mated, for what is most obvious is that the first 
 word ends with the sound of n and the second with 
 the sound of m. And earlier in the same lyric we 
 find 
 
 Those Shandon bells 
 Whose sounds so wild would 
 In the days of childhood 
 Fling round my cradle 
 Their magic spells. 
 
 Here we are asked to receive as a double rime wild 
 would and childhood, in spite of the substitution of 
 an h for a to in the final short syllable of the second 
 line. Apparently the lyrist was satisfied by the actual 
 identity of the vowel-sound and was careless of the 
 consonants that followed it. Strictly speaking, this is 
 not rime but assonance, that is, identity of the long 
 vowel of the final foot with liberty to modify the con- 
 sonant at will. The use of assonance instead of rime 
 is of high antiquity ; we can find it in a proverbial 
 couplet like 
 
 See a pin and pick it up 
 
 All day long you '11 have good luck.
 
 60 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 We can discover it frequently in nursery-rimes : 
 
 Leave them alone, 
 
 And they will come home. 
 
 And again : 
 
 Little Tommy Tucker, 
 Singing for his supper, 
 What shall he have ? 
 Brown bread and butter. 
 
 It is to be found also in the traditional bacchana- 
 lian lyric which begs the landlord to fill the flowing 
 bowl, and which asks us to accept over as a rime for 
 October. 
 
 We can observe it even in Shakspere, in the 
 " Comedy of Errors " : 
 
 So thou, who hast no unkind mate to grieve thee, 
 With urging helpless patience would relieve me. 
 
 And again in a play which is generally attributed 
 to Shakspere, in " Pericles," in the opening couplet of 
 the speech of Gower as Prologue : 
 
 To sing a song that old was sung, 
 From ashes ancient Gower is come. 
 
 In one sonnet Shakspere matches open and broken, 
 and in another remembered and tendered. : 
 
 We can find it in Scott : 
 
 Heaven send it happy dew, 
 Earth lend it sap anew. 
 
 We can note it again in Whittier's uniting main 
 land and train band. But where it still flourishes 
 freely is in the comic song of the violently funny mu- 
 sical song-piece. So long as the final long vowel gets
 
 RIME 61 
 
 across the footlights boldly, neither the writers of the 
 words of the song nor the hearers seem to care whether 
 there is any kinship in the consonants. A satirist has 
 held these negligent rimesters up to scorn in a 
 parody of their own method : 
 
 There seems not to be a man 
 In this comic opera land 
 Who is mindful of a rime ; 
 Anything, they say, is fine. 
 Don't they siug of all the happy 
 Days they spent in Cincinnati f 
 And, with rare poetic feeling, 
 Carol of a boyhood fleeting 
 Lyric-writers, will you answer 
 Where you get your rime for transfer ? 
 Some and done arid always war 
 Makes the proper rime to saw. 
 Can you think a rime to pie-fork f 
 No, you cannot ? Well, it 's high talk. 
 
 It is interesting to note that this primitive as- 
 sonance, possibly of Celtic origin and surviving in 
 nursery-rime and street-lyric, is exact in mating its 
 vowels and slovenly in matching its consonants ; and 
 it is thus precisely the reverse of the so-called " allow- 
 able rimes," which poets of high literary pretension 
 have permitted themselves, river and ever, shadow 
 and meadow, in which the consonants are exactly 
 mated and the vowels are matched in more slovenly 
 fashion. The unliterary ear of the populace is satis- 
 fied if it can catch the repetition of the bold vowel, 
 while the sophisticated ear of the dilletant may even 
 find a certain perverted pleasure in a slight variation 
 of this vowel, accompanied by exact identity of the 
 consonants. Perhaps it is not going too far to suggest
 
 62 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 that here the unsophisticated taste of the unpretend- 
 ing crowd is wiser than the overcultivated taste of the 
 dilletants, since the vowel supplies the dominant car- 
 rying sound to a rime, and the identity of the vowel 
 is therefore more important than the identity of the 
 consonants. Of course, there is no really adequate 
 rime which has not the double identity of vowel and 
 of consonant. 
 
 Rime should be so exact as not to attract attention 
 to itself, just as meter should not attract attention to 
 itself. Rime and meter might be likened to the two 
 rails along which the poet invites us to glide with him ; 
 and the more smoothly we move forward, the less we 
 have occasion to consider the track itself, the better 
 pleased we are, and the more completely can we bestow 
 our interest upon the passengers in the car or upon the 
 landscape glimpsed through the windows. Rime and 
 meter must work together unobtrusively to this end. 
 What Lowell said of meter is true also of rime, although 
 in a less degree : " Meter, by its systematic and reg- 
 ular occurrence, gradually subjugates and tunes the 
 senses of the hearer, as the wood of the violin arranges 
 itself in sympathy with the vibration of the strings, and 
 thus that predisposition to the proper emotion is accom- 
 plished which is essential to the purpose of the poet. You 
 must not only expect, but you must expect in the right 
 way; you must be magnetized beforehand in every 
 fiber by your own sensibility in order that you may 
 feel what and how you ought." 
 
 The principle here laid down by Lowell is often 
 deliberately violated by Browning, in not a few of 
 whose serious poems we find the poet consciously striv- 
 ing for ingenious and far-fetched rimes which attract
 
 RIME 63 
 
 attention to themselves and thereby more or less 
 distract us. There is an obvious shock to our sensi- 
 bility when we come to a couplet like this : 
 
 I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, 
 Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe; 
 
 or to another like this : 
 
 Oh, what a face ! One by fits eyed 
 Her and the horrible pitside. 
 
 Or to a quatrain like this : 
 
 Image the whole, then execute the parts 
 
 Fancy the fabric 
 Quite, ere you build, ere steel strikes fire from quartz, 
 
 Ere mortar dab brick. 
 
 These rimes are perfect, no doubt, but they are 
 artificial. They are too clever, too ingenious, too witty, 
 to be in keeping with the somber tone of the poems in 
 which we find them. Browning's practice was con- 
 demned in advance by Coleridge, who asserted that 
 " double and trisyllable rimes form a lower species 
 of wit, and, attended to exclusively for their own sake, 
 may become a source of momentary amusement." 
 Here Coleridge seems to have gone a little too far, 
 since Hood, for one, proved in the "Bridge of Sighs" 
 that double and treble rimes may be employed effec- 
 tively. The difference between Browning's use of these 
 rimes and Hood's lies in this, that the latter employs 
 natural rimes, instantly recognizable as ordinary words 
 and evoking no start of surprise, whereas the former 
 invents novel and arbitrary combinations which are 
 continually compelling notice. 
 
 This witty ingenuity in devising unexpected rimes,
 
 64 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 which appears out of place in serious poetry, is wholly 
 appropriate in comic verse, where we expect the writer 
 to amuse us with his unfailing cleverness. We find a 
 " source of momentary amusement " in the unexpected 
 matings which justify themselves in the " Ingoldsby 
 Legends " and in the " Fable for Critics." Humorous 
 verse of this kind gets part of its fun out of difficulty 
 vanquished ; and when we hear the troublesome sylla- 
 bles at the end of the first line of a couplet, we take 
 pleasure in guessing, or at least in wondering, how 
 the poet is going to satisfy us at the end of the second 
 line. Here the manner perhaps is almost as important 
 as the matter ; and the mere mechanism of the light 
 poem can be paraded without our losing any of its 
 less significant meaning. No one can help feeling the 
 fun in this couplet of Barham's : 
 
 There 's Setebos storming because Mephistopheles 
 Dashed in his face a whole cup of coffee-lees. 
 
 No one can help smiling at the wit in this couplet 
 of Byron's " Don Juan " : 
 
 O ye lords of ladies intellectual, 
 
 Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all f 
 
 And every one must appreciate the affluence of 
 ingenuity which we discover in Lowell's " Fable for 
 
 Critics " : 
 
 Quite irresistible 
 
 Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table 
 (I bethought me at first that the rime was untwistable, 
 Though I might here have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel). 
 
 To get the full effect of this clever solving of a 
 self-imposed difficulty, the normal word should end 
 the first line and the artificial combination must fol-
 
 RIME 65 
 
 low. This is a minor detail, of course, and it has not 
 always been kept in mind by luxuriant rimesters. 
 Barham, for example, disregarded it in this couplet: 
 
 Should it even set fire to the castle and burn it, you 1 re 
 Amply insured both for buildings and furniture. 
 
 And Browning frequently refused to consider it, as 
 in this couplet : 
 
 Here we get peace and aghast 1 'm 
 Caught thinking war the true pastime. 
 
 And again in this quatrain : 
 
 Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, 
 
 Can't I see his dead eye glow ? 
 Bright, as 't were a Barbary corsair's t 
 
 (That is, if he 'd let it show !) 
 
 Perhaps it is not too much to say that in comic 
 verse it is permissible to violate accent, to play tricks 
 with meter or to alter orthography. There is an ele- 
 ment of absurdity in Canning's deliberate splitting of 
 a word to make his rime : 
 
 Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu, 
 
 That kings and priests are plotting in ; 
 Here doomed to starve on water-gru- 
 el, never shall I see the U- 
 
 -niversity of Gottingen, 
 -niversity of Gottingen. 
 
 And this exaggerated device is carried a step farther 
 in " Lewis Carroll's " : 
 
 Who would not give all else for tico p- 
 -enny worth only of beautiful soup ? 
 
 We will forgive the humorous bard also if he 
 achieves his rime only by deliberate misspelling :
 
 66 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 A stingy old man of Malacca, 
 
 Who wore clothes of the thinnest alpacca, 
 
 Would remark with a groan : 
 
 " I 've a match of my own ; 
 Will you lend me a pipe and tobacco f " 
 
 Thus far rime has been considered as terminal 
 only, as an ornament at the end of a pair of lines. 
 But it may also be internal, appearing within the lines, 
 to give an added and unexpected pleasure to the ear. 
 This internal rime is often quite distinct from the 
 terminal rime that plays along the edges of the 
 stanza. As satisfactory an example as any is this of 
 Scott's : 
 
 There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee. 
 Or this of Swinburne's : 
 
 With changes of gladness and sadness that cheer and chide. 
 Or this of Swinburne's again : 
 
 From afar to the star that recedes, from anear to the wastes of 
 the wild shore. 
 
 Or this of Poe's: 
 Thrilled me, filled me, with fantastic terror never felt before. 
 
 Internal rime is more elaborately employed in 
 these lines of Kipling's " McAndrews' Hymn " : 
 
 An' home again, the Rio run ; it 's no child's play to go 
 Steamin' to bell for fourteen days o' snow an'_/?oe an' blow 
 The bergs like kelpies overside that girn and turn an' shift 
 Whaur grindin' like the Mills o' God, goes by the big South 
 drift. 
 
 Here we have the independent internal rimes 
 girn and turn, and also the internal rimes snow and
 
 RIME 07 
 
 floe that echo and intensify the terminal rimes go 
 and blow. 
 
 Sometimes the internal rimes are in different lines, 
 as in this couplet of Hood's : 
 
 Mad from life's history, 
 Glad to death's mystery. 
 
 Or in this quatrain of Poe's " For Annie," which is 
 metrically only two lines, although printed as four : 
 
 My tantalized spirit 
 
 Here blandly reposes, 
 Forgetting, or never 
 
 Regretting its roses. 
 
 Or again in this quatrain of Locker-Lampson's 
 ** Serenade " : 
 
 Arise then, and lazy 
 
 Regrets from thee fling, 
 For sorrows that hazy 
 
 To-morrows may bring. 
 
 In the stanza of Rossetti's " Love's Nocturn " there 
 is an internal rime in the last line which mates with 
 three earlier rimes : 
 
 Poets' fancies all are there : 
 
 There the elf-girls flood with wings 
 
 Valleys full of plaintive air; 
 
 There breathe perfumes ; there in rings 
 Whirl the foam-bewildered springs; 
 
 Siren there, 
 Winds her dizzy hair and sings. 
 
 Browning once employed the same internal rime 
 three times in a single line : 
 
 And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, 
 
 He loved sir, used to meet: 
 How sad and bad aud mad it was 
 
 But then, how it was sweet !
 
 68 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And this same rime Swinburne chose to repeat fou* 
 times in a single line of a ballade, and as this line was 
 the refrain, it had to be repeated four times. 
 
 Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. 
 
 This does not commend itself to the ear ; it sounds 
 freakish and self-conscious. It is a glaring patch of 
 wilful repetition which almost shrieks aloud for recog- 
 nition. It is aggressively inartistic in a serious poem, al- 
 thoughit might be tolerated and even accepted willingly 
 in a comic poem. Probably we should not be moved to 
 protest if we found it in a lilting lyric of humorous intent 
 like that in which Eugene Field pretended to tell the 
 " Truth about Horace " and in which we find this speci- 
 men of ultra-ingenuity in riming : 
 
 With a massic-laden ditty, 
 And a classic maiden pretty, 
 He painted up the city, 
 
 And Msecenas paid the freight. 
 
 Even more complicated is the congeries of internal 
 and external rimes in Joaquin Miller's " Lost 
 Love": 
 
 Thatch of palm, and patch of clover, 
 
 Breath of balm, in a field of brown ; 
 The clouds blew up and the birds flew over. 
 
 And I looked upward, but who looked down ? 
 
 Who was true in the test that tried us ? 
 
 Who was it mocked ? Who now may mourn 
 The loss of a love that a cross denied us, 
 
 With folded hands and a heart forlorn ? 
 
 Sometimes the poet shortens his lines and multiplies 
 his rimes, external and internal, to correspond to 
 the theme he is treating ; and sometimes he lengthens
 
 RIME 69 
 
 his lines and eschews internal rime altogether. Some- 
 times he contrasts his riming vowels in successive 
 lines to give variety ; and sometimes he may prefer to 
 compose a whole poem on the same rime. This is 
 what H. C. Bunner did in his humorously pathetic 
 " One, Two, Three," 1 in which he adds to the effect 
 of this recurring terminal open vowel by leaving the 
 alternate lines entirely without rime : 
 
 It was an old, old, old, old lady, 
 
 And a boy who was half-past three; 
 And the way that they played together 
 Was beautiful to see. 
 
 She could n't go running and jumping, 
 
 And the boy, no more could he, 
 For he was a thin little fellow, 
 
 With a thin little twisted knee. 
 
 They sat in the yellow sunlight, 
 
 Out under the maple tree ; 
 And the game that they played I '11 tell you, 
 
 Just as it was told to me. 
 
 It was Hide-and-go-Seek they were playing, 
 Though you 'd never have known it to be 
 
 Witb an old, old, old, old lady, 
 And a boy with a twisted knee. 
 
 The boy would bend his face down 
 
 On his one little sound right knee, 
 And he 'd guess where she was hiding, 
 
 In guesses One, Two, Three ! 
 
 " You are in the china closet ! " 
 
 He would cry and laugh with glee 
 It wasn't the china closet: 
 
 But he still had Two and Three. 
 
 1 By permission from Rowen, Second Crop Songs, copyright, 1892, 
 by Charles Scribner'a Sons.
 
 70 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 " You are up in papa's big bedroom, 
 
 In the chest with the queer old key ! " 
 And she said: "You are warm and warmer, 
 But you 're not quite right," said she. 
 
 "It can't be the little cupboard 
 
 Where mamma's things used to be 
 So it must be the clothes press, gran'ma," 
 And he found her with his Three. 
 
 Then she covered her face with her fingers, 
 They were wrinkled and white and wee, 
 
 And she guessed where the boy was hiding, 
 With a One and a Two and a Three. 
 
 And they had never stirred from their places, 
 
 Right under the maple tree 
 This old, old, old, old lady, 
 
 And the boy with the lame little knee 
 This dear, dear, dear old lady, 
 
 And the boy who was half-past three. 
 
 This monotony of rime in the second and fourth 
 lines and this absence of rime in the first and third, 
 must not be ascribed to any poverty of resource on 
 the poet's part ; we can hardly fail to perceive the 
 unity of tone which has been attained by these devices. 
 Bunner felt instinctively the riming effect that would 
 best suit his theme. The work of the poet must be 
 conscious to some extent, but it must also be largely 
 unconscious, the result of intuitive impulse. In " One, 
 Two, Three," the residt proves that the poet was justi- 
 fied in his feeling that he would do well for once to 
 ring the changes on a single rime. But so much can 
 scarcely be said for Browning's " In the Metidja," 
 where we find the same device less happily employed. 
 
 Dr. Holmes once declared that " when a word comes 
 up fit to end a line with, I can/eeZ all the rimes in
 
 RIME 71 
 
 the language that are fit to go with it without naming 
 them. I have tried them all so many times, I know 
 all the polygamous words, and all the monogamous 
 ones, and all the unmarrying ones the whole lot 
 that have no mates as soon as I hear their names 
 called. Sometimes I run over a string of rimes, but 
 generally speaking it is strange what a short list it is 
 of those that are good for anything. This is the piti- 
 ful side of all rimed verse. Take such words as home 
 and world. What can you do with chrome or loam or 
 gnome or tome ? You have dome, foam and roam, 
 and not much more to use in your pome, as some of 
 our fellow countrymen call it. As for world, you know 
 that in all human probability somebody or something 
 will be hurled into it or out of it ; its clouds may be 
 furled or its grass impearled ; possibly something may 
 be whirled or curled or swirled" 
 
 Here Dr. Holmes is following in the footsteps of 
 Pope, who asserted in his " Essay on Criticism " that 
 the poetasters have little variety in their verse : 
 
 While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, 
 With sure returns of still expected rimes ; 
 Where'er you find " the cooling western breeze," 
 In the next line it " whispers through the trees " : 
 If crystal streams " with pleasing murmurs creep," 
 The reader 's threatened not in vain with " sleep." 
 
 As yet no one has drawn up a complete catalog of 
 what Dr. Holmes called the monogamous rimes, those 
 which are fated to marry the same one again and again, 
 because there is absolutely no other mate for them 
 in our language, such as anguish, blackness, moun- 
 tain, and winter. Of those words which are con- 
 demned to absolute celibacy, the old maids of poetry,
 
 72 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 because there is not a single suitor for them, there 
 must be two or three score at least. Here are some of 
 them: April, August, chimney, coif, crimson, forest, 
 kiln, microcosm, month, nothing, open, poet, rhomb, 
 scarce, scarf, silver, statue, squirrel, temple, widow, 
 window.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 TONE-COLOR 
 
 We must not only choose our words for elegance, but for sound, 
 to perform which a mastery in the language is required ; the poet 
 must have a magazine of words, and have the art to manage his few 
 vowels to the best advantage, that they may go the farther. He 
 must also know the nature of the vowels which are more sonorous, 
 and which more soft and sweet and so dispose them as his present 
 occasions require. DBYDEN : Discourse on Epic Poetry. 
 
 THE province of rime is twofold ; its primary pur- 
 pose is to emphasize the architecture of the poem, to 
 indicate the ends of the lines, and to bind up the 
 couplet, the quatrain or the longer stanza into a har- 
 monious unit ; and it has the secondary duty of pleas- 
 ing the ear by its own sound. The ear finds unending 
 delight in the melody which is the result of the adroit 
 commingling of rhythm and rime so as not merely 
 to carry the meaning of the poet, but also to intensify 
 this meaning by the choice and by the contrast of the 
 sounds which convey it. As Pope asserted in his 
 "Essay on Criticism" : 
 
 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, 
 
 As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 
 
 'T is not enough no harshness gives offence, 
 
 The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 
 
 Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, 
 
 And the smooth .stream in smoother numbers flows ; 
 
 But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, 
 
 The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar ; 
 
 When Ajax strives some rock's vast might to throw, 
 
 The line, too, labors, and the words move slow.
 
 74 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, 
 
 Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. 
 
 Here Pope artfully conformed his practice to his 
 preaching. This adjustment of the sound to the sense 
 can be accomplished by a variety of devices ; and it is 
 now generally known as tone-color. It will be noted 
 that Pope was careful in the selection of his rimes, 
 ever the most salient words. Roar and shore, throw 
 and slow, at the ends of two of his couplets are exactly 
 the right words to convey the desired impression. 
 
 But it is not enough that the rimes shall be well 
 chosen ; they ought to be varied one from the other. 
 A quatrain or a stanza has a weak, thin effect upon 
 the ear if the vowel-sounds in the several rimes are 
 either identical or too clearly akin. For example, sight 
 and light, glide and abide would not be satisfactory 
 rimes in the same quatrain, since the ear would have 
 to strain to distinguish sharply between the two pairs 
 of words. "The result," as Lanier declared, "is like 
 two contiguous shades of pink in a dress; one of the 
 rimes will seem faded." This is a defect which we can 
 discover even in Swinburne, who is a master metrist, 
 commanding sounds at will to work his magic : 
 
 Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to 7ier, 
 
 Fold our hands round her knees and cling ? 
 O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, 
 Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring. 
 
 Here, in fact, there is not only identity of rime, 
 but identity of the actual riming word in the third 
 and fourth lines, spring to her and spring. 
 
 Set this with its monotony beside another chorus 
 from the same dramatic poem, " Atalauta in Calydon,"
 
 TONE-COLOR 75 
 
 and observe how much force is gained by the opposi- 
 tion of the vowel-sounds in the rimes : 
 
 Before the beginning of the years, 
 There came to the making of man 
 
 Time, with a gift of tears; 
 Grief, with a glass that ran. 
 
 Strength without hands to smite; 
 
 Love that endures for a breath; 
 Night, the shadow of light, 
 
 And life, the shadow of death. 
 
 Sometimes the tone-color is aided by shortening one 
 of the two successive riming lines so that the echo 
 of the sound is more immediate. Here is an example 
 in single rime taken from Browning's " Love among 
 the Ruins " : 
 
 Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles 
 
 Miles and miles 
 On the solitary pastures where our sheep 
 
 Half asleep 
 Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop 
 
 As they crop. 
 
 And here is another example in double rime by 
 Austin Dobson, written really in anapestic tetrameter, 
 but so divided that it falls on our ears as alternating 
 trimeter and monometer riming together, and gain- 
 ing much of its buoyancy from the dexterity of its 
 double rimes : 
 
 In our hearts is the Great One of Avon 
 
 Engraven, 
 And we climb the cold summits once built on 
 
 By Milton. 
 But at times not the air that is rarest 
 
 Is fairest ;
 
 T6 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And we long in the valley to follow 
 
 Apollo. 
 Then we drop from the heights atmospheric 
 
 To Herrick, 
 Or we pour the Greek honey, grown blander, 
 
 Of Landor ; 
 Or our coziest nook in the shade is 
 
 Where Praed is, 
 Or we toss the light bells of the mocker 
 
 With Locker. 
 Oh, the song where not one of the Graces 
 
 Tight-laces, 
 Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly, 
 
 But archly, 
 Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying, 
 
 Comes playing 
 And the rime is as gay as a dancer 
 
 In answer, 
 It will last till men weary of pleasure 
 
 In measure ! 
 It will last till men weary of laughter . . . 
 
 And after ! 
 
 In Browning's " Love among the Ruins," the rimes 
 tfere all single, and in Austin Dobson's " Jocosa Lyra," 
 the rimes were all double; and in both cases this 
 decision was justified by the r,esult. Often, however, an 
 admirable effect is attained by alternating single and 
 double rimes, with due regard to the rich contrast 
 of the vowel-sounds that are interlinked, as in this 
 stanza of Swinburne's : 
 
 The songs of dead seasons, that wander 
 
 On wings of articulate words; 
 Lost leaves that the shore-wind may squander, 
 
 Light flocks of untamable birds ; 
 Some sang to me dreaming in class time 
 
 And truant in hand as in tongue; 
 For the youngest were born of boy's pastime, 
 
 The eldest are young.
 
 TONE-COLOR 77 
 
 In this there is an added felicity in the unexpected 
 shortening of the final line of the stanza. Sometimes 
 however a poet gains an effect by ending his stanza 
 with a full line terminating in a bold single rime, 
 preceded by shorter lines with double rimes. Here 
 is an illustration from Longfellow's " Seaweed " which 
 exemplifies the superb mating of sound and sense : 
 
 When descends on the Atlantic 
 
 The gigantic 
 
 Storm-wind of the equinox, 
 Landward in his wrath he scourges 
 
 The toiling surges, 
 Laden with seaweed from the rocks ; 
 
 From Bermuda's reefs ; from edges 
 
 Of sunken ledges, 
 In some far-off, bright Azore; 
 From Bahama, and the dashing, 
 
 Silver-flashing 
 Surges of San Salvador ; 
 
 From the tumbling surf, that buries 
 
 The Orkneyan skerries, 
 Answering the hoarse Hebrides ; 
 And from wrecks of ships, and drifting 
 
 Spars, uplifting 
 On the desolate, rainy seas ; 
 
 Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
 
 On the shifting 
 
 Currents of the restless main ; 
 Till in sheltered coves, and reaches 
 
 Of sandy beaches, 
 All have found repose again. 
 
 Often there is advantage in not having the rim- 
 ing words too closely alike ; light and slight, for ex- 
 ample, are perfectly proper rimes ; but there would
 
 78 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 be more variety if light were linked with sight and 
 slight with fright. And yet sometimes the poet finds 
 his effect in using rimes which have just this simi- 
 larity, as in a stanza of the " Village Blacksmith " : 
 
 Week in, week out, from morn till night, 
 
 You can hear his bellows blow 
 You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 
 
 With measured beat and slow, 
 Like a sexton ringing the village bell, 
 
 When the evening sun is low. 
 
 Perhaps something of the largeness of this stanza 
 of Longfellow's is due to the triple repetition of the 
 same riming vowel and to the absence of rime in the 
 first, third and fifth lines, whereby he avoids a jin- 
 gling jigginess. 
 
 As the skilful lyrist may rime all his lines or may 
 refuse to rime some of them in accord with his in- 
 stinct for the better way, and as he may commingle 
 double and single rimes, placing each just where he 
 feels that it will be most effective, so he varies his 
 choice, now using words of a single syllable and then 
 preferring ampler vocables. In Pope's day, there was a 
 prejudice against the monosyllable which is voiced in 
 a line of the " Essay on Criticism " : 
 
 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line. 
 
 But more than one poet has been able so to handle 
 lines composed almost wholly of monosyllables that he 
 has not only avoided dulness but attained to a mas- 
 sive dignity of utterance. Consider, for example, these 
 lines of Milton's : 
 
 Tell me, how may I know Him, how adore, 
 From whom I have that thus I move and live ?
 
 TONE-COLOR 79 
 
 And also this simple speech of Shakspere's where 
 King John is suggesting the murder of Arthur : 
 
 Good friend, tbou hast no cause to say so yet ; 
 But thou shalt have ; and creep time ne'er so slow, 
 Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good. 
 I had a thing to say ; but let it go. 
 
 Professor Corson, dwelling on Shakspere's mastery 
 of the monosyllable, declared that " deep feeling of 
 every kind expresses itself through, and indeed, at- 
 tracts to itself, the monosyllabic words of the lan- 
 guage ; not only because such words are, for the most 
 part, Anglo-Saxon, and therefore more consecrated to 
 feeling than to thought, but because the staccato effect 
 which can be secured through them rather than through 
 dissyllabic and trisyllabic words, subserves well the 
 natural movement of impassioned speech." 
 
 Addison Alexander once composed two sonnets in 
 which he set forth, and at the same time exemplified, 
 the " Power of Short Words " : 
 
 Think not that strength lies in the big round word, 
 
 Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. 
 To whom can this be true who once has heard 
 
 The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak, 
 When want or woe or fear is in the throat, 
 
 So that each word gasped out is like a shriek 
 Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note 
 
 Sung by some far-off fiend ? There is a strength 
 Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine, 
 
 Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length. 
 Let but this force of thought and speech be mine, 
 
 And he that will may take the sleek fat phrase 
 Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shine, 
 
 Light, but no heat, a flash, but not a blaze I 
 
 Nor is it mere strength that the short word boasts : 
 It serves of more than fight or storm to tell,
 
 80 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 The roar of waves that dash on rock-bound coasts, 
 
 The crash of tall trees when the wild winds swell) 
 The roar of guns, the groans of men that die 
 
 On blood-stained fields. It has a voice as well 
 For them that far off on their sick beds lie ; 
 
 For them that weep, for them that mourn the dead ; 
 For them that laugh and dance and clap the hand ; 
 
 To joy's quick step, as well as grief's slow tread, 
 The sweet, plain words we learnt at first keep time, 
 
 And though the theme be sad, or gay, or grand, 
 With each, with all, these may be made to chime, 
 / In thought, or speech, or soug, or prose, or rime. 
 
 In Gascoigne's " Certain Notes of Instruction con- 
 cerning the Making of Verse," we are told that " the 
 most ancient words are of one syllable, so that the more 
 monosyllables you use, the truer Englishman you shall 
 seem, and the less you shall smell of the ink-horn." 
 
 On the other hand, there is strength also in the poly- 
 syllable, as when Shakspere writes : 
 
 No, this my hand will rather 
 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine. 
 
 In comic verse, the use of the polysyllable is often 
 most amusing, as in the couplet of a humorous ballad 
 about a certain hypocritical lord whom his attendants 
 
 found 
 
 beneath the table sunk, 
 Problematically pious but indubitably drunk. 
 
 There is profit in varying words of one syllable and 
 of two with infrequent words of three syllables, as in 
 this stanza of "A Revolutionary Relic" by Austin 
 Dobson : 
 
 Did she turn with sight swift-dimming, 
 
 And the quivering lip we know, 
 With the full, slow eye-lid brimming, 
 With the languorous pupil swimming 
 Like the love of Mirabeau ?
 
 TONE-COLOR 81 
 
 In another stanza of the same lyric, we find only one 
 trisyllable in the five lines, the rest of the words hav- 
 ing been almost equally divided between monosyllables 
 and dissyllables : 
 
 Wailing, wailing, as the plover 
 
 Waileth, wheeleth, desolate, 
 Heedless of the hawk above her, 
 While as yet the rushes cover, 
 
 Wauing fast, her wounded mate. 
 
 And in this last stanza there is another point to 
 be observed the repetition of the sound which 
 begins the first, second and fifth lines, the sound of 
 way. We may remark also that in the third line two 
 words, both of them long, heedless and hawk, begin 
 with the same letter. This is the device which is 
 known as alliteration, the repetition of the same initial 
 consonant. Alliteration, as an aid to rhythm, is histori- 
 cally earlier than rime ; indeed, it is a kind of in- 
 complete rime at the beginning of a line. It is very 
 prevalent in primitive poetry ; and it was accepted by 
 Wagner as preferable to rime for lyrics intended to 
 be set to music. Wagner held that " rime is useless 
 in music because it implies identity not only of vowel- 
 sounds but also of the succeeding consonants," which 
 are lost to the listener by the singer's need of dwell- 
 ing on the vowel alone, whereas the initial consonant 
 cannot be lost, " because it is that which stamps its 
 physiognomy on a word." As the repetition of the 
 same sound in a series of initial consonants creates 
 " a sort of musical cadence which is agreeable to the 
 ear," Wagner desired alliteration to be substituted 
 for rime. For this preference the composer had a rea- 
 son sufficient to himself ; but in poetry, which is sup-
 
 82 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 posed to be spoken rather than sung, rime is held to 
 be more effective ; and alliteration has been reserved 
 as an occasional accessory to be employed sparingly 
 and unobtrusively. 
 
 Here are two striking examples of the obtrusive use 
 of alliteration, taken from Poe arid from the British 
 poet who learned much from the American lyrist, and 
 who often bettered his teaching. In his " Ulaluine " 
 Poe informs us that his shadowy heroine has 
 
 Come up through the lair of the lion, 
 With love in her luminous eyes. 
 
 And in one of his earlier lyrics, Swinburne contrasts 
 
 violently 
 
 The lilies and languors of virtue, 
 The raptures and roses of vice. 
 
 In another lyric, " A Child's Daughter," the same 
 British poet "hunts the letter" even more emphati- 
 cally: 
 
 All the bells of heaven may ring, 
 All the birds of heaven may sing, 
 All the wells on earth may spring, 
 All the winds on earth may bring 
 
 All sweet sounds together ; 
 Sweeter far than all things heard, 
 Hand of harper, tone of bird, 
 Sound of woods at sundavm stirred, 
 Welling waters, winsome word, 
 Wind in warm, wan weather. 
 
 Here our attention is taken from off the matter and 
 called strenuously to the manner. Our ear begins to 
 count the number of alliterations, to expect them and 
 to wonder at them ; and while it is doing this, it is 
 likely to fail to catch the poet's meaning. If we once 
 begin to notice tricks of method, we shall not appro
 
 TONE-COLOR 83 
 
 hend the message. If we fall to admiring the poet's 
 dexterity in juggling with sounds, we shall not really 
 listen to what he is talking about and perhaps we 
 shall not care. If this is the case, the verbal artist has 
 plainly overreached himself. He has constructed his or- 
 nament instead of ornamenting his construction. He 
 has allowed the minor matter of style to interfere with 
 the major matter of substance. As Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 said, " the value and rank of every art is in proportion 
 to the mental labor employed in it or the mental pleas- 
 ure produced by it. As this principle is observed or 
 neglected a profession becomes either a liberal art or a 
 mechanical trade." And in another place Reynolds in- 
 sisted that " art in its perfection is unostentatious ; it lies 
 hid and worka its effects, itself unseen." 
 
 When we seek to discover why Poe's lines and Swin- 
 burne's produce this unforeseen and unfortunate effect, 
 we perceive that the four Fa in the American poem and 
 the two r's, the two Fs and the two v's in the British 
 poem are all of them initials of long syllables, of sylla- 
 bles which have an emphatic accent, so that they im- 
 press themselves most forcibly upon the ear. Contrast 
 the two lines of Poe and the two lines of Swinburne 
 with these two lines of Tennyson: 
 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms 
 And murmur of innumerable bees. 
 
 Here are actually eight ra's; and yet they achieve 
 their soothing effect without projecting themselves into 
 ur consciousness and without in any way arresting the 
 current of our interest. There they are, and we may 
 count them at our leisure if we choose; but they do 
 not cry aloud for immediate recognition when the lines
 
 84 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 fall on our ears. While some of these ra's are initials 
 of long feet, most of them are more cunningly com- 
 mingled with the three Z's, with the three repetitions 
 of the u sound (for that is heard also in doves), and 
 with the two long o's in the first line. Where Poe and 
 Swinburne have vaunted their virtuosity, proudly pa- 
 rading it, Tennyson has subtly hidden his far more 
 delicate art. Sometimes Tennyson, when he feels the 
 need, dares a bolder alliteration : 
 
 Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew 
 His wreathed bugle-horn. 
 
 And Browning makes use of like words for a like 
 purpose : 
 
 That bubble they were bent on blowing big, 
 He had blown already till he burst his cheeks. 
 
 In the following four lines Bunner has only two initial 
 Ts and w?'s, but another I and another w are unobtru- 
 sively effective while the third line is sustained by three 
 long o's contrasted with r's : 
 
 I dwell in a land of winter, 
 
 From my love a world apart 
 But the snow blooms over with rosea 
 
 At the thought of her in my heart. 
 
 The result justified frank initial alliteration in these 
 lines of Shakspere's : 
 
 The churlish chiding of the winter wind. 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free. 
 
 And also in these of Coleridge's : 
 
 The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
 The furrow followed free.
 
 TONE-COLOR 85 
 
 Yet in this last example the repeated y's, all at the 
 beginning of long syllables, are perilously near to the 
 danger-line where they might divert the reader's mind 
 from the story he was hearing to the technic of the 
 story-teller. There is profit in setting this by the side 
 of a marvelously adroit interweaving of complemen- 
 tary and contrasted sounds in this exquisitely musical 
 passage of Tennyson's " Princess " : 
 
 The babe that by us, 
 
 Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, 
 Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass, 
 Uncared for, spied its mother and began 
 A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance 
 Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms 
 And lazy ling'ring fingers. 
 
 This fragment of Tennyson's is more elaborately 
 wrought than this of Milton's, in which however there 
 is the same intermittent play of alliteration, changing 
 its letter from line to line : 
 
 And ever, against eating cares, 
 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
 
 Married to immortal verse, 
 
 Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
 
 In notes with many a winding bout 
 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out 
 
 With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 
 
 The melting voice through mazes running, 
 
 Untwisting all the .chains that tie 
 
 The hidden Soul of Harmony. 
 
 Perhaps there is no passage of Shakspere more cun- 
 ningly contrived with a varied play of repeated and 
 contrasted consonants than the description of Cleopa- 
 tra's descent of the Nile:
 
 86 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 
 
 Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; 
 
 Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 
 
 The winds were love-sick with them ; the oars were silver, 
 
 Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made 
 
 The water which they beat to follow faster, 
 
 As amorous of their strokes. 
 
 If we reserve alliteration to describe the recurring 
 of the same sound as the initial of words or of long 
 syllables, then we need another terra for the recurrence 
 of the same sound in the less emphatic places in the 
 line. " Colliteration," a word which has been proposed 
 by Bliss Carman, seems to be excellent for the pur- 
 pose, since it suggests at once the close relation be- 
 tween it and alliteration and yet points out the differ- 
 ence. Colliteration, then, has this advantage over 
 alliteration, that it is less obvious, that it forces itself 
 less upon the hearer's attention, that it conveys a 
 gentler pleasure to the ear while concealing the source 
 of this gratification. Alliteration braves the spot- 
 light of publicity, while Colliteration modestly shrinks 
 from the glare of self-display. These two lines of 
 Browning's have been used to illustrate the delicate 
 effects of adroit Colliteration : 
 
 But I know not any tone 
 So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow. 
 
 As Richard Hovey pointed out, the repeated fa 
 (Jit, falter, forth) are a true alliteration in that they 
 are the initials of long syllables and get the full force 
 of three beats out of the five in the line. The ^-sounds 
 (t in but, not, tone, fit, to and -ter, and th in thine, and 
 forth) are scattered indiscriminately, three falling in 
 short syllables, three on the ends of long syllables,
 
 TONE-COLOR 87 
 
 and two only (and these not exactly the same, t in 
 tone and th in thine) on the beginnings of long sylla- 
 bles. " The result of this scattering is that they do 
 not catch the ear as the alliterating fa do ; but they 
 do unconsciously impress the mind with a sense of a 
 prevailing color." Again, the w's (know, not, any, 
 tone, thine) form a colliterating group with a slight 
 associated alliteration (the final TI'S of tone and thine^ 
 which strongly affect the beat). 
 
 It needs to be noted that alliteration and collitera- 
 tion have nothing to do with spelling, since our chaotic 
 orthography allows almost every single sound of our 
 language to be represented by a variety of different 
 symbols. The sound of u in burn, for example, is 
 represented by every other vowel in earn, journey, 
 firm, myrrh. To the ear this is true alliteration, al- 
 though the eye may not always discover the identity 
 of sound. 
 
 The too frequent recurrence of the same vowel- 
 sound may be fatiguing, as Lanier illustrated by two 
 lines which he made as atrocious as possible in order 
 to set the fault forth clearly : 
 
 'Tis May-day gay ; wide-smiling skies shine bright, 
 Through whose true blue cuckoos do woo anew. 
 
 The assertion has been made that Browning strove 
 ever to avoid the repetition of the same vowel-sound 
 in a single line. If he did act on this principle, he de- 
 prived himself of a valuable means of securing tone- 
 color. We may feel that the reecho of the same 
 vowel-sound in Byron's 
 
 Oh, we '11 go no more &-roving 
 is perhaps a little too bold and direct. But Poe's in-
 
 88 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 tentional repetition of the same sound in three lines 
 of " The Bells " is admirable in its carrying out of the 
 purpose of the poem : 
 
 From the molten-golden notes, 
 
 And all in tune, 
 What a liquid ditty floats. 
 
 And there is the same bold use of the same open 
 vowels, a luxurious symphony, in two quatrains of 
 Andrew Lang's " Twilight on Tweed " : 
 
 A mist of memory broods and floats, 
 
 The border waters flow ; 
 The air is full of ballad notes, 
 
 Borne out of long ago. 
 
 Old songs that sung themselves to me, 
 Sweet through a boy's day-dream, 
 
 While trout below the blossom'd tree 
 Flashed in the golden stream. 
 
 There is a deliberate expressiveness not otherwise 
 attainable in Tennyson's 
 
 Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere. 
 
 Not in the same line, indeed, but in three consecu- 
 tive lines, does Shakspere employ a triple repetition 
 of the long i sound : 
 
 In such a night 
 
 Stood .Dt'do with a willow in her hand, 
 Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 Here we may note also the alliteration of the three 
 w's (loillow, wild, and waff) and of the two c's (come 
 and Carthage), as well as the colliteration of the u 
 sound (love and come). And Pope got a certain effect
 
 TONE-COLOR 89 
 
 by repeating a vowel-consonant combination in his 
 second line : 
 
 If nature Sundered in our opening ears 
 And stunned us with the music of the spheres. 
 
 The same kind of imitative harmony is to be found 
 in Whitcomb Kiley's " When the Frost is on the 
 Punkin," especially in these two lines : 
 
 The husky, rusty rustle of the tossels of the corn, 
 
 And the rashiu' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn. 
 
 English is a language sibilant beyond all others ; 
 and it is not easy for our poets to avoid making lines 
 which hiss unpleasantly. It was in the effort to escape 
 from this danger that an anonymous bard was moved 
 to compose this " Song without a Sibilant " : 
 
 Oh ! come to-night ; for naught can charm 
 
 The weary time when thou 'rt away. 
 Oh ! come ; the gentle moon hath thrown 
 
 O'er bower and hall her quivering ray. 
 The heatherbell hath mildly flung 
 
 From off her fairy leaf the bright 
 And diamond dewdrop that had hung 
 
 Upon that leaf a gem of light. 
 Then come, love, come ! 
 
 To-night the liquid wave hath not 
 
 Illumined by the moonlit beam 
 Playing upon the lake beneath, 
 
 Like frolic in an Autumn dream 
 The liquid wave hath not, to-night, 
 
 In all her moonlight pride, a fair 
 Gift like to them that on thy lip 
 
 Do breathe and laugh, and home it there. 
 Then come, love, come ! 
 
 To-night, to-night, my gentle one, 
 The flower-bearing Amra tree
 
 90 , A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Doth long, with fragrant moan, to meet 
 
 The love-lip of the honey-bee. 
 But not the Amra tree can long 
 
 To greet the bee, at evening light, 
 With half the deep, fond love I long 
 
 To meet my Nama here to-night. 
 Then come, love, come ! 
 
 Tennyson held it essential that the poet should have 
 a fine ear for vowel-sounds and an ability to kick " the 
 geese out of the boat," that is, to avoid sibilations. 
 He declared that he " never put two s's together in 
 any verse of mine. My line is not, as often quoted, 
 
 And freedom broadens slowly down, 
 but 
 
 And freedom slowly broadens down." 
 
 In laying down this rule, Tennyson was refining 
 upon the practice of Shakspere, who unhesitatingly 
 ends one word with an s and begins the next with the 
 same sound : 
 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine. 
 
 The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold. 
 
 But that our loves and comforts should increase. 
 
 I am thy father's spirit. 
 
 This liberty of Shakspere's is the more significant, 
 because these quotations are all taken from his plays, 
 where every line was intended to be spoken. Yet 
 Tennyson's insistence upon the high standard of avoid- 
 ing the succession of s's is evidence that he kept in 
 mind always the effect of his lines upon the ear. 
 Tennyson lacks the large affluence of Shakspere ; his
 
 TONE-COLOR 91 
 
 art is more timid ; but it is ever worthy of the most 
 careful study. He was what he called Catullus, a 
 " consummate metrist," avid of experiment and untir- 
 ing in search of ultimate perfection. Consider, for an- 
 other example, how skilfully he colliterates the short 
 i sound with thin 's and &'s to gain an effect of 
 insignificance : 
 
 The little rift within the lover's lute, 
 Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit, 
 
 in which there are eight varied 's and seven f s. 
 
 The precept and the practice of Tennyson have left 
 a deep impress upon the technic of all the later verse- 
 writers of our language. His influence was beneficial 
 in raising the level of technical accomplishment. It 
 has made the average versifier ashamed of negligent 
 work. The lyrists of to-day may have only a few burn- 
 ing words to utter and the torch of poesy may be 
 dimmer than a generation ago, because our bards have 
 now no message tipped with flame ; but they see clearly 
 while the lamp holds out to burn. They know how to 
 say what little they may have to say. As Tennyson 
 himself asserted late in life, 
 
 All can grow the flower now, 
 For all have got the seed. 
 
 Of course, there is an ever-present danger that 
 manner may come to be more highly esteemed than 
 matter. Stedman was not overstating the case when 
 he asserted that certain " non-creative writers lavish 
 all their ingenuity upon decoration until it becomes a 
 vice. You cannot long disguise a lack of native vigor 
 by ornament and novel effects. Over-decoration of late
 
 92 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 is the symptom of over-prolonged devotion to the 
 technical side of poetry. All of the countless effects 
 of technic are nothing without that psychical beauty 
 imparted by the true vitality are of less value than 
 faith and works without love. The vox humana must 
 be heard. That alone can give quality to a poem ; the 
 most refined and artistic verse is cold and forceless 
 without it. A soulless poem is a stained glass window 
 with the light shining on and not through it." 
 
 Yet it is well to have the instruments of the art 
 kept fit for the service of the truly creative poet when 
 he shall come. The bugle will be ready to his hand, 
 when he arrives to blow a mighty blast. No artist 
 can have too great technical dexterity ; and every art- 
 ist must serve his apprenticeship in the workshop, 
 learning his trade. In default of the major poet, with 
 his message for all men, we can find delight in the 
 dexterity of the minor poets and in the skill with 
 which they carve their cameos. We can take a keen 
 pleasure in the measured movement of this stanza of 
 Aldrich's "Voice of the Sea," with its certainty of 
 touch, its effective repetitions, and its perfect adjust- 
 ment of sound to sense : 
 
 In the hush of the autumn night 
 I hear the voice of the sea, 
 In the hush of the autumn night 
 It seems to say to me 
 Mine are the winds above, 
 Mine are the caves below, 
 Mine are the dead of yesterday 
 And the dead of long ago. 
 
 We can enjoy also the skilful interweaving of rimes, 
 the delicate play of alliteration and of colliteration,
 
 TONE-COLOR 93 
 
 the artful selection of thin vowel-sounds and thin 
 consonants, in these quatrains of Riley's : 
 
 When chirping crickets fainter cry, 
 
 And pule stars blossom in the sky, 
 
 And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom 
 
 And blurred the butterfly ; 
 
 When locust-blossoms fleck the walk, 
 And up the tiger-lily stalk, 
 The glow-worm crawls aud clings and falls 
 And glimmers down the garden walls. 
 
 And it is well now and then to study a masterpiece 
 of poetry, like Tennyson's " Crossing the Bar," and 
 examine its workmanship, if we wish to convince our- 
 selves anew that content and form are Siamese twins, 
 after all, and that one cannot exist without the other, 
 born at the same moment : 
 
 Sunset and evening star, 
 
 And one clear call for me 1 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
 
 When I put out to sea, 
 
 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
 
 Too full for sound and foam, 
 When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
 
 Turns again home. 
 
 Twilight and evening bell, 
 
 And after that the dark ! 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
 
 When I embark ; 
 
 For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 
 When I have crost the bar. 
 
 It would be difficult to set a more profitable task be- 
 fore any student than to ask him to take this lovely
 
 94 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 lyric apart and to discover how much of its ineffable 
 and intangible beauty is due to the poet's artistry, to 
 his mastery of alliteration and colliteration, to his 
 exquisite feeling for vowel-sounds, to his firm control 
 over contrasting consonants, to his intuitive sense of 
 rhythm, and to his perfect understanding of the value 
 of an adroitly varied refrain, to the antithesis of 
 " Sunset and evening star " with " Twilight and evening 
 bell," and to the final recurrence of the figure of the bar 
 to be crossed which is suggested in the first quatrain. 
 Perhaps the refrain is not fairly to be classed under 
 tone-color ; and yet it may as well be considered here 
 as later. The refrain may be defined as a phrase, often 
 filling a whole line, which recurs again and again at 
 intervals, sometimes absolutely unchanged and some- 
 times artfully modified in meaning. This device, which 
 we use now for sustaining and reawakening the interest 
 of the hearer, is of very high antiquity ; and it is fre- 
 quent in the folksongs of various peoples. Macaulay 
 employed it in the stirring stanzas in which he sought 
 to recapture the swiftness of the primitive ballad ; and 
 in the " Battle of Ivry " he ends off again and again 
 with " King Henry of Navarre." Tennyson chose to set 
 his refrain at the beginning of every stanza of his 
 " Lady Clara Vere de Vere." Kipling makes us feel its 
 stark power in his gruesome " Danny Deever " and he 
 forced it to lend weight to his lofty " Recessional." 
 Walt Whitman seized it for once in his noble lament 
 for Lincoln, where every stanza begins with 
 
 O Captain, my Captain ! 
 
 and every stanza ends with 
 
 Fallen cold and dead.
 
 TONE-COLOR 95 
 
 The refrain is the backbone of Longfellow's " Ex- 
 celsior " and of his " Old Clock on the Stairs " ; and 
 he modified it pathetically in his " Chamber over the 
 Gate." It is adroitly handled in Riley's " There, little 
 girl, don't cry." It is the heart of Tennyson's " Lady 
 of Shalott " ; and it is dramatically varied in his 
 ballad of the " Sisters," in which all the six stanzas 
 end with the same line : 
 
 O, the earl was fair to see ! 
 
 While in the third line of the successive stanzas he 
 rings the changes on 
 
 The wind is blowing in turret and tree, 
 which becomes 
 
 The wind is howling in turret and tree 
 and 
 
 The wind is raving in turret and tree, 
 
 only to return in the final stanza to the original form. 
 Tennyson also employed it most effectually in his 
 " May Queen " and again, a little insistently, in his 
 " Oriana." 
 
 In the essay on the "Philosophy of Composition," 
 wherein Poe pretended to set forth the successive 
 steps which he took in order to write the " Raven," 
 he asserted that no artistic effect had been more often 
 employed in verse than the refrain. " The univer- 
 sality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its 
 intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of sub- 
 mitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with 
 regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon 
 saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly
 
 96 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 used, the refrain or burden, not only is limited to 
 lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the 
 force of monotone both in sound and thought. The 
 pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity 
 of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so heighten, 
 the effect by adhering in general to the monotone of 
 sound, while I continually varied that of thought ; 
 that is to say, I determined to produce continuously 
 novel effects by the variation of the application of the 
 refrain the refrain itself remaining for the most 
 part unvaried." Whether Poe knew it or not, this 
 exact repetition of the refrain with a shifting meaning 
 of the repeated word or phrase was not really a 
 novelty of his, since it can be found to search no 
 further in the ballade and the rondeau and the 
 triolet. 
 
 Poe then went on to consider the proper length of 
 the refrain itself; and here his acuteness has full 
 play. " Since its application was to be repeatedly 
 varied, it was clear that the refrain itself must be 
 brief, for there would have been an unsurmountable 
 difficulty in frequent variations of application in any 
 sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of 
 the sentence would of course be the facility of the 
 variation. This led me at once to a single word as the 
 best refrain." And as the refrain was properly to 
 close the several stanzas, " such a close, to have force, 
 must be sonorous and susceptible to protracted em- 
 phasis." These considerations " inevitably led me to 
 the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection 
 with r as the most producible consonant." So he 
 selected for his refrain the single word Nevermore. 
 
 It may be doubted whether Poe is quite candid in
 
 TONE-COLOR 97 
 
 his explanation of the processes of his composition of 
 the " Raven," for if the poem is solely the result of 
 his analytic determination of the proper constituent 
 elements of a pathetic lyric, there would be reason for 
 wonder why he did not start up the machinery again 
 and manufacture a succession of similar poems. Yet 
 few poets have ever taken us so satisfactorily into the 
 workshop as Poe did in this paper, laying bare the 
 artistic motives which guided his creation. Poe de- 
 clared these motives to have been conscious, and such 
 they may have been in some measure, although probably 
 not to the degree he claims. A true poet has always 
 built better than he knew ; and conscious craftsman as 
 Tennyson was, we may doubt whether the half of the 
 verbal and metrical felicities which we can detect in 
 " Crossing the Bar " were deliberately intended and 
 foreseen by the poet. They were the result of Tennyson's 
 lifelong attention to technic, until his hand had become 
 subdued to what it worked in and until he wrought his 
 marvels almost unconsciously. 
 
 The refrain is closely akin in effect to the repetition 
 of a thought in other words as Tennyson returned 
 in his last line to the crossing of the bar, first men- 
 tioned in the fourth line of his first stanza. Sometimes 
 this can be attained by the recurrence of a single strik- 
 ing word, as in this " Parable " l by Anna Reeve 
 Aldrich : 
 
 I made the cross myself whose weight 
 
 Was later laid on me. 
 This thought is torture as I toil 
 
 Up life's steep Calvary. 
 
 1 By permission from Songs about Love, Life and Death, by Anna 
 Reeve Aldrich, copyight, 1892, by Charles Scribuor's Sons.
 
 98 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 To think mine own bands drove the nails I 
 
 I sang a merry song, 
 And chose the heaviest wood I had 
 
 To build it firm and strong. 
 
 If I had guessed if I bad dreamed 
 
 Its weight was meant for me, 
 I should have made a lighter cross 
 
 To bear up Calvary. 
 
 And this repetition of the vital word or phrase need 
 not occur at the end of the poem or even of the stanza. 
 Indeed, there is sometimes a special emphasis in plac- 
 ing it earlier, as in Lander's exquisite lyric, which has 
 a classic grace in its delicate force. In this poem a 
 beautiful proper name serves to tie the two quatrains 
 together : 
 
 Ah, what avails the sceptered raee, 
 
 Ah, what the form divine ! 
 What every beauty, every grace I 
 
 Rose Aylmer, all were thine. 
 
 Rose Aylmer, whom those wakeful eyes 
 
 May weep, but never see, 
 A night of memories and of sighs 
 
 I consecrate to tbee. 
 
 This same transposition of the refrain from the end 
 of the stanza is to be seen in Gilder's " Sherman," 
 where it opens each of the first three stanzas to reap- 
 pear paraphrased but undisguised in the third line of 
 the final stanza : 
 
 Glory and honor and fame and everlasting laudation 
 
 For our captains who loved not war, but fought for the life of 
 
 the nation; 
 
 Who knew that, in all the land, one slave meant strife, not peace; 
 Who fought for freedom, not glory; made war that war might 
 
 cease.
 
 TONE-COLOR 99 
 
 Glory and honor and fame ; the beating of muffled drums ; 
 The wailing funeral dirge, as the flag- wrapped coffin comes ; 
 Fame and honor and glory ; and joy for a noble soul, 
 For a full and splendid life, and laureled rest at the goal. 
 
 Glory and honor and fame ; the pomp that a soldier prizes ; 
 The league-long waving line as the marching falls and rises; 
 Rumbling of caissons and guns; the clatter of horses' feet, 
 And a million awe-struck faces far down the waiting street. 
 
 But better than martial woe, and the pageant of civic sorrow; 
 Better than praise of to-day, or the statue we build to-morrow; 
 Better than honor and glory, and History's iron pen, 
 Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men. 
 
 Perhaps it is not needful to draw attention to what 
 all must have felt the imitative ingenuity of the 
 
 Rumbling of caissons and guns 
 and the imagination and picturesqueness of 
 The league-long waving line as the marching falls and rises. 
 
 Poe also made use of another device which has a 
 certain likeness to the refrain. He repeated the 
 final line of his stanza with a modification of one or 
 more words, thus gaming the emphasis of reiteration 
 while avoiding the monotony of exact repetition. In 
 " For Annie," for example, not a little of the vibrating 
 intensity of the lyric is due to these terminal echoes : 
 
 The moaning and groaning, 
 
 The sighing and sobbing, 
 Are quieted now 
 
 With that horrible throbbing 
 At heart: ah, that horrible, 
 
 Horrible throbbing 1 
 
 When the light was extinguished 
 She covered me warm,
 
 100 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And she prayed to the angels 
 
 To keep me from harm, 
 To the queen of the angels 
 
 To shield me from harm. 
 
 The same method is to be observed also in " Anna- 
 bel Lee " : 
 
 For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams 
 
 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
 And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 
 
 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
 And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
 Of my darling, my darling my life and my bride, 
 
 In her sepulchre there by the sea, 
 
 In her tomb by the sounding sea. 
 
 And in " Ulalume," the principle seems to have 
 been carried to an even further extreme : 
 
 Our talk had been serious and sober, 
 
 But our thoughts they were palsied and sere, 
 Our memories were treacherous and sere, 
 
 For we knew not the month was October, 
 
 And we marked not the night of the year, 
 (Ah, night of all nights in the year ! ) 
 
 We noted not the dim lake of Auber 
 
 (Though once we had journeyed down here), 
 
 Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber 
 
 Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 This stanza has a magic melody, even if its mean- 
 ing is vague and uncertain ; it steals over us like a 
 strain of music. And its insinuating charm is due to 
 dexterity of rhythmic variation, to adroitness in inven- 
 tion of rime, and, above all, to tone-color, to the choice 
 and to the contrast of the mere sounds. 
 
 Perhaps this chapter cannot end better than with 
 a pregnant quotation from Stevenson's most illumi-
 
 TONE-COLOR 101 
 
 native essay on " Style in Literature " : " Each phrase 
 in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music 
 consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, de- 
 mands, and harmonizes with another ; and the art of 
 rightly using these concordances is the final art in lit- 
 erature. It used to be a piece of good advice to all 
 young writers to avoid alliteration ; and the advice was 
 sound, in so far as it prevented daubing. None the 
 less for that, was it abominable nonsense, and the 
 merest raving of the blindest of the blind who will not 
 see. The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a 
 sentence, depends implicitly upon alliteration and 
 upon assonance. The vowel demands to be repeated. 
 The consonant demands to be repeated ; and both cry 
 aloud to be perpetually varied. You may follow the 
 adventures of a letter through any passage that has 
 particularly pleased you ; find it perhaps denied a 
 while, to tantalize the ear ; find it fired at you again 
 in a whole broadside ; or find it pass into congenerous 
 sounds, one liquid or labial melting away into an- 
 other."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE STANZA 
 
 Verse to the true poet is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and 
 a difficulty. It is a help. It springs from the same enthusiasm as the 
 rest of his impulses, and is necessary to their satisfaction and effect. 
 Verse is no more a clog than the condition of rushing upward is a 
 clog to fire, or than the roundness and order of the globe is a clog to 
 the freedom and variety that abound within its sphere. Verse is no 
 dominator orer the poet, except inasmuch as the bond is recipro- 
 cal, and the poet dominates over the verse. LBIOH HUNT : What it 
 Poetry ? 
 
 EPIC, idyllic and narrative poems, as well as didactic, de- 
 scriptive and satiric verse, are usually written continu- 
 ously without subdivision into minor parts of a rigid 
 length. They may be set off into books or cantos ; but 
 they are not cut up into stanzas. That is to say, they 
 may have a series of chapters, but they are not measured 
 off into equal paragraphs. Lyric poetry, including the 
 ballad and often also the story in verse, is generally 
 composed of a succession of stanzas identical in structure 
 and uniform in length. Thus the stanza is the unit, of 
 which the sequence constitutes the poem. It is a part 
 of the whole ; and yet it is complete in itself. It re- 
 sembles the paragraph of prose-composition, except 
 that it has uniformity of length and of structure. 
 
 In the majority of the poems written in the modern 
 languages, rime is employed to make the framework 
 of the stanza clearly perceptible to the ear. Rime 
 not only marks off the ends of the several lines, it 
 serves also to organize and to coordinate the stanza
 
 THE STANZA 103 
 
 itself. It sustains the architecture of the often elab- 
 orate form. This is an added reason why rime should 
 be exact and perfect, so that the ear may the more 
 readily perceive the scheme of the stanza, however 
 complex this may be. And as this apprehension and 
 retention of the skeleton of the structure imposes more 
 or less burden upon the ear, there is a certain disad- 
 vantage in a stanza which is too protracted in length, 
 or too complicated in arrangement. This must ever be 
 borne in mind, in spite of the fact that some stanzaic 
 constructions which are neither short nor simple, 
 have a sweeping amplitude gratefully welcomed by 
 the ear. 
 
 The stanza may be any length, from two lines to a 
 dozen or more. A succession of couplets, each com- 
 plete in itself, might seem to be unduly monotonous 
 to carry a story satisfactorily. Yet the couplet is the 
 simple form chosen by Whittier to tell about " Maud 
 Muller" and "Barbara Frietchie." In the first, the 
 sense is generally coincident with the couplet : 
 
 Maud Muller on a summer's day 
 Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 
 
 Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth 
 Of simple beauty and rustic health. 
 
 In the second, the poet sometimes lets the thought run 
 on from couplet to couplet : 
 
 Up from the meadows rich with corn, 
 Clear in the cool September morn, 
 
 The clustered spires of Frederick stand 
 Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
 
 104 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 The couplet is also the form preferred by Austin 
 Dobson for his " Ballad of Beau Brocade " : 
 
 Seventeen hundred and thirty-nine 
 That was the date of this tale of mine. 
 
 First great George was buried and gone ; 
 George the Second was plodding on. 
 
 The British bard, it must be noted, allowed himself 
 the liberty of an occasional triplet to interrupt the 
 current of his couplets : 
 
 Out spoke Dolly the chambermaid, 
 (Tremulous now and sore afraid,) 
 11 Stand and deliver, O Beau Brocade ! " 
 
 Firing then, out of sheer alarm, 
 Hit the Beau in the bridle arm. 
 
 Button the first went none knows where, 
 But it carried away his solitaire ; 
 
 Button the second a circuit made, 
 Glanced in under the shoulder-blade ; 
 Down from the saddle fell Beau Brocade. 
 
 The triplet has also served as a stanza, generally 
 tied together by a single rime, as in Longfellow'g 
 " Maidenhood" : 
 
 Maiden ! with the meek, brown eyes, 
 In whose orbs a shadow lies 
 Like the dusk in evening skies ! 
 
 Thou whose locks outshine the sun, 
 Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
 As the braided streamlets run ! 
 
 Standing, with reluctant feet, 
 Where the brook and river meet, 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet I
 
 THE STANZA 105 
 
 Longfellow's triplets are trochaic tetrameters with 
 the final short syllable dropped. In " A Toccata of 
 Galuppi's," Browning employs triplets of trochaic oc- 
 tameter, also cutting off the final short syllable : 
 
 As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, 
 Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the 
 
 crop : 
 What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop ? 
 
 Sometimes the poet has chosen to avoid the triple 
 repetition of the same sound in leaving the middle 
 line of the three unrimed ; and sometimes he has 
 carried over into the second triplet the terminal 
 sound of this second line. This is what Browning has 
 done in the " Statue and the Bust " : 
 
 There 's a palace in Florence, the world knows well, 
 
 And a statue watches it from the square, 
 And this story of both do our townsmen tell. 
 
 Ages ago, a lady there, 
 
 At the farthest window facing the East 
 Asked, " Who rides by with the royal air ? " 
 
 The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased; 
 
 She leaned forth, one on either hand ; 
 They saw how the blush of the bride increased 
 
 This same method of linking the triplets together 
 into a chain is to be found also in Morris's " Defence 
 of Guinevere " : 
 
 But, knowing now that they would have her speak, 
 She threw her wet hair backward from her brow, 
 Her hand close to her mouth, touching her cheek, 
 
 As though she had there a shameful blow, 
 
 And feeling it shameful to feel ought but shame 
 All through her heart, yet felt her cheek burn so,
 
 106 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 She must a little touch it: like one lame, 
 
 She walked away from Gauwaine, with her head 
 Still lifted up ; and ou her cheek of flame. 
 
 A massive and sweeping triplet-stanza is that em- 
 ployed by Kipling in the dedication of his book^of 
 verses to his dead brother-in-law, Wolcott Balestier. 
 It owes much of its weight and largeness to the length 
 of the several lines, which are iambic heptameter: 
 
 Beyond the path of the outmost sun through utter darkness 
 
 hurled 
 
 Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled 
 Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made 
 
 oar world. 
 
 They are purged of pride because they died, they know the 
 
 worth of their bays, 
 They sit at wine with the Maidens Nine and the Gods of the 
 
 Elder Days, 
 It is their will to serve or be still as fitteth our Father's praise. 
 
 This large triplet-stanza is appropriate to the full- 
 blown eulogy which is here Kipling's intent. But it 
 is not fitter for its special purpose than the more re- 
 served triplet-stanza that Tennyson chose for his 
 "Two Voices": 
 
 And all so variously wrought, 
 
 I marvell'd how the mind was brought 
 
 To anchor by one gloomy thought. 
 
 Of all possible stanzas the quatrain is the most fre- 
 quent in English verse. Generally the first and third 
 lines rime together, and the second and fourth, as 
 in Emerson's "Concord Hymn": 
 
 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 ' : 

 
 THE STANZA , 107 
 
 This form of the quatrain may be varied by the alter- 
 nation of double and single rimes, as in Byron's : 
 
 When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, 
 Let him combat for that of his neighbors; 
 
 Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome, 
 And get knocked on the head for his labors. 
 
 And in this of Shelley's : 
 
 I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, 
 
 Thou needest not fear mine; 
 My spirit is too deeply ladeu 
 
 Ever to burden thine. 
 
 Some poets have found an advantage in leaving the 
 first and third lines unrimed, as in this quatrain of 
 Coleridge's : 
 
 All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
 Whatever stirs this mortal frame; 
 
 All are but ministers of love, 
 And feed his sacred flame. 
 
 But although this is here printed as four lines, it 
 may be questioned whether the ear does not really re- 
 ceive it rather as two long lines, in consequence of 
 the absence of the rime. In this case there is a cer- 
 tain strain imposed on the hearing. This is probably 
 the reason why careful versifiers rarely leave any pair 
 of lines unrimed in a poem which is otherwise 
 rimed. A single unrinied line in a quatrain, the 
 other three lines of which rime together, is often 
 restful ; and this is the form of the quatrain chosen 
 by Fitzgerald for his translation of Omar Khayyam : 
 
 A book of verses underneath the bough, 
 A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and tbou 
 Beside me singing in the wilderness 
 Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow 1 

 
 108 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Another disposition of the unrimed line is to be 
 found in Byron's familiar epistle to his publisher, 
 which consists of a riming triplet, with an unrimed 
 refrain : 
 
 To thee, with hope and terror dumb, 
 The unfledged MS. authors come ; 
 Thou printest all and sellest some 
 My Murray. 
 
 Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine 
 The works thou deemest most divine 
 The " art of cookery," and mine, 
 
 My Murray. 
 
 This same arrangement of the quatrain, which Byron 
 employed jocularly, serves also for the massive and 
 resonant "Battle- Hymn of the Republic " : 
 
 Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : 
 He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 
 
 stored ; 
 
 He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword : 
 His truth is marching on. 
 
 In this lofty lyric, the refrain always ends with 
 ** marching on," but the rest of the line is sometimes 
 
 varied : 
 
 His day is marching on, 
 
 and 
 
 Since God is marching on. 
 
 This is a form of the quatrain closely akin to a 
 triplet ; and there is also a form of the quatrain which 
 is composed of two consecutive couplets. Here is an 
 example, from Byron's " Stanzas written on the Road 
 from Florence to Pisa" : 
 
 Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story; 
 The days of our youth are the days of our glory; 
 And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty 
 Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.
 
 THE STANZA 109 
 
 In this quatrain, the two couplets come one after 
 the other. In the quatrain which Tennyson chose for 
 " In Memoriam" a couplet is inserted between the lines 
 of another couplet : 
 
 Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
 Against her beauty ? May she mix 
 With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 
 
 Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 
 
 But on her forehead sits a fire; 
 She sets her forward countenance 
 And leaps into the future chance, 
 
 Submitting all things to desire. 
 
 As it is customary to represent iambs and trochees 
 by symbols, v - and w, so it is traditional to indicate 
 the riming scheme of any stanza by alphabetical sym- 
 bols, d-a representing one pair of rimes, bb another 
 and x-~w standing for lines without rime. Translating 
 into these alphabetic symbols the several forms of the 
 quatrain, we see that the alternating rimes, all single 
 or single and double, as in the examples from Emer- 
 son and Shelley, are arranged thus, a, 6, a, 6. In Cole- 
 ridge's quatrain we have ou, a, cc, a ; in Fitzgerald's 
 o, a, , a and in Byron's flippant address to Murray, 
 a, a, a, x. In Byron's quatrain composed of a pair of 
 couplets, we have a, a, 6, b ; and in Tennyson's " In 
 Memoriam " we have a, 6, 6, a. These are not all the 
 ways in which rimed and unrimed lines can be ar- 
 ranged in a quatrain, but they are the most frequently 
 used. And these forms of the quatrain may be made 
 infinitely various by lengthening or shortening one or 
 more lines of the four. The rime-scheme of Bryant's 
 " To a Waterfowl " is a, 6, a, 6, the same as that of 
 Emerson's " Concord Hymn " ; and yet the effect upon
 
 110 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 the ear is totally different in consequence of the met* 
 rical variation : 
 
 Whither, midst falling dew, 
 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
 Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
 
 Thy solitary way ? 
 
 The same also is the rime-scheme of Hood's " Haunted 
 House," wherein the difference is accentuated by the 
 double rime : 
 
 The wood-louse dropped and rolled into a ball, 
 Touched by some impulse, occult or mechanic. 
 
 And nameless beetles ran along the wall 
 In universal panio. 
 
 Just as the quatrain may be composed by the union 
 of two couplets, one following the other, so two qua- 
 trains of any of these forms may be combined into an 
 eight-line stanza. The stanza of the ordinary ballad is 
 simply a double quatrain, riming a, 6, a, 6, c, d 1 c, J, 
 or else with the first, third, fifth and seventh lines 
 left unrimed, a;, a, a?, a, x, 6, , 6, as in Kipling's 
 " Merchantmen " : 
 
 King Solomon drew merchantmen* 
 
 Because of his desire 
 For peacocks, apes, and ivory, 
 
 From Tarshish unto Tyre : 
 With cedars out of Lebanon 
 
 Which Hiram rafted down, 
 But we be only sailormen 
 
 That use in London Town. 
 
 The noble stanza in which Drayton composed his 
 superb and sonorous " Battle of Agincourt " is simply 
 two triplets with the fourth and eighth lines riming tot 
 gether, a, a, a, 6, c, c, c, b :
 
 THE STANZA 111 
 
 Fair stood the wind for France, 
 When we our sails advance, 
 Nor now to prove our chance 
 
 Longer will tarry ; 
 But putting to the main, 
 At Caux the mouth of Seine, 
 With all his martial train 
 
 Landed King Harry. 
 
 Herrick, who is a master of metrical effect, in his 
 lively " To Violets " uses a shorter line than Tennyson 
 chose for his stately " In Memoriam," but employs the 
 same arrangement of rimes, a, 6, 6, a, c, <?,<?, c : 
 
 Welcome, maids of honor ! 
 
 You do bring 
 
 In the Spring, 
 And wait upon her. 
 She has virgins many 
 
 Fresh and fair; 
 
 Yet you are 
 More sweet than any. 
 
 Another effective eight-line stanza is that which 
 Byron handles wittily in "Don Juan." The rime-scheme 
 is a, 6, a, 6, a, 6, c, c, the final couplet coming like the 
 crack of a whip : 
 
 If ever I should condescend to prose 
 
 I '11 write poetical commandments, which 
 
 Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those 
 That went before; in these I shall enrich 
 
 My text with many things that no one knows, 
 And carry precept to the highest pitch: 
 
 I '11 call the work " Longinus, o'er a Bottle, 
 
 Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle." 
 
 Yet another arrangement of rimes, pleasing to the 
 ear and binding the stanza into compact unity, is that 
 \n which a quatrain is followed by a triplet, the added
 
 112 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 eighth line riming with the second and fourth, a, &, a, 
 6, c, c, c, 6, as in Swinburne's " Garden of Proser 
 pine " : 
 
 We are not sure of sorrow, 
 
 And joy was never sure; 
 To-day will die to-morrow, 
 
 Time stoops to no man's lure; 
 And love, grown faint and fretful, 
 With lips but half-regretful, 
 Sighs, and with eyes forgetful 
 
 Weeps that no loves endure. 
 
 Also excellent in its tying of the two quatrains to- 
 gether is the form found, for example, in Chaucer's 
 " Monk's Tale," a, 6, a, 6, 6, c, 6, c, the second rime 
 of the first quatrain continuing as the first rime of the 
 second quatrain, thus setting a couplet in the middle 
 of the stanza : 
 
 Cenobia, of Palymerie queene 
 
 As writeii Persies of hir noblesse, 
 So worthy was in armes, and so kene, 
 
 That no wight passed hir in hardynesse, 
 
 Ne in lynage, ne in other gentilesse. 
 Of Kinges blood of Peres is she descended; 
 
 I seye not that she had moost fairnesse, 
 But of hire shape she myghte not been amended. 
 
 Not only can almost numberless combinations of 
 rimes be essayed in the eight-line stanza, but any com- 
 bination which may be adopted can be modified to 
 suit the theme, and can be made to take on an aspect 
 of novelty by shortening certain lines and lengthening 
 others, and by the interlinking of double rimes with 
 single or by leaving certain lines unrimed. The choice 
 of types at the command of the poet is practically in- 
 exhaustible ; and he reveals his intuitive feeling for
 
 THE STANZA 113 
 
 verse by the certainty with which he selects the type 
 that is best suited to his subject, and by the skill with 
 which he so modifies this as to serve his immediate 
 purpose. 
 
 After the quatrain, the stanza of eight lines has 
 been the most popular with the poets of our language. 
 Yet they have chosen to write also in stanzas of many 
 another length ; and it is only proper to give a few 
 specimens of the more significant of these other stan- 
 zas. The stanza of five lines, for example, has ad- 
 vantages of its own. Sometimes it resembles one of 
 the quatrain-forms already considered with the addi- 
 tion of an extra line ; and sometimes it takes on a 
 special quality of its own. The younger Hood con- 
 sidered it "one of the most musical forms of the 
 stanza," since " it is capable of almost endless variety, 
 and the proportions of rimes, three and two, seem to 
 be especially conducive to harmony." The rime-scheme 
 may be a, a, 6, 6, cc, the x representing a refrain, as 
 in Longfellow's " Excelsior " : 
 
 The shades of night were falling fast, 
 As through an Alpine village passed 
 A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, 
 A banner with the strange device, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 Or it may be a, 5, a, 6, 6, as in Waller's " To a 
 Rose " : 
 
 Go, lovely rose ! 
 Tell her that wastes her time and me, 
 
 That now she knows, 
 When I resemble her to thee, 
 How sweet and fair she seems to be. 
 
 Here the final couplet seems to sum up and rein- 
 force the stanza, giving it a sharper point. The same
 
 114 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 rime-scheme with the use of double rimes is found in 
 Shelley's " Skylark " : - 
 
 Higher still and higher 
 
 From the earth thou springest 
 
 Like a cloud of fire ; 
 
 The blue deep thou wingest, 
 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 
 
 Here the lengthening of the fifth line strengthens 
 the stanza. Perhaps it was Shelley's use of this effect 
 in lyric which suggested to Swinburne the type he 
 employed more than once, in which the fifth line is as 
 long as all the four lines which precede it : 
 
 First life on my sources 
 
 First drifted and swam ; 
 Out of me are the forces 
 That save it or damn; 
 
 Out of the man and woman and wild-beast and bird; before God 
 was, I am. 
 
 If we analyze this metrically, we perceive it to be 
 really an anapestic heptameter couplet, of which the 
 first line is divided into four parts by the use of 
 double and single rhymes, gaining weight and mass 
 by the full flow of the final line, unencumbered by in- 
 ternal rime. But this is a form to be handled satis- 
 factorily only by a master; and it lends itself easily 
 to parody, because of the obvious peculiarity of its 
 structure. It was borrowed by Bret Harte for his 
 "Plain Language from Truthful James": 
 
 Which I wish to remark, 
 
 And my language is plain, 
 That for ways that are dark 
 
 And for tricks that are vain, 
 The heathen Chinee is peculiar, 
 
 Which the same I would rise to explain.
 
 THE STANZA 115 
 
 In one of the lyrics of " The Foresters," Tennyson 
 has a five-line stanza, x, a, 6, a, 6, in which he obtains 
 an effect of ease and freedom by leaving the first line 
 without rime : 
 
 Love flew in at the window 
 
 As Wealth walked in at the door. 
 "You have come as you saw Wealth coming," said I. 
 But he fluttered his wings with a sweet little cry, 
 
 "I'll cleave to you rich or poor." 
 
 And in " A Serenade at the Villa," Browning is 
 content with five lines of equal length, rimed alter- 
 nately, a, 6, a, 6, a, perhaps the simplest possible 
 arrangement of this stanza: 
 
 That was I, you heard last night, 
 Where there rose no moon at all, 
 
 Nor, to pierce the strained and tight 
 Tent of heaven, a planet small: 
 
 Life was dead, and so was light. 
 
 It may be thought that Mrs. Browning was a little 
 too negligent of the possibilities of the five-line form, 
 when she was content to use only one rime, leaving 
 two lines unrimed, x, a, , a, a; but there is in- 
 disputable strength in the lengthening of the final 
 line, although this is not paraded as in Swinburne's 
 stanza already quoted : 
 
 Oh, a lady might have come there, 
 
 Hooded fairly like her hawk 
 With a book or lute in summer, 
 
 And a hope of sweeter talk. 
 Listening less to her own music than for footsteps on the walk. 
 
 When we analyze this, we discover that it is really a 
 triplet of trochaic octameter, although presented to the
 
 116 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 eye as five lines, much as Swinburne's stanza re 
 vealed itself as a couplet. In fact, both Swinburne's 
 and Mrs. Browning's are not really in the five-line 
 form, since they assume this outer shape only to the 
 eye. To the ear Swinburne's is only a couplet of long 
 lines, and Mrs. Browning's is only a triplet. In Mrs. 
 Browning's case the absence of more than the abso- 
 lutely necessary three rimes makes this fairly obvious, 
 even to a careless ear ; whereas the two pairs of rimes 
 inside Swinburne's first line may be held to give his 
 stanza more claim to be considered as actually made up 
 of five lines, in spite of the metrical equivalence of the 
 first four to the final one. 
 
 Longfellow employed an effective five-line stanza in 
 his " Enceladus," a, 6, 6, a, 6 : 
 
 Under Mount Etna he lies, 
 
 It is slumber, it is not death ; 
 For he struggles at times to arise, 
 And above him the lurid skies 
 
 Are hot with his fiery breath. 
 
 Just as two quatrains can be combined into an eight- 
 line stanza, so two five-line stanzas can be united to 
 make a ten-line type. Sometimes, indeed, the five-line 
 stanzas may even be printed separately, although the 
 rime goes over from the first to the second and from 
 the third to the fourth, as in Longfellow's " The Gob- 
 let of Life," in which the rime-scheme is o, a, a, a, 6, 
 c, c, c, c, b : 
 
 Filled is Life's goblet to the brim ; 
 And though my eyes with tears are dim, 
 I see its sparkling bubbles swim, 
 And chant a melancholy hymn 
 With solemn voice and slow.
 
 THE STANZA 117 
 
 No purple flowers, no garlands green, 
 Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen, 
 Nor maddening drafts of Hippocrene, 
 Like gleams of sunshine, flash between 
 Thick leaves of mistletoe. 
 
 This is one of Longfellow's earlier lyrics and lie did 
 not employ this type again, probably feeling that the 
 fourfold repetition of the rime in prompt succession 
 was a little monotonous, and that the long wait for the 
 rime of the fifth line to recur in the tenth was per- 
 haps a little fatiguing to the ear. 
 
 The two five-line stanzas may be merely conjoined, 
 as in Moore's " The Time I 've lost in wooing," wherein 
 the rime-scheme is o, a, 6, 6, a, c, c, <?, c?, c: 
 
 The time I 've lost in wooing, 
 In watching and pursuing 
 
 The light that lies 
 
 In woman's eyes, 
 Has been my heart's undoing. 
 Though wisdom oft has sought me, 
 I scorned the love she brought me. 
 
 My only books 
 
 Were woman's looks, 
 And folly 's all they taught me. 
 
 A better arrangement of the ten-line stanza is that 
 we find in Gray's " On a Distant Prospect of Eton Col- 
 lege," wherein he ties together by a middle couplet two 
 quatrains, the first with interlinked rimes and the last 
 with rimes arranged, as in Tennyson's " In Memoriam/' 
 o, 6, a, 6, c, c, d, e, e, d : 
 
 Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 
 
 That crown the watery glade, 
 Where grateful Science still adores 
 
 Her Henry's holy shade ;
 
 118 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And ye, that from the stately brow 
 
 Of Windsor's heights the expanse below 
 
 Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, 
 Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
 Wanders the hoary Thames along 
 
 His silver-winding way. 
 
 There is an effective ingenuity in the ten-line stanza 
 which Bret Harte employed in " Miss Blanche Says." 
 The rime-scheme is , 6, a, 6, c, d, c, c, c, d; and the 
 quadruple repetition of one riming sound is relieved 
 by the use of double rimes in four of the other lines : 
 
 And you are the poet, and so you want 
 
 Something what is it ? a theme, a fancy ? 
 Something or other the Muse won't grant 
 
 To your old poetical necromancy ; 
 Why, one half you poets you can't deny 
 
 Don't know the Muse when you chance to meet her, 
 But sit in your attics and mope and sigh 
 For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky, 
 When flesh and blood may be standing by 
 
 Quite at your service, should you but greet her. 
 
 It is needless to attempt to catalog all the possible 
 forms of the ten-line stanza, since it is capable of un- 
 ending variations in the rime-scheme. But no one of 
 its several types is quite as large and sweeping as the 
 nine-line stanza which Spenser employed in the " Faery 
 Queen " and which is usually called the Spenserian : 
 
 So pure and innocent as that same lamb, 
 
 She was in life and every virtuous lore ; 
 
 And by descent from royal lineage came 
 
 Of ancient kings and queens, that had of yore 
 
 Their scepters stretcht from east to western shore. 
 
 And all that world in their subjection held ; ^ 
 
 Till that infernal fiend with foul uproar 
 
 Forwasted all their land, and them expelled ; 
 
 Whom to avenge she had this Knight from far compelled.
 
 THE STANZA 119 
 
 This Spenserian stanza is one of the most melodious 
 instruments that ever a great poet played on, and we 
 need not wonder that Byron and Burns, Keats and 
 Hood borrowed it in turn and evoked delicious music 
 from it. Holmes described it as 
 
 The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows, 
 Sweeps gently onward to its dying close, 
 Where waves on waves in long succession pour, 
 Till the ninth billow melts along the shore. 
 
 Lowell had the same figure of speech in one of those 
 critical papers of his which were always informed 
 with the insight of a poet into the mechanism of his 
 art. " There is no ebb and flow in the meter more than 
 on the shores of the Adriatic, but wave follows wave 
 with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding 
 back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried 
 forward by the next. In all this there is soothingness, 
 indeed, but no slumberous monotony ; for Spenser was 
 no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety 
 of his pauses now at the close of the first or second 
 foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth he 
 gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency 
 certainly is to become languorous. He knew how to 
 make it rapid and passionate at need." 
 
 Three other nine-line stanzas may be mentioned 
 here. One of them is Chaucer's, of which the rime- 
 scheme is a, a, 6, a, a, 6, 6, c, c. A second is that 
 which we find in Poe's " Ulalume," where the rimes 
 are arranged a, 6, 6, a, 5, a, 6, a, 6, the final a, 5, 
 consisting of a repetition of the riming words of the 
 preceding a, 6. The third is that employed by Tenny- 
 son in " The Lady of Shalott," a, a, a, a, 5, c, c, c, 6,
 
 120 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 the two 6 rime-words being always SJialott and Came- 
 lot, which thus serve as a double refrain, so to speak. 
 This nine-line stanza of Tennyson's may be compared 
 with Longfellow's ten-line stanza in " The Goblet of 
 Life": 
 
 On either side the river lie 
 Long fields of barley and of rye, 
 That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
 And through the field the road runs by 
 
 To many-towered Camelot ; 
 And up and down the people go, 
 Gazing where the lilies blow 
 Hound an island there below, 
 
 The island of Shalott. 
 
 Although many poets have written in stanzas of 
 more than ten lines, few of these longer forms have 
 justified themselves. Ten is apparently the utmost 
 limit of the lines, the rimes of which the ear can 
 receive without undue strain on the attention. Moore 
 employed a thirteen-line stanza in " Fly not yet " ; 
 Francis Mahoney used sixteen short-lines in his " Bells 
 of Shandon," ending every stanza with a refrain ; and 
 Swinburne, ever confident in his strength of wing, 
 strove to soar aloft in a stanza of twenty-four lines in 
 his " Last Oracle." 
 
 The consideration of the combination of quatrains 
 into the eight-line stanza and of five-line stanzas into 
 ten-line stanzas led to the temporary overlooking of a 
 shorter stanza, which now demands consideration. 
 This is the six-line stanza. It is found very early in 
 English verse, as in this " Christmas Carol," where 
 the rime-scheme is JB, a, a;, a, a?, a : 
 
 God rest you merry, gentlemen, 
 Let nothing you dismay,
 
 THE STANZA 121 
 
 Remember Christ our Savior 
 
 Was born on Christmas day: 
 To save us all from Satan's power 
 
 When we were gone astray. 
 
 This is the same rime-scheme as we find in Longfel- 
 low's " The Village Blacksmith," in Willis's " Unseen 
 Spirits," and in Poe's "Annabel Lee." With the 
 first, third, and fifth lines riming together, the form 
 seems to be rare. 
 
 Sometimes the six-line stanza is made up of three 
 consecutive couplets, ez, a, 5, 6, c, c, as in Bunner's 
 " Forfeits " : 
 
 They sent him round the circle fair, 
 To bow before the prettiest there. 
 I 'm bound to say the choice he made 
 A creditable taste displayed; 
 Although I can't say what it meant 
 The little maid looked ill-content. 
 
 His task was then anew begun 
 To kneel before the wittiest one. 
 Once more that little maid sought he, 
 And went him down upon his knee. 
 She bent her eyes upon the floor 
 I think she thought the game a bore. 
 
 He circled then his sweet behest 
 To kiss the one he loved the best. 
 For all she frowned, for all she chid, 
 He kissed that little maid, he did. 
 And then though why I can't decide 
 The little maid looked satisfied. 
 
 Sometimes it is composed of a quatrain with alter- 
 nate rimes followed by a couplet, a, 5, a, 5, c, c, as 
 in this " Song " of Shelley's : - 
 
 1 By permission from Poem*, by H. C. Banner, copyrighted, 1884, 
 by Charles Scribner's Sons.
 
 122 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Rarely, rarely comcst them, 
 
 Spirit of Delight ! 
 Wherefore hast thou left me now 
 
 Many a day and night ? 
 Many a weary night and day 
 'T is since thou art fled away. 
 
 One of the most effective arrangements of rimes in 
 the six-line stanza is that which we see in Longfellow's 
 " Seaweed," in Hood's " Progress of Art," and in 
 Holmes's " The Last Leaf." The scheme is a, a, 6, 
 c, c, b : 
 
 I saw him once before, 
 As he passed by the door, 
 
 And again 
 
 The pavement stones resound, 
 As he totters o'er the ground 
 With his cane. 
 
 Effective also is the restriction to two rimes only, as 
 in Longfellow's " Prelude," a, 5, a, a, a, b : 
 
 Before me rose an avenue 
 
 Of tall and sombrous pines ; 
 Abroad their fan-like branches grew, 
 And, when the sunshine darted through, 
 Spread a vapor, soft and blue, 
 
 In long and sloping lines. 
 
 The six-line stanza was a special favorite of Long- 
 fellow's. In " The Cumberland " he essayed still an- 
 other rime-scheme, a, 6, a, c, c, b : 
 
 Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay, 
 
 Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. 
 Lord, how beautiful was Thy day ! 
 Every waft of the air 
 Was a whisper of prayer, 
 Or a dirge for the dead.
 
 THE STANZA 123 
 
 Burns made frequent use of another six-line stanza 
 with only two rimes, a, a, a, 6, a, 6, as in his lines 
 " To a Mouse " : 
 
 Still thou art blest, compared wi' me ! 
 The present only toucheth thee: 
 But, och! I backward cast my e'e 
 
 On prospects drear 1 
 An' forward, though I cannot see, 
 
 I guess an' fear ! 
 
 The seven-line stanza is not frequently found, 
 far less frequently than the stanza of five lines. It 
 may be a quatrain and a couplet with a final line 
 riming with either pair of the lines of the quatrain, as 
 in Swinburne's resonant invocation " To Walt Whit- 
 man in America " : 
 
 Till the motion be done and the measure 
 Circling through season and clime, 
 
 Slumber and sorrow and pleasure, 
 Vision of virtue and crime; 
 
 Till consummate with conquering eyes, 
 
 A soul disembodied, it rise 
 
 From the body transfigured of time. 
 
 The seven-line stanza may, of course, have many 
 other arrangements of its rime-scheme. Rossetti, for 
 example, in "Love's Nocturn," chose to limit himself 
 to two rimes, a, 6, a, 6, 6, a, 6 : 
 
 Master of the murmuring courts 
 
 Where the shapes of sleep convene! 
 Lo ! My spirit here exhorts 
 
 All the powers of my demesne 
 
 For their aid to woo my queen. 
 What reports 
 
 Yield thy jealous courts unseen.
 
 124 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Tennyson, in his " Fatima," rimes his first foul 
 lines together and his last three, a, a, a, a, 6, 6, b : 
 
 O Love, Love, Love! O withering mightl 
 O sun, that from thy noonday height 
 Shudderest when I strain my sight, 
 Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light, 
 Lo, falling from iny constant mind, 
 Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind, 
 I whirl like leaves in roaring wind. 
 
 But the fourfold repetition of the first rime and 
 the threefold repetition of the second combine to give 
 the stanza an air of artificiality. There is a lack of the 
 apparent ease and spontaneity, which most easily cap- 
 ture our interest. Indeed, " Fatima," for all its poetic 
 and psychologic power, seems to be one of Tennyson's 
 less successful experiments.
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 THE SONNET 
 
 In the most successful pieces of poetical composition, the struggle 
 between matter and form is not visible. Expression and thought are 
 adapted and mutually helpful. But even single lines ... of this per- 
 fection are rare. What we usually find is metrical skill surpassing 
 power of thought . . . or, on the other hand, expression laboring with 
 an idea which it is unable to embody. This conflict, which takes place 
 in that part of poetic effort which falls within the domain of Art, is 
 most perceptible in the sonnet, for the reason that this is the one form, 
 which, in our language, has been brought within the control of fixed 
 rules. MARK PATTISON, Introduction to Milton's Sonnets. 
 
 THE stanza has been considered in the previous chap- 
 ter as a constituent part of a longer poem, as a single 
 link of a lengthening chain. Yet it may be independ- 
 ent ; it may stand forth alone as a poem complete in 
 itself. There are very brief lyrics in a single stanza 
 of ten lines, or of five or even of two. The couplet is 
 the shortest possible form of the stanza, and it has 
 often served for epigram. There is, for example, Gay's 
 epitaph on himself: 
 
 Life is a jest, and all things show it. 
 I thought so once, and now I know it. 
 
 And here is the inscription which Pope wrote for 
 the collar of a dog that belonged to the Prince of 
 
 Wales: 
 
 I am his Highness' dog at Eew; 
 
 Pray, sir, tell me, whose dog are you ? 
 
 These are pretty trifles only, crackling with wit ; 
 but the couplet has also served to present airier fancies
 
 126 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 or sterner thoughts, as in these two lines of Herrick's 
 " Tears and Laughter " : 
 
 K newest thou one month would take thy life awaj, 
 Thou 'dst weep ; but laugh, should it not last a day. 
 
 And in these two by the same dextrous lyrist, on 
 "Dreams": 
 
 Here we are all, day by day ; by night we 're hurled 
 By dreams, each into a several world. 
 
 The couplet has sufficed also for a sterner purpose 
 in Emerson's " Inscription for a Well in Memory of 
 the Martyrs of the War " : 
 
 Fall, stream, from Heaven to bless ; return as well ; 
 So did our sons ; Heaven met them as they fell. 
 
 So may the single triplet be adequate for the clear 
 presentation of the poet's feeling at the moment, as 
 in this three-line poem, also by Herrick, " On Him- 
 self": 
 
 Lost to the world, lost to myself, alone 
 Here now I rest under this marble stone, 
 In depth of silence, heard and seen of none. 
 
 Landor chose the triplet once for the modest con- 
 tribution " Written on the First Leaf of an Album " : 
 
 Pass me ; I only am the rind 
 
 To the rich fruit that you will find, 
 
 My friends, at every leaf behind. 
 
 Of all the briefer stanza forms, the one which has 
 most often been chosen for the expression of a single 
 thought or for the record of a single mood or feeling 
 is the quatrain. Many poets have found that they 
 could phrase a fleeting impression better in four lines
 
 THE SONNET 127 
 
 than in six or eight. They have relished the sober com- 
 pactness of this form which imposes a stern conden- 
 sation. They have profited by the possible variety 
 within the limitations of the four lines the choice of 
 any one of three rime-schemes, a, 5, a, 6, or a, a, 6, 
 6, or a, &, &, a ; the option between any one of the 
 four rhythms, and the privilege of lengthening or 
 shortening the meter of any line. The English quat- 
 rain has slowly come to be recognized by the lyrists 
 of our language as a fit instrument for special occa- 
 sions, for the epitaph, for the memorial inscription, 
 for any brief utterance which would gain by an Attic 
 concision and an Attic elevation of tone. 
 
 Thus Lowell chose the quatrain for the inscription 
 which he was asked to compose for the Soldiers' and 
 Sailors' Monument in Boston : 
 
 To those who died for her on land and sea, 
 That she might have a country great and free, 
 Boston builds this : build ye her monument 
 In lives like theirs, at duty's summons spent. 
 
 Gilder sent a quatrain to Lowell himself on the 
 latter 's birthday: 
 
 Navies nor armies can exalt the state, 
 Millions of men, nor coined wealth untold : 
 Down to the pit may sink a land of gold ; 
 
 But one great name can make a country great. 
 
 For two memorial windows in St. Margaret's, West- 
 minster, Lowell and Whittier prepared quatrains. The 
 former had to commemorate Raleigh : 
 
 The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew 
 Such milk as bids remember whence we came ; 
 
 Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew, 
 This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name.
 
 128 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And the latter did homage to Milton : 
 
 The New World honors him whose lofty plea 
 For England's freedom made her own more sure, 
 
 Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be 
 
 Their common freehold while both worlds endure. 
 
 The quatrain has been found fit for other purposes 
 than inscriptions and congratulations, as is made plain 
 in Aldrich's " Pessimist and Optimist " : 
 
 This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, 
 Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath ; 
 
 This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while 
 Laughs in the teeth of Death. 
 
 Aldrich maintained that the quatrain was " a sur- 
 prisingly difficult form of poem," with a "difficulty 
 out of all proportion to its brevity. A perfect quat- 
 rain is as rare as a perfect sonnet. The quatrain has 
 laws as imperative as those of the sonnet, not to be 
 broken with impunity. Four lines do not necessarily 
 constitute a quatrain proper any more than fourteen 
 lines necessarily constitute a sonnet. If your little 
 stanza ends with a snap, it becomes an epigram and 
 ceases to be a poem. The idea or thought expressed 
 must be so fully expressed as to leave no material for 
 a second stanza. The theme that can be exhausted in 
 the space of four lines is not easy to light upon. Lan- 
 dor was a master in this field." 
 
 It may be well to illustrate this last assertion by 
 citing two of Lander's quatrains. Here is one written 
 on his seventy-fifth birthday : 
 
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ; 
 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; 
 I warmed both hands before the fire of life, 
 
 It sinks, and 1 am ready to depart.
 
 THE SONNET 129 
 
 And here is another, apparently composed even 
 later : 
 
 Death stands above me, whispering low 
 
 I kuow not what into my ear ; 
 Of his strange language all I know 
 
 Is, there is not a word of fear. 
 
 Like the couplet, the quatrain has served also for the 
 purposes of satire ; and then it is likely to end with a 
 snap and to become an epigram rather than an epi- 
 graph. Here are the vivacious four lines which Byron 
 wrote on his wedding-day, January the second : 
 
 Here 's a happy New Year ! but with reason, 
 
 I beg you '11 permit me to say 
 Wish me many returns of the season, 
 
 But as few as you please of the day. 
 
 The noblest fixed form of English verse, far more 
 valuable than the couplet or the quatrain, which have 
 voiced satire more often than not, is the sonnet. Al- 
 though it is not English in its origin, but borrowed 
 from the Italian, it has been firmly established in our 
 language for more than three centuries. It has proved 
 itself a superb instrument for the supreme masters of 
 English poetry; and in no other tongue is there a 
 more splendid collection of sonnets than in our own. 
 And yet there is no final agreement on its exact form. 
 The sonnets of Shakspere are written in an arrange- 
 ment of rimes far easier than that in which the son- 
 nets of Milton are composed. Indeed, most of those 
 who have set forth the theory of this form are inclined 
 to deny that the so-called sonnets of Shakspere are 
 justly entitled to the name. All are agreed that the 
 sonnet is a stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines, 
 complete in itself, containing a single thought and ex-
 
 130 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 pressing this adequately and amply. Most critics would 
 demand more than this ; they would insist that the true 
 sonnet conforms to a special scheme of rimes, and that 
 no fourteener which does not conform to this scheme 
 is fairly to be termed a sonnet. 
 
 The stanza which satisfied Shakspere consisted sim- 
 ply of three quatrains followed by a couplet. Each of 
 the three quatrains rimes a, 6, a, &, and the rimes in 
 each of the three are distinct ; and distinct also are the 
 pair of rimes in the final couplet. This is the form pre- 
 scribed by George Gascoigne, who has defined it as " a 
 poem of fourteen lines, every line containing ten syl- 
 lables, the first twelve riming in staves of four lines 
 by cross meter, and the last two riming together." 
 It is this prescription that Shakspere chose to follow. 
 Here is his one hundred and thirty-ninth sonnet, as 
 characteristic as any : 
 
 O, call ine not to justify the wrong 
 
 That thy unkind ness lays upon my heart; 
 
 Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue, 
 Use power with power and slay me not by art. 
 
 Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere, but in my sight, 
 Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside: 
 
 What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might 
 Is more than my o'er-press'd defence can bide ? 
 
 Let me excuse thee : ah ! my love well knows 
 Her pretty looks have been mine enemies, 
 
 And therefore from my face she turns my foes, 
 That elsewhere they might dart their injuries : 
 
 Yet do not so, but since I am near slain, 
 Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain. 
 
 In this poem we note that every quatrain is com- 
 plete in itself, being in fact almost an independent
 
 THE SONNET 131 
 
 stanza, and that the couplet winds up the brief lyric 
 with a sharp snap which is almost epigrammatic in its 
 temper. If Shakspere, with all his instinctive feeling 
 for technic, preferred this laxer form to the stricter 
 and more limited arrangement of the true Italian son- 
 net, it was not because he was unacquainted with that, 
 since it had been already attempted by not a few of 
 his elder contemporaries. His choice was probably 
 due to his belief that the three quatrains and the 
 couplet were better suited for his own immediate pur- 
 pose. As an acute critic has declared, Shakspere 
 must have been convinced " that the classic symmetry 
 of the Petrarchan sonnet was in English too difficult 
 of attainment ; that it cramped invention, and imposed 
 too many sacrifices and concessions; and that the 
 artistic end could better be achieved by the looser ar- 
 rangement he adopted." Perhaps it may be suggested 
 also that with his Elizabethan liking for points and 
 conceits and antitheses, he felt that he wanted the 
 final couplet with its epigrammatic suggestion. The 
 same sharp critic noted also that Keats wrote his earlier 
 sonnets in one of the stricter Italian forms, but in 
 his later relapsed into the freer English arrangement 
 which Shakspere had glorified. The most marked pecu- 
 liarity of the Shaksperian fourteener is that there is 
 likely to be a break in the sense at the end of each of 
 the three quatrains, and that the couplet is thus sharply 
 set off by itself. This is wholly contradictory to the 
 theory of the more rigid Italian form, where the divi- 
 sion occurs at the end of the second quatrain, leaving 
 a large opportunity to the sestet for the application of 
 the thought presented in the octave. 
 
 Having chosen his form for reasons sufficient to
 
 132 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 himself, Shakspere revealed his keen insight into its 
 possibilities. Commonly he developed " the subject in 
 three stages, putting the conclusion into the final 
 couplet." In the sixty-seventh sonnet, for example, 
 three questions are asked, one in each quatrain ; and 
 the answer is given in the concluding pair of lines. 
 
 Ah ! wherefore with infection should he live, 
 
 And with his presence grace impiety, 
 That sin by him advantage should achieve 
 
 And lace itself with his society ? 
 Why should false painting imitate his cheek, 
 
 And steal dead seeing of his living hue ? 
 Why should poor beauty indirectly seek 
 
 Roses of shadow, since his rose is true ? 
 Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, 
 
 Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins ? 
 For she hath no exchequer now but his, 
 
 And, proud of many, lives upon his gains. 
 O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had 
 In days long since, before these last so bad. 
 
 In other sonnets, Shakspere varied his method. It 
 has been pointed out that in the eighty-third sonnet, 
 ' the poet's apology for silence is presented as an 
 argument in three clauses, the salient fact being put 
 in the couplet as strongly as possible " ; and that in the 
 ninety-seventh " the second quatrain puts in an objection 
 to the first, which is met by the third, the couplet in 
 this case being treated as an extension of the third 
 quatrain." Now and again, the triple division of the 
 theme into the three quatrains is emphasized " by the 
 repetition of the same or similar words at the begin- 
 ning of each quatrain," as in the forty-ninth and the 
 hundredth. 
 
 In spite of the weight of Shakspere's example, the 
 large majority of English poets have preferred to
 
 THE SONNET 133 
 
 adopt a stricter form, more in accord with the Italian 
 model, although not a few of them have clung to the 
 final couplet. This Italian model resembles the Shak- 
 sperian form in that it is a stanza of fourteen iambic 
 pentameter lines ; and it differs in that it has only two 
 quatrains and that instead of seven rimes it has at 
 most five and often only four. The two quatrains have 
 only two rimes between them, arranged a, 5, 6, a, 
 a, 6, 6, a. The final six lines are allowed more liberty ; 
 indeed there is no agreement as to the number of the 
 rimes or as to their order. Sometimes they are but 
 two, alternating c, c?, c, c?, c, d ; and sometimes they are 
 three, c, (?, e, c, d, e. 
 
 Milton's massive sonnet " On the Late Massacres in 
 Piedmont " may be taken as an example of the form 
 which has only four rimes : 
 
 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones 
 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
 
 Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
 When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, 
 Forget not : in thy book record their groans 
 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
 
 To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
 O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
 
 The triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow 
 A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, 
 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 
 
 This has a sweeping unity of theme and a weighty 
 austerity of thought. Its effect is intensified by the long 
 open vowel-sounds ay and o which end the final lines. 
 Its unity is so complete that it does not comply with 
 the requirement sometimes laid down that the thought
 
 134 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 shall be stated in the first eight lines ; that there shall 
 be a break at this point ; and that then the thought 
 shall recoil on itself in the last six lines. This condi- 
 tion is fulfilled in Gilder's sonnet, "The Sonnet," in 
 which there are five rimes, two in the quatrains, a, S, 5, a, 
 a, 6, 6, a, and three in the tercets, c, of, e, c, d, e : 
 
 What is a sonnet ? 'T is the pearly shell 
 
 That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea ; 
 
 A precious jewel carved most curiously : 
 It is a little picture paiuted well. 
 What is a sonnet ? 'T is the tear that fell 
 
 From a great poet's hidden ecstasy ; 
 
 A two-edged sword, a star, a song ah me I 
 Sometimes a heavy tolling funeral bell. 
 This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath ; 
 
 The solemn organ whereon Milton played, 
 
 And the clear glass where Shakespere's shadow falls : 
 A sea this is beware who ventureth ! 
 
 For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid 
 
 Mid-ocean deep sheer to the mountain walls. 
 
 These are the only two forms of the sonnet which 
 are admitted to be absolutely correct by the purists 
 and precisians. In both, the quatrains have only two 
 rimes, arranged a, 6, 6, a, a, 6, 6, a ; and in one, 
 the final six lines have also only two rimes, each re- 
 peated alternately three times, c, d, c, c?, c, e?, while 
 in the other the final six lines are allotted three 
 rimes, each recurring twice in regular succession, 
 c, <?, e, c, <?, e. But if we seek to deduce the principle 
 from the practice of the masters of verse, we find that 
 there this rigid rule is not supported. The immense 
 majority of English son net- writers are found to cling 
 to the accepted arrangement of the octave ; but they 
 are unwilling to be bound by any law which shall 
 limit the sequence of the rimes in the sestet. Often
 
 THE SONNET 135 
 
 they accept one or the other of the approved arrange- 
 ments ; but often also they reject these, for reasons of 
 their own, unwilling to spoil their poem for the sake 
 of an arbitrary rule, the validity of which they do not 
 feel bound to acknowledge. Here again the test is the 
 ear of the hearer. It is easy for the ear to follow the 
 strict arrangement of the rimes in the two quatrains ; 
 but it is not easy for the ear to keep up the counting 
 in the later lines, especially since it has been trained 
 to accept either of two arrangements. So long as the 
 rimes in the final six lines are two or three, and so 
 long as the final couplet is avoided, the ear is satis- 
 fied. The sonnet is an arbitrary and artificial form, 
 appealing especially to the cultivated ear, and most of 
 those who appreciate its merits are likely to possess 
 more or less acquaintance with the accepted rules of 
 its composition ; therefore any failure to follow these 
 rules is likely to disappoint these hearers and to dis- 
 tract their interest. 
 
 Yet it seems to be only an unjustifiable hypercriti- 
 cism which would object to the couplet that occurs in 
 the middle of the final six lines of Lang's admirable 
 sonnet on " The Odyssey " : 
 
 As one that for a weary space has lain 
 Lulled by the song of Circe aud her wine 
 In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, 
 
 Where that ^geau isle forgets the main, 
 
 And only the low lutes of love complain, 
 And only shadows of wan lovers pine, 
 As such an one were glad to know the brine 
 
 Salt on his lips, aud the large air again, 
 
 So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
 Men turn, and see the stars and feel the free 
 Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, 
 And, through the music of the languid hours,
 
 136 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 They hear like ocean on a western beach 
 The surge and thunder of the Odyssey. 
 
 If fault must be found with this sonnet, it would 
 not be that the lyrist has departed from the strict se- 
 quence of rimes, c, d, e, c, d, e, substituting his own 
 arrangement, c, d, e, e, c, d; but rather that he has 
 been a little careless of tone-color, in ending both of the 
 rimes of his quatrains with the sound of n, lain and 
 wine, and that he has also employed the sound of long e 
 in two of the three rimes of his sestet, speech and 
 free. A similar carelessness is to be discovered, also, 
 in Wordsworth's " Scorn not the Sonnet," in which 
 two of the rimes of the sestet are too closely akin, 
 lamp, land, damp, hand, since the same vowel-sound 
 of a occurs in both of them, intensified by the pho- 
 netic relation of the m to the n. To those who apply 
 the test of the ear this will seem a more regrettable 
 lapse from ultimate perfection than the use of a final 
 couplet : 
 
 Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, 
 Mindless of its just honors; with this key 
 Shakspere unlocked bis heart; the melody 
 
 Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; 
 
 A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 
 With it Camoeus soothed an exile's grief; 
 The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf 
 
 Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 
 
 His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp 
 
 It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land 
 
 To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 
 The thing became a trumpet ; whence be blew 
 
 Soul-animating strains alas, too few. 
 
 It must needs be noted also that Wordsworth has 
 here allowed himself the license of changing the pair
 
 THE SONNET 137 
 
 of rimes in the middle of the second quatrain. In- 
 stead of a, 6, 6, a, a, 6, 6, a, he has a, 6, 6, a, a, c, c, a 
 And yet although he ventured upon his departure from 
 the form, he retained the same vowel-sound in the 
 middle of both quatrains, key and melody in the first, 
 and grief and leaf in the second. It seems dimly pos- 
 sible that as he had emphasized the long e sound in the 
 first quatrain, he may have thought that the ear would 
 catch this same long e in grief and. leaf, and that he was 
 satisfied with this repetition, neglecting or unwittingly 
 eliminating the in significant f which follows the longe 
 in the second quatrain. It was hard always for Words- 
 worth to put on the fetters of any fixed form ; he had a 
 tendency to lawlessness of structure ; he was wilful in 
 going his own way in his own fashion ; and it may be 
 that he had a vague consciousness of this, which, as 
 Lowell suggested, made him welcome the restraint of 
 the sonnet. Nobility of thought was his by gift of 
 nature, and elevation of outlook; but in the minor 
 matters of technic he needed some outside stimulus to 
 keep him up to the mark of his highest achievement. 
 To the two sonnets on the sonnet already quoted 
 here may be added a third by Rossetti, inferior to 
 Wordsworth's in its imagination no doubt, but supe- 
 rior in its technic : 
 
 A Sonnet is a moment's monument, 
 
 Memorial from the Soul's eternity 
 
 To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, 
 Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, 
 Of its own arduous fulness reverent: 
 
 Carve it in ivory or in ebony, 
 
 As Day or Night may rule ; and let Time see 
 Its flowering crest impearl'd and orient. 
 A Sonnet is a coin; its face reveals 
 
 The soul, its converse, to what power 'tis due:
 
 138 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Whether for tribute to the august appeals 
 Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, 
 It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, 
 In Charon's palm it pays the toll of Death. 
 
 It is especially in the sonnet that Longfellow re- 
 vealed his mastery of verse ; and he was prone to keep 
 to the strict letter of the law, taking no liberties with 
 the form, and preferring to use three rimes in the ses- 
 tet, as he did in this on " Nature " : 
 
 As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
 
 Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 
 
 Half willing, half reluctant to be led, 
 
 And leave his broken playthings on the floor, 
 Still gazing at them through the open door, 
 
 Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
 
 By promises of others in their stead, 
 
 Which, though more splendid, may not please him 
 
 more; 
 So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
 
 Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 
 
 Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
 Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, 
 
 Being too full of sleep to understand 
 
 How far the unknown transcends the what we know. 
 
 Longfellow's intuitive feeling led him to avoid the 
 terminal couplet. Probably he would have agreed with 
 Aldrich in holding that the strict Italian arrangement 
 " with its interwoven rimes, its capacity for expressing 
 subtle music is an instrument as superior to the Eng- 
 lish form as the harp or the guitar is superior to the 
 banjo; and I fancy that most workers in this kind of 
 verse will agree with me. The alternate lines riming, 
 and closing with a couplet, gave the poet the command 
 of some of the richest melodic effects within the reach 
 of English versification. The sonnet that ends with a
 
 THE SONNET 139 
 
 couplet misses that fine unrolling of music which be- 
 longs to the sonnet proper. The couplet brings the 
 reader up with a jerk. In ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred, the couplet has the snap of a whip-lash, and 
 turns the sonnet into an epigram. To my thinking, this 
 abruptness hurts many of Shakspere's beautiful poems 
 of fourteen lines for they are simply that. One must 
 go to Milton, and Wordsworth, and Keats (in three 
 instances) in order to find the highest development of 
 the English sonnet." 
 
 In fact, it seems to be the opinion of most of the 
 later poets of our language that if the game is to be 
 played at all, it is best to follow the rules without cavil 
 and without claiming any license to depart from them. 
 There is no obligation on any poet to make use of the 
 sonnet framework ; and if he would express himself 
 without restraint he has at his command the large lib- 
 erty of all the other lyrical forms. It is in the rigidity 
 of its skeleton that the charm of the sonnet is solidly 
 rooted. It tends to impose a helpful condensation, thus 
 counteracting the temptation to diffuseness. Except 
 for the narrow limits within which the acceptance of the 
 form has restricted it, many a poem that " would have 
 been but a loose nebulous vapor has been compressed 
 and rounded into a star," so Trench declared; "the 
 sonnet, like a Grecian temple, may be limited in its 
 scope, but like that, if successful, it is altogether per- 
 fect." 
 
 Tennyson said to a friend that " a sonnet arrests the 
 free sweep of genius, and if poets were to keep to it, 
 it would cripple them ; but it is a fascinating kind of 
 verse, and to excel in it is a rare distinction." And 
 when his companion suggested that the last line should
 
 140 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 form the climax, both of thought and of expression, 
 and that the whole should be like a wave breaking on 
 the shore, Tennyson declared that " the whole should 
 show a continuous advance of thought and movement, 
 like a river fed by rillets, as every great poem should." 
 
 The sonnet is thus seen to be not only a form of 
 verse, deliberately accepted and conscientiously filled, 
 it is also a special type of poem, because it must have 
 an absolute unity of its own. It must have its single 
 and simple theme, lofty and yet not too large for its 
 frame but exactly commensurate with this. It must 
 move in every line toward its inevitable conclusion, 
 which shall be full and satisfactory to the ear and to the 
 mind. It must be ample and yet reticent ; and it must 
 have sustained sonority, culminating impressively in 
 the final line. It must be impeccable, beyond all other 
 verse, in the easy perfection of its rhythm, its meter, 
 and its rime, with an avoidance of all dissonance and 
 jingle, and with an artful contrast of the vowel-sounds 
 in all of its four or five rimes. Above all, it must be not 
 only continuous but clear in its central thought, since 
 the form itself is complicated, and therefore the ear 
 must not have to strain itself also to ascertain the poet's 
 message. Lowell praised Longfellow's sonnets espe- 
 cially for this quality of clarity : " they remind me of one 
 of those cabinets we sometimes see, in which many 
 drawers are unlocked by a single key. I have seen son- 
 nets in which there is a separate lock, I may say, for 
 every line, and in fumbling among our fourteen keys 
 we find ourselves sometimes in certain confusion. 
 Added to this there would be sometimes the conundrum 
 of secret drawers." 
 
 This limpidity of Longfellow is displayed beautifully
 
 THE SONNET 141 
 
 in one of his sonnets on the " Divina Commedia " of 
 Dante : 
 
 Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 
 A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 
 Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet 
 Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 
 
 Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; 
 Far off the noises of the world retreat; 
 The loud vociferations of the street 
 Become an undistinguishable roar. 
 
 So, as I enter here from day to day, 
 
 And leave my burden at this minster gate, 
 Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, 
 
 The tumult of the time disconsolate 
 To inarticulate murmurs dies away, 
 While the eternal ages watch and wait. 
 
 This is noble in tone and lofty in its simple imagery. 
 There is special felicity in the richness imparted to 
 the versification by the polysyllables in the second half. 
 But, if a blemish must be sought, it can be found in 
 the use of the same vowel-sound in both of the rimes 
 of the sestet. The long a in gate, disconsolate and 
 wait reappears in day, pray and away ; and this is 
 not entirely pleasing to the ear, if, indeed, it is not 
 even a little confusing. 
 
 The rigorous limitation to fourteen lines of pre- 
 scribed and equal length, the restriction of the rimes 
 to four or five as the case may be, the intricate arrange- 
 ment of these rimes according to the Petrarchan 
 pattern, and the avoiding of the terminal couplet, 
 all these requirements unite to make the sonnet seem 
 like a difficult form. And yet this very difficulty may 
 be an advantage. Every true artist finds his profit in 
 a resolute grapple with technical obstacles, a struggle 
 which forces him to take the utmost pains and to put
 
 142 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 forth his topmost strength ; and he gets keen pleasure 
 out of this tussle with his material and with his form. 
 The very limitation of the rimes of the sonnet may 
 be suggestive and sustaining ; and the poet can attain 
 ultimate freedom within strict bounds. 
 
 That the sonnet is not so difficult as it may seem 
 at first sight is proved by the multitude of English 
 sonnets which rise to a fairly satisfactory level of 
 technical merit. Few of the major poets of our lan- 
 guage have failed absolutely in this form. On the 
 other hand, only a few even of the greater lyrists have 
 attained to high distinction as sonneteers, because the 
 sonnet at its best demands a union of imaginative in- 
 spiration, of moral aspiration, and of technical accom- 
 plishment which is very rarely achieved. And a poor 
 sonnet is a very poor thing, indeed. As a French critio 
 once wittily asserted, " nothing is longer than a son- 
 net when there is nothing in it." 
 
 Although the sonnet is best fitted for the expression 
 of a single thought or a single emotion complete in 
 itself, ample for the form and yet not too abundant 
 for its limited framework, certain poets have chosen 
 to use it almost as if it were only a stanza. They have 
 composed a succession of sonnets on a central theme, 
 each devoted to a single aspect of this. These sonnet- 
 sequences, as they are termed, were particularly pop- 
 ular with the Elizabethans ; and they have been at- 
 tractive also to certain of the Victorians, especially 
 to Rossetti and Mrs. Browning. And yet the sonnet- 
 sequence seems to be rather contradictory, since the 
 unique characteristic of the sonnet is that it must be 
 the perfect expression of a single and simple thought 
 or mood. To treat the sonnet merely as though it was
 
 THE SONNET 143 
 
 a stanza is to forego this special quality, without any 
 compensating advantage. It is to adventure on the 
 quest for a necklace of flawless and priceless pearls, 
 all of equal size and of equal value.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 
 
 The six most important of the poetic creations of old France, the 
 rondel, the rondeau, the triolet, the villauelle, the ballade, and the 
 chant-royal. . . . Each has a fixed form, regulated by traditional laws, 
 and each depends upon richness of rime and delicate workmanship 
 for its successful exercise. The first three are habitually used for joy- 
 ous or gay thought, and lie most within the province of jeu d'esprit 
 and epigram ; the last three are usually wedded to serious or stately 
 expression, and almost demand a vein of pathos. EDMUND GOSSE : 
 A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse. 
 
 THE sonnet is the noblest of all fixed forms, with a 
 special function of its own. The quatrain is inferior 
 to the sonnet, if only by reason of its brevity; but it 
 can serve on occasion even for imagination, although 
 it seems better suited to fancy or to wit. There is also 
 a five-line stanza of wide popularity which confines 
 itself within the lower realm of playful humor, often 
 deriving a large proportion of its effect from the in- 
 ventive unexpectedness of its double and treble rimes. 
 This is the form which has won wide recognition under 
 the curious title of the " limerick." It is anapestic in 
 rhythm, with its first, second and fifth lines trimeter, 
 and its third and fourth dimeter. Sometimes the rimes 
 are single throughout, as in this: 
 
 There was a young lady from Lynn, 
 Who was so excessively thin 
 
 That when she essayed 
 
 To drink lemonade 
 She slipped through the straw and fell in.
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 145 
 
 Sometimes the thrice-repeated rime of the trimeter 
 lines is double, as in this : 
 
 There was once an ichthyosaurus, 
 
 Who lived when the earth was all porous; 
 
 But he fainted with shame 
 
 When he first heard his name, 
 And departed a great while before us. 
 
 And sometimes these longer lines have a triple rime 
 which affords abundant scope for the devising of 
 unlooked-for collocations, as in this : 
 
 Do you know the young ladies of Birmingham, 
 And the terrible scandal concerning 'em ? 
 
 How they took their hat-pins 
 
 And scratched at the shins 
 Of the bishop while he was confirming 'em ? 
 
 This last specimen illustrates the special opportunity 
 of the limerick, the reward it pays to the fertile rime- 
 ster. Full advantage is not taken of the form when the 
 fifth line merely repeats the terminal word of the 
 first, as in this : 
 
 There was a small boy of Quebec, 
 Who was buried in snow to his neck, 
 
 When asked, " Are you friz ? " 
 
 He answered, " I is, 
 But we don't call this cold in Quebec." 
 
 In view of its widespread popularity wherever the 
 English language is spoken, there is no denying that 
 the limerick is a definite fixed form. 
 
 The humble limerick has the distinction of being the 
 only fixed form which is actually indigenous to Eng- 
 lish. The sonnet is a transplanted exotic which has 
 long been acclimatized in our language. And the 
 quatrain, which was cultivated in both Greek and
 
 146 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Latin, has in our own tongue attained an importance 
 not paralleled in any other modern language. There 
 are other fixed forms of foreign growth which have 
 also taken root in English versification, most of 
 them having been imported from France. They have 
 not succeeded, any of them, in winning equality with 
 the sonnet, but they afford to the lyrist the same op- 
 portunity for working within prescribed bounds. They 
 have the fascination of apparent difficulty, the over- 
 coming of which is likely to give pleasure to the lis- 
 tener and delight to the artist. And each of them has 
 possibilities of its own, now serious and now comic. 
 
 Of these imported forms, the least important is the 
 triolet. It is an artificial stanza with its brief lines and 
 its treble repetition of the refrain ; but it lends itself 
 readily to frank fun with a flavor of personality. Al- 
 though it had been known earlier in English litera- 
 ture, it attracted no attention until it was revived by 
 Austin Dobson, to whom, more than to any other 
 poet, these imported fixed forms owe their vogue with 
 our verse-makers. The triolet is at its best when it is 
 used for epigram, for a single swift thrust of satire ; 
 but it can also carry playful humor with a faint hint 
 of sentiment. Although its multiplied refrains tend 
 to make it monotonous if heard too often, Alphonse 
 Daudet, in French, and Austin Dobson, in English, 
 have ventured on triolet-sequences, not without a cer- 
 tain measure of success in both cases. 
 
 The triolet is a stanza of eight lines, preferably 
 brief, containing only two rimes, arranged a, 6, a, a, 
 a, 6, a, 6, with the first line repeated as the fourth 
 and again as the seventh, and with the second line re- 
 peated as the eighth. Here, as an example, is one stave
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 147 
 
 of the triolet-sequence which Austin Dobson entitled 
 " Rose-Leaves " : 
 
 I intended an ode, 
 
 And it turned into triolets. 
 It began a la mode. 
 I intended an ode, 
 But Rose crossed the road 
 
 With a bunch of fresh violets ; 
 I intended an ode, 
 
 And it turned into triolets. 
 
 Here is another from the same set of little lyrics ; 
 and in this second example the smiling lyrist has been 
 able to suggest a more distinct differentiation of mean- 
 ing in the several repetitions of the refrain: 
 
 Rose kissed me to-day. 
 
 Will she kiss me to-morrow ? 
 Let it be as it may, 
 Rose kissed me to-day ; 
 But the pleasure gives way 
 
 To a savor of sorrow ; 
 Rose kissed me to-day, 
 
 Will she kiss me to-morrow ? 
 
 Henley, borrowing the hint from Dobson's rondeau 
 after Voiture, rimed a triolet on the triolet itself: 
 
 Easy is the Triolet, 
 
 If you really learn to make it I 
 
 Once a neat refrain you get 
 
 Easy is the Triolet. 
 
 As you see ! I pay my debt, 
 
 With another rime, Deuce take it ! 
 
 Easy is the Triolet, 
 
 If you really learn to make it ! 
 
 But by its undue weight and by its condescending 
 bluster this example proves that the triolet is really 
 not so very easy, after all: or at least it is evidence 
 that Henley himself could not rival the apparent ease
 
 148 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 of Dobson. Part of the heaviness of Henley's speci- 
 men is due to the riming of triolet on the last syl- 
 lable, which has not quite emphasis enough for this, 
 just as part of the lightness of the first of Dobson's 
 two specimens is the result of the triple-riming trio- 
 lets and violets. It is sad to have to record that a 
 pedantic friend persuaded the poet that triolets was 
 not yet an English word, and that it therefore retained 
 its French pronunciation, which forbade its mating 
 with violets, whereupon Dobson transmogrified his 
 lightsome lyric, and despoiled it of not a little of its 
 levity as well as of most of its truth: 
 
 I intended an Ode, 
 
 And it turned to a Sonnet. 
 It began a la mode. 
 I intended an Ode; 
 But Rose crossed the road 
 
 In her latest new bonnet. 
 I intended an Ode, 
 
 And it turned to a Sonnet. 
 
 One cause of the gossamer unsubstantiality of 
 ** Rose-Leaves " is the brevity of the line, adjusting it- 
 self to the brevity of the stanza itself. For the triolet 
 the meter must not be too long ; and his choice of 
 anapestic dimeter is added evidence of the delicacy of 
 Dobson's intuitive feeling for propriety of rhythm. 
 His anapestic dimeter is far better for the purpose in 
 hand than Henley's trochaic tetrameter. The triolet 
 loses a little of its lightness even when the line is 
 lengthened from anapestic dimeter to anapestic trime- 
 ter, as in this triolet of Bunner's : 
 
 A pitcher of mignonette, 
 
 In a tenement's highest casement:
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 149 
 
 Queer sort of flower-pot yet 
 That pitcher of mignonette 
 Is a garden in heaven set, 
 
 To the little sick child in the basement 
 The pitcher of mignonette, 
 
 In the tenement's highest casement. 
 
 And there is in this example, charming as it is in 
 feeling, a regrettable lapse from the rigor of the rules, 
 in that the fourth and seventh lines are slightly va- 
 ried in wording from the first. Perhaps it must be 
 said also that the sentiment in Bunner's triolet is al- 
 most too serious for so tricksy a form. Yet, as is 
 shown in these two triolets by Mme. Duclaux (A. Mary 
 F. Robinson), an even deeper emotion has been ex- 
 pressed in this stanza : 
 
 All the night and all the day 
 
 I think upon her lying dead, 
 With lips that neither kiss nor pray 
 All the night nor all the day. 
 In that dark grave whose only ray 
 
 Of sun or moon's her golden head; 
 All the night and all the day 
 
 I think upon her lying dead. 
 
 What can heal a broken heart ? 
 
 Death alone, I fear me. 
 Thou that dost true lovers part, 
 What can heal a broken heart ? 
 Death alone, that made the smart, 
 
 Death, that will not hear me. 
 What can heal a broken heart ? 
 
 Death alone, I fear me. 
 
 It may not be fanciful to see in the triolet the 
 source of the captivating stanza which Swinburne de- 
 vised for his lovely lyric, " A Match." He gave up the 
 repetition of the first line as the fourth ; and he em-
 
 150 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 ployed a third rime for the third and fourth lines 
 linked in a couplet : 
 
 If I were what the words are, 
 And love were like the tune, 
 With double sound and single 
 Delight our lips would mingle 
 With kisses glad as birds are 
 
 That get sweet rain at noon; 
 If I were what the words are, 
 And love were like the tune. 
 
 If you were queen of pleasure 
 
 And I were king of pain, 
 We 'd hunt down love together, 
 Pluck out his flying feather 
 And teach his feet a measure, 
 And find his mouth a rein; 
 If you were queen of pleasure 
 And I were king of pain. 
 
 A little more substantial than the triolet and yet 
 closely akin in restriction of rime and in repetition 
 of refrain are the rondel and the rondeau. The ron- 
 del has two accepted forms in English, both of which 
 are due to the example set by Dobson, who has 
 adapted the French original to the requirements of 
 our English tongue with the same certainty of touch 
 that Horace revealed when he modified the Greek 
 sapphic stanza to fit the needs of Latin. In the fuller 
 form, the rondel consists of fourteen lines with only 
 two rimes, the first and second lines being repeated 
 as the seventh and eighth and again as the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth. The more serious possibility of the 
 rondel is revealed in Bunner's " Ready for the 
 Kide" 1 : 
 
 1 By permission from Poem* by H. C. Banner, copyrighted, 1884| 
 by Charles Scribner'a Sons.
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 151 
 
 Through the fresh fairness of the spring to ride, 
 As in the old days when he rode with her, 
 
 With joy of Love that had fond Hope to bride, 
 One year ago had made her pulses stir. 
 
 Now shall no wish with any day recur, 
 (For Love and Death part year and year full wide,) 
 Through the fresh fairness of the spring to ride, 
 
 As in the old days when he rode with her. 
 
 No ghost there lingers of the smile that died 
 On the sweet pale lips where his kisses were 
 
 Yet still she turns her delicate ear aside, 
 
 That she may hear him come with jingling spur 
 
 Through the fresh fairness of the spring to ride, , 
 As in the old days when he rode with her. .* ^O 
 
 */7* 
 
 The other form of the rondel is exactly the same 
 
 as this, except that it consists of thirteen lines only, 
 the final repetition of the second line as the four- 
 teenth being discarded, the poem ending with the repe- 
 tition of the first line as the final line. The full value 
 of the rondel in this slightly curtailed variation is dis- 
 closed in Austin Dobson's melodious " Wanderer " : 
 
 Love comes back to his vacant dwelling 
 The old, old Love that we knew of yore! 
 We see him stand by the open door, 
 
 With his great eyes sad, and his bosom swelling. 
 
 He makes as though in our arms repelling, 
 
 He fain would lie as he lay before; 
 Love comes back to his vacant dwelling 
 
 The old, old Love that we knew of yore ! 
 
 Ah, who shall help us from over-telling 
 
 That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore! 
 
 E'en as we doubt in our heart once more, 
 With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling, 
 Love comes back to his vacant dwelling.
 
 152 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 It may be well to call attention to the unforced 
 ingenuity with which both Banner and Dobson, in 
 these two rondels, have given new meaning to the first 
 line of their charming lyrics, as this is repeated later 
 in their poems. This is a point too often neglected by 
 these who have chosen to express themselves in this 
 form, although it is only by attaining this felicity that 
 the repetition of the refrain can be made interesting 
 to the ear. If the game is to be played at all, the poet 
 must willingly abide by all its rules, making his profit 
 out of them. He must know what they are when he 
 begins ; and he must do his best within the rigorous 
 code. As Stevenson declared, " the engendering idea 
 of some works is stylistic ; a technical preoccupation 
 stands them instead of some robuster principle of life. 
 And with these the execution is but play ; for the sty- 
 listic problem is resolved beforehand, and all large 
 originality of treatment wilfully foregone. Such are the 
 verses intricately designed, which we have learned to 
 admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the hands 
 of Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson." And when the pattern 
 of the intricate design is once attempted, the execution, 
 playful though it may be, must concord therewith. 
 
 Swinburne rejected both of the established varia- 
 tions of the rondel and devised a form which he called 
 a roundel, and in which he composed a hundred lyrics. 
 For this " Century of Eoundels " he wrote one more in 
 which he exemplified and explained the form he had 
 devised to suit himself : 
 
 A roundel is wrought as a ring or a star-bright sphere, 
 With craft of delight and cunning of sound unsought, 
 That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear 
 A roundel is wrought.
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 153 
 
 Its jewel of music is carved of all or of aught 
 
 Love, laughter, or mourning, remembrance of rapture or 
 
 fear 
 That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought. 
 
 As a bird's quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear 
 Pause answer to pause, and again the same strain caught, 
 So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or a tear, 
 A roundel is wrought. 
 
 This roundel Swinburne may have wrought himself 
 with craft of delight ; but the device has failed to 
 charm other lyrists. Perhaps the reason may be that 
 the line is a little too long and too full for so light a 
 thing, or, that since its inventor had composed five- 
 score lyrics in this mold of his own, he had exhausted 
 all its possibilities. Of course, the failure of the roundel 
 may have an even simpler explanation, that no 
 other poet cared to venture on a rivalry with Swin- 
 burne in a field which that master of verse had fenced 
 in for the exercise of his own surpassing metrical 
 dexterity. 
 
 The rondel is ampler than the triolet and fitted for 
 a wider and higher range of themes ; and its sister 
 form, the rondeau, is perhaps still a finer instrument. 
 The rondeau has continually tempted English rime- 
 sters ; Wyatt essayed himself in this form in his day ; 
 and again in Canning's time it reappeared to serve as 
 a vehicle for partisan satire. Praed must have had 
 these political verses in mind when he wrote : 
 
 And some compose a tragedy, 
 
 And some compose a rondo : 
 And some draw sword for liberty, 
 
 And some draw pleas for John Doe. 
 
 Yet Leigh Hunt did not know the exact form when
 
 154 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 he composed what he called a rondeau to commemo 
 rate his being kissed by Mrs. Carlyle : 
 
 Jenny kissed me when we met, 
 
 Jumping from the chair she sat in ; 
 
 Time, you thief ! who love to get 
 Sweets into your list, put that in. 
 
 Say I 'm weary, say I 'm sad ; 
 
 Say that health and wealth have missed me ; 
 
 Say I 'm growing old ; but add 
 Jenny kissed me ! 
 
 The true form was revived by Dobson, to whom it 
 has owed its later popularity. He has used it more 
 often and to better effect than any of the many minor 
 bards who have followed in his footsteps both in Great 
 Britain and in the United States. The rondeau consists 
 of thirteen lines with only two rimes between them ; 
 and it has also an unrimed refrain after the eighth 
 line and after the thirteenth, this refrain being the first 
 four syllables of the first line. Lope de Vega once 
 wrote a sonnet on the difficulty of writing a sonnet ; 
 and it was this playful Spanish lyric which probably 
 suggested to Voiture the composition of a rondeau on 
 the difficulty of writing a rondeau. This clever trifle 
 of Voiture's Dobson has most cleverly adapted into 
 English : 
 
 You bid me try, blue eyes, to write 
 A rondeau. What ! forthwith ? to-night ? 
 Reflect, some skill I have, 't is true ; 
 But thirteen Hues and rimed on two 
 " Refrain " as well. Ah, hapless plight I 
 
 Still, there are five lines, ranged aright 
 These Gallic bonds, I feared, would fright 
 My easy Muse. They did, till you 
 You bid me trv !
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 155 
 
 This makes them nine. The port 'a in sight ; 
 
 'T is all because your eyes are bright ! (_ 
 Now just a pair to end with " oo " 
 When maids command, what can't we do ? 
 
 Behold J the rondeau tasteful, light 
 You bid me try ! 
 
 In an article written in 1877, before his own ex- 
 amples had won favor for the form, Dobson asserted 
 that there was " no real reason why the rondeau 
 should not become as popular in its own line as the 
 sonnet," a prophecy which has not quite been ful- 
 filled, partly because " its own line " has less breadth 
 of appeal than that of the sonnet. The rondeau, satis- 
 factory as it is for the purposes for which it is fit, lacks 
 the large variety of the sonnet, which can voice all 
 moods of sentiment and of passion. In this same essay, 
 Dobson declared that to learn the inner secret of the 
 rondeau, "to give the refrain a new savor and fra- 
 grance at each repetition by some covert art of setting, 
 and to make it seem mere bubbling over, as it were, 
 of the eighth and thirteenth lines, these are things 
 which only masters of the lyre can attain to." 
 
 To vary the content of the four sounds which con- 
 stitute the refrain, a daring rirnester now and then has 
 risked a play upon words. This is justified by the pre- 
 cedent of the French ; and yet it does not recommend 
 itself heartily to us with our confirmed belief that the 
 pun belongs to a subordinate order of wit. Still it may 
 be well to give an example of this method of solving 
 the problem; and here is a rondeau entitled "Sub 
 Rosa": 
 
 Under the rows of gas-jets bright, 
 Bathed in a blazing river of light,
 
 156 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 A regal beauty sits ; above her 
 The butterflies of fashion hover, 
 And burn their wings, and take to flight. 
 
 Mark you her pure complexion, white 
 Though flush may follow flush ? Despite 
 Her blush, the lily I discover 
 Under the rose. 
 
 All compliments to her are trite ; 
 She has adorers left and right ; 
 
 And I confess here, under cover 
 
 Of secrecy, I too I love her ! 
 Say naught. She kuows it not. 'T is quite 
 Under the rose. 
 
 That the rondeau can aspire to more than the hinted 
 sentiment and the external gaiety of familiar verse, 
 and that it can stand forth on occasion as worthy of 
 comparison even with the sonnet, Dobson himself has 
 proved in more than one of his lyrics in this seemingly 
 narrow form. In none has he done this with more 
 masterly certainty than in this : 
 
 In after days when grasses high 
 
 O'er-top the stone where I shall lie, 
 
 Though ill or well the world adjust 
 My slender claim to honored dust, 
 
 I shall not question nor reply. 
 
 I shall not see the morning sky ; 
 I shall not hear the night-wind sigh ; 
 1 shall be mute, as all men must 
 In after days. 
 
 But yet, now living, fain were I 
 
 That some one then should testify, 
 Saying He held his pen in trust 
 To Art, not serving shame or lust. 
 
 Will none ? Then, let my memory die 
 In after days !
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 157 
 
 As there are two slightly different types of rondel, 
 so there are two varieties of the rondeau. The type ob- 
 served by Voiture is that just considered ; and the 
 type used by Villon departs from it botli in the reduc- 
 tion of the number of lines to ten and in the condensing 
 of the refrain to a single word. Here is John Payne's 
 English rendering of one of Villon's lyrics in this 
 more compact type: 
 
 Death, of thy rigor I complain, 
 That hast my lady borne from me, 
 And yet will not contented be 
 Till from me too all strength be ta'en 
 For lauguishment of heart and brain. 
 What harm did she in life to thee, 
 Death ? 
 
 One heart we had betwixt us twain ; 
 Which being dead, I too must dree 
 Death, or, like carven saints we see 
 
 In choir, sans life to live be fain, 
 Death ! 
 
 Although this is disfigured by the unnecessary and 
 unfortunate repetition of the refrain-word at the be- 
 ginning of the next to the last line, it is a fairly satis- 
 factory example of the shorter type of the rondeau ; 
 and it exhibits the inferiority of this to the more gen- 
 erous type which Dobson has employed for themes 
 both grave and gay. The briefer type seems to lack 
 something of the " nimble movement, speed, grace, 
 lightness of touch," which Banville held to be the 
 foremost characteristics of the rondeau. 
 
 The villanelle has an intricacy of its own not quite 
 of the same kind as the complexity of the triolet, the 
 rondel, and the rondeau. The villanelle consists of five
 
 158 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 stanzas of three lines each and of a sixth stanza of 
 four ; it has only two rimes ; and the last line of 
 the first stanza recurs as the last line of the third, 
 fifth and sixth stanzas, while the first line reappears as 
 the final line of the second and fourth stanzas and 
 also as the third line of the final quatrain. Here again 
 the most successful example is one of Austin Dob- 
 son's, an alluring portrayal of fascinating maidenhood 
 limned with the assured swiftness of an etching : 
 
 When I saw you last, Rose, 
 
 You were only so high ; 
 How fast the time goes i 
 
 Like a bud ere it blows* 
 
 You just peeped at the sky, 
 When I saw you last, Rose. 
 
 Now your petals unclose, 
 
 Now your May- time is nigh; 
 How fast the time goes ! 
 
 And a life, how it grows ! 
 
 You were scarcely so shy, 
 
 When I saw you last, Rose ! 
 
 In your bosom it shows 
 
 There 's a guest on the sly ; 
 How fast the time goes ! 
 
 [s it Cupid ? Who knows ! 
 Yet you used not to sigh, 
 When I saw you last, Rose 
 How fast the time goes I 
 
 In the exquisite simplicity of this lyric, with its 
 touch of tenderness and with its glancing humor, the 
 delicate effect is due in part to the felicity of the 
 meter, anapestic dimeter, which here proves its appro*
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 159 
 
 priateness for this linked sequence of little stanzas. 
 If the meter is changed, something of the lightness 
 and brightness is immediately lost, as we are con- 
 vinced when we compare Dobson's triumph with this 
 labored effort of Henley's : 
 
 A dainty thing 's the villanelle, 
 Sly, musical, a jewel in rime. 
 It serves its purpose passing well. 
 
 A double-clappered silver bell 
 
 That must be made to clink in chime, 
 A dainty thing 's the villanelle; 
 
 And if you wish to flute a spell, 
 
 Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime, 
 It serves its purpose passing well. 
 
 You must not ask of it the swell 
 
 Of organs grandiose and sublime 
 A dainty thing 's the villanelle ; 
 
 And filled with sweetness, as a shell 
 
 Is filled with sound, and launched in time, 
 It serves its purpose passing well. 
 
 Still fair to see and good to smell 
 
 As in the quaintness of its prime, 
 A dainty thing 's the villanelle, 
 It serves its purpose passing well. 
 
 In this rather lumbering attempt, the effort to be 
 airy is a little too obvious, and the vivacity is evidently 
 a little forced. But the fundamental mistake of the 
 writer was in the selection of his meter, iambic tetra- 
 meter, which lacks the ethereal ease of the anapestic 
 dimeter. Yet the iambic tetrameter is not out of 
 place when the theme is statelier, as Lang made plain 
 in this congenial appreciation of Theocritus :
 
 160 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Apollo left the queenly Muse, 
 
 And shepherded a mortal's sheep, 
 Theocritus of Syracuse ! 
 
 With thee to lead the lambs and ewes 
 
 Where Milon and where Battus reap, 
 Apollo left the queenly Muse. 
 
 With thee, he loitered in the dews, 
 
 He slept the swain's unfever'd sleep, 
 Theocritus of Syracuse ! 
 
 To watch the tunny-fishers cruise 
 Below the sheer Sicilian steep, 
 Apollo left the queenly Muse. 
 
 And now with bis might Time confuse 
 
 Thy songs, like his that laugh and leap, 
 Theocritus of Syracuse ! 
 
 To sing with thee beside the deep, 
 Or where JStnsean waters weep, 
 Theocritus of Syracuse, 
 Apollo left the queenly Muse. 
 
 Of all these French forms, the noblest by far is the 
 ballade, the largest in its framework, the widest in 
 its range, and the most varied in its possibilities. It 
 has had the supreme advantage of serving early as 
 the instrument of a true poet, Villon, that " warm 
 voice out of the slums of Paris," as Matthew Arnold 
 called him. Yet the form soon lost its popularity in 
 France ; and the poet-critics of the Plei'ade were 
 hostile to it, although they accepted the sonnet will- 
 ingly enough. The ballade crossed the channel into 
 England as early as Chaucer's time ; and he may have 
 borrowed from it the stanza which he made his own 
 (the eight lines of iambic tetrameter riming a, b, 6,
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 161 
 
 a, a, c, a, c), and which Spenser took as the founda- 
 tion of his own superb stave. Yet the ballade fell out 
 of favor in English as it had fallen out of favor in 
 France ; and not until after Theodore de Banville had 
 revived it in Paris and exhibited anew its lyric grace 
 and its adaptability to both pathetic and jocular 
 themes, did the ballade regain its footing. It was Ban- 
 ville's book of "Trente-six Ballades Joyeuses" which 
 moved Dobson to write " The Prodigals " ; and his ex- 
 ample was followed at once by Andrew Lang and also, 
 after an interval, by Swinburne. It was at the begin- 
 ning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century that 
 these various French forms renewed their citizenship 
 in English poetry ; and in the years that have passed 
 since they were gladly acclaimed, they have continued 
 to allure many lyrists of Great Britain and the United 
 States. When the warmth of their first welcome was 
 chilled by the lapse of time, most of them lost a little 
 of their vogue. But the ballade has rooted itself 
 solidly in our poetry ; it is as definitely acclimatized 
 as the sonnet, although it has not yet taken captive 
 as many of the major bards of our tongue. It lacks 
 the stern compression of the sonnet and the lofty 
 simplicity of that Italian form ; but it has its own 
 field and it serves its own purpose, less serious than 
 the sonnet, but fitter for themes where sentiment and 
 humor disclose themselves in turn, like twins playing 
 hide-and-seek. 
 
 The ballade has two variations of type, of which 
 the shorter is more characteristic of the form and is 
 more firmly intrenched in popular favor. This con- 
 sists of three stanzas of eight lines each and a final 
 quatrain ; it has only three rimes in all its twenty-
 
 162 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 eight lines, every octave abiding by the same rime- 
 scheme, o, 6, a, 6, 6, c, 5, c, the final quatrain rim- 
 ing 6, c, 6, c. This quatrain is called the Envoy ; and 
 it was originally addressed directly to the king or 
 prince or dignitary in whose honor the ballade had 
 been rimed. The final quatrain and each of the 
 three staves must end with the same line, absolutely 
 unvaried in wording, however modified it may be in 
 meaning. Thus, the ballade displays itself as a tiny 
 comedy in three acts, with the envoy as an epilog 
 spoken to the public. Here is Andrew Lang's " Bal- 
 lade of Old Plays," evoked by an edition of Moliere 
 published in Paris in 1667 : 
 
 La Cour 
 When these Old Plays were new, the King, 
 
 Beside the Cardinal's chair, 
 Applauded, 'mid the courtly ring, 
 
 The verses of Moliere ; 
 
 Point-lace was then the only wear, 
 Old Corneille came to woo, 
 
 And bright Du Pare was young and fair, 
 When these Old Plays were new I 
 
 La Comedie 
 How shrill the butcher's cat-calls ring, 
 
 How loud the lackeys swear I 
 Black pipe-bowls on the stage they fling, 
 
 At Bre'court, fuming there ! 
 
 The Porter 's stabbed ! a Mousquetaire 
 Breaks in with noisy crew 
 
 'T was all a commonplace affair 
 When these Old Plays were new 1 
 
 La Ville 
 
 When these Old Plays were new ! They bring 
 A host of phantoms rare :
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 163 
 
 Old jests that float, old jibes that sting, 
 
 Old faces peaked with care : 
 
 Menage's smirk, de Vise"s stare, 
 The thefts of Jean Ribou, 
 
 Ah, publishers were hard to bear 
 When these Old Plays were new I 
 
 Envoy 
 Ghosts, at your Poet's word ye dare 
 
 To break Death's dungeons through, 
 And frisk, as in that golden air, 
 
 When these Old Plays were new ! 
 
 The other variation of the ballade employs a stanza 
 of ten lines with four rimes, a, 6, a, 6, 6, c, c, <?, c, c?, 
 and it therefore lacks the couplet which links the oc- 
 tave together in the middle, as exemplified in Lang's 
 lilting lyric. Banville was emphatic in asserting the 
 importance of this internal couplet, warning the bal- 
 lade-makers against composing separately the two 
 quatrains of the octave, since this was a process likely 
 to give the stanza a broken back. In the absence of 
 this internal couplet in the longer variation of the 
 ballade, the back of the stanza must bear the weight 
 of ten lines as best it may. The increase of the num- 
 ber of rimes also diminishes the difficulty of the task 
 the poet has undertaken, and thereby robs the ballade 
 of a part of its charm. Yet this second type is not 
 without admirers ; and here is Gosse's lyric written 
 just after the death of Theodore de Banville : 
 
 One ballade more before we say good-night, 
 O dying Muse, one mournful ballade more ; 
 
 Then let the new men fall to their delight, 
 The Impressionist, the Decadents, a score 
 Of other fresh fanatics, who adore 
 
 Quaint demons, and disdain thy golden shrine; 
 
 Ah 1 faded goddess, thou wert held divine
 
 164 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 When we were young ! But now each laureled head 
 Has fallen, and fallen the ancient glorious line ; 
 The last is gone, since Banville too is dead. 
 
 Peace, peace a moment, Dolorous Ibsenite ! 
 
 Pale Tolstoiat, moaning from the Euxine shore I 
 Heredity, to dreamland take thy flight ! 
 
 And, fell Psychology, forbear to pour 
 
 Drop after drop thy dose of hellebore, 
 For we look back to-night to ruddier wine 
 And gayer singing than those moans of thine ! 
 
 Our skies were azure once, our roses red, 
 Our poets once were crowned with eglantine ; 
 
 The last is gone, since Banville too is dead. 
 
 With flutes and lyres and many a lovely rite 
 
 Through the mad woodland of our youth they bore 
 
 Verse, like an ichor in a chrysolite, 
 
 Secret yet splendid, and the world forswore, 
 One breathing space, the mocking mask it wore. 
 
 Then failed, then fell those children of the vine 
 
 Sons of the sun and sank in slow decline ; 
 Pulse after pulse their radiant lives were shed. 
 
 Envoy 
 
 Prince-jeweler, whose facet rimes combine 
 All hues that glow, all rays that shift and shine, 
 
 Farewell ! thy song is sung, thy splendor fled I 
 No bards to Aganippe's wave incline ; 
 
 The last is gone, since Banville too is dead. 
 
 It is also the ten-line variation which Swinburne 
 preferred for his buoyant and overwhelming " Ballade 
 of Swimming," with its large long lines of anapestic 
 heptameter : 
 
 The sea is awake, and the sound of the song of the joy of her 
 
 waking is rolled 
 From afar to the star that recedes from anear to the wastes of 
 
 the wild wide shore.
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 165 
 
 Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward : if dawn in her 
 
 east be acold, 
 From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle the life 
 
 that it kindled before 
 Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us, her kisses to blesa 
 
 as of yore ? 
 For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause in the sky, 
 
 neither fettered nor free, 
 Leans wave ward and flutters the ripple of laughter ; and fain 
 
 would the twain of us be 
 Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under the curve 
 
 of the deep dawn's dome, 
 And full of the morning and fired with the pride of the glory 
 
 thereof and the glee, 
 Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, 
 
 athirst for the foam. 
 
 Life holds not an hour that is better to live in : the past is a tale 
 
 that is told, 
 The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, with a bless- 
 
 ing in store. 
 As we give us again to the waters, the rapture of limbs that the 
 
 waters enfold 
 Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby, though the burden it 
 
 quits were sore, 
 Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will are absorbed in 
 
 the life they adore 
 In the life that endures no burden, and bows not the forehead, 
 
 and bends not the knee 
 In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven, in the laws that 
 
 atone and agree. 
 In the measureless music of things, in the fervor of forces that 
 
 rest or that roam, 
 That cross and return and reissue, as I after you and as you after 
 
 me 
 Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, 
 
 athirst for the foam. 
 
 For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply the heart 
 
 of a man may be bold 
 To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother's that saith to the 
 
 son she bore,
 
 166 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit the breath in 
 
 thy lips from of old ? 
 
 Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength, and thy fool- 
 ishness learn of my lore ? 
 Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or made not the 
 
 might of thy gladness more ? 
 And surely his heart should answer, The light of the love of my 
 
 life is in thee. 
 She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not fairer, the wind is not 
 
 blither than she : 
 From my youth bath she shown me the joy of her bays that I 
 
 crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb, 
 Till now that the twain of us here, in desire of the dawn and in 
 
 trust of the sea, 
 Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, 
 
 athirst for the foam. 
 
 Envoy 
 Friend, earth is a harbor of refuge for winter, a covert where- 
 
 under to flee 
 When day is the vassal of night, and the strength of the hosts of 
 
 her mightier than he ; 
 But here is the presence adored of me, here my desire is at rest 
 
 and at home. 
 There are cliffs to be climbed upon land, there are ways to be 
 
 trodden and ridden : but we 
 Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, 
 
 athirst for the foam. 
 
 In this resonant lyric, the lines sweep forward and 
 swing backward like the sounding surges of the surf, 
 billow after billow, breaker following breaker, tum- 
 bling ahead till they crash at last on the shore. Yet 
 the line is so long-drawn and so loud-sounding that the 
 ear is only doubtfully conscious of the structure of the 
 ballade. Indeed, while this lyric of Swinburne is proof 
 positive that the ballade can obey the poet's behest for 
 amplitude of treatment and for elevation of tone, yet 
 it is not really characteristic of what is best in the form.
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 167 
 
 So far as its form is concerned every ballade must be 
 arbitrary and artificial ; and therein lies not a little of 
 its fascination. It could stretch itself out at Swinburne's 
 bidding ; but it needed to make no effort when Dobson 
 called on it for hidden tenderness of sentiment touched 
 with a hint of humor. 
 
 The soul of the ballade is its refrain ; each of the 
 three octaves and the final quatrain lead up to this 
 recurring line, elucidating it and justifying it. The 
 refrain must be aptly chosen and adroitly handled, 
 so that, as Dobson himself declared, it will " recur 
 without the tedium of importunity and return with 
 the certainty of welcome." Especially significant are 
 the two contrasted refrains in the ballade a double 
 refrain, wherein the fourth line of the first octave re- 
 appears unchanged in every octave, and wherein the 
 envoy consists of two couplets, the final line of the 
 first couplet being the internal refrain and the final 
 line of the second couplet being the external refrain. 
 Here there are two refrains for the poet to provide and 
 to set over against each other in rhythmical antithesis. 
 And again we find a perfect example prepared for us 
 by Austin Dobson in "The Ballade of Prose and 
 Rime": 
 
 When the ways are heavy with mire and rut, 
 
 In November fogs, in December snows, 
 When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut, 
 
 There is place and enough for the pains of prose ; 
 
 But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows, 
 And the jasmine-stars to the casement climb, 
 
 And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows, 
 Then hey ! for the ripple of laughing rime ! 
 
 When the brain gets dry as an empty nut, 
 When the reason stands on its squarest toes,
 
 168 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 When the mind (like a beard) has a " formal cut," 
 There is place and enough for the pains of prose ; 
 But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows, 
 
 And the young year draws to the " golden prime," 
 And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose, 
 
 Then hey ! for the ripple of laughing rime ! 
 
 In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant-strut, 
 In a changing quarrel of " Ayes " and " Noes," 
 
 In a starched procession of " If " and " But," 
 
 There is place and enough for the pains of prose : 
 But whenever a soft glance softer grows, 
 
 And the light hours dance to the trysting-time, 
 And the secret is told " that no one knows," 
 
 Then hey ! for the ripple of laughing rime ! 
 
 Envoy 
 
 In the work-a-day world, for its needs and woes, 
 There is place and enough for the pains of prose ; 
 But whenever the May-bells clash and chime, 
 Then hey ! for the ripple of laughing rime I 
 
 Here we have the finest flower of the artificial lyric, 
 in which the very artificiality is made to accentuate 
 our pleasure, as the laughing rime ripples in our 
 ears. In this ballade we find the crispness of rhythm, 
 the apparent spontaneity, the unfailing felicity of 
 phrase, which we demand in what Cowper chose to 
 call " familiar verse " and which is more often known 
 by the wholly inadequate and unsatisfactory French 
 term vers de societe. 1 
 
 1 In almost every department of familiar verse, Austin Dobson ha* 
 proved himself a master ; and he had a right, therefore, to declare its 
 code in the Twelve Good Rules that he drew up many years ago for 
 the guidance of all who shall adventure themselves in this sort of 
 verse : 
 
 1. Never be vulgar. 2. Avoid alang and puns. 3. Avoid inver- 
 sions. 4. Be sparing of long words. 5. Be colloquial but not com- 
 monplace. 6. Choose the lightest and brightest of measures. 7. Lot
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 169 
 
 The ballade and the rondeau are best fitted for 
 familiar verse, no doubt, and their obvious artifice 
 may prevent their use in the highest reaches of poesy, 
 where the lyrist must forego as many shackles as he 
 may. Yet they need not be restricted to the field of 
 vers de societe alone. They may lack the sharp con- 
 cision of the quatrain and the soaring elevation of the 
 sonnet ; but their range is wider than the drawing- 
 room lyric only. The ballade especially has an indis- 
 putable variety ; and in the hands of a true poet its 
 arbitrary rime-scheme and its foreordained twenty- 
 eight lines are not unduly cramping to the liberty of 
 the lyrist. If evidence must be adduced in behalf of 
 this contention, here is Swinburne's haunting " Bal- 
 lade of Dreamland " : 
 
 I hid my heart in a nest of roses, 
 
 Out of the sun's way, hidden apart ; 
 In a softer bed than the soft white snow is, 
 
 Under the rose I hid my heart. 
 
 Why would it sleep not ? why should it start, 
 When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred ? 
 
 What made sleep flutter his wings and part ? 
 Only the song of a secret bird. 
 
 Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes, 
 
 And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart; 
 Lie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes, 
 
 And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art. 
 
 Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart? 
 Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred ? 
 
 What bids the lips of thy sleep dispart ? 
 Only the song of a secret bird. 
 
 the rimes be frequent but not forced. 8. Let them be rigorously 
 exact to the ear. 9. Be as -witty as you like. 10. Be gerious by ac- 
 cident. 11. Be pathetic with the greatest discretion. 12. Never ak 
 if the writer of these rules has observed them himself.
 
 170 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 The green land's name that a charm encloses 
 
 It never was writ in the traveler's chart, 
 And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is, 
 
 It never was sold in the merchant's mart. 
 
 The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart. 
 And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard ; 
 
 No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart, 
 Only the song of a secret bird. 
 
 Envoi 
 In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, 
 
 To sleep for a season and hear no word 
 Of true love's truth or of light love's art, 
 
 Only the song of a secret bird. 
 
 Perhaps the best plea that has been made for the 
 ballade is to be found in one of the brilliant essays of 
 M. Jules Lemaitre, which Mr. Andrew Lang has ren- 
 dered into English : " The poet who begins a ballade 
 does not know very exactly what he will put into it. 
 The rime, and nothing but the rime, will whisper things 
 unexpected and charming, things he would never have 
 thought of but for her, things with strange and re- 
 mote relations to each other, all united in the disorder 
 of a dream. Nothing, indeed, is richer in suggestion 
 than the strict laws of these difficult pieces ; they force 
 the fancy to wander afield, hunting high and low ; and 
 while she seeks through all the world the foot that 
 can wear Cinderella's slipper, she makes delightful 
 discoveries by the way." 
 
 There is an amplified form of the ballade which is 
 called the chant-royal. It consists of five eleven-line 
 stanzas, riming a, 6, a, 6, c, c, d, d, e, <?, e, with a 
 five-line envoy, riming c?, d, e> d, e, every stanza and 
 the envoy ending with the refrain. Here is John 
 Payne's " God of Love " :
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 171 
 
 most fair God, O Love both new and old, 
 That wast before the flowers of morning blew, 
 
 Before the glad sun in his mail of gold 
 
 Leapt into light across the first day's dew; 
 Thou art the first and last of our delight, 
 That in the blue day and the purple night 
 
 Holdest the hearts of servant and of king, 
 
 Lord of liesse, sovran of sorrowing, 
 That in thy hand hast heaven's golden key 
 
 And Hell beneath the shadow of thy wing, 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee. 
 
 What thing rejects thy mastery ? Who so bold 
 But at thine altars in the dusk they sue ? 
 
 Even the strait pale goddess, silver-stoled, 
 
 That kissed Endymion when the Spring was new, 
 
 To thee did homage in her own despite, 
 
 When in the shadow of her wings of white 
 
 She slid down trembling from her mooned ring 
 To where the Latmian boy lay slumbering, 
 
 And in that kiss put off cold chastity. 
 
 Who but acclaim with voice and pipe and string, 
 u Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ? " 
 
 Master of men and gods, in every fold 
 
 Of thy wide vans the sorceries that renew 
 The laboring earth, tranced with the winter's cold, 
 
 Lie hid the quintessential charms that woo 
 The souls of flowers, slain with the sullen might 
 Of the dead year, and draw them to the light. 
 
 Balsam and blessing to thy garments cling; 
 
 Skyward and seaward, when thy white hands fling 
 Their spells of healing over land and sea, 
 
 One shout of homage makes the welkin ring, 
 " Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee I " 
 
 1 see thee throned aloft; thy fair hands hold 
 Myrtles for joy, and euphrasy and rue: 
 
 Laurels and roses round thy white brows rolled, 
 
 And in thine eyes the royal heaven's hue: 
 But in thy lips' clear color, ruddy bright, 
 The heart's blood shines of many a hapless wight.
 
 172 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Thou art not only fair and sweet as spring ; 
 
 Terror and beauty, fear and wondering 
 Meet on thy brow, amazing all that see : 
 
 All men do praise thee, ay, and everything; 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee. 
 
 I fear thee, though I love. Who can behold 
 The sheer gun burning in the orbed blue, 
 
 What while the noontide over hill and wold 
 Flames like a fire, except his mazed view 
 
 Wither and tremble ? So thy splendid sight 
 
 Fills me with mingled gladness and affright. 
 Thy visage haunts me in the wavering 
 Of dreams, and in the dawn awakening, 
 
 I feel thy radiance streaming full on me, 
 Both fear and joy unto thy feet I bring ; 
 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 
 
 Envoy 
 
 God above Gods, High and Eternal King, 
 To whom the spheral symphonies do sing, 
 
 I find no whither from thy power to flee, 
 Save in thy pinions' vast o'ershadowing, 
 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee. 
 
 This has a lyric largeness ; and yet the chant-royal 
 lies peculiarly open to the objection which Professor 
 Lounsbury has urged against all fixed forms of verse, 
 to the effect that " it is poetry not of art, but of arti- 
 fice, though often artifice in a very high sense. Work 
 of this kind is usually produced by men who are artists, 
 and sometimes great artists, in poetry, as distinguished 
 from great poets. It is accordingly not so much what 
 they say that interests us as the way in which they say 
 it." It is true that this objection must also hold, to a 
 certain extent, even against the sonnet. In every art dif- 
 ficulty conquered affords an abiding source of pleasure ; 
 and although this is admitted ungrudgingly, there is
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 173 
 
 conviction also in Lowell's assertion that " difficulty 
 without success is perhaps the least tolerable kind of 
 writing." As Theodore de Banville was frank in de- 
 claring, "without poetic vision all is mere marquetry 
 and cabinet-maker's work ; that is, so far as poetry 
 is concerned nothing." 
 
 The case for the fixed form was never better put than 
 by Edmund Gosse in his " Plea for Certain Exotic 
 Forms of Verse," written when these imported types 
 were just reappearing in our language. " But there is 
 always the danger of using elaborate and beautiful 
 measures to conceal poverty of thought, and my plea 
 would be incomplete if I left this objection to it un- 
 stated. The only excuse for writing rondeaux and 
 villanelles is the production of poems that are charm- 
 ing to a reader who takes no note of their elaborate 
 form ; they should be attractive in spite of, and not 
 because of, their difficulty. The true test of success is 
 that the poem should give the reader an impression 
 of spontaneity and ease, and that the attention should 
 be attracted by the wit, or fancy, or pathos, in the 
 thoughts and expression, and not, until later study, 
 by the form at all. Let it not, however, be for this 
 reason imagined that the labor is thankless and the 
 elaboration needless. Half the pleasure given to the 
 reader, half the sense of richness, completeness, and 
 grace which he vaguely perceives and unconsciously 
 enjoys, is due to the labor the poet has expended." 
 
 One more exotic form remains to be considered, not 
 French this time, but Malayan. This is the pantoum, 
 imported but not important, which Victor Hugo called 
 to the attention of Gautier and Banville. It is not an 
 attractive form, and its resources are scanty. It con-
 
 174 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 sists of a succession of quatrains, the second and fourth 
 lines of the first quatrain being repeated as the first 
 and third of the second quatrain, and the second and 
 fourth lines of this second quatrain serving again as 
 the first and third of the third quatrain ; and so on, the 
 final quatrain picking up again the first and third 
 lines of the first. Monotony is inevitable, and any 
 ample treatment of a theme is impossible. With his 
 customary tact, Austin Dobson seized on this mono- 
 tony as the excuse for the lyric he prepared in this 
 form, thereby forcing the incessant repetition to sub- 
 serve the general effect of insistently recurrent lines. 
 He called his pantoum, the first to be attempted in 
 English, " In Town " : 
 
 Toiling in town now is " horrid " 
 
 (There is that woman again !) 
 June in the zenith is torrid, 
 
 Thought gets dry in the brain. 
 
 There is that woman again: 
 
 " Strawberries! fourpence a pottle! '* 
 
 Thought gets dry in the brain; 
 Ink gets dry in the bottle. 
 
 "Strawberries! fourpence a pottle !" 
 
 for the green of a lane ! 
 Ink gets dry in the bottle; 
 
 " Buzz " goes a fly in the pane i 
 
 O for the green of a lane, 
 
 Where one might lie and be lazy I 
 "Buzz" goes a fly in the pane; 
 Bluebottles drive me crazy ! 
 
 Where one might lie and be lazy, 
 
 Careless of town and all in it ! 
 Bluebottles drive me crazy: 
 
 1 shall go mad in a minute !
 
 OTHER FIXED FORMS 175 
 
 Careless of town and all in it, 
 
 With some one to soothe and to still you; 
 I shall go mad in a minute; 
 
 Bluebottle, then I shall kill you ! 
 
 With some one to soothe and to still you, 
 
 As only one's feminine kin do, 
 Bluebottle, then I shall kill you: 
 
 There now 1 I 've broken the window ! 
 
 As only one's feminine kin do, 
 Some muslin-clad Mabel or May ! 
 
 There now ! I 've broken the window ! 
 Bluebottle *s off and away I 
 
 Some muslin-clad Mabel or May, 
 
 To dash one with eau de Cologne: 
 Bluebottle 's off and away, 
 
 And why should I stay here aloue ? 
 
 To dash one with eau de Cologne, 
 
 All over one's eminent forehead ; 
 And why should I stay here alone ! 
 
 Toiling in town now is " horrid."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 
 
 Rime, the rack of finest wits, 
 That expresseth but by fits 
 
 True conceit, 
 
 Spoiling senses of their treasure, 
 Cozening judgment with a measure, 
 
 But false weight ; 
 
 Wresting words from their true calling, 
 Propping verse for fear of falling 
 
 To the ground, 
 
 Jointing syllables, drowning letters, 
 Fastening vowels, as with fetters 
 
 They were bound. 
 
 Greek was free from rime's infection, 
 Happy Greek by this protection 
 
 Was not spoiled, 
 
 Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, 
 Is not yet free from rime's wrongs, 
 
 But rests foiled. 
 BEN JONSON : A Fit of Rime against Rime. 
 
 IN the various types of stanza which have been con- 
 sidered, in the sonnet and in the other fixed forms, 
 rime serves to indicate the metrical scheme which 
 the ear is to expect. Now and again, one line or 
 another in the quatrain, or in a longer stanza, may be 
 left unmated ; and often a refrain is rimeless. Yet the 
 importance of rime is indisputable ; indeed one might 
 declare that its necessity is almost undeniable. At 
 least, this much must be admitted that in our mod- 
 ern English the stanza, whatsoever its length, seems to 
 insist upon its sequence of terminal rimes, and that
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 177 
 
 in consequence of this apparent insistence very few 
 lyrics have been able to sing themselves into the 
 memory and to capture a popularity which is at once 
 wide and enduring, unless they have soared aloft on 
 the wings of rime. 
 
 In the epic and in the drama, poetry can get along 
 very well without the tinkle of the terminal syllables ; 
 in fact, English poetry of this lofty species seems to 
 reject rime, as needless and even enfeebling. But in 
 lyrical poetry, whether it is confined in a single stanza 
 or extended to a sequence of stanzas, rime appears 
 to be almost obligatory. George Meredith went so far 
 as to insist that " in lyrics the demand for music is 
 imperative, and, as quantity is denied to the English 
 tongue, rimes there must be." If rime is absent, 
 our ears are deprived of a delight which they have 
 learned to anticipate. Rime supplies to the stanza its 
 architectural outline ; and it is the steel-frame for the 
 firm construction of the towering ode. If the rime 
 is lacking, our ears miss it and they have to strain to 
 make sure of the stanzaic form. This may be due 
 merely to long traditions in English verse ; or more 
 probably it may be ascribed to some unexplored pe- 
 culiarity of our modern languages. Certainly the lack 
 of rime does not interfere with the charm of the lyrics 
 of the Greeks, of the Latins, and of the Hebrews. 
 The French, it may be noted, are even more dependent 
 upon rime than we are ; they have never been able 
 to develop blank verse ; and both their epic and their 
 tragic poetry gladly wears the fetters of the riming 
 couplet, made even more galling by the rule that a 
 pair of masculine rimes shall always alternate with a 
 pair of feminine rimes.
 
 178 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Yet many poets have composed English lyrics in 
 rimeless stanzas of varying length ; and not a few 
 of them have produced poems of unquestionable grace 
 and beauty. Nevertheless, the fact remains that scarcely 
 any poet of our language has achieved one of his major 
 successes with an unrimed lyric ; and it is always 
 upon his lyrics adorned with chiming ends that his 
 reputation rests. In English the rimeless lyric is 
 sporadic and abnormal; and yet these experiments 
 in stanzas without rime are significant and interest- 
 ing. 
 
 If we limit the word couplet, as perhaps we should, 
 to describe a pair of lines which rime together, we 
 have the word distich to describe a pair of unrimed 
 lines. For inscriptions, for memorial purposes, the 
 distich has a proved fitness. In so brief a lyric the 
 necessity for rime is less obvious. Here is a distich 
 of Emerson's : 
 
 This passing moment is an edifice 
 Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild. 
 
 Here are three lines of Landor's on Shakspere : 
 
 In poetry there is but one supreme, 
 
 Though there are many angels round his throne, 
 
 Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid. 
 
 There is a lapidary concision like that of an Attic 
 inscription in these three lines of Emerson's : 
 
 No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, 
 For God hath writ all dooms magnificent, 
 So guilt not traverses His tender will. 
 
 The unrimed quatrain is infrequent in English 
 verse; and yet a few stately specimens are available. 
 Here is one from Emerson :
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 179 
 
 There is a time when the romance of life 
 Should be shut up, and closed with double clasp: 
 Better that this be done before the dust 
 That none cau blow away falls into it. 
 
 In these little lyrics, the ear has scarce time to 
 awaken to the expectancy of rime before the poem 
 comes to its end. But when the lyric consists of several 
 stanzas the absence of the rime is soon noted ; and 
 although this may be forgiven, still it is likely to be 
 more or less disconcerting, especially if the stanza 
 chosen is familiar, as in this " Etching " of Henley's : 
 
 Two and thirty is the plowman ; 
 He 's a man of gallant inches, 
 And his hair is close and curly, 
 
 And his beard ; 
 
 But his face is wan and sunken, 
 And his eyes are large and brilliant, 
 And his shoulder blades are sharp, 
 
 And his knees. 
 
 This stanza seems to cry aloud for its customary 
 rimes ; and there is a wanton bravado in depriving 
 us of them. The unrimed lyric is more acceptable 
 when it avoids the well-known stanzaic forms wherein 
 rime is traditional and when it employs a less rigid 
 frame, freer in its movement. This Longfellow felt 
 with his intuitive feeling for felicity of presentation. 
 Here are the opening quatrains of his greeting " To 
 an Old Danish Song-Book " : 
 
 Welcome, my old friend, 
 Welcome to a foreign fireside, 
 While the sullen gales of autumn 
 Shake the windows. 
 
 The ungrateful world 
 
 Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,
 
 180 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, 
 First I met thee. 
 
 This is excellent in its mating of style and sub- 
 stance. These unrimed quatrains justify themselves ; 
 they do not demand rime ; they would not be bettered 
 by it. There is an even bolder irregularity in the open- 
 ing of " The Saga of King Olaf " : 
 
 I am the God Thor, 
 I am the War God, 
 I am the Thunderer ! 
 Here in my Northland, 
 My fastness and fortress, 
 Reign I forever ! 
 
 Here amid icebergs 
 Rule I the nations ; 
 This is my hammer, 
 Miolner the mighty ; 
 Giants and sorcerers 
 Cannot withstand it ! 
 
 Longfellow had an easy mastery of rime when he 
 chose to exert it, yet he liked to forego its aid and to 
 lift up a lyric without the assistance of the expected 
 pairs of terminal words. His song on " The Bells of 
 Lynn " is written in distichs, with a refrain at the 
 end of every second line : 
 
 O curfew of the setting sun ! O Bells of Lynn I 
 O requiem of the dying day 1 O Bells of Lynn ! 
 
 From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted, 
 Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn. 
 
 Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight, 
 O'er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn I 
 
 In this lyric the stave is only two lines long and 
 the expectancy of rime is met by the recurring re-
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 181 
 
 f rain. It is by the aid of a refrain also that Charles 
 Lamb ties together his sequence of three-line stanzas: 
 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have had playmates, I have had companions, 
 In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I loved a love once, fairest among women; 
 Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her; 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 Tennyson succeeded in giving lightness and fluidity 
 to an unrimed lyric arranged in stanzas of three 
 lines each, which is supposed to be sung in " The Prin- 
 cess " : 
 
 O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south! 
 Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, 
 And tell her, tell her, what I tell to tbee. 
 
 O tell her, Swallow, that thou knowest each, 
 That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
 And dark and true and tender is the North. 
 
 And in " Tears, Idle Tears," one of his loveliest 
 lyrics, Tennyson again abandoned rime, but clung 
 to the refrain as marking usefully the limit of tW 
 stanza : 
 
 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
 Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
 Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
 In looking on the happy autumn-fields, 
 And thinking of the days that are no more. 
 
 Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
 That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
 Sad as the last which reddens over one 
 That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
 So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
 
 182 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Symonds held this to be a " perfect specimen of the 
 most melodious and complete minstrelsy in words " ; 
 and he declared that the refrain with its "recurrence 
 of sound and meaning is a substitute for rime and 
 suggests rime so persuasively that it is impossible to 
 call the poern mere blank verse." 
 
 A device not dissimilar is employed in a lyric by an 
 American poet, untimely cut off in his youth, Charles 
 Henry Liiders. This song is entitled the "Four 
 Winds " 1 : and it must be given in full to show clearly 
 how the several stanzas are kept separate and distinct, 
 clearly perceptible to the listening ear, without the aid 
 of the rime: 
 
 Wind of the North, 
 
 Wind of the Northland snows, 
 
 Wind of the winnowed skies and sharp, clear stars, 
 
 Blow cold and keen across the naked hills, 
 
 And crisp the lowland pools with crystal films, 
 
 And blue the casement-squares with glittering ice, 
 
 But go not near my love. 
 
 Wind of the West, 
 
 Wind of the few, far clouds, 
 
 Wind of the gold and crimson sunset lands, 
 
 Blow fresh and pure across the peaks and plains, 
 
 And broaden the bine spaces of the heavens, 
 
 And sway the grasses and the mountain pines, 
 
 But let my dear one rest. 
 
 Wind of the East, 
 
 Wind of the sunrise seas, 
 
 Wind of the clinging mists and gray, harsh rains, 
 
 Blow moist and chill across the wastes of brine, 
 
 And shut the sun out, and the moon and stars, 
 
 And lash the boughs against the dripping eaves, 
 
 Yet keep thou from my love. 
 
 1 By permission from The Dead Nymph and other Poems by 
 Charles Henry Liiders, copyrighted, 1891, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 183 
 
 But thou, sweet wind ! 
 
 Wind of the fragrant South, 
 
 Wind from the bowers of jasmine and of rose, 
 
 Over magnolia glooms and lilied lakes 
 
 And flowering forests come with dewy wings, 
 
 And stir the petals at her feet and kiss 
 
 The low mound where she lies. 
 
 Although the refrain has served Lamb, Longfellow, 
 and Tennyson to impress the form of an unrimed 
 stanza upon the ear, other poets have done without its 
 aid, perhaps because they did not feel any desire to 
 isolate the successive units of construction. Thus 
 William Watson has a sequence of quatrains in " Eng- 
 land, My Mother," linked together by the continuity 
 of the thought and flowing forward without any sharp 
 division into stanzas : 
 
 Lo, with ancient 
 Roots of man's nature 
 Twines the eternal 
 Passion of song. 
 
 Ever Love fans it, 
 Ever Life feeds it ; 
 Time cannot age it, 
 Death cannot slay. 
 
 Deep in the world-heart 
 Stand its foundations, 
 Tangled with all things, 
 Twin-made with all. 
 
 In this poem of Watson's the stanzas are of uniform 
 length and of uniform metrical construction ; but they 
 are not separate unities. The stanza is not insisted on ; 
 it is not integral to the movement of the ode-like lyric. 
 Still less does our ear ask for rime when the succes-
 
 184 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 sive stanzas are not of uniform length or of uniform 
 metrical construction. 
 
 In Matthew Arnold's " Strayed Reveler," there is no 
 rigorous uniformity ; indeed, the rhythmical movement 
 is so free that the ear adjusts itself at once to this free- 
 dom and has to make no effort to seize any prescribed 
 metrical scheme : 
 
 The Youth 
 
 Who speaks ? Ah, who comes forth 
 
 To thy side, Goddess, from within? 
 
 How shall I name him ? 
 
 This spare, dark-featured, 
 
 Quick-eyed stranger? 
 
 Ah, and I see too 
 
 His sailor's bonnet, 
 
 His short coat, travel-tarnished, 
 
 With one arm bare ! 
 
 Art thou not he, whom fame 
 
 This long time rumors 
 
 The favor'd guest of Circe, brought by the waves, 
 
 Art thou he, stranger ? 
 
 The wise Ulysses, 
 
 Laertes' son ? 
 
 Ulysses 
 
 I am Ulysses. 
 
 And tbou, too, sleeper ? 
 
 Thy voice is sweet. 
 
 It may be thou hast follow'd 
 
 Through the islands some divine bard, 
 
 By age taught many things, 
 
 Age and the Muses; 
 
 And heard him delighting 
 
 The Chiefs and the people 
 
 In the banquet, and learned his songs 
 
 Of Gods and Heroes, 
 
 Of war and arts, 
 
 And peopled cities, 
 
 Inland or built 
 
 By the gray sea. If so, then hail! 
 
 I honor and welcome thee.
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 185 
 
 Apparently it is only when the stanza stands out by 
 itself that our ears expect the rime to indicate the 
 metrical framework ; and when the verse flows on 
 avoiding equal subdivisions, our ears accept this with- 
 out being in any way strained. Browning, for example, 
 divides " One Word More," his epistle to his wife at 
 the end of " Men and Women," into groups of lines, 
 these metrical paragraphs containing sometimes only 
 three or four lines and sometimes extending to more 
 than twenty. Thus there is no suggestion of any 
 stanzaic form, and therefore there is no need for 
 rime or refrain or for any other device to guide the 
 ear. Here is the first of these paragraphs, limited to 
 four lines only : 
 
 There they are, my fifty men and women 
 Naming me the fifty poems finished ! 
 Take them, Love, the book and me together; 
 Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 
 
 And here is another paragraph, the sixth, having 
 three lines only : 
 
 You and I would rather see that angel, 
 
 Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
 
 Would we not ? than read a fresh Inferno. 
 
 Part of the ease and lightness of this poem is due 
 to its trochaic rhythm. As we examine the most satis- 
 fying of the lyrics in our language which are not 
 adorned with rime, we cannot help remarking how 
 strong is the tendency of the poets to end their lines 
 with short syllables. They are prone either to employ 
 a trochaic rhythm, or to append an extra short 
 syllable to their iambic lines. It is an unrimed 
 iambic heptameter with this added short syllable 
 which Newman chose for his translation of Homer.
 
 186 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 It is in unrimed dactylic trimeter that Dr. Weir 
 Mitchell composed his " Psalm of the Waters," carry- 
 ing over the final short syllable of every line to the 
 beginning of the next : 
 
 So this is a psalm of the waters, 
 The wavering, wandering waters: 
 With languages learned in the forest, 
 With secret of earth's lonely caverns, 
 The mystical waters go by me 
 On errands of love and of beauty, 
 On embassies friendly and gentle, 
 With shimmer of brown and of silver. 
 
 It is in iambics, chiefly tetrameter and trimeter, that 
 Southey wrote his " Thalaba," adding frequently a 
 short syllable at the end of his line : 
 
 He found a woman in the cave, 
 
 A solitary Woman 
 Who by the fire was spinning 
 
 And singing as she spun. 
 The pine boughs were cheerfully blazing, 
 And her face was bright with the flame. 
 
 In the very year, 1855, when Browning published 
 " One Word More," Longfellow had earlier issued 
 " The Song of Hiawatha " in a kindred trochaic rhythm. 
 But the American poet took over from the Finnish 
 "Kalevala" (which had suggested his meter) the 
 device of frequent repetition of the same thought in 
 slightly varied words. This device gave individuality 
 to his lyrical legend, and a pervading gracefulness 
 almost feminine in its delicacy : 
 
 Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree ! 
 Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree I 
 Growing by the rushing river, 
 Tall and stately in the valley I 
 I a light canoe will build me,
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 187 
 
 Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, 
 That shall float upon the river, 
 Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 
 Like a yellow water-lily ! 
 
 Two other of Longfellow's longer poems are also 
 without the assistance which rime may bestow. 
 These are " Evangeline " and "The Courtship of 
 Miles Standish." They are written in what may be 
 described as English hexameters, every line consisting 
 of five dactyls, followed by a single trochee, which 
 supplied the final short syllable that unrimed verse 
 appears to prefer. The choice was singularly felici- 
 tous, especially for " Evangeline." As Dr. Holmes 
 declared, "the hexameter has been often criticized, 
 but I do not believe any other measure could have 
 told that lovely story with such effect, as we feel 
 when carried along the tranquil current of these 
 brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines. Imagine, 
 for a moment, a story like thia minced into octosyl- 
 lables. The poet knows better than his critics the 
 length of step which best befits his muse." The 
 shrewdness of Dr. Holmes's opinion is shown by an 
 experiment tried by Longfellow himself. The poet 
 rewrote one of the most beautiful passages of " Evan- 
 geline," not in octosyllables, but in riming iambic 
 pentameters. The matter was substantially identical 
 in both versions, and only the manner was different ; 
 yet not a little of the charm of the hexameter original 
 has evaporated in the rewriting into rimed penta- 
 meters. 
 
 Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of 
 
 singers, 
 
 Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, 
 Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,
 
 188 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent 
 
 to listen. 
 Plaintive at first were the tones and sad : then soaring to 
 
 madness 
 Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied 
 
 Bacchantes. 
 
 Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation ; 
 Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, 
 As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops 
 Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the 
 
 branches. 
 
 This is the unrimed hexameter original ; and here is 
 the rimed pentameter reworking : 
 
 Upon a spray that overhung the stream 
 The mocking-bird, awaking from his dream, 
 Poured such delirious music from his throat 
 That all the air seemed listening to his note. 
 Plaintive at first the song began, and slow; 
 It breathed of sadness, and of pain and wo; 
 Then, gathering all his notes, abroad he flung 
 The multitudinous music from his tongue, 
 As, after showers, a sudden gust again 
 Upon the leaves shakes down the rattling rain. 
 
 The immediate welcome accorded to " Evangeline " 
 and to its successor in the same meter, " The Courtship 
 of Miles Standish," is proof that the English-speaking 
 peoples found no difficulty in accepting this dactylic 
 hexameter as Longfellow handled it. Almost a novelty 
 in English versification, it was received at once as 
 pleasing to our ears. As Dr. Holmes noted, it met 
 with not a little adverse criticism, mostly from those 
 who applied a false test and who blamed Longfellow 
 for a failure to accomplish what he had never tried 
 to attempt. The dissatisfied critics complained that 
 these English hexameters did not conform exactly to 
 the strict rules of the Greek and Latin hexameter and
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 189 
 
 therefore that they did not suggest to an English ear 
 the full effect made by the classic hexameter on the 
 ears of the Athenians and the Romans. But nowhere 
 did Longfellow claim that his dactylic hexameter was 
 the equivalent in our language of the classic hexameter 
 which depended for a large part of its weight and of 
 its stately march on the terminal spondee, a foot which 
 our language abhors. What Longfellow did was to 
 establish an English hexameter, which the English ear 
 was glad to accept. This English hexameter was un- 
 doubtedly suggested to Longfellow by certain attempts 
 to acclimatize in our versification the classic hexameter ; 
 but the American poet was too accomplished a metrist 
 to have supposed that he could carry over into our 
 accentual language the specific characteristics of any 
 verse-form developed in a quantitative language like 
 the Greek. 
 
 In Greek and in Latin the rhythm is the result of 
 quantity, that is to say, it is caused by the alternation 
 of syllables which are actually long or actually short 
 in the duration of the time taken to pronounce them. 
 In English, rhythm is caused to some slight extent by 
 quantity, but more often by accent, by stress, by the 
 emphasis with which we habitually pronounce one or 
 more syllables in all words containing more than one 
 syllable. An actual length of vowel-sound, a superior 
 accent, a heightening of pitch, any of these or all of 
 them at once, create rhythm in the ears of those who 
 have English for their mother-tongue. Our ears are 
 not trained to feel quantity alone or to receive a rhythm 
 which is purely quantitative. Although it has seemed 
 convenient in these chapters to call the more marked 
 syllables long and the less marked syllables short, this
 
 190 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 was done only after full warning that length by itself 
 does not account for English rhythm. So accentual is 
 our language that the spondee, the foot composed of 
 two longs, can hardly be said to exist in English verse. 
 Milton was able to achieve it now and again, and so 
 was Tennyson ; but we are so habituated to accent that 
 we find it almost impossible to give equal weight to 
 two successive syllables. 
 
 As a result of this fundamental difference between 
 the rhythmic basis of Greek and Latin versification 
 and the rhythmic basis of English versification, any 
 attempt to import into our language the classical 
 meters (founded on quantity alone) is foredoomed to 
 failure. Such an attempt can be only the amusement 
 of the learned ; it cannot aspire to anything else ; it 
 must be foreign to any consideration of modern Eng- 
 lish versification. And even the learned are rarely 
 satisfied with any particular imitation in English of 
 the specific characteristics of the classical writer. What 
 one scholar has devised another scholar is likely to find 
 fault with. Coleridge, for example, taking a hint from 
 Schiller, tried to exemplify the classical hexameter and 
 pentameter in these two lines : 
 
 In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column 
 In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. 
 
 But this distich did not meet with Tennyson's appro- 
 bation ; and he revised it, striving to make it quanti- 
 tative rather than accentual : 
 
 Up springs hexameter, with might, as a fountain arising, 
 Lightly the fountain falls, lightly the pentameter. 
 
 It may even be doubted whether Tennyson would 
 have been any better pleased with Longfellow's at- 
 tempt than he was with Coleridge's :
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 191 
 
 In hexameter plunges the headlong cataract downward, 
 In pentameter up whirls the eddying mist. 
 
 In two other lines Coleridge sought not only to sug- 
 gest in English verse the largeness and the force of 
 the Homeric hexameter, but also to reproduce its met- 
 rical arrangement : 
 
 Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows 
 Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean. 
 
 It is possible that these two lines were lingering in 
 Tennyson's memory when he dismissed contemptuously 
 the various strivings to carry over into English the 
 " surge and thunder of the Odyssey " : 
 
 These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer I 
 No but a most burlesque barbarous experiment. 
 
 When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England? 
 When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon ? 
 
 Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us, 
 Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters. 
 
 English poets of high distinction, Tennyson and 
 Swinburne among them, have sportively toyed with 
 the technical difficulty of writing sapphics and alcaics 
 in English. At least one of these interesting experi- 
 ments proved to be truly a poem, valuable in itself 
 apart from the overcoming of the metrical difficulties. 
 This is Tennyson's poem in alcaics on " Milton " : 
 
 O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, 
 O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, 
 
 God-gifted organ-voice of England, 
 
 Milton, a name to resound for ages ; 
 Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, 
 Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories. 
 
 Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean 
 
 Rings to the roar of an angel onset ! 
 Me rather all that bowery loneliness, 
 The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
 
 192 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And bloom profuse and cedar arches 
 
 Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, 
 Where some refulgent sunset of India 
 Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, 
 And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods 
 Whisper in odorous heights of even. 
 
 For the several lyrists this exercise in exotic meters 
 may have been a valuable gymnastic ; but it means little 
 to the lovers of English poetry. The experiments may 
 not be burlesque and barbarous ; they may be refined 
 and delicate ; but they remain experiments, none the 
 less, and experiments doomed to ultimate failure. 
 Perhaps the final word on the subject was uttered 
 three centuries ago by Thomas Nash : " The hexa- 
 meter I grant to be a gentleman of an ancient house 
 (so is many an English beggar); yet this clime of 
 ours he cannot thrive in ; he goes twitching and hop- 
 ping, retaining no part of that stately, smooth gait, of 
 which he vaunts himself among the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans." The sapphic and the alcaic in English are no 
 better off than the hexameter ; they cannot divest 
 themselves of the strenuous effort and of the self-con- 
 scious artifice that have gone to their making. With 
 the aid of the refrain and of alliteration and of repeti- 
 tion, English lyrists have won us to accept lyrics de- 
 void of rime ; but they have been able to do this only 
 when they have chosen metrical forms native to our 
 tongue, or at least not hostile to our system of accent- 
 ual rhythm. 
 
 Another foreign device, not transplanted from a 
 dead language, but taken over from another modern 
 tongue, was essayed by George Eliot in one of the 
 songs of " The Spanish Gipsy." As her theme was 
 Spanish she borrowed from Spanish poetry a system
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 193 
 
 of semi-riming which is known as assonance, the 
 vowel-sounds being repeated exactly while the conso- 
 nants which follow these vowel-sounds may vary at the 
 caprice of the poet. Here are two stanzas : 
 
 Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness, 
 
 Lithe as panther forest-roaming, 
 Long-armed iiaiad, when she dances, 
 
 On a stream of ether floating 
 
 Bright, O bright Fedalma ! 
 
 Form all curves like softness drifted, 
 Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling, 
 
 Far-off music slowly winge'd, 
 Gently rising, gently sinking 
 
 Bright, O bright Fedalma ! 
 
 The long o of roaming is repeated in floating ; and 
 the short a and short e of blackness are echoed in 
 dances. To the Spanish ear, trained to catch this re- 
 petition of the vowel-sound, assonance is as accept- 
 able as actual rime ; but to the English ear there is 
 scarcely a suggestion of the author's intent to marry 
 blackness and dances. To us this stanza is as though 
 it was absolutely unrimed. The assonance is appre- 
 hended only by those who are learned enough to know 
 that it is employed by the Spaniards. It is quite pos- 
 sible that our ears, once possessed of this knowledge, 
 might be trained to follow the recurring vowels ; but 
 this could be achieved only by an effort which would 
 violate the Economy of Attention. In blackness and 
 dances the assonance extends to two syllables and 
 thereby becomes twice as difficult for us to perceive. 
 In floating and roaming there is identity of the termi- 
 nal short syllable ; and the long o might carry over 
 its impression from one line to another. This bolder
 
 194 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 and more obvious assonance is akin to that with which 
 we are already familiar in proverbs and folk-rimes : 
 
 Leave them alone 
 And they '11 come home. 
 
 But in these more or less accidental variations from 
 strict rime, the changing consonants which follow 
 the unchanged vowel-sound do not greatly vary. In 
 alone and home, the n and the m are easily confounded 
 when sung. 
 
 In Matthew Arnold's " The Future," the lines are 
 unrimed ; but the keen ears of an accomplished student 
 of verse have discovered a play of assonance, that is, 
 of occasional identity of the final vowels of certain 
 pairs of lines. 
 
 Haply,' the river of Time 
 
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge 
 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 
 On a wider, statelier stream 
 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 
 Of its early mountainous shore, 
 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 
 And the width of the waters, the hush 
 
 Of the gray expanse where he floats, 
 
 Freshening its current and spotted vrithfoam 
 
 As it draws to the ocean, may strike 
 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast, 
 
 As the pale waste widens around him, 
 
 As the banks fade dimmer away, 
 
 As the stars come out, and the night-wtVu? 
 
 Brings up the stream 
 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. 
 
 Arnold has pleased the ear by the casual repetition 
 of the same vowel-sound without creating any exact 
 expectation of this recurrence. 
 
 In the chapter on the ballade, the rondeau and the
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 195 
 
 other fixed forms, one of these forms was omitted, the 
 sestina, because it was originally composed without 
 rime. The sestina is an awkward and uninviting form, 
 which is quite as effective without rime as with it. 
 Although it has tempted poets as variously gifted as 
 Swinburne and Kipling, it cannot be said to have 
 demonstrated its worthiness. It is so forced in its for- 
 mality that it takes on an aspect of f reakishness ; and 
 so cumbrous is its structure that it can be seized by 
 the ear only as the result of undue exertion. Edmund 
 Gosse has written an unrimed sestina, of which this is 
 the first stanza : 
 
 In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose, 
 Arnaut, great master of the lore of love, 
 First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart, 
 For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang, 
 And for her sake he broke the bonds of rime, 
 And in this sabler measure had bis too. 
 
 The six terminal words reappear in changing order 
 at the line-ends of all the other five stanzas, wo ending 
 the first line of the second stanza, and the other five 
 words following in turn, the final line ending with 
 heart. And heart then becomes the terminal word of 
 the first line of the third stanza, followed by wo, with 
 the rest of them tagging after. There is an envoy of 
 three lines, in which we find one half of the six words 
 at the ends of the lines and the other half concealed 
 in the middle : 
 
 Ah ! Sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rime, 
 The men of old who sang, were great at heart, 
 Yet have we too known wo, and worn their rose. 
 
 Swinburne, following the example of the French- 
 man, Gramont, tipped the six-line staves of his sestina
 
 196 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 with rimes ; and Kipling, eschewing rime, made use 
 of the dialect of Tommy Atkins for his " Sestina of the 
 Tramp Royal." But rimed or unrimed, picturesquely 
 lyrical or realistically prosaic, the sestina is never likely 
 to win favor in the ears of listeners whose native speech 
 is English. Its arbitrary artificiality is too subtle ; and 
 the difficulty vanquished is not here an adequate re- 
 ward. 
 
 At the opposite extreme from the cumbersome re- 
 straint which is imposed by the laws of the sestina is 
 the lawlessness which is found in the most of Walt 
 Whitman's earlier poems. Many poets of our lan- 
 guage have claimed the full freedom which results 
 from rejecting the strict stanza and the exact metrical 
 equivalence of corresponding lines. In Matthew Ar- 
 nold's " The Strayed Reveler," for example, we cannot 
 decide with certainty just what the meter may be, so 
 large and sweeping is the rhythmical flow of the poem. 
 Whitman went still further ; he declared a revolt from 
 all the accepted conventions of English versification. 
 He proclaimed the right to be a law unto himself and 
 asserted substantially that his formlessness was its own 
 excuse for being. He believed that he had rejected all 
 tradition, yet he had plainly come under the influ- 
 ence of Blake, and he had been impressed also by the 
 mighty movement of the Hebrew rhapsodists as this 
 had been carried over into English by the translators 
 under King James. As a result of this theory, many 
 passages of Whitman reveal themselves as only a 
 little removed from prose ; they fail to give us exactly 
 the kind of pleasure which we have been in the habit 
 of expecting from poetry. Whitman is most impres- 
 sive when he comes nearest to shapeliness of structure
 
 RIMELESS STANZAS 197 
 
 and when he approaches most closely to the flowing 
 rhythm which delights us in Arnold's poem, for ex- 
 ample, and in some of Blake's. Desiring to break 
 away from all the restrictions, he has won his warmest 
 welcome when his verse has been most in accord with 
 our normal expectation. It is significant that the one 
 poem of Whitman's which has been taken to heart 
 by the American people, " O Captain ! My Captain," 
 is the lyric of his which unhesitatingly accepts the 
 current conventions of English verse ; it is in stanza 
 and in rime, and it has a refrain. It is significant also 
 that those of his other poems which are most admired 
 are those in which he most widely departed from his 
 own iconoclastic theories and in which he is most 
 evidently following the broader current of English 
 poetry. Consider, for example, " When Lilacs last in 
 the Dooryard Bloom'd," one of his threnodies for 
 Lincoln : 
 
 When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, 
 
 And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the 
 
 night, 
 I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 
 
 Ever-retnrning spring, trinity sure you bring, 
 
 Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 
 
 And thought of him I love. 
 
 Here is another fragment from the same lofty and 
 aspiring lyric : 
 
 O, how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ? 
 And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has 
 
 gone? 
 And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ? 
 
 Sea-winds blown from east and west, 
 
 Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the
 
 198 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting, 
 These and with these and the breath of my chant, 
 I '11 perfume the grave of him I love. 
 
 This may seem irregular, but it is scarcely more ir- 
 regular than Arnold's " The Strayed Reveler " or than 
 Southey's " Thalaba." It is free and spontaneous, but 
 it carries at least the suggestion of a definite form. It 
 is the utterance of deep emotion, liberal and surging, 
 but sustained and restrained by art. It has a technic 
 of its own, not narrow and confined, not easily de- 
 clared with precision, and yet felt and appreciated. 
 Whitman's best poetry is the work of his maturity, 
 when he had fully mastered his new form, which, as 
 Professor Carpenter put it, " hovered between prose 
 and verse." He had found his instrument at last ; " it 
 was living, musical, rhythmical, impassioned speech. 
 If it had a prototype or an origin, it may be said to 
 have been born of the rhythm which he heard in na- 
 ture and of his memories of the arias and recitatives 
 of the Italian opera." 
 
 " A man who finds that his gloves cripple him does 
 right in drawing them off," said Stedman ; " at first 
 Whitman certainly meant to escape all technic. But 
 genius, in spite of itself, makes works that stand the 
 test of scientific laws." And the keen critic added 
 that " unrimed verse, the easiest to write, is the 
 hardest to excel in, and no measure for a bardling." 
 What is too easy is not worth while ; and the greatest 
 artists are those who have most eagerly accepted the 
 specific limitations under which a given piece of work 
 had to be done ; so far from rejecting technic, they 
 have ever been athirst for new devices ; and it has 
 been their pride always to prove that although bound,
 
 RB1ELESS STANZAS 199 
 
 they could be free. And this Whitman came in time 
 to feel, even though he may never have confessed it 
 even to himself. Those move easiest who have learned 
 to dance ; and in " When Lilacs last in the Dooryard 
 Bloom'd" Whitman proved he had devised a form, 
 loose, large and free, exactly suited to his own needs.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE COUPLET 
 
 With the substitution of heroic for unrimed verse, the theory and 
 practice of harmony in English composition were altered. What was 
 essentially national in our poetry the music of sustained periods, 
 elastic in their structure, and governed by the subtlest laws of melody 
 in recurring consonants and vowels was sacrificed for the artificial 
 eloquence and monotonous cadence of the couplet. For a century and 
 a half the summit of all excellence in versification was the construc- 
 tion of neat pairs of lines, smooth indeed and polished, but scarcely 
 varying in their form. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS : Blank Verse. 
 
 FOR the expression of lyrical sentiment, the poets have 
 generally chosen some form of the stanza, a single 
 quatrain, an octave, a sonnet, a ballade, or a sequence 
 of whatever unit they have deemed most fit for their 
 purpose. For narrative, they have also employed not 
 infrequently a succession of stanzas, notably in the 
 ballad, which sets forth a story running over from 
 one quatrain into another until the tale is told. But 
 more often the poets have preferred not to cut up their 
 narrative into equal parts and not to confine them- 
 selves within the narrow limits of any stanza-form. 
 
 If the poet decides that his story will profit by the 
 aid of rime, he is likely to select one of three meters, 
 anapestic tetrameter, iambic tetrameter, or iambic 
 pentameter, generally riming in couplets. Of these 
 three the iambic pentameter, commonly known as the 
 " heroic couplet," has been most frequently employed. 
 The heroic couplet has served not only for narrative, 
 but also for contemplative, philosophic, descriptive
 
 THE COUPLET 201 
 
 and satiric expression. It demands more detailed con- 
 sideration here than either of the other meters ; and 
 these had therefore better be discussed briefly before 
 the heroic couplet itself is analyzed. And as the ana- 
 pestic tetrameter has been less often employed than 
 the iambic tetrameter, it may be considered first. 
 
 Although Byron has chosen to print " The Destruc- 
 tion of Sennacherib " in stanzas of four lines each, its 
 movement is continuous and the unit of construction 
 rather is the single couplet than the pair of couplets 
 joined to suggest a quatrain to the eye. The ear would 
 find it almost impossible to detect any break between 
 the successive quatrains. Indeed, the three final stanzas 
 begin each of them with an and which ties them 
 closely to their predecessor : 
 
 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
 And his cohorts were gleamiug in purple and gold ; 
 Aiid the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
 When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 
 
 Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, 
 That host with their banners at sunset were seen : 
 Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, 
 That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown. 
 
 For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, 
 And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd ; 
 And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill, 
 And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still I 
 
 And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
 But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride : 
 And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, 
 And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 
 
 And there lay the rider distorted and pale, 
 
 With the dew on his brow, and the rust on bis mail ;
 
 802 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 
 The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. 
 
 And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, 
 And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ; 
 And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
 Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! 
 
 The essential quality of this meter, as it is disclosed 
 in this poem of Byron's, is swiftness ; it has an irre- 
 sistible onward rush, due to the anapestic rhythm it- 
 self. This is the reason why Browning used anapests 
 in his galloping lines on " How They Brought the Good 
 News from Ghent to Aix." 
 
 This same rapidity we find earlier, here and there, 
 in Dryden's " Alexander's Feast," for example, in 
 these two lines : 
 
 The princes applaud, with a furious joy ; 
 
 And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy. 
 
 Yet the same meter is employed by Cowper in 
 " The Poplar Field," wherein he is striving rather for 
 an unhurried effect : 
 
 The poplars are felled ; farewell to the shade, 
 And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade ; 
 The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves, 
 Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. 
 Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view 
 Of my favorite field, and the bank where they grew, 
 And now in the grass behold they are laid, 
 And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade. 
 
 Although Cowper chose this meter for a contempla- 
 tive poem, it has been employed most often in humor- 
 ous verse, and more especially in satire. Its briskness, 
 its facility, its easy brilliancy aid the versifier to make 
 his lines glittering and pointed. There can be no bet-
 
 THE COUPLET 20s 
 
 ter example of this than Goldsmith's delicate and 
 
 delightful " Retaliation " : 
 
 Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, 
 
 He has not left a wiser or better behind. 
 
 His pencil was striking, resistless and grand ; 
 
 His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; 
 
 Still born to improve us in every part, 
 
 His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 
 
 To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering ; 
 
 When they judged without skill, he was still hard of bearing ; 
 
 When they talked of Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 
 
 He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff. 
 
 Possibly it was a recalling of the success with which 
 Goldsmith had used this meter for his gallery of por- 
 traits that led Lowell to choose it also for the series 
 of character-studies which he included in " A Fable 
 for Critics," in which he is as acute as Goldsmith, al- 
 though a little less tolerant, as well as a little more 
 wilfully clever in the invention of novel rimes : 
 
 There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, 
 Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge, 
 Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 
 In a way to make people of common sense damn meters, 
 Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, 
 But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind. 
 
 Lowell's criticism of Bryant is as candid and as acute 
 as his criticism of Poe ; and it is also quite as ingen- 
 ious in its riming and in its rhythmic swing : 
 
 There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified 
 
 As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is iguified, 
 
 Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' nights 
 
 With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. 
 
 He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation 
 
 (There 's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation), 
 
 Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,
 
 204 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on, 
 He 's too smooth and polished to hang any zeal on : 
 Unqualified merits, I '11 grant, if you choose, he has 'em, 
 But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm ; 
 If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 
 Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. 
 
 These extracts from Goldsmith and from Lowell 
 serve to exemplify the privilege of commingling double 
 and treble rimes with the single rimes which are 
 the staple of the anapestic tetrameter. Indeed, when 
 this meter is used for a humorous or satiric purpose 
 there is an almost irresistible temptation to devise un- 
 expected rimes and to decorate the edges with sound- 
 combinations never before attempted. The lyrist has 
 also the privilege of substituting iambics for anapests, 
 more often in the first foot, but also on occasion in 
 the second or third ; although this privilege can be 
 availed of only at the peril of slackening the swift 
 movement. And the versifier may even inject, now 
 and again, a couplet of dimeters, without retarding 
 the flow of his lines. This is what Barbara did unhes- 
 itatingly in his " Ingoldsby Legends," as will be seen 
 in this extract from " The Jackdaw of Rheims " : 
 
 The Cardinal rose with a dignified look, 
 
 He called for his candle, his bell, and his book : 
 
 In holy anger, and pious grief, 
 
 He solemnly curs'd that rascally thief ! 
 
 He curs'd him at board, he curs'd him in bed, 
 
 From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head ! 
 
 He curs'd him in sleeping, that every night 
 
 He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright ; 
 
 He curs'd him in eating, he curs'd him in drinking, 
 
 He curs'd him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking ; 
 
 He curs'd him in sitting, in standing, in lying ; 
 
 He curs'd him in walking, in riding, in flying ; 
 
 He curs'd him in living, he curs'd him dying I
 
 THE COUPLET 205 
 
 Never was heard such a terrible curse I 
 
 But what gave rise 
 
 To no little surprise, 
 Nobody seem'd a penny the worse ! 
 
 The anapestic tetrameter is thus seen to have ex- 
 traordinary flexibility ; it may rime in couplets or in 
 triplets or for four and five lines in succession ; it 
 may utilize at will single or double or treble rimes ; 
 it may shrink to eight or nine syllables, as in Bar- 
 ham's 
 
 In holy anger, and pious grief, 
 
 or it may expand to fourteen syllables, as in Lowell's 
 As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified. 
 
 It can go on frolicking and rollicking in the utmost 
 high spirits, with the rushing tumult of a cataract. 
 
 Certain of the same qualities, especially the swift- 
 ness, although a little relaxed, can be found also in the 
 iambic tetrameter, particularly when it is used for 
 satire as it was by Butler, by Churchill and by Trum- 
 bull. But what the iambic tetrameter lacks in speed, 
 it makes up in sententiousness, as we note in the fa- 
 miliar couplets of " McFingal " : 
 
 But rogue ne'er yet felt halter draw, 
 With good opinion of the law, 
 
 and 
 
 For optics sharp it needs, I ween, 
 To see what never can be seen. 
 
 The same pregnant concision is to be found in Butler : 
 
 Great conquerors greater glories gain 
 By foes in triumph led than slain, 
 and 
 
 Ay me ! what perils do environ 
 
 The man that meddles with cold iron t
 
 206 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Butler indulges also in the arbitrary and inventive 
 riming that we find later in Lowell : 
 
 When pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, 
 la beat with fist instead of a stick. 
 
 (Strictly speaking, this is not a true rime, since the 
 second line merely repeats without the proper varia- 
 tion the terminal sound of the first line.) 
 
 The iambic tetrameter has served other purposes 
 than satire. Chaucer employed it in " The House of 
 Fame," Milton in " II Penseroso," Burns in " Tarn 
 o' Shanter," Byron in "The Prisoner of Chillon," 
 Wordsworth in " The White Doe," Scott in " Mar- 
 mion " and " The Lady of the Lake," Whittier in 
 " Maud Muller " and " Barbara Frietchie." Scott, in- 
 deed, was frank in declaring his preference for the 
 iambic tetrameter over the pentameter for purposes 
 of narrative, although perhaps not for descriptive 
 poetry. He held that the tetrameter " is capable of 
 certain varieties denied to the heroic couplet. Double 
 rimes, for instance, are congenial to it. ... You 
 may also render it more or less rapid by retaining or 
 dropping an occasional syllable. Lastly, it runs better 
 into sentences than any length of line I know, as it 
 corresponds, upon an average view of our punctua- 
 tion, very commonly with the proper and usual space 
 between comma and comma." And then Scott added, 
 as a final reason for his liking, that he had " somehow 
 a better knack at this " meter than at the longer 
 pentameter. In other words, Scott found iambic te- 
 trameters easy to write ; and so they are ; and this 
 facility is often fatal to them, since they may flow too 
 fast and without sufficient thought and emotion be-
 
 THE COUPLET 207 
 
 hind them. As Holmes pointed out, the iambic tetra- 
 meter does not conform to our normal breathing; 
 it forces us to hurry and to take short breaths. It 
 may be rapid, as indeed it is in the movement of 
 Scott's narrative passages ; but it tends hi tune to be fa- 
 tiguing. It lacks the broader scope of the pentameter, 
 which is better adjusted to our natural inspiration 
 and expiration. Yet Scott was right in thinking that 
 it was a satisfactory meter for the bold and lusty 
 deeds he desired to set forth in verse ; and he modi- 
 fied its rigidity under two influences. One of these 
 was the old English ballad which he had absorbed 
 so absolutely, and from which he borrowed the privi- 
 lege of dropping the strict couplet, now and then, 
 and employing a quatrain with its interlaced runes, 
 and with its occasional trimeter lines to relieve the 
 monotony of the tetrameter. And the other influ- 
 ence was that of Coleridge's " Christabel," which he 
 had seen or heard before its publication. Coleridge 
 had Deliberately departed from the strict eight sylla- 
 bles of the rigid iambic tetrameter as that had been 
 written by his immediate predecessors. He claimed the 
 right to vary iambics with anapests and to drop out 
 syllables at will, if the sense explained the resulting 
 pause ; he professed to reserve the privilege of varying 
 the number of syllables in any line from seven to 
 twelve as long as he retained the four long syllables 
 which were the backbone of the meter. As a matter 
 of fact, he went so far as to put only four syllables 
 into one of his lines : 
 
 'T is the middle of night by the castle clock, 
 And the owls have awakened the crowing cock, 
 Tu whit 1 Tu whoo i
 
 208 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Here Coleridge is rather anapestic than iambic, 
 whereas Scott following him is more regularly iambic, 
 although not without an occasional anapest, which gives 
 enhanced rapidity to his lines : 
 
 "Now, in good sooth," Lord Marmion cried, 
 
 *' Were I in warlike wise to ride, 
 A better guard I would not lack 
 Than your stout forayers at my back; 
 But as in form of peace I go, 
 A friendly messenger, to know 
 Why, through all Scotland, near and far, 
 Their king is mustering troops for war, 
 The sight of plundering Border spears 
 Might justify suspicious fears, 
 And deadly feud or thirst of spoil 
 Break out in some unseemly broil." 
 
 It is curious that Scott, brought up on the iambic 
 pentameter, which still retained its vogue in his youth, 
 should have abandoned it in his narrative poems, 
 when his great predecessors in the art of story-telling 
 in verse, Chaucer and Dryden, long familiar with the 
 tetrameter, seem to have introduced the pentameter 
 as an ampler instrument for the same purpose. 
 Chaucer and Dryden are not only greater poets than 
 Scott ; they are also far more consummate metrists, 
 far more careful and conscientious artists in verse. 
 The explanation of Scott's reversion to the meter 
 Chaucer had abandoned is probably to be found in 
 the fact that he found the pentameter after it had 
 received the impress of Pope, whereby it had lost not a 
 little of the easy spontaneity with which Chaucer had 
 endowed it. In Pope's hands the iambic pentameter 
 had stiffened; it had become antithetic and artifi- 
 cial. There is more than a little truth in Cowper's
 
 THE COUPLET 209 
 
 assertion that Pope had " made poetry a mere mechanic 
 art " ; at least Pope had made the mechanism of 
 verse more obvious, and never more obvious than in 
 his handling of the heroic couplet. Perhaps the dif- 
 ference between this meter as Pope used it and as 
 Chaucer had used it can be indicated by declaring that 
 in Pope's hands it is strictly the heroic couplet, with 
 the thought firmly clamped within two riming lines, 
 whereas in Chaucer it is rather to be called iambic 
 pentameter flowing ever freely from line to line with 
 no rigid limitation of the sense within the successive 
 pairs of rimes. 
 
 Although the main purpose of the present book is 
 not to give the history of English versification but to 
 dwell on its principles and on its practice, the import- 
 ance of the rimed iambic pentameter is such that 
 a brief chronological survey is here justifiable, in- 
 deed, the rich variety of which this meter is capable 
 can best be shown by considering its development. 
 The easy amplitude of the iambic pentameter as 
 Chaucer handled it will be found also in Spenser's 
 treatment. It retained its fluidity and openness in 
 Marlowe and Shakspere; but it tightened and 
 stiffened in Ben Jonson's hands. Waller refined on 
 Jonson and Pope on Waller, until the heroic couplet 
 became antithetical, exactly balanced, with the mean- 
 ing rigidly compacted into a single line or at most 
 within the pair of rimes. At its worst the heroic 
 couplet as Pope had sharpened and polished it justi- 
 fies Lowell's assertion that " Mr. Pope's versification 
 was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, 
 in which we could fancy, after long listening, a certain 
 kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a
 
 210 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all." And in " A 
 Fable for Critics" Lowell declared that the heroic 
 couplet was 
 
 what I call a sham meter, 
 But many admire it, the English pentameter. 
 
 Here Lowell is in disaccord with Holmes, who liked 
 to write the iambic pentameter and who loved to 
 praise it : 
 
 The proud heroic^ with its pulse-like beat, 
 Kings like the cymbals, clashing as they meet. 
 
 This couplet is from one of his earlier poems ; and 
 in one of his later lyrics Holmes with even more 
 emphasis again declared the faith that was in him : 
 
 And so the hand that takes the lyre for you 
 
 Plays the old tune on strings that once were new. 
 
 Nor let the rimester of the hour deride 
 
 The straight-backed measure with its stately stride, 
 
 It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope; 
 
 It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope; 
 
 In Goldsmith's verse it learned a sweeter strain; 
 
 Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain; 
 
 I smile to listen while the critic's scorn 
 
 Flouts the proud purple kings have nobly worn. 
 
 Holmes himself relished the heroic couplet as it 
 had been edged and pointed by Pope ; and though he 
 cited Goldsmith and Campbell, he failed to mention 
 the later poets who have used the iambic pentameter 
 with the same large liberty that Chaucer enjoyed. 
 Leigh Hunt led the way in emancipating this meter, 
 and he was followed immediately by Keats and Shelley. 
 And later it was employed by Swinburne and Morris, 
 with a freedom from mere antithesis, which made this 
 measure in their hands a very different instrument
 
 THE COUPLET 211 
 
 from what it had been in the hands of Pope and of 
 his less gifted disciples. 
 
 But the full possibilities of the iambic pentameter 
 can best be shown by a sequence of selections from 
 successive poets. Here is an extract from the pro- 
 log to the " Canterbury Tales " : 
 
 A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, 
 That fro the tyme that he first bigan 
 To riden out, he loved chivalrie, 
 Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie. 
 Ful worthy was he iu his lorde's werre, 
 And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre, 
 As wel in cristendom as in hetheuesse, 
 And evere honoured for his wortkynesse. 
 
 These lines have the flowing ease so characteristic 
 of Chaucer. The rimes are not sharply emphasized 
 and the sense is not shut up in a line or even in a 
 couplet. Neither the line nor the couplet is the unit 
 of structure. And these same characteristics are visi- 
 ble also in this passage, from Spenser's " Shepherd's 
 Calendar": 
 
 There grewe an aged Tree on the greene, 
 A goodly Oake sometime had it bene. 
 With armes full strong and lergely display'd, 
 But of their leaves they were disarayde: 
 The bodie bigge, and mightely pight, 
 Thoroughly rooted, and of wonderous height, 
 Whilome had bene the King of the field, 
 And mochell mast to the husband did yielde, 
 And with his nuts larded many swine: 
 But now the gray mosse marred his rine; 
 His bared boughes were beaten with stormes, 
 His toppe was bald, and wasted with wormes. 
 
 This may lack the spontaneity of Chaucer's verse ; 
 but a little awkward as it may be, it runs on with its 
 initial impetus, never arrested arbitrarily at the end
 
 212 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 of a line or a couplet. The movement of the narrative 
 is possibly a little slower than in these lines from 
 Marlowe's " Hero and Leander " : 
 
 On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood, 
 
 In view and opposite two cities stood, 
 
 Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's might; 
 
 The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight. 
 
 At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair, 
 
 Whom young Apollo courted for her hair, 
 
 And offer'd as a dower his burning throne, 
 
 Where she should sit, for men to gaze upon. 
 
 The outside of her garments were of lawn, 
 
 The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn; 
 
 Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove, 
 
 Where Venus in her naked glory strove 
 
 To please the careless and disdainful eyes 
 
 Of proud Adonis, that before her lies. 
 
 The example from Shakspere may be taken from 
 an early play, written when he was most under the 
 influence of Marlowe. Here is part of a speech from 
 " Love's Labor 's Lost " : 
 
 Under the cool shade of a sycamore 
 I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour ; 
 When, lo ! to interrupt my purpos'd rest, 
 Toward that shade I might behold address'd 
 The King and his companions. Warily 
 I stole into a neighbor thicket by, 
 And overheard what you shall overbear, 
 That, by and by, disguis'd they will be here. 
 Their herald is a pretty knavish page, 
 That well by heart hath conn'd his embassage. 
 Action and accent did they teach him there ; 
 "Thus must thou speak," and "thus thy body bear" ; 
 And ever and anon they made a doubt 
 Presence majestical would put him out. 
 
 In all these specimens of iambic pentameter from 
 Chaucer to Shakspere we find the sense gliding on from
 
 THE COUPLET 213 
 
 line to line, with no undue emphasis on the rimes and 
 with no effort to arrest the movement within the limit of 
 the couplet. In Ben Jonson, we begin to find the mo- 
 tion less easy; we catch a dawning desire for antithesis ; 
 we discover already a certain snap at the end of the 
 line ; we perceive an increasing tendency toward sen- 
 tentiousness ; and our attention is more often called to 
 the couplet itself. These characteristics are already 
 visible in Jonson's epigram "To my mere English 
 Censure " : 
 
 To thee, my way in epigrams seems new, 
 When both it is the old way_. and the true. 
 Thou sayst that cannot be ; for thou hast seen 
 Davis and Weever, and the best have been. 
 And mine come nothing like. I hope so ; yet, 
 As theirs did with thee, mine might credit get. 
 If thou 'dst but use thy faith, as thou didst then, 
 When tbou wert wont t' admire, not censure men. 
 Prithee believe still, and judge not so fast : 
 Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast. 
 
 The characteristics which we can only glimpse in 
 Jonson are overtly revealed in Waller. Dry den de- 
 clared that " the excellence and dignity of rime were 
 never fully known until Mr. Waller taught it ; he first 
 made writing easily an art, first showed us to conclude 
 the sense, most commonly in distichs, which in the verse 
 of those before him runs on for so many lines together, 
 that the reader is out of breath to overtake it." It was 
 Waller who pointed the path to Dryden himself and 
 after Dryden to Pope. In his hands the couplet became 
 the obvious unit of structure ; in fact, in his verse, the 
 poem had the unity only of a chain of which the coup- 
 lets are the several links. Here is Waller's account of 
 " His Majesty's Escape " :
 
 214 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 While to his harp divine Arion sings 
 
 The loves and conquests of our Albion kings ; 
 
 Of the fourth Edward was his noble song, 
 
 Fierce, goodly, valiant, beautiful and young ; 
 
 He rent the crown from vanquished Henry's head, 
 
 Raised the White Rose, and trampled on the Red, 
 
 Till love, triumphing o'er the victor's pride, 
 
 Brought Mars and Warwick to the conquered side f 
 
 Neglected Warwick, whose bold hand like fate, 
 
 Gives and resumes the sceptre of our state, 
 
 Woos for his master, and with double shame, 
 
 Himself deluded, mocks the princely dame, 
 
 The Lady Bona, whom just anger burns, 
 
 And foreign war with civil rage returns ; 
 
 Ah ! spare your swords, where beauty is to blame, 
 
 Love gave the affront, and must repair the same, 
 
 When France shall boast of her, whose conquering eyes 
 
 Have made the best of English hearts their prize, 
 
 Have power to alter the decrees of fate, 
 
 And change again the counsels of our state. 
 
 Dryden followed Waller and easily bettered his 
 model because lie was truly a poet, which Waller 
 chanced to be only in a lyric or two, almost by acci- 
 dent. Dryden refused to let his meaning run on line 
 after line. He isolated the couplet, and thus empha- 
 sized the importance of the rime. He yielded to a 
 rhetorical temptation and used antithesis to balance 
 his lines. His verse became compacter and more sen- 
 tentious, because he relied more often on his wit than 
 on his imagination. In his hands the iambic pentame- 
 ter ought rather to be described as the heroic couplet ; 
 and no one has used this implement with more certain 
 mastery than Dryden. Here is a fragment from one of 
 his satires, the famous portrait of the infamous Duke 
 of Buckingham : 
 
 Some of their chiefs were princes of the land : 
 In the first rank of these did Zimri stand ;
 
 THE COUPLET 15 
 
 A man so various, that he seemed to be 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong ; 
 Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon : 
 Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
 Blest madman, who could every hour employ, 
 With something new to wish, or to enjoy ! 
 Railing and praising were his usual themes ; 
 And both, to show his judgment, in extremes : 
 So over-violent, or over-civil, 
 That every man, with him, was God or Devil. 
 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art : 
 Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 
 Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late. 
 He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
 He laughed himself from court ; then sought relief 
 By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief ; 
 For, spite of him, the weight of business fell 
 On Absalom and wise Achitophel : 
 Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft, 
 He left not faction, but of that was left. 
 
 The heroic couplet, which seems to be best fitted for 
 satire, Dryden employed also in narrative, with the 
 same certainty of stroke. Here is his spirited descrip- 
 tion of a tourney in " Palamon and Arcite " : 
 
 At this the challenger, with fierce defy, 
 
 His trumpet sounds; the challeng'd makes reply : 
 
 With clangor rings the field, resounds the vaulted iky. 
 
 Their vizors clos'd, their lances in the rest, 
 
 Or at the helmet pointed, or the crest, 
 
 They vanish from the barrier, speed the race, 
 
 And spurring see decrease the middle space. 
 
 A cloud of smoke envelops either host, 
 
 And all at once the combatants are lost : 
 
 Darkling they join adverse, and shock unseen, 
 
 Coursers with coursers justling, men with men;
 
 216 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 As laboring in eclipse, a while they stay, 
 Till the next blast of wind restores the day. 
 They look anew; the beauteous form of fight 
 Is chang'd, and war appears a grisly sight. 
 Two troops in fair array one moment show'd, 
 The next, a field with fallen bodies strow'd: 
 Not half the number in their seats are found; 
 But men and steeds lie grov'ling on the ground. 
 The points of spears are stuck within the shield, 
 The steeds without their riders scour the field. 
 The knights, unhors'd, on foot renew the fight; 
 The glitt'ring fauchions cast a gleaming light: 
 Hauberks and helms are hew'd with many a wound ; 
 Out spins the streaming blood, and dyes the ground. 
 
 Pope followed Dryden as Dryden had followed 
 Waller, continuing and developing the tendencies which 
 are visible in the verse of these immediate predeces- 
 sors. He lacked the bold imagination of Dryden, but 
 he was a more meticulous artist. There was often a 
 large affluence about Dryden, whereas Pope was 
 rather a miser than a spendthrift. He was always a 
 deliberate and conscientious craftsman in verse, with a 
 code of his own to which he conformed at whatever cost 
 of toil. He relied on antithesis for much of his rhetor- 
 ical effect ; indeed, the suggestion might be ventured 
 that he is rather a rhetorician in rime than a true 
 poet. He preached what he practised ; and the formula 
 of the heroic couplet as he had perfected it was free 
 to all who came after. His method was so easily ac- 
 quired that almost anybody could set up for a poet, 
 who accepted Pope's rules and trod in Pope's own 
 footsteps ; and thus in time the iambic pentameter it- 
 self was emptied of its vitality by dint of uninspired 
 imitation, until Lowell was justified in his assertion 
 that " the measure is so facile that one soon loses one's
 
 THE COUPLET 217 
 
 sense of the difference between what sounds like some- 
 thing and what really is something." 
 
 In his versified " Essay on Criticism," Pope laid 
 down the law by which he wished to be judged. Here is 
 one of the cleverest and most characteristic passages 
 in which he adroitly exemplifies the doctrine he is de- 
 claring : 
 
 But most by Numbers judge a poet's song, 
 
 And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong. 
 
 In the bright Muse tho' thousand charms conspire, 
 
 Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; 
 
 Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, 
 
 Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, 
 
 Not for the doctrine, but the music there. 
 
 These equal syllables alone require, 
 
 Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire, 
 
 While expletives their feeble aid do join, 
 
 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: 
 
 While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, 
 
 With sure returns of still expected rimes; 
 
 Where'er you find " the cooling western breeze," 
 
 In the next line, it " whispers thro' the trees " ; 
 
 If crystal streams " with pleasing murmurs creep," 
 
 The reader 's threaten'd (not in vain) with " sleep " ; 
 
 Then, at the last and only couplet, fraught 
 
 With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 
 
 A needless Alexandrine ends the song, 
 
 That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. 
 
 Leave such to tune their own dull rimes, and know 
 
 What 's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; 
 
 And praise the easy vigor of a line, 
 
 Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join. 
 
 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, 
 
 As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 
 
 'T is not enough no harshness gives offence, 
 
 The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 
 
 Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, 
 
 And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; 
 
 But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, 
 
 The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar ;
 
 218 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 
 
 The line, too, labors, and the words move slow. 
 
 Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, 
 
 Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. 
 
 Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, 
 
 And bid alternate passions fall and rise ! 
 
 And in one of his " Imitations of Horace," Pope de- 
 scribed the refining of English poetry as he under- 
 stood it : 
 
 We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms, 
 
 Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er, our arms ; 
 
 Britain to soft refinements less a foe, 
 
 Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow. 
 
 Waller was smooth ; but Dryden taught to join 
 
 The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 
 The long majestic march, and energy divine : 
 
 Tho' still some traces of our rustic vein 
 
 And splay-foot verse remain'd, and will remain. 
 
 Late, very late, correctness grew our care, 
 
 When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war. 
 
 Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire 
 
 Show'd us that France had something to admire. 
 
 Not but the tragic spirit was our own, 
 
 And full in Shaksper e, fair in Otway, shone ; 
 
 But Otway fail'd to polish or refine, 
 
 And fluent Shakspere scarce effac'd a line. 
 
 Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, 
 
 The last and greatest art, the art to blot. 
 
 Admirably adapted as Pope's methods may be for 
 satire and for epigram, they are wholly unfitted to 
 render the largeness of Homer, the simplicity and the 
 nobility of his bold manner. Matthew Arnold in his 
 lectures " On Translating Homer " quoted a passage 
 from Pope's version : 
 
 Could all our care elude the gloomy grave 
 Which claims no less the fearful than the brave, 
 For lust of fame I should not vainly dare 
 In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war :
 
 THE COUPLET 219 
 
 But since, alas ! ignoble age must come, 
 Disease, and death's inexorable doom ; 
 The life which others pay, let us bestow, 
 And give to fame, what we to nature owe. 
 
 And on this Arnold made the pertinent comment 
 that " nothing could better exhibit Pope's prodigious 
 talent ; and nothing, too, could be better in its own 
 way. But, as Bentley said, ' You must not call it 
 Homer.' One feels that Homer's thought has passed 
 through a literary and rhetorical crucible, and come 
 out highly intellectualized ; come out in a form which 
 strongly impresses us, indeed, but which no longer 
 impresses us in the same way as when it was uttered 
 by Homer. The antithesis of the last two lines 
 
 The life which others pay, let us bestow, 
 And give to fame, what we to nature owe 
 
 is excellent, and is just suited to Pope's heroic couplet ; 
 but neither the antithesis itself, nor the couplet which 
 conveys it, is suited to the feeling or to the move- 
 ment of the Homeric ?o/tev." 
 
 Arnold objected to Pope's parade of antithesis to 
 break up the natural movement of Homer's narration. 
 Antithesis, symmetry, balance, Pope employed to give 
 immediate point to his lines. This trick of style is the 
 most obvious of Pope's mannerisms. Leigh Hunt 
 quoted a passage from " The Rape of the Lock," divid- 
 ing every line in two by a dash to call attention to the 
 wilful and persistent setting off of one half of a line 
 against the other : 
 
 On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, 
 Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore. 
 Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 
 Quick as her eyas, and as unfix'd as those :
 
 220 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Favors to none, to all she smiles extends ; 
 Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 
 Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, 
 And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. 
 Yet, graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, 
 Might hide her faults, if Belles had faults to hide : 
 If to her share some female errors fall, 
 Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. 
 
 " The reader will observe," Leigh Hunt remarked, 
 " that it is literally see-saw, like the rising and the 
 falling of a plank, with a light person at one end who 
 is jerked up in the briefer time, and a heavier one 
 who is set down more leisurely at the other." Here 
 Hunt has caught Pope in flagrant violation of his 
 own theory, as the author of " The Kape of the Lock " 
 once wrote a letter in which he asserted that " every 
 nice ear must, I believe, have observed that in any 
 smooth English verse of ten syllables, there is natu- 
 rally a pause either at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syl- 
 lable," and he added that " to preserve an exact 
 harmony and variety none of these pauses should be 
 continued above three lines together, without the in- 
 terposition of another, else it will be apt to weary the 
 ear with one continual tone." But even if this break 
 in the line is not continuously after the fourth syllable, 
 as it is in the passage Leigh Hunt cited, even if it is 
 sometimes after the fifth and sometimes after the sixth, 
 even this limitation becomes monotonous in time and 
 tends to reduce the rhythm to a mechanical tick-tack. 
 
 Scott pointed out another occasional weakness in 
 the heroic couplet as Pope wrote it, the use of need- 
 less adjectives merely to fill out the five feet. Scott 
 was defending his own preference for the tetrameter, 
 and he quoted the opening lines of Pope's " Iliad,"
 
 THE COUPLET 221 
 
 italicizing the adjectives which seemed to him need- 
 less : 
 
 Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring 
 Of woes unnumberM, heav'nly goddess, sing ! 
 That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign 
 The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain : 
 Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore, 
 Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore. 
 
 Scott said that " since it is true that by throwing 
 out the epithets underscored, we preserve the sense 
 without diminishing the force of the verses, and since 
 it is also true that scarcely one of the epithets are 
 more than merely expletive, I do really think that 
 the structure of verse which requires least of this 
 sort of bolstering, is most likely to be forcible and 
 animated." 
 
 While Goldsmith inherited the heroic couplet from 
 Pope and from the clouds of imitators who encom- 
 passed Pope about, he had more feeling than his witty 
 predecessor ; he was less obviously clever ; he was gen- 
 tler and more human ; and as a result he modified the 
 meter to suit his own needs. There is less striking 
 antithesis ; and the lines break with less monotony. 
 There are fewer expletive adjectives thrust in to fill 
 out the line. The couplet is still the unit of struc- 
 ture ; and yet the narrative has a less jerky movement. 
 Here is a passage from "The Deserted Village": 
 
 Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 
 And still where many a garden flower grows wild, 
 There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
 The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 
 A man he was to all the country dear, 
 And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 
 Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
 Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place ;
 
 222 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, 
 
 By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ; 
 
 Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, 
 
 More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 
 
 His house was known to all the vagrant train, 
 
 He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; 
 
 The long-remembered beggar was his guest, 
 
 Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 
 
 The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, 
 
 Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ; 
 
 The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 
 
 Sate by his fire, and talked the night away ; 
 
 Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, 
 
 Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were wou- 
 
 The heroic couplet was employed by Johnson and 
 by Byron in their satires ; and they were content to 
 leave it as they found it. Even Cowper, although he 
 was no slavish follower of Pope, did not impress his 
 individuality on the iambic pentameter. After Gold- 
 smith the next poet to handle it with any freedom 
 was Leigh Hunt, who blazed the trail for Keats and 
 Shelley. In his " Story of Rimini " there is an abandon- 
 ment of Pope's couplet-structure with its epigram- 
 matic flavor and with its monotony of strict iambics. 
 The rhythm is more fluid and the narrative runs over 
 from line to line. The thought is no longer diked 
 between two rimes. There is again a sense of freedom 
 and of spontaneity, due partly to the avoidance of the 
 self-conscious ingenuity of Pope : 
 
 But 'twixt the wood and flowery walks, half-way, 
 And formed of both, the loveliest portion lay, 
 A spot, that struck you like enchanted ground ; 
 It was a shallow dell, set in a mound 
 Of sloping orchards, fig, and almond trees, 
 Cherry and pine, with some few cypresses ; 
 Down by whose roots, descending darkly still 
 (You saw it not, but heard), there gushed a rill,
 
 THE COUPLET 223 
 
 Whose low sweet talking seemed as if it said, 
 Something eternal to that happy shade. 
 
 This harks back to Chaucer and points forward to 
 Keats, in whose hands the iambic pentameter was to 
 reveal itself again as a fit and flexible instrument for 
 a true poet. Keats claimed the liberty of occasional 
 double rimes, which helped him to avoid the tempta- 
 tion to end a majority of lines with bold monosylla- 
 bles. He shifted the place of his pauses in the middle 
 of his lines with exquisite skill, varying the movement 
 to mate with his sentiment. Perhaps the passage that 
 best exemplifies this new ease of the iambic penta- 
 meter is the well-known description of beauty, in 
 " Endymion " : 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 
 
 Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
 
 Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 
 
 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
 
 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
 
 Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 
 
 A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 
 
 Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 
 
 Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, 
 
 Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways 
 
 Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all, 
 
 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
 
 From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, 
 
 Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon 
 
 For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 
 
 With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 
 
 That for themselves a cooling covert make 
 
 'Gainst the hot season ; the mid-forest brake, 
 
 Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms J 
 
 And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 
 
 We have imagined for the mighty dead ; 
 
 All lovely tales that we have heard or read : 
 
 An endless fountain of immortal drink, 
 
 Pouring unto us from the heaveu's brink.
 
 224 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Shelley used this meter with similar ease ; and the 
 rigidity of the heroic couplet disappeared. The way 
 was now made straight for the poets who were to come 
 after. Browning found the iambic pentameter avail- 
 able for the narrative of " Sordello " ; Swinburne 
 employed it with large luxuriance in " Tristram of 
 Lyonesse " ; and Morris took it to tell the " Life and 
 Death of Jason."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 BLANK VERSE 
 
 That which is the glory of blank verse, as a vehicle of poetry, is 
 also its danger and its difficulty. Its freedom from the fetters of 
 rime, the infinite variability of the metrical structure of its lines, the 
 absence of couplets and stanzas, all assimilate it to prose. It is the 
 easiest of all conceivable meters to write ; it is the hardest to write 
 well. Its metrical requirements are next to nothing ; its poetical re- 
 quirements are infinite. It was Byron, I believe, who remarked, that 
 it differed from other meters in this, that whereas they required a cer- 
 tain proportion of lines, some more, some less, to be good, in blank 
 verse, every line must be good. SHADWOKTH H. HODGSON : English 
 Verse. 
 
 BLANK verse, the unrimed iambic pentameter, is the 
 most characteristic and the most individual meter of 
 English poetry. It has shown itself to be the best in- 
 strument for the expression of the essential energy of 
 the English-speaking peoples in their loftiest flights 
 of imagination. It is a nobler vehicle for the epic and 
 for the tragic than the Alexandrine of the French 
 encumbered as that is with its pairs of rimes, al- 
 ternately masculine and feminine. It has proved it- 
 self a worthy rival of the supple and sonorous hex- 
 ameter of the Greeks. It has a definite firmness of 
 structure and, at the same time, an infinite variety 
 within this framework. It can be swift, simple, and 
 direct ; or it may be elaborate and luxuriant. It lends 
 itself to all moods, and it is adequate for every kind 
 of poetry. It can tell a story ; it can voice a purely 
 lyric sentiment ; it can convey at will the interprets
 
 226 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 tive description of external nature or the subtlest 
 revelation of human psychology. It can serve alike 
 for the witty banter of light comedy and for the soul- 
 stirring depths of inexorable tragedy. It demands 
 that the poet who essays it shall always put forth his 
 topmost power and that he shall always do the best that 
 is in him. With no support from any stanza and with 
 no assistance or suggestion from rime, it may seem 
 easy ; but it is an instrument to be handled worthily 
 only by a master. It has a large freedom wherein a 
 man adventures himself only at his peril. " In hear- 
 ing good blank verse," so Symonds declared, " we do 
 not long for rime, our ears are satisfied without it ; 
 nor does our sense of order and proportion require 
 the obvious and artificial recurrence of stanzas, when 
 the sense creates for itself a melodious structure 
 and is not forced into the mold of any arbitrary 
 form." 
 
 In the history of English poetry, blank verse devel- 
 oped later than the heroic couplet, which it was to suc- 
 ceed as the supreme implement of the English poets, 
 only in its turn to be superseded for a while under the 
 influence of Dryden and Pope. Blank verse came into 
 its own slowly, influenced at first by the tradition of 
 the heroic couplet. In its turn, it influenced the heroic 
 couplet; and if rimed pentameter was able in the 
 nineteenth century to recapture the larger liberty it 
 had earlier enjoyed, this was due mainly to the inspir- 
 ing example of blank verse. The rimed pentameter 
 and the unrimed pentameter have existed side by 
 side for now three centuries and more, rivals for the 
 favor of the poets, each in turn borrowing from the 
 other. The heroic couplet has been dealt with first,
 
 BLANK VERSE 227 
 
 as the elder ; and blank verse in turn demands the same 
 chronological consideration, since it is only by following 
 it through its development that we are able to possess 
 ourselves of its essential principles and to discover its 
 immense variety as its many possibilities were perceived 
 by the poets of our language, generation after genera- 
 tion. 
 
 Apparently Surrey, in his translation of part of the 
 "jSSneid," was the first to write the unrimed iambic 
 pentameter which came later to be known as blank 
 verse. And by a happy chance the meter was taken 
 over by Sackville and Norton for their tragedy " Gor- 
 boduc." The motive of their choice was probably three- 
 fold : first, they wanted a more dignified meter than 
 the rimed iambic heptameter (ballad-meter), which had 
 been generally employed in the unpretending folk- 
 drama; second, they wished to avoid rime altogether, 
 since that had been unknown to the Latin and Greek 
 dramatists whom they supposed themselves to be imi- 
 tating and emulating ; and thirdly, they were seeking 
 a meter which would allow them more easily to attain 
 the concise sententiousness which they admired in the 
 tragedies of Seneca, written rather for recitation than 
 for actual performance. Probably this last motive was 
 the strongest of the three ; and its influence is most 
 obvious in their blank verse, which tends to the stiff- 
 ness of rhetoric and to the compacting of the thought 
 within a single swelling line or at most within a pair 
 of lines. 
 
 The blank verse of " Gorboduc " has prim regularity ; 
 it consists of a sequence of iambics in close accord with 
 the exact pattern ; it rarely ventures on any substitu- 
 tion of a trochee for an iambus, even in the first foot;
 
 228 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 it seldom permits itself an unaccented extra syllable at 
 the end of the line ; it hesitates to allow the thought 
 to run over from one line halfway into the next. As a 
 result of these self-imposed limitations the blank verse 
 of " Gorboduc " lacks melody and variety ; it is charac- 
 terized by a chill monotony ; it seems eminently unin- 
 spired. But it was incisive at times, and emphatic ; it 
 lent itself to declamatory rhetoric ; it was not unsuited 
 to the purpose in hand ; and it gave the English drama 
 a meter which later poets, more adroit and more gifted, 
 were able to bend to their bidding. Here, for example, 
 is part of a speech in the fifth act of " Gorboduc " : 
 
 Lo, here the end of Brutus' royal line, 
 
 And lo, the entry to the woful wreck 
 
 And utter ruin of this noble realm ! 
 
 The royal king and eke his sons are slain; 
 
 No ruler rests within the regal seat; 
 
 The heir, to whom the scepter 'longs, unknown ; 
 
 That to each force of foreign prince's power 
 
 Whom vantage of our wretched state may move, 
 
 By sudden arms to gain as rich a realm. 
 
 And to the proud and greedy mind at home 
 
 Whom blended lust to reign leads to aspire, 
 
 Lo, Britain realm is left an open prey, 
 
 A present spoil for conquest to ensue. 
 
 In this the single line is plainly the unit of construc- 
 tion ; and the passage as a whole is built up by succes- 
 sive lines most of which are end-stopt, that is, com- 
 plete in themselves. The phrase does not run on or run 
 over, line after line. The unity is only that of a series 
 of drawers, each with its own content. There is nothing 
 organic in a passage of this sort; it is fragmentary 
 and lacking in any large movement. Yet it served as 
 a texture for the more richly endowed Marlowe to em 
 broider at will.
 
 BLANK VERSE 229 
 
 In Marlowe's blank verse there is more ease and 
 flexibility. The pause in the middle of the line is 
 shifted, now here and now there, thus avoiding 
 monotony. Trochees are substituted for iambs, more 
 often in the first foot, but sometimes elsewhere in the 
 line. Feminine endings appear occasionally, relieving 
 the end of the lines from rigidity. The thought is no 
 longer clamped into the single line ; or at least the 
 phrase is no longer absolutely coincident with the 
 line. There is an obvious unity in the larger passages, 
 and a sweeping movement that rolls forward, wave 
 after wave. Here is the famous speech of Faustus 
 when Mephistopheles has granted his wish to behold 
 Helen of Troy : 
 
 Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, 
 And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss, 
 Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flees 1 
 Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
 Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, 
 And all is dross that is not Helena. 
 I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
 Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd; 
 And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
 And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; 
 Yes, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
 And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
 O, thou art fairer than the evening air 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; 
 Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter 
 When he appear'd to hapless Semele; 
 More lovely than the monarch of the sky 
 In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms; 
 And none but thou shalt be my paramour ! 
 
 And here is the opening of the soliloquy of Faustus 
 when he faces his doom :
 
 230 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Ah, Faustus, 
 
 Now them hast but one bare hour to live, 
 
 And then thou must be damu'd perpetually ! 
 
 Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, 
 
 That time may cease, and midnight never come; 
 
 Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again and make 
 
 Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but 
 
 A year, a month, a week, a natural day, 
 
 That Faustus may repent and save his soul ! 
 
 O lente, lente currite, noctis equi ! 
 
 The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, 
 
 The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. 
 
 It was due to the example of Marlowe that blank 
 verse was accepted as the standard instrument for the 
 English poetic drama ; and the value of this accept- 
 ance can scarcely be overstated. Symonds was not 
 exaggerating when he asserted that " Marlowe did not 
 merely drive the rimed couplet from the stage by 
 substituting the blank verse of his contemporaries ; he 
 created a new meter by the melody, variety and force 
 which he infused into the iambic, and left models of 
 versification, the pomp of which Shakspere and 
 Milton alone can be said to have surpassed. . . . He 
 found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, mono- 
 syllabic and divided into five feet of tolerably regular 
 short and long. He left it various in form and 
 structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, some- 
 times deficient, enriched with unexpected emphasis 
 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 meter to preserve a fixed
 
 BLANK VERSE 231 
 
 and unalterable type, but suffered it to assume most 
 variable modulations, the whole beauty of which de- 
 pended upon their perfect adaptation to the current 
 of his ideas. By these means he was able to produce 
 the double effect of variety and unity, to preserve the 
 fixed march of his chosen meter, and yet, by subtle 
 alterations in the pauses, speed and grouping of the 
 syllables to make one measure represent a thousand." 
 Marlowe gave blank verse ease and force, especially 
 force. His lesser contemporaries Greene and Peele 
 bestowed on it a gentleness and a sweetness which 
 Marlowe had not sought. Here is a specimen of 
 Greene's easy-running lines, a speech of Margaret in 
 " Friar Bacon and Friar Bun gay " : 
 
 Ah, father, when the harmony of heaven 
 Soundeth the measures of a lively faith, 
 The vain illusions of this flattering world 
 Seem odious to the thoughts of Margaret. 
 I loved once, Lord Lacy was my love; 
 And now I hate myself for that I lov'd, 
 And doted more on him than on my God, 
 For this I scourge myself with sharp repents. 
 But now the touch of such aspiring sins 
 Tells me all love is lust but love of heaven; 
 That beauty us'd for love is vanity; 
 The world contains naught but alluring baits, 
 Pride, flattery, and inconstant thoughts. 
 To shun the pricks of death, I leave the world 
 And vow to meditate on heavenly bliss, 
 To live in Framlingham a holy nun, 
 Holy and pure in conscience and in deed; 
 And for to wish all maids to learn of me 
 To seek heaven's joy before earth's vanity. 
 
 Shakspere learned much from Marlowe, and even 
 from Peele and Greene; but he bettered his lesson. 
 He made himself master of blank verse in all its pos-
 
 232 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 sibilities. He used it for tragedy and for comedy, foi 
 description, for sentiment, and for pathos. But he 
 did not tie himself down to it. Nothing is more 
 characteristic of Shakspere's dramatic instinct than 
 his use or avoidance of blank verse. He held himself 
 at liberty to employ whatever metrical device best 
 suited his immediate purpose. He unhesitatingly com- 
 mingled prose and blank verse and rime. In his 
 earlier plays, both comic and tragic, there is a large 
 proportion of riming couplets ; and on occasion, he 
 even made use of quatrains and other stanzaic forms 
 which he felt to be appropriate to the more or less 
 artificial sentiment he was voicing. In his later plays, 
 when he had ceased to be artificial, he abandoned 
 rime, but even then he frequently dropped into prose 
 when he felt intuitively that prose was a better 
 implement. 
 
 It was only by degrees that Shakspere arrived at 
 his full mastery of blank verse. At first, we find him 
 restrained by the tradition of the less gifted poets in 
 whose footsteps he was then treading. Many of his 
 lines are end-stopt ; that is to say, the thought is 
 completely expressed within the line. The longer 
 speeches may often be described as built up of a se- 
 quence of single lines each complete in itself. There 
 are few dropt syllables, such as we find in the later 
 plays, where the place of a missing word may be filled 
 out by a pause in the dialog. There are few feminine 
 endings ; indeed, Shakspere was a little slow in perceiv- 
 ing the value of an added unaccented eleventh syllable 
 at the end of a line to give fluidity to a speech. But even 
 early in his development as a dramatist and as a poet, 
 we cannot fail to find a nice adjustment of the meter
 
 BLANK VERSE 233 
 
 to the character and to the situation. " Romeo and 
 Juliet " is a comparatively early play ; and Professor 
 Saints bury has called attention to its " curious alter- 
 nation, or rather intermixture, of the cumulative and 
 the periodic styles of blank verse." The stately speech 
 of the Prince after the opening brawl, the longer ut- 
 terances of Friar Laurence, are periodic. " But 
 Juliet's heart beats throughout to another tune than 
 their sententious clank ; her lover, though less uni- 
 formly, is master of the better rhythm also ; and 
 Mercutio shows that fancy can act as the solvent no 
 less than passion." 
 
 The same critic has also called attention to the great 
 patriotic speech of Gaunt in " Richard II " : 
 
 This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 
 and he has pointed out how it is that " although almost 
 every line is self -enclosed, the paragraph-effect is 
 given in a way Marlowe hardly ever attains, by the 
 variation of the pause, the weighting of different parts 
 of the line by the quicksilver power of specially sono- 
 rous or important words, and sometimes by a cunning 
 parenthetic device, which makes the voice hurry over 
 parts of a line, or whole lines, so as to connect rhyth- 
 mically as in sense, what comes after with what comes 
 before." The great agency in giving variety to Shak- 
 spere's blank verse is the shifting of the pause, which 
 his predecessors (Marlowe chiefly excepted) tended to 
 retain more or less in the middle of the line. Another 
 agency, almost equally effective in the avoidance of 
 rigidity, is the separation of the phrase from the exact 
 line or sequence of lines ; the thought is no longer 
 contained in a series of drawers ; it may begin in the
 
 234 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 middle of one line, flow on through two or three ot 
 more, and end at last in the middle of yet another, with- 
 out departing in the least from the normal decasyllabic 
 division. 
 
 Perhaps no better example can be quoted to exhibit 
 the infinite modulation of which dramatic blank verse 
 is capable in Shakspere's hands, after he made him- 
 self absolute master of his instrument, than a speech 
 of Prospero's in the " Tempest " (which we know to 
 be one of his very latest plays) : 
 
 Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
 Are melted into air, into thin air ; 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 This exquisite passage justifies Symonds's assertion 
 that the characteristic of Shakspere's blank verse is 
 " that it is naturally, unobtrusively, and enduringly 
 musical. We hardly know why his words are melodi- 
 ous, or what makes them always fresh. There is a 
 subtle adjustment of sound to sense, of lofty thoughts 
 to appropriate words ; the ideas evolve themselves with 
 inexhaustible spontaneity, and a suitable investiture 
 of language is never wanting, so that each cadenced 
 period seems made to hold a thought of its own, and 
 thought is linked to thought and cadence to cadence in 
 unending continuity. Inferior artists have systems of 
 melody, pauses which they repeat, favorite termina-
 
 BLANK VERSE 235 
 
 tions, and accelerations or retardations of rhythm, 
 which they employ whenever the occasion prompts 
 them. But there is none of this in Shakspere. He 
 never falls into the commonplace of mannerism." 
 
 And this is what could not be said of any of Shak- 
 spere's immediate followers. There is abundant power 
 in the blank verse of Webster and even of Ford ; but 
 there is rarely the variety and the ease which char- 
 acterize Shakspere's lines. As for Fletcher and Mas- 
 singer, it can scarcely be denied that they come near 
 to falling into " the commonplace of mannerism." In- 
 deed, Fletcher employed a feminine ending so fre- 
 quently that his style often approached to the very 
 verge of effeminacy. But he is undeniably a poet ; and 
 his lines have constant melody and sweetness. Mas- 
 singer, on the other hand, is less poet than he is psy- 
 chologist and rhetorician ; and his blank verse, direct 
 as it generally is, tends to be a little pedestrian ; and 
 it has marked peculiarities, which lend themselves eas- 
 ily to imitation. Coleridge declared that Ben Jonson's 
 blank verse is " very masterly and individual " ; and 
 Symonds added that it was the blank verse of " a 
 scholar pointed, polished and free from the lyricisms 
 of his age," lacking harmony and often labored ; but 
 " vigorous and solid it never fails to be." 
 
 Even the less richly endowed playwrights of that 
 inspired period, Marston and Heywood, Dekker and 
 Shirley, are all of them capable on occasion of blank 
 verse of fine quality. The secret of it seems then to 
 have been a common property. Upon all of them, each 
 in his own degree, had been bestowed the ability now 
 and again to write plaintively or melodiously or nobly. 
 And moreover all of the dramatic poets of that splendid
 
 936 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 epoch seem to have understood instinctively the neces- 
 sity which the playwright is under of always adjusting 
 his lines to oral delivery. The dramatist wrote his 
 speeches to be actually spoken in the theater and not 
 merely to be read in the library. His appeal was not 
 to the eye of the reader but to the ear of the hearer 
 through the mouth of the actor. Therefore the Eliza- 
 bethan playwright-poets composed blank verse which is 
 fundamentally dramatic, not lyric in temper or narra- 
 tive in leisurely movement. 
 
 Symonds pointed out that Webster, for example, 
 " no doubt imagined his actors declaiming with great 
 variety of intonation, with frequent and lengthy pauses, 
 and with considerable differences in the rapidity of 
 their utterances"; and the same thing might be said 
 of all the others, above all, of Shakspere, whose 
 lines are always phrased for easy delivery by the 
 actor and reveal always a delicate adjustment of the 
 rhythm to the dramatic situation. He, and in a less 
 degree his contemporaries, possessed the true secret of 
 blank verse, which is to be found in " the proper 
 adaptation of words and rhythms to the sense contained 
 in them." It has been well said that the apparent 
 irregularities of meter in the plays of the foremost 
 Elizabethans furnish an unerring index " to the in- 
 flections which the actors must have used, to the char- 
 acters which the poets designed, and to the situations 
 which they calculated." The result of these endeavors 
 was to give ease and variety and rapidity to blank 
 verse and to make it flexible for the expression of 
 every word. 
 
 Thus perfected by the playwrights, blank verse was 
 ready for the use to which Milton was to put it. The
 
 BLANK VERSE 237 
 
 stately narrative of his noble epic, with its intermit- 
 tent dialog and its occasional set debate, demanded a 
 change of method. It was written to be read in the 
 study and not to be declaimed on the stage ; and yet 
 it is also adjusted to the voice, indeed, it does not dis- 
 close its full beauty until it is uttered aloud. Although 
 it was printed for the eye, its appeal was to the ear as 
 well, for Milton was never one to overlook the fact that 
 poetry is always to be said or sung. Even the purely 
 narrative passages reveal added felicities of rhythm 
 when they come to us through the ear. In Milton's 
 verse, as Lowell asserted, "the music makes part of the 
 meaning. . . . No one before or since has been able 
 to give to simple pentameters the majesty and com- 
 pass of the organ. He was as much composer as poet." 
 The iambic pentameter may be defined as a se- 
 quence of five alternate short and long syllables. 
 When it achieved this exact regularity, it concorded 
 with the practice of Pope and it won the approval of 
 Johnson. But to apply any rigid standard of this sort 
 to Milton's blank verse is to misapprehend absolutely 
 the principle upon which he worked. He accepted the 
 strict succession of iambics only as a norm ; he accus- 
 tomed the ear to the alternate shorts and longs ; and 
 then, this expectation having been thus established, he 
 adventures numberless variations, as daring as they 
 are successful. With him the line is no longer the 
 unit and his large poetic phrase is not coincident with 
 any single line or sequence of lines. It has an ampler 
 architecture ; and it sweeps forward irresistibly, with 
 bold licenses of substitution which immediately justify 
 themselves to the ear, however much they may discon- 
 cert unsympathetic critics like Johnson, trained to
 
 938 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 count off the succeeding snorts and longs on their fin- 
 gers. In some of Milton's superbly organized pas- 
 sages, it may be a little difficult to scan any single 
 line taken by itself, since this line thus isolated may 
 seem irregular or even rugged. But if the whole pas- 
 sage is read aloud with due regard to its meaning 
 and with care to give the emphasis which the thought 
 demands, the difficulty disappears and the ear is satis- 
 fied by the majestic sweep of the rhythmic movement. 
 The opening lines of " Paradise Lost," elevated and 
 sonorous, are also firm in their regularity. There is 
 an occasional substitution of a trochee for an iambus, 
 but even the thick-fingered Johnson ought to have 
 found little difficulty in measuring all the successive 
 feet by his unmusical yardstick : 
 
 Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the World, and all our woe, 
 With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
 Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, 
 Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top 
 Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire 
 That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed 
 In the beginning how the heavens and earth 
 Rose out of Chaos; or, if Sion hill 
 Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed 
 Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
 Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song, 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar 
 Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
 Things unattempted yet in prose or rime. 
 
 Compare this with the opening of one of Satan's 
 speeches : 
 
 Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
 Doing or suffering : but of this be sure 
 To do aught good never will be our task,
 
 BLANK VERSE 239 
 
 But ever to do ill our sole delight, 
 As being the coutrary to His high will 
 Whom we resist. 
 
 In the first line the first foot (" Fall'n che ") is a 
 rather forced trochee ; and the last foot (" serable ") 
 lacks the weight which might be expected in its final 
 syllable. In the second line the first foot (" Doing ") 
 is plainly a trochee ; and the third foot (" fering ; 
 but ") is plainly an anapest. But when this speech is 
 spoken aloud, the ear takes no account of these diver- 
 gences from rigid regularity. The substitutions impose 
 themselves upon us, without demur on our part. They 
 have given variety to these first two lines ; and they 
 have not diverted our attention to themselves. If we 
 disregard the satisfactory impression made on the ear 
 and study the passage with the eye, we discover that 
 the single line is not here the dominant unit of meas- 
 ure. Nor was it generally in Milton's epics ; he com- 
 posed his passages as integral wholes, in which the 
 line plays a part but in which it is not allowed to 
 force itself on the attention. Of course, there are in- 
 stances not a few where we discover Milton to achieve 
 a subtle effect by isolating a single line and charging 
 it with a full and complete message of its own. 
 
 Symonds pointed out that Milton's " most sonorous 
 passages begin and end with interrupted lines, includ- 
 ing in one organic structure, periods, parentheses, and 
 paragraphs of fluent melody, that the harmonies are 
 wrought by subtle and most complex alliterative sys- 
 tems, by delicate changes in the length and volume of 
 syllables, and by the choice of names magnificent for 
 their mere gorgeousness of sound " ; and he insisted 
 that " in these structures there are many pauses which
 
 240 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none 
 are perfect, none satisfy the want created by the open- 
 ing hemistich, until the final and deliberate close is 
 reached." And he cited in evidence this passage : 
 
 And now his heart 
 
 Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength, 
 Glories : for never, since created Man, 
 Met such embodied force as, named with these, 
 Could merit more than that small infantry 
 Warr'd on by cranes though all the giant brood 
 Of Phlegra with the heroic race were join'd 
 That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
 Mix'd with auxiliar gods; and what resounds 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
 And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
 Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
 Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
 When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
 By Fontarabbia. 
 
 "Milton's use of pause is unique," so Professor 
 Saintsbury has insisted ; " like Shakspere, he will put 
 it anywhere or nowhere." And the varied effect of 
 his constant shifting of the pause and of his refusal 
 to place it frequently in the middle of the line, he 
 heightened by abundant variations from the strict suc- 
 cession of iambics. He substituted trochees at will, in 
 any one of the five feet, even in the last. He called 
 in the aid of the anapest whenever he felt the need of 
 that swifter and lighter foot : 
 
 Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife. 
 
 He achieved the spondee on occasion, a foot almost 
 impossible in our sharply accented tongue : 
 
 Caves, rocks, lakes, fens, bays, dens, and shades of death.
 
 BLANK VERSE 241 
 
 His intimate familiarity with the Greek and Latin 
 poets helped him to attain metrical effects rare in 
 English because they were due mainly to quantity, to 
 the contrast of syllables not only stressed but actually 
 long or short in duration of utterance. If his metrical 
 daring does not always justify itself, and it might 
 be possible to pick out a very few instances whore 
 this must be admitted, this may be due to his ab- 
 sorption of the Italian poets, which tempted him to 
 give an Italianate accent to an English word, an ac- 
 cent which the English reader recognizes only by an 
 effort. 
 
 After Milton blank verse went under a cloud. Dry- 
 den and Pope preferred the heroic couplet and polished 
 it to suit their several needs. It is true that Dryden 
 could write bold blank verse ; but he rarely chose to do 
 so. Addison's blank verse serves to show how com- 
 pletely the poets had forgotten the lessons of Shak- 
 spere and Milton ; it is not only uninspired and monoto- 
 nous, but it returns to the earlier and easier structure, 
 wherein the line coincides with the sentence, or at least 
 with a clause of the sentence, and whereby the several 
 lines may be said to have each an almost independent 
 existence. The influence of the riming heroic couplet, 
 metrically identical and yet wholly different in spirit 
 and in opportunity, weighed down blank verse and 
 kept it from soaring aloft. In time, Thomson and Cow- 
 per recovered much of its freedom ; and they opened 
 the doors for Coleridge and Wordsworth. In his turn, 
 Keats recaptured a portion of the Miltonic melody, 
 not the majesty of his mighty predecessor, but some- 
 thing of the music. And here in America Bryant 
 not a great poet, not foremost even among our own
 
 242 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 bards found in blank verse a meter which exactly 
 suited his large stateliness. Here is the opening pas- 
 sage of the austere and lofty " Thanatopsis " : 
 
 To him who in the love of Nature holds 
 
 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
 
 A various language. For his gayer hours 
 
 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
 
 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
 
 Into his darker musings, with a mild 
 
 And healing sympathy, that steals away 
 
 Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
 
 Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
 
 Over thy spirit, and sad images 
 
 Of the stern agony, and shroud and pall, 
 
 And breathless darkness, and the narrow house 
 
 Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; 
 
 Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
 
 To Nature's teachings. 
 
 Brian Hooker has justly called attention to " the 
 subtile grading of the stresses, the vigorous contrast 
 of scansion and phrase-rhythm, and the tireless variety 
 of the pauses " ; and then he asked us to consider also 
 " how all this opposition is held under just sufficient 
 control, so that the equilibrium of the normal scansion, 
 continually and seductively threatened, is never for one 
 moment overthrown." And it must be remembered to 
 Bryant's credit that although this was written after 
 Wordsworth and Keats had reinvigorated blank verse, 
 it was composed before Tennyson and Browning. 
 
 Tennyson early made himself a master of blank 
 verse. In his hands it has melodious flexibility, varied 
 cadences, richness of alliteration and of colliteration, 
 and deliberate sweetness of tone. The workmanship is 
 exquisite, but a little cloying and a little self-conscious. 
 The beauty of Tennyson's blank verse strikes us as
 
 BLANK VERSE 243 
 
 studied rather than spontaneous. The effects he aimed 
 at he attained ; but we often are aware of the effort. 
 His style is sweetly lyric rather than boldly epic or 
 pregnantly dramatic. His blank verse lacks largeness 
 of sweep and inevitability of phrase. It is graceful, 
 charming, idyllic ; it suggests a Tanagra figurine rather 
 than the Hermes of Praxiteles. 
 
 Browning's blank verse is less artificial, indeed it 
 rarely calls attention to itself, rushing forward as 
 though it was the poet's natural expression. It is devoid 
 of all marquetry of beautiful sounds ; it may even be 
 termed harsh or at least rugged ; and in its frankly 
 dramatic march it is tense and masculine. Here are a 
 few lines from " An Epistle, containing the Strange 
 Medical Experience of Karshish " : 
 
 The very God ! think, Abib : dost thou think ? 
 So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too 
 So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here I 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
 Thou hast no power nor rnayst conceive of mine, 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee 1" 
 The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 POETIC LICENSE 
 
 This poetical license is a shrewd fellow, and covereth manj faults ia 
 verse ; it maketh words longer, shorter, of more syllables, of fewer, 
 newer, older, truer, falser ; and to conclude it turneth all things at 
 pleasure. GEORGE GASCOIQNE: Certain Notes of Instruction concern- 
 ing the Making of Verse. (1575.) 
 
 THERE is advantage always in beginning any discussion 
 with a sharp definition of the thing to be discussed. 
 Here, then, is a pertinent characterization of license 
 which we find in the latest edition of Webster's Dic- 
 tionary : " That deviation from strict fact, form, or 
 rule in which an artist or writer indulges, assuming 
 that it will be permitted for the sake of the advantage 
 or effect gained." And this warrants us in declaring 
 that a poetic license is a departure from strict form, 
 which the verse-writer permits himself in the belief 
 that it will be pardoned for the sake of some effect 
 he may thereby gain or of some advantage he could 
 not otherwise attain. In other words, poetic license 
 may be described as a privilege claimed by the poet 
 of sacrificing something that seems to him relatively 
 unimportant to secure something else that he holds of 
 superior value. He may feel, for example, that he 
 cannot express himself fully, unless he is permitted, 
 once in a way, to depart from the strict rules of 
 grammar or rhetoric, to employ an arbitrary con- 
 traction, a forced accent or a disconcerting inversion 
 of the natural order of words, or to avail himself of a
 
 POETIC LICENSE 45 
 
 so-called allowable rime, which is of a truth no rime 
 at all. 
 
 When the case is thus stated, the question as to the 
 permissibility of any poetic license is easy to answer. 
 In the specific instance, was the poet right in his feel- 
 ing as to the importance of the two things one of 
 which he sacrificed to the other? And was he justified 
 in his belief that he could attain his advantage and 
 gain his effect in no other way than by departing 
 from the letter of the law ? If his decision was sound, 
 then will he be forgiven his violation of form, even 
 though we cannot help being more or less conscious of 
 his departure from the normal use of language. Every 
 single instance of poetic license must needs be ex- 
 amined by itself ; and the poet can claim no general 
 permit to do as he pleases. His poem is always in- 
 tended to be said or sung ; its appeal is ever to the 
 ears of those to whom it is addressed ; it arouses in us 
 a certain expectancy both of content and of form, 
 and if for any reason, good or bad, the poet chooses 
 to disappoint that expectancy, he can do so only at 
 his peril, at the risk of breaking the circuit which 
 must bind together the listener and the singer. 
 
 If the verse-writer has seen fit to disappoint the 
 expectancy he has created in the ears of his hearers, 
 by an awkward inversion, by an unwonted contraction, 
 by the use of a so-called " allowable " rime, by an un- 
 grammatical employment of words, or by any other 
 license, his sole excuse must be that this was necessary 
 or at least profitable in that special instance, since 
 only by the aid of that license could he attain the 
 effect he was seeking at the moment. This is akin to 
 what the lawyers call a plea of confession and avoid-
 
 246 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 ance ; and the burden of proof is on the poet to show 
 that he was justified in his faith. That is to say, do 
 we, his hearers, unhesitatingly pardon his departure 
 from strict rule, because of the ultimate result? If we 
 do, then there is nothing more to be said, and an in- 
 sistence upon the letter of the law is beside the mark. 
 Our own ears are the final court of appeal, and when 
 they are satisfied the poet may depart without a stain 
 on his character. The jury will refrain from all cen- 
 sure if they have been charmed by an " intuitive phrase 
 where the imagination at a touch precipitates thought, 
 feeling and image in an imperishable crystal," to 
 borrow Lowell's suggestive words. The more inspired 
 the poet may be and the loftier the theme, the less 
 likely are we to turn the crystal over in search of 
 flaws. When we are rapt out of ourselves we fail to 
 notice any little liberties the poet may have taken 
 with the language, and we are ready enough to par- 
 don them if they happen to attract our attention. 
 
 But only a true poet can do this unerringly, and he 
 can do it only on occasion when he is sweeping us away 
 with surging emotion or lifting us on high with ethe- 
 real imagination. His eye in fine frenzy rolling will 
 profit him nothing, unless he weaves an incantation 
 about our ears also. For those who are not assured 
 that they are true poets there is only one counsel of 
 perfection, to abide sturdily by all the rules of 
 the game and to refuse resolutely to apply for any 
 license to break the law at will. As the younger Tom 
 Hood declared in his useful little treatise on the 
 " Rules of Rhyme," " the poet gives to the world his 
 sublime thoughts, diamonds of the purest water " ; 
 and it would be petty " to quibble about minor points
 
 POETIC LICENSE 47 
 
 of the polishing and setting of such gems," whereas 
 the writer of mere verse does not pretend to give us 
 diamonds. " He offers paste brilliants, and therefore 
 it the more behooves him to see to the perfection of 
 the cutting, on which their beauty depends." This is 
 well put ; and yet attention may be called to the sig- 
 nificant fact that the poets who have had the sublim- 
 est thoughts have generally been the most careful in 
 their craftsmanship. No one would deny sublimity to 
 Dante and Milton, who are both of them impeccable 
 artists in the cutting, the polishing, and the setting of 
 their diamonds of the purest water. It is not from the 
 "Divine Comedy" or from "Paradise Lost " that we 
 can most easily quote examples of poetic license. 
 These great poets did their best always, sparing no 
 pains and delighting in the labor which was to insure 
 faultlessness of expression. 
 
 If the strictness of the law did not crib, cabin and 
 confine Dante and Milton, if these major bards were 
 willing to be bound that they might be free, still more 
 strongly does the obligation lie upon all lesser poets, 
 upon all mere verse-writers, upon all who make the 
 confession we find in Browning's " One Word More," 
 
 Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 
 
 In fact, the humbler the task and the more modest 
 the versifier the more inexorable should he be with him- 
 self. Especially is this conscientiousness imposed upon 
 the writers of familiar verse. As Locker-Lampson as- 
 serted, "however trivial the subject-matter may be 
 indeed, rather in proportion to its triviality subordi- 
 nation to the rules of composition, and perfection of ex- 
 ecution, should be strictly enforced." Locker-Lampson
 
 248 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 always practised what he preached, so does his friendly 
 rival, Austin Dobson ; and a large part of the ease and 
 grace of their delightful lyrics is due to their unfailing 
 acceptance of the highest standards of workmanship. 
 Both of them profited by the example of the French, 
 whose versification is generally sustained at a lofty 
 level. Indeed, Lowell once asserted that very often in 
 French verse " only the high polish keeps out the decay." 
 It was for the apprentice poets of his own language 
 that Theodore de Banville composed his little treatise 
 on French versification. And in that very entertaining 
 volume he declared that his chapter on "poetic li- 
 censes " contained only a single sentence : " There are 
 none ": " What ! " he cried, " under the pretence of 
 writing in verse, that is to say in a tongue which de- 
 mands rhythm and orderliness above all else, you claim 
 the right to be disorderly and to violate the rules. And 
 this on the pretext that it would have been too diffi- 
 cult to get into your verse what you wanted to put 
 into it exactly as you wanted to put it. But that is pre- 
 cisely what the art of versification is, and it cannot 
 consist in not doing what you have undertaken to do." 
 This may sound like a hard saying, and, in fact, another 
 French poet, Auguste Dorchain, writing on the " Art 
 of Verse" has boldly called it a paradox. But it con- 
 tains the root of the matter ; and it recognizes the fact 
 that the true artist, poet or painter, sculptor or archi- 
 tect, never shrinks from apparent difficulty. On the 
 contrary, he glories in vanquishing it. He grapples 
 with it gladly, knowing that then only can he put forth 
 his full strength. His desire is not merely to express 
 himself amply, but also always to make a good job of 
 the expression itself.
 
 POETIC LICENSE 249 
 
 And he accepts the conditions of the job, whatever 
 they may be, and however arduous they may appear at 
 first glance. No doubt, Michael Angelo might have 
 asked to have false flat surfaces cover the curved ceiling 
 of the Sistine Chapel, and certainly this would have 
 made his task easier ; but we may be sure that no such 
 thought ever entered his mind. He found himself face 
 to face with a new problem in painting, and he yielded 
 himself joyfully to its fascination, snatching the flower, 
 safety, out of the nettle, danger. He would have scorned 
 to plead for any license of any kind, just as Milton 
 would have scorned to append a fifteenth line to a 
 sonnet. Strong men like Michael Angelo and Milton 
 are never tempted to plead the baby act. They never 
 beg off : they would smile with contempt at the weak- 
 lings who are content with the easiest way. 
 
 Yes; when the ways oppose 
 
 When the hard means rebel, 
 Fairer the work out-grows, 
 
 More potent far the spell. 
 
 O Poet, then, forbear 
 
 The loosely-saudaled verse, 
 Choose rather thou to wear 
 
 The buskin, straight and terse; 
 
 See that thy form demand 
 
 The labor of the file; 
 Leave to the tiro's hand 
 
 The limp pedestrian style. 
 
 Paint, chisel, then, or write; 
 
 But, that the work surpass, 
 With the hard fashion fight, 
 
 With the resisting mass.
 
 250 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Thus Austin Dobson has rephrased in compact 
 English Gautier's declaration of the creed of all true 
 artists. They relish the hard fight for perfection of 
 form ; and they enjoy the long siege which shall force 
 a rebellious matter to surrender itself at last in the 
 fittest manner. They would scoff at the suggestion 
 which Walker made in his " Riming Dictionary " 
 that the mating of two words not identical in their 
 terminal sounds may be forgiven on the ground that 
 even " if these imperfect rimes were allowed to be 
 blemishes it would still be better to tolerate them 
 than to cramp the imagination by too narrow bound- 
 aries of exactly similar sounds." The worthy Walker 
 herein revealed his total misunderstanding of the 
 fundamental condition of all art, which is ever a 
 wrestle with difficulty and an ultimate conquest, after 
 valiant striving and impending defeat. The struggle 
 with stubborn expression is only the stimulus to a 
 final triumph ; and no real artist ever finds it cramp- 
 ing to the imagination. It is only by incessant over- 
 coming of obstacles which may seem for a season 
 insuperable that the master measures his full strength, 
 training his muscles and his nerves to obey his will. 
 The poet who shrinks timidly from strenuous effort, 
 and who is lazily willing to avail himself of the tradi- 
 tional poetic licenses for fear of cramping his imagina- 
 tion, may be likened to a man playing patience who 
 should feel himself at liberty to depart from the rules 
 in order to compel the cards to come out right. We 
 cannot help despising any creature so weak of charac- 
 ter as to cheat himself into a belief that the game can 
 be won in this way. And we have a stern respect for 
 the stronger poets who hold with the whist-loving
 
 POETIC LICENSE 2*1 
 
 Mrs. Battle in her liking for " A clear fire, a clean 
 hearth and the rigor of the game." 
 
 The rigor of the game, the letter of the law, the 
 full submission to the rules, these are terms which 
 will be misleading if they seem to suggest that there 
 is any arbitrary code promulgated by some superior 
 power and imposed upon the poet. Of course, the 
 poet is under no other compulsion than so to express 
 himself that he can transmit his thought and com- 
 municate his emotion instantly to his hearers. For 
 his own sake, and under obligation only to himself, 
 the poet must avoid all impediment to this conveying 
 of his meaning to us. Whatever calls away our atten- 
 tion from his message is a hindrance to our swift and 
 complete reception of it. The principle of Economy of 
 Attention is even more imperative in the rhetoric of 
 verse than in the rhetoric of prose. A certain propor- 
 tion of the reader's attention is necessarily absorbed 
 by the effort of following the means whereby the 
 writer sets forth what he has to say, and therefore 
 that style is best which calls least attention to itself, 
 which offers least resistance to the sending of the 
 message, and which leaves the most attention free for 
 its reception. In other words, a writer must so guard 
 the manner of his utterance that we can get his 
 matter with the slightest possible friction. And this 
 is the only law that all writers must obey, whether 
 they work in prose or in verse. 
 
 They violate it only at their own risk ; and every 
 poetic license is a violation of this law. What are 
 the various kinds of poetic license ? Inversions, arbi- 
 trary accents, imperfect rimes, unusual contractions, 
 and departures from accepted grammar ; and every
 
 252 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 one of these is likely to interrupt the current, to in- 
 terfere with the poet's purpose, to call attention to 
 itself if only for a fleeting moment, and thus to take 
 away some part of our attention however little it 
 may be from the thing which he is telling us. 
 Some of these arbitrary variations from normal 
 speech, some of these contractions, some of these 
 inadequate rimes, may seem to the poet to be conse- 
 crated by tradition. But he cannot claim precedent, 
 because he has no right to suppose that all his hearers 
 are familiar with the earlier poets, whose practices he 
 would cite as authorizing his own wilfulness. As a 
 matter of fact, a few of these hearers of his may be 
 familiar with the poets of the past, and those may or 
 may not be disposed to tolerate a poetic license sanc- 
 tified by convention. On the other hand, many of them 
 will surely lack this acquaintance with earlier bards; 
 and these are likely to be annoyed by his failure to 
 satisfy the expectation he has created. If a poet is 
 seeking to reach the heart of the people, he must deny 
 himself the poetic licenses that earlier poets indulged 
 in ; and he is in error if he thinks that in verse-making 
 "freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to 
 precedent." 
 
 Of all the various departures from the proper use 
 of language which constitute the several kinds of 
 poetic license, perhaps the most defensible are inver- 
 sions. The rhythmic march of stately verse often calls 
 for a change in the natural order of words and often 
 justifies it to the ear. In the opening lines of " Para- 
 dise Lost " we find an example of this justifiable 
 inversion or rather of inversion which is actually 
 helpful :
 
 POETIC LICENSE 253 
 
 Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the World, and all our woe, 
 With loss of Eden, till one greater Mau 
 Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, 
 Sing, Heavenly Muse I 
 
 The ear easily carries the meaning as it is unrolled 
 until the phrase ends with the words " Sing, Heavenly 
 Muse ! " which logically should come first. And many 
 other examples as illuminating could readily be se- 
 lected from the same epic. Indeed, this is not really 
 an instance of poetic license, since the inversion here 
 does not interfere with the Economy of Attention ; 
 indeed, it may even heighten this. So the two inver- 
 sions in one of the stanzas of Wordsworth's noble 
 " Ode to Duty " justify themselves at once, because 
 they are congruous to the temper of the poem as a 
 whole : 
 
 To humbler functions, awful Power 1 
 
 I call thee : I myself commend 
 
 Unto thy guidance from this hour ; 
 
 Oh, let my weakness have an end I 
 
 In these two examples, Milton's and Wordsworth's, 
 the eye of the reader may detect the inversion ; but the 
 ear of the hearer would accept them without notice. 
 It is said that certain of the horses in the frieze of the 
 Parthenon have legs only on the outer side and that 
 the legs on the inner side have been suppressed un- 
 hesitatingly by the sculptor, a departure from nature 
 which can be detected only by careful observation ; 
 and this can scarcely be termed a license since it is 
 but the suppression of something non-essential to the 
 purpose of the artist. This suppression in no wise 
 calls attention to itself ; and thus it is parallel with
 
 254 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 the inversions just quoted from Milton and Words- 
 worth. 
 
 Closely akin to awkward inversions are arbitrary 
 contractions, such as ta'en for taken, o'er for over or 
 'gainst for against. Here again, the sole question is 
 whether these departures from normal language call 
 attention to themselves. Do they interfere with our 
 Economy of Attention, as the lines fall upon our ears ? 
 If they do not, then they justify themselves. As a 
 matter of fact, 'gainst is so slight a variation from 
 against that most ears would fail to notice it, while 
 on the other hand ta'en for taken would be likely to 
 annoy the ordinary hearer not acquainted with the 
 traditions of English poetry. The Elizabethan poets, 
 especially the dramatists, were free in their contrac- 
 tions. They risked 'stroy for destroy, 'tide for decide, 
 'stall for instal ; and all of these licenses would jar 
 on our ears to-day, whatever they may have done long 
 ago. The Elizabethans also were wont to use 'twixt 
 for betwixt and 'neath for underneath ; and here they 
 seem to have anticipated our modern use of the 
 shorter form as an accepted contraction so familiar 
 that it opposes no friction to the thought. 
 
 It is to be noted that the later poets of the classi- 
 cist period made many contractions which now seem 
 to us unnecessary ; they accepted a theory of rigid 
 regularity of rhythm and did not allow themselves 
 to profit by the privilege of substituting frankly an 
 anapest for an iamb, which the ear usually admits 
 without cavil. Thus they felt themselves forced to 
 write whisp'ring for whispering, tim'rous for timor- 
 ous, mis'ry for misery, contractions imposed upon 
 them by their narrow theory of verse and yet not of-
 
 POETIC LICENSE 255 
 
 fensive to us to-day because they are evident only to 
 our eyes and not audible in our ears, wbich uncon- 
 sciously supply the missing syllable. 
 
 Where some versifiers have forced a word to fit 
 into their metrical schemes by violently mangling it, 
 others have been able to accomplish the feat only by 
 altering its ordinary accent. They have wrenched the 
 pronunciation of a single word to compel it to fit into 
 the rhythm of their lines. Sometimes this seems to be 
 mere wilf ulness, as in Walt Whitman's " O Captain ! 
 My Captain ! " noble as that is in its elevation and firm 
 as it is in its structure. The poet was so unused to rime 
 that he required us to accent the insignificant ing twice 
 in order to get a semblance of rime that he needed ; and 
 he is guilty of this in two stanzas out of three : 
 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring, 
 
 and again 
 
 For you bouquets and ribbon 'd wreaths for you the shores 
 
 a-crowdm<7, 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the poet is not really falsify- 
 ing the accent, although he may seem to do so to the 
 eye of the pedantic reader. Milton, for example, in his 
 famous line describing the fallen angel's descent, 
 
 Burned after him to the bottomless pit, 
 
 did not intend that the word bottomless should have 
 an arbitrary stress on its second syllable. He dared 
 the natural pronunciation of the word here, because 
 he needed the unexpected variation in the meter to 
 suggest, at once boldly and subtly, the irresistible 
 slipping down into the fathomless depth. The license
 
 256 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 here, if there is any, is not a question of pronuncia- 
 tion, but of meter ; and if the passage is read aloud 
 with due regard to mass and weight, the ear is not 
 offended by the departure from regularity. Rather, 
 indeed, is this departure an element in the power and 
 beauty of the poetic narrative. 
 
 Now and again in English poetry we come across 
 a colloquial looseness which may seem to some persons 
 a blunder in grammar. On occasion we discover this 
 to have been intentional, indulged in as a stroke of 
 humor, as, for example, in Prior's playful epistle : 
 
 Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war ; 
 
 And let us like Horace and Lydia agree : 
 For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, 
 
 As he was a poet sublimer than me. 
 
 But there is apparently no intent in a grammatical 
 perversity of Byron's, 
 
 And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray, 
 And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies 
 His petty hope in some near port or bay, 
 And dashest him again to earth : there let him lay. 
 
 With all his great gifts Byron often lacked art. In 
 his verse he was not willing always to take the trouble 
 to put his best foot foremost. Probably he would have 
 approved of Coleridge's saying that " poetry, like 
 schoolboys, by too frequent and severe correction, 
 may be cowed into dulness." And yet there is no 
 denying that to be content to move along the line of 
 least resistance is as demoralizing and as dangerous in 
 verse-writing as it is in character-building. 
 
 Byron has often the brisk celerity of the impro- 
 viser ; and he shrank from the labor of the file. In 
 his graver verse he was ready enough to take what-
 
 POETIC LICENSE 257 
 
 ever rimes might run off the end of his pen. And the 
 most frequent of all poetic licenses is that which is 
 supposed to permit the linking of two words which 
 do not chime with precision. Byron was willing to 
 begin his " Stanzas " with 
 
 Could Love for ever 
 
 Run like a river. 
 
 And later in the same lyric he is content to set 
 
 down 
 
 When lovers parted 
 Feel broken-Aeartec? 
 And, all hopes thwarted^ 
 Expect to die. 
 
 Ever does not rime with river^ unless we are ex- 
 pected to pronounce it iver ; and thwarted does not 
 rime with parted, unless we force it to do so by vary- 
 ing from the accepted pronunciation. The poet who 
 tries to link together uncongenial words like these 
 is impaled on the horns of a dilemma : either the 
 words do not sound alike and then our ears are cheated 
 of the expectation of rime, or they are made to sound 
 alike, by forcing the pronunciation of one of them, 
 and then our attention is distracted by this departure 
 from the normal use of language. In either case the 
 poet has violated the principle of Economy of Atten- 
 tion. These misguided attempts at rime may be toler- 
 ated by some ears, but others will hold that a rime 
 which is only tolerable is about as unsatisfactory as a 
 tolerable egg. 
 
 Mortimer Collins's charming lyric, the " Ivory Gate," 
 is marred for many a hearer by several false rimes. 
 One of them is so slight a departure from identity of 
 terminal sound that it may not arrest the attention 
 as it falls upon the ear :
 
 258 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Then the oars of Ithaca dip so 
 
 Silently into the sea 
 That they wake not sad Calypso, 
 
 And the Hero wanders free ; 
 He breasts the ocean furrows 
 
 At war with the words of fate, 
 And the blue tide's low susurrus 
 
 Comes up to the Ivory Gate. 
 
 But in another stanza there are two false rimes, 
 one of which surely calls attention to itself even if the 
 other was covered by customary slovenliness of pro- 
 nunciation : 
 
 Or down from green Helvellyn 
 
 The roar of streams I hear, 
 And the lazy sail is swelling 
 
 To the winds of Windermere : 
 That girl with the rustic bodice, 
 
 'Mid the ferry's laughing freight, 
 Is as fair as any goddess 
 
 Who sweeps thro' the Ivory Gate. 
 
 To mate furrows and susurrus, bodice and god' 
 dess may be a blemish only, but to link together Hel- 
 vellyn and swelling is little short of a crime. We may 
 be willing enough to overlook the blemishes and even 
 to pardon the crime, for the sake of the buoyancy and 
 brilliancy of the little lyric as a whole. But the pity of 
 it ! We cannot but grieve that a poem which came so 
 near perfection in its kind should fall so far short of 
 it. Even in Keats and in Tennyson we stumble on 
 false rimes, more frequently in Keats than in Tenny- 
 son ; and they stand out as needless defects. They 
 may be only spots on the sun, which is none the less 
 glorious ; but none the less are they spots. 
 
 In English a pair of rimes must have identity of the 
 accented vowel-sound and of all the following sounds
 
 POETIC LICENSE 259 
 
 and at the same time it must have different sounds 
 preceding the accented vowel. That is to say, a word 
 cannot rime with itself, even if the meaning is wholly 
 different. In French and in Italian verse this rule does 
 not obtain ; but in English our ears refuse to accept 
 sense and innocence as a fitly mated pair, although 
 Wordsworth has chosen to marry them in a couplet. 
 Milton linked together ruth and Ruth, probably misled 
 by Italian precedents ; and Tennyson ventured to fol- 
 low 
 
 The holly by the cottage eave 
 with 
 
 And sadly falls our Christmas eve. 
 
 To many English ears these departures from the 
 usual practice might be annoying, in that they would 
 arrest attention to themselves. They might disappoint 
 the expectation of the hearer; and they would be the 
 more likely to do this the closer they came together, 
 that is, the more emphatically they forced themselves 
 upon our notice. But they would probably be over- 
 looked in the course of a lyric in which the same rim- 
 ing sound recurred frequently, as in a ballade, for ex- 
 ample, wherein a dozen lines rime together. In Austin 
 Dobson's " Ballade of the Armada " we can discover, 
 if we take the trouble, that he has back ws and Bac- 
 chus, tack us and attack us. Yet this repetition does 
 not call attention to itself as it occurs in different 
 stanzas. It can be detected by the eye, of course, but 
 the ear would probably fail to perceive it : 
 
 King Phillip has vaunted his claims ; 
 
 He had sworn for a year he would sack us ; 
 With an army of heathenish names 
 
 He was coming to fagot and stack us ;
 
 260 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Like the thieves of the sea he would track u 
 And shatter our ships on the main ; 
 
 But we had bold Neptune to back us, 
 And where are the galleons of Spain ? 
 
 His caracks were christened of dames 
 
 To the kirtles whereof he would tack us ; 
 
 With his saints and his gilded stern-frames, 
 He had thought like an egg-shell to crack OS J, 
 Now Howard may get to his Flaccus, 
 
 And Drake to his Devon again, 
 
 And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus, 
 
 For where are the galleons of Spain ? 
 
 Let his Majesty hang to St. James 
 
 The ax that he whetted to hack us; 
 He must play at some lustier games 
 
 Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us ; 
 
 To his mines of Peru he would pack us 
 To tug at his bullet and chain ; 
 
 Alas ! that his Greatness should lack us ! > 
 But where are the galleons of Spain ? 
 
 Envoy 
 GLORIANA ! the Don may attack us 
 
 Whenever his stomach be fain ; 
 
 He must reach us before he can rack us, . . . 
 
 And where are the galleons of Spain ? 
 
 " Art in its perfection is not ostentatious ; it lies hie 
 and works its effect, itself unseen," so Sir Joshua Reyv 
 nolcls asserted, paraphrasing Horace. And in another 
 of his suggestive discourses the English painter ampli- 
 fied the same thought in a passage which is as appli- 
 cable to poetry as it is to painting : " The great end 
 of the art is to strike the imagination. The painter 
 therefore is to make no ostentation of the means by 
 which this is done ; the spectator is only to feel the re- 
 sult in his bosom. An inferior artist is unwilling that
 
 POETIC LICENSE 261 
 
 any part of his industry should be lost upon the spec- 
 tator. He takes as much pains to discover, as the 
 greater artist does to conceal, the marks of his subor- 
 dinate assiduity." While this is true of one class of in- 
 ferior artists, there is another class who are deficient 
 in this "subordinate assiduity," and who have not 
 taken the trouble to master the means whereby they 
 must strike the imagination. They are prone to assert 
 a claim to that poetic license which can be allowed only 
 to the greater artists and which the greater artists very 
 rarely ask us to excuse. 
 
 In the Mexico of Montezuma, when the natives first 
 caught sight of the cavalrymen of Cortez, they thought 
 that horse and man were one. and they were astonished 
 when they chanced to behold a trooper dismounting 
 from his steed. When a poet soars aloft upon Pegasus 
 he ought to be one with his winged steed ; he may 
 guide it at will as it soars aloft ; but he must not let 
 the spectator see him dismount. 

 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A! SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 
 
 THE student who comes to the consideration of English 
 versification without any previous acquaintance with its 
 principles will do well to begin by training himself to 
 recognize the various rhythms and meters. He should take 
 a good collection of poetry, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, 
 Stedman's Victorian or American Anthologies, and go 
 through its pages identifying the rhythm and the meter of 
 the successive poems until he has attained certainty of de- 
 cision. At the same time he can investigate the various 
 forma of the stanza employed by the leading British and 
 American lyrists. These anthologies contain only the more 
 popular and more representative poems of the several au- 
 thors ; and the student will do well to select two or three 
 poets and to examine their complete works to see if he can 
 perceive in the lyrics omitted from the anthologies any 
 technical reason for the comparative failure to please the 
 public. Sometimes he will be able to discover that an un- 
 due length of line or an awkwardness of rhythm or a 
 monotony of rime may be responsible for the lack of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 Then as he becomes more familiar with the technic of 
 versification and more responsive to its delicate effects, he 
 may consider more highly specialized collections of poetry, 
 each devoted to a single type : Child's English and Scot- 
 tish Popular Ballads, Cambridge Edition, Main's Treas- 
 ury of English Sonnets, Gosse's English Odes, Gleeson 
 White's Ballads and Rondeaux, Locker's Lyra Elegantia- 
 rum. Some of these volumes are devoted to poems in the 
 same rigid form and others are confined to lyrics animated 
 by the same spirit.
 
 264 APPENDIX 
 
 But if the student really wishes to attain an intimate 
 understanding of the art of verse he must attempt verse- 
 making himself. The result of his effort may be negligi- 
 ble, but the effort will be its own reward. He may begin 
 very modestly by taking any simple passage of prose 
 for example, a newspaper account of a fire or of any other 
 accident and rephrasing this in a succession of iambs, 
 running on without any division into lines. Another pas- 
 sage may be turned into trochees, a third into anapests and 
 a fourth into dactyls. The iambs and the trochees ought to 
 be achieved with no great difficulty ; but the succession of 
 dactyls and of anapests will not be so easy. When a fair 
 facility has been conquered a passage may be chosen from 
 some public address Webster's Bunker Hill Oration 
 or Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech to be recast into blank 
 verse, unrimed iambic pentameter. Another passage might 
 be taken from a novel to be turned into trochaic tetra- 
 meter, the meter of The Song of Hiawatha. 
 
 Then the student may undertake a task calling for more 
 or less command of form. He may find a simple story 
 either in a newspaper or excerpted from a play or a ro- 
 mance ; and this simple story he may turn into a ballad. 
 The kind of ballad which he decides to experiment in 
 ought to be consonant with the character of the theme. 
 That is to say, the story may be treated with the naif sim- 
 plicity of the old English ballads, such as Sir Patrick 
 Spens ; it may be told with the narrative leisureliness of 
 Longfellow's Paul Severe 's Bide ; it may have the swift 
 terseness of Scott's Young Lochinvar, and of Macaulay's 
 Battle of Ivry ; it may glow with the dramatic intensity 
 of Rudyard Kipling's Ballade of East and West ; or it 
 may be cast in couplets with the quaint color of Whittier's 
 Maud Mutter, or with the picturesque flavor of Austin 
 Dobson's Ballad of Beau Brocade. 
 
 Other exercises of the same sort will easily suggest 
 themselves to the student. For example, there would be 
 profit in taking a critical statement from any one of Ar-
 
 APPENDIX 265 
 
 nold's Essays in Criticism, and rewriting this in heroic 
 couplets in the manner of Pope's Essay on Criticism, In 
 like manner a brilliant paragraph might be picked out of 
 one of Lowell's prose essays, that on Thoreau, for in- 
 stance, and this might be rephrased in the rapid riming 
 anapests of his own Fable for Critics. 
 
 The composition of what the French term bouts rimes is 
 also an admirable gymnastic. This requires the writing of 
 a poem to a set of rimes arbitrarily chosen in advance. 
 The student may open a book anywhere and pick out any 
 two words ; he must find a rime to each of these words ; 
 and then with these two pairs of rimes he must write a 
 quatrain, as best he can and on any theme that the riming 
 words may suggest to him. Of course he can borrow a 
 commonplace thought to fill out his four lines, if the riming 
 words do not happen to be suggestive. After a little prac- 
 tice with quatrains and octaves in bouts rimes, the student 
 may venture on the composition of a sonnet to a set of pre- 
 scribed lines. He must choose six words, well contrasted in 
 their vowel-sounds. Then he must find three other words to 
 rime with the first word of his five and with the second ; 
 these will give him the rimes for his octave, a, b, b, a, 
 a, b, b, a. He needs only one rime for each of the other 
 three of his original five words ; and these will give him 
 the sextet, c, d, e, c, d, e. Here again it is quite possible that 
 the rimes themselves may suggest a topic for the sonnet. 
 
 Owing to the apparent complexity of their structure the 
 various French forms are very useful to the student in his 
 search for technical dexterity, especially the rondeau and 
 ballade. But the full profit of the grapple with their com- 
 plexity is to be had only when the student abides by all 
 the rules of the form and denies himself any privilege. A 
 charade may be cast in the form of a ballade, with the 
 first syllable in the first octave, the second syllable in the 
 second octave, the third syllable in the third octave, and 
 the whole word in the envoy. 
 
 Parody is also to be recommended, or at least deliberate
 
 266 APPENDIX 
 
 imitation, the wilful copying of the method of the chosen 
 poet, perhaps with a playful exaggeration of his manner- 
 isms. But useful as may be the conscious imitation of sev- 
 eral poets having sharply diverging principles, it is not 
 more advantageous than translation. A piece of Latin or 
 French prose may be turned into English verse, or a for- 
 eign poem may be rendered into English as faithfully as 
 possible with due respect for the metrical structure of the 
 original. 
 
 These are but scattered hints to be improved by the stu- 
 dent himself, or by the instructor. Just as the college 
 teacher of rhetoric compels his pupils to attain to an aver- 
 age of facility in composition by requiring them to prepare 
 daily themes, so the student of versification must supple 
 his muscles by attempting all sorts of metrical exercises. 
 But these exercises are intended chiefly to increase his ap- 
 preciation and his understanding of the masterpieces of the 
 major poets ; and he must continue the constant and care- 
 ful study of these poets, spying out their metrical secrets, 
 and never failing to observe their rhythmical variety. 
 
 B! BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS 
 
 A classified list of the more important treatises on Eng- 
 lish versification will be found in Chapter VII of Gayley 
 and Scott's Introduction to the Methods and Materials of 
 Literary Criticism (Boston : Ginn & Co., 1899) ; and a 
 chronological list of books and articles in English only is 
 presented in T. S. Omond's English Metrists (Tunbridge 
 Wells : Pelton, 1903). 
 
 The two most elaborate treatises in English are Guest's 
 History of English Rhythms, new edition by W. W. Skeat 
 (London: Bell, 1882), and Saintsbury's History of Eng- 
 lish Prosody, in three volumes (London and New York : 
 Macmillan, 1906-1910). To be noted also are two other in- 
 vestigations, Verrier's Principes de la Metrique Anglaise, 
 in three volumes (Paris : Welter, 1909-1910), and Jakob 
 Schipper's Englische Metrik, in three volumes (Vienna,
 
 APPENDIX 267 
 
 1881-1888). A single volume condensation of Schipper's 
 book was issued in Vienna in 1895, and the author pre- 
 pared an English version of this which he called A His- 
 tory of English Versification (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 
 1910). 
 
 There are shorter text-books better fitted for the begin- 
 ner, written from varying points of view. The names of a 
 few of these may be given here, although an exhaustive 
 list would be impossible : Gummere's Handbook of Poetics 
 (Boston: Ginn, 1891) ; Corson's Primer of English Verse 
 (Boston : Ginn, 1892) ; Parsons's English Versification 
 (Boston : Leach, Shewell and Sanborn, 1894) ; Mayor's 
 Chapters on English Meter (Cambridge : University Press, 
 1886) ; Omond's Study of Meter (London : Richards, 
 1903) ; Bright and Miller's Elements of English Versifi- 
 cation (Boston : Ginn, 1910), and Richardson's Study of 
 English Rimes (Hanover, N. H., 1909). Alden's English 
 Verse (New York : Holt, 1903) contains a well-arranged 
 collection of examples. John Addington Symonds's papers 
 on Blank Verse are now available in a separate volume 
 (New York : Scribner, 1895). 
 
 Poe's three papers on the Rationale of Verse, the 
 Philosophy of Composition and the Poetic Principle can 
 be found in any edition of his works. The influence of Poe 
 is obvious in Lanier's Science of English Verse (New 
 York : Scribner, 1880), just as the influence of Lanier is 
 obvious in Dabney's Musical Basis of Verse (New York 
 and London: Longmans. 1901). Dr. Holmes's very sug- 
 gestive paper on the Physiology of Versification is in* 
 eluded in his Pages from an Old Volume of Life (Boston : 
 Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883). In my own Parts 
 of Speech, Essays on English (New York : Scribner, 1901) 
 will be found An Inquiry as to Rime and a paper On the 
 Poetry of Place-Names.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 241. 
 Alcaics, 191. 
 
 Aldrich, Anna Reeve, 97. 
 Aldrich, T. B., 92, 128, 138. 
 Alexander, Addison, 79. 
 Alexander's feast, 202. 
 Alliteration, 81. 
 Allowable rimes, 54, 61, 245. 
 Alphabetical symbols, for pairs of 
 
 rimes, 109. 
 Amiel, 6. 
 Amphibrach, 16. 
 Amphiinacer, 16. 
 Anacreon, 40. 
 Anapestic dimeter, 148, 159; hcpta- 
 
 meter, 18, 114 ; hexameter, 35 ; oc- 
 
 tameter, 35; tetrameter, 26, 200, 
 
 204, 205 ; trimeter, 23, 148. 
 Anapestic meters, substitution in, 
 
 20. 
 Anapestic rhythm, 32; termination 
 
 of ,60. 
 
 Annabel Lee, 100, 121. 
 Aristotle, 32. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 160, 184, 194, 196, 
 
 198, 218, 265. 
 Art of Poetry," 41, 49. 
 " Art of Verse," 248. 
 Assonance, 59, 61, 193. 
 Atalanta in Calydon, 74. 
 
 Balestier, Wolcott, 106. 
 Ballad, 20, 32; meter, 227. 
 Ballad of Beau Brocade, 104, 264. 
 Ballade, 160. 
 
 Ballade a double refrain, 167. 
 Ballade of Dreamland, 169. 
 Ballade of East and West, 264. 
 Ballade of Old Plays, 162. 
 Ballade of Prose and Rime, 167. 
 Ballade of Swimming, 164. 
 Ballade of the Armada, 259. 
 Banville, Theodore de, 157, 161, 163, 
 
 173, 248. 
 
 Barbara Frietchie, 103, 206. 
 Barham, Richard H., 64, 204, 205. 
 
 Battle of Agincourt, 110. 
 
 Battle -Hymn of the Republic, 
 
 108. 
 
 Belle of the Ball-room, 46. 
 Bells, The, 88. 
 Bells of Lynn, The, 180. 
 Bells of Shandon, 58, 120. 
 Bentley, Richard, 219. 
 Blake, William, 196, 197. 
 Blank verse, 49, 225. 
 "Blank Verse," Symonds, quota* 
 
 tion from, 200, 267. 
 Boileau, 41, 49. 
 
 Bradley, Professor A. C., 3, 7. 
 Breathing, rate of, 36. 
 Bride ofAbydos, 27, 35. 
 Bridge of Sighs, 45, 63. 
 Bright, John, 11, 267. 
 Browning, Elizabeth B., 53, 67, 68, 
 
 115, 142. 
 Browning, Robert, 23, 24, 33, 89, 40, 
 
 63, 56, 62, 65, 67, 70, 75, 76, 84, 86, 87, 
 
 105, 115, 185, 186, 202, 224, 242, 243, 
 
 247. 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 109, 203, 
 
 241. 
 
 Bunner, H. C., 69, 84, 148, 150, 162. 
 Burns, Robert, 119, 123, 206. 
 Butler, Samuel, 205. 
 Byron, Lord, 13, 17, 27, 35, 50, 64, 87, 
 
 107, 108, 109, 111, 119, 129, 201, 202, 
 
 206, 222, 256, 257. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 210. 
 
 Canning, George, 65, 153. 
 
 Canterbury Tales, 211. 
 
 Carman, Bliss, 86. 
 
 Carpenter, Professor G. R., 198. 
 
 Catullus, 91. 
 
 Cavalier Tunes, 23. 
 
 Celtic origin of assonance, 61. 
 
 Century of Roundels, 152. 
 
 " Certain Notes of Instruction con- 
 cerning the Making of Verse," 
 Gascoigne, quotation from, 80, 
 244.
 
 270 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chamber over the Gate, 95. 
 
 Chant-royal, 170. 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 112, 119, 160, 206, 
 
 208, 210, 223. 
 Child, Francis J., 263. 
 Child's Daughter, A, 82. 
 Christabel, 207. 
 Christmas Carol, 120. 
 Churchill, Charles, 205. 
 Classic hexameter, 189. 
 Coleridge, Samuel T., 2, 16, 25, 63, 
 
 84, 107, 109, 190, 207, 208, 235, 241, 
 
 256. 
 
 Collins, Mortimer, 257. 
 Colliteration, 86. 
 Comedy of Errors, 60. 
 Common meter, 38. 
 Concord Hymn, 106, 109. 
 Contractions, 254. 
 Corson, Professor H. T., 79, 267. 
 Couplet, 103, 125, 178, 200. 
 Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 
 
 187, 188. 
 
 Cowper, William, 168, 202, 222, 241. 
 Crossing the Bar, 93, 97. 
 Cumberland, The, 122. 
 
 Dabney, J. P., 267. 
 
 Dactylic rhythms, 33; termination 
 of, 50. 
 
 Dactylic tetrameter, 24. 
 
 Danny Deever, 94. 
 
 Dante, 247. 
 
 Daudet, Alphonse, 146. 
 
 Deborah and Barak, Song of, 10. 
 
 Defence of Guinevere, 105. 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 235. 
 
 Deserted Village, The, 221. 
 
 Destruction of Sennacherib, 201. 
 
 Dickens, rhythm in, 11. 
 
 Dimeter, 17. 
 
 " Discourse on Epic Poetry," Dry- 
 den, quotation from, 73. 
 
 'Discourses on Painting," Rey- 
 nolds, quotation from, 4. 
 
 Distich, 178. 
 
 Divlna Commedia, 141, 247. 
 
 pobson, Austin, 17, 45, 46, 50, 75, 76, 
 80, 104. 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 
 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 167, 168, 
 174, 248, 250, 259. 
 
 Don Juan, 64, 111. 
 
 Dorchain, Auguste, 248. 
 
 Double rime, 47, 50, 63, 76. 
 
 Drake, Joseph K., 13, 17. 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 38, 110. 
 
 Dreams, 126. 
 
 Dryden, John, 32, 73, 202, 208, 218, 
 
 214, 216, 226, 241. 
 Duclaux, Mine. (A. Mary F. Robin* 
 
 son), 149. 
 Dyer, John, 39. 
 
 Economy of Attention, 29, 41, 52, 193; 
 
 251, 253, 254, 257. 
 Eight-line stanza, 110, 111. 
 Elements of English Versification, 
 
 267. 
 
 Eliot, George, 192. 
 Elizabethan playwright-poets, 236. 
 Emerson, R. W., 41, 44, 53, 106, 109, 
 
 126, 178. 
 
 Enceladus, 116. 
 Endymion, 223. 
 England, My Mother, 183. 
 English hexameters, 187. 
 English verse, 225. 
 
 English versification, only feet pos- 
 sible in, 15. 
 Envoy, 162. 
 Epic poems, 102. 
 Epistle, containing the Strangt 
 
 Medical Experience of Karshish, 
 
 An, 243. 
 Essay on Criticism, 71, 73, 78, 217, 
 
 265. 
 
 Etching, 179. 
 Evangeline, 187, 188. 
 Excelsior, 95, 113. 
 
 Fable for Critics, 64, 203, 210, 268. 
 
 Faery Queen, 118. 
 
 Familiar verse, 168. 
 
 Fatima, 124. 
 
 Faustus, 229. 
 
 Feet, number of, 35. 
 
 Feminine rime, 50. 
 
 Field, Eugene, 68. 
 
 Fifine at the Fair, 39. 
 
 "Fit of Rime against Rime, A,* 
 
 Jonson, quotation from, 176. 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, 107, 109. 
 Five-line stanza, 113. 
 Fletcher, John, 235. 
 Fly not yet, 120. 
 Foot, 33. 
 
 For Annie, 26, 35, 67, 99. 
 Ford, John, 235. 
 Foresters, The, 116. 
 Four Winds, 182.
 
 INDEX 
 
 271 
 
 French, terminal rimes In, 33; 225; 
 
 Alexandrine, 40, 225; dependence 
 
 upon rime, 177. 
 French verse, 248, 259. 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 
 
 231. 
 Future, The, 194. 
 
 Garden of Proserpine, 112. 
 
 Gascoigne, George, 80, 130, 244. 
 
 Gautier, Thdophile, 173, 250. 
 
 Gay, John, 125. 
 
 Gilder, R. W., 98, 127, 134. 
 
 Goblet of Life, The, 116, 120. 
 
 God of Love, 170. 
 
 God Save the Xing, 40. 
 
 Goethe, 27. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 203, 204, 210, 221, 
 
 222. 
 
 Gorboduc, 227, 228. 
 Gosse, Edmund, 144, 163, 173, 195, 263. 
 Gould, Baring, 17. 
 Gower, John, 60. 
 Gramont, 195. 
 Gray, Thomas, 17, 117. 
 Greek dramatists, 227. 
 Greek hexameter, 225. 
 Greek poetry, rhythm in, 32, 40, 189, 
 
 190 ; lack of rime in, 177. 
 Greene, Robert, 231. 
 Gronyar Hill, 39. 
 Gummere, Professor, 25, 29, 267. 
 
 Harte, Bret, 53, 114, 118. 
 
 Haunted House, 110. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 25. 
 
 Hebrew lyrics, lack of rime in, 177. 
 
 Hebrew rhapsodists, 196. 
 
 Henley, William E., 147, 148,159, 179. 
 
 Hero and Leander, 212. 
 
 Heroic couplet, 32, 200. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 111, 126. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas, 235. 
 
 Hiawatha, Song of , 36, 37, 186, 264. 
 
 His Majesty's Escape, 213. 
 
 Hodgson, Shadworth H.,225. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver "Wendell, 36, 37, 38, 
 
 39, 40, 57, 70, 119, 122, 187, 188, 207, 
 
 210. 
 
 Homer, 40. 
 
 Homeric hexameter, 191. 
 Hood, Tom, 1, 13, 17, 33,45, 53, 63, 67, 
 
 110, 119, 122, 246. 
 Hooker, Brian, 242. 
 Horace, 150, 260. 
 
 Rouse of Fame, The, 206. 
 
 Hovey, Richard, 36, 86. 
 
 How They Brought the Good Newt 
 
 from Ghent to Aix, 202. 
 Hugo, Victor, 173. 
 Hunt, Leigh, 7, 102, 153, 210, 219, 220, 
 
 222. 
 Hymns, 32. 
 
 Iambic heptameter, 17, 22, 34, 38, 
 227; hexameter, 17, 38; pentame- 
 ter, 17, 18, 37, 39, 42, 129, *33, 200, 
 208, 209, 210, 211, 223, 224; tetra- 
 meter, 17, 159, 186, 200, 205, 206. 
 207 ; trimeter, 186. 
 
 Iambic meters, substitution in, 20. 
 
 Iambic rhythms, frequency in Eng- 
 lish verse, 31, 32 ; termination, 50. 
 
 Idyllic poems, 102. 
 
 It Penseroso, 206. 
 
 Iliad, Pope's translation, 220. 
 
 Imitations of Horace, 218. 
 
 In Memoriam, 109, 111, 117. 
 
 In Town, 174. 
 
 In the Metidja, 70. 
 
 Ingoldsby Legends, 64, 204. 
 
 Inscription for a Well in Memory 
 of the Martyrs of the War, 126. 
 
 Insertion of extra short syllable, 
 24. 
 
 Internal rime, 66. 
 
 " Introduction to Milton's Son- 
 nets," Pattison, quotations from, 
 125. 
 
 Italian sonnet, 133, 138. 
 
 Italian verse, 259. 
 
 Ivory Gate, The, 257. 
 
 Ivry, 94, 264. 
 
 Jackdaw of ftheims, The, 204. 
 Jocosa Lyra, 76. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 222, 237, 238. 
 Jonson, Ben, 55, 176, 209, 213, 235. 
 
 Kalevala, the Finnish, 186. 
 
 Keats, John, 53, 119, 131, 139, 210,222, 
 
 223, 241, 242, 258. 
 King Henry of Navarre, 94. 
 King James, 31, 47, 48, 196. 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 18, 40, 53, 66, 94, 
 
 106, 110, 195, 196. 
 
 La Farge, John, 2. 
 
 Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 94. 
 
 Lady of Shalott, The, 95, 119.
 
 872 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lady of the Lake, The, 206. 
 Lamb, Charles, 181, 183. 
 Landor, W. S., 98, 126, 128, 178. 
 Lang, Andrew, 88, 135, 152, 159 161, 
 
 162, 170. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, 74, 87, 267. 
 Last Leaf, Tlie, 122. 
 Last Oracle, 120. 
 Latin dramatists, 227. 
 Latin hexameter, 40. 
 Latin lyrics, absence of rime in, 
 
 177. 
 Latin rhythm the result of quantity, 
 
 189. 
 
 Lemaitre, Jules, 170. 
 Lewis Carroll, 65. 
 Life and Death of Jason, 224. 
 Limerick, 144. 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 264. 
 Locker-Lampson, Frederick, 67, 247. 
 Long syllable, 18, 28, 189. 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 13, 
 
 17, 18, 36, 39, 40, 77, 78, 95, 104, 113, 
 
 116, 120, 121, 122, 139, 140, 179, 180, 
 
 183, 186, 187, 188, 190. 
 Lope de Vega, 154. 
 Lost Love, 68. 
 
 Lounsbury, Professor T. R., 172. 
 Love among the Ruins, 75, 76. 
 Love and Age, 46. 
 Love's Labor 's Lost, 212. 
 Love's Nocturn, 67, 123. 
 Lowell, James Russell, 10, 50, 62, 64, 
 
 119, 127, 137, 140, 173, 203, 204, 206, 
 
 209, 210, 216, 237, 246, 248. 
 Lliders, Charles Henry, 182. 
 Lyric poetry, 102. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 34, 38, 46, 94. 
 
 Mahoney, Francis, 120. 
 
 Maidenhood, 104. 
 
 Malayan pantoum, 173. 
 
 Marching Along, 23. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 209, 212, 228, 
 
 229, 230, 231, 233. 
 Marmion, 36, 37, 206. 
 Marseillaise, The, 40. 
 Marston, John, 235. 
 Masculine rime, 50. 
 Massinger, Philip, 235. 
 Match, A, 149. 
 Maud Mutter, 103, 206, 264- 
 May Queen, 96. 
 Mayor, Professor, 6. 
 McAndrews' Hymn, 06. 
 
 McFingal, 20 
 
 Men and Women, 185. 
 
 Merchantmen, The, 110. 
 
 Meredith, George, 177. 
 
 Meter, 31, 33. 
 
 Miller, Joaquin, 68. 
 
 Milton, John, 16, 32, 42, 43, 44, 78, 86, 
 
 129, 133, 139, 190, 191, 206, 230, 236, 
 
 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 247, 249, 264, 
 
 255, 259. 
 
 Miss Blanche Says, 118. 
 Mitchell, Weir, 186. 
 Monk's Tale, 112. 
 Monogamous rimes, 71. 
 Monosyllables, 78. 
 Monotony, avoided by substitutions 
 
 and suppressions, 32. 
 Moore, Thomas, 117, 120. 
 Morris, William, 105, 210, 224. 
 "Musical Basis of Verse," 267. 
 
 Narrative poems, 102. 
 Nash, Thomas, 192. 
 Nature, Longfellow, 138. 
 " Nature and Elements of Poetry, 
 The," Stedman, quotation from, 8. 
 Newman, Cardinal, 185. 
 Nicholas Nickleby, 11. 
 Nine-line stanza, 119. 
 Norton, Caroline E. S., 227. 
 Nursery-rimes, 20, 39, 60. 
 
 O Captain ! My Captain, 197, 255. 
 
 Octave, 131. 
 
 Ode, to Duty, 253. 
 
 Odyssey, The, 135. 
 
 Old Clock on the Stairs, 95. 
 
 Omissions, 21. 
 
 Omond,T. S., 31, 266, 267. 
 
 On a Distant Prospect of Eton Cot- 
 
 lege, 117. 
 On a Fan, 45. 
 On Himself, 126. 
 "On Translating Homer," Arnold, 
 
 quotation from, 218. 
 On the Late Massacres in Pied* 
 
 mont, 133. 
 
 One, Two, Three, 69. 
 One Word More, 185, 186, 247. 
 Oriana, 95. 
 "Oxford Lectures on Poetry," 
 
 Bradley, quotation from, 3. 
 
 Palamon and Arcite, 215. 
 Pantoum, 173.
 
 INDEX 
 
 273 
 
 Parable, 97. 
 
 Paradise Lost, 238, 247, 252. 
 
 Parnassians, French, 6. 
 
 Pattison, Mark, 125. 
 
 Paul Revere' 's Ride, 264. 
 
 Payne, John, 157, 170. 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Love, 46. 
 
 Peele, George, 227. 
 
 Pericles, 60. 
 
 Pessimist and Optimist, 128. 
 
 Petrarchan sonnet, 131, 141 
 
 " Philosophy of Composition," Poe, 
 
 quotation from, 95. 
 " Physiology of Versification," 
 
 Holmes, quotation from, 36, 267. 
 Plain Language from Truthful 
 
 James, 114. 
 " Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of 
 
 Verse," Gosse, quotation from, 
 
 144, 173. 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 2, 26, 35, 50, 53, 58, 
 
 66, 67, 82, 83, 84, 87, 95, 96, 99, 119, 
 
 121. 
 
 Poetic License, 244, 251. 
 Polyolbion, 38. 
 Polysyllable, 80. 
 Pope, Alexander, 2, 32, 43, 71, 73, 78, 
 
 88, 125, 208, 209, 210, 213, 216, 217, 
 
 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 226. 
 Poplar field, The, 202. 
 Power of Short Words, 79. 
 Praed, W. M., 46, 153. 
 Prelude, 122. 
 Princess, 85, 181. 
 Prior, Matthew, 40, 256. 
 Prisoner of Chillon, The, 206. 
 Prodigals, The, 161. 
 Progress of Art, 222. 
 Prologue, 60. 
 Psalm of Life, 18. 
 Psalm of the Waters, 186. 
 
 Quantity, 14, 189. 
 
 Quatrain, 67, 106, 111, 126, 144. 
 
 Rape of the Lock, The, 220. 
 " Rationale of Verse," Poe, 26, 267. 
 Raven, 95, 97. 
 Ready for the Ride, 150. 
 Recessional, 94. 
 
 Recurrence of the same vowel- 
 sound, 87. 
 Kef rain, 94, 167. 
 Repetition of sound, 55. 
 Rests, 23. 
 
 Retaliation, 203. 
 
 Revolutionary Relic^ A, 80. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 2, 4, 83, 260. 
 
 Rhythm, 9, 31, 189 ; carried over from 
 one line to the next, 24. 
 
 Richard II, 233. 
 
 Riley, James Whitcomb, 89, 93, 95 
 
 Rime 49; in English, denned as 
 identity of vowel-sound, 49 ; iden- 
 tity of, 74. 
 
 Rime less stanzas, 176. 
 
 Rimeless verse, 33. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 233. 
 
 Rondeau, 150, 153. 
 
 Rondel, 150. 
 
 Rose-Leaves, 147, 148. 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 58, 67, 123, 
 137, 142. 
 
 Roundel, 152. 
 
 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 107. 
 
 "Rules for writing verse," King 
 James, 31. 
 
 " Rules of Rhyme, The," Hood, quo- 
 tation from, 1, 246. 
 
 Sackville, George, 227. 
 Saga of King Olaf, The, 180. 
 Saintsbury, Professor G. E , 233, 240, 
 
 266. 
 
 Sapphics, 191. 
 Scansion, 17. 
 Schiller, 190. 
 
 Scorn not the Sonnet, 136. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 25, 34, 36, 38, 3% 
 
 47, 58, 60, 66, 206, 208, 220, 264. 
 Seaweed, 77, 122. 
 Seneca, 227. 
 Serenade, 67. 
 
 Serenade at the Villa, A, 115. 
 Sestet, 131. 
 Sestina, 195. 
 
 Sestina of the Tramp Royal, 196. 
 Seven-line stanza, 123 
 Shakspere, William, 18, 19, 32, 41, 60, 
 
 79, 80, 84, 85, 88, 90, 129, 130, 139, 209, 
 
 212, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 240, 
 
 241. 
 
 Shaksperlan sonnet, 131. 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 34, 38, 107, 
 
 109, 114, 210, 222, 224. 
 Shepherd's Calendar, 211. 
 Sherman, 98. 
 Shirley, James, 235. 
 Short syllables, 18, 28, 189. 
 Sibilants, 89.
 
 274 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Single rime, 60, 75. 
 
 Sisters, 95. 
 
 Six- line stanza, 121. 
 
 Skylark, 114. 
 
 Sony without a Sibilant, 89. 
 
 Sonnet, 32, 125, 129. 
 
 Sonnet, The, 134. 
 
 Sonnet-sequences, 142. 
 
 Bordello, 234. 
 
 Sound and sense, 74. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 186, 198. 
 
 Spanish Gipsy, The, 192. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 28, 41. 
 
 Spens, Sir Patrick, 20. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 40, 118, 161, 209, 
 
 211. 
 
 Spenserian stanza, 118. 
 Spondee, 16. 
 Stanza, 102, 257. 
 Stanzas written on the Boad from 
 
 Florence to Pisa, 108. 
 Statue and the Bust, 105. 
 Stedman, Edmund 0., 8, 91, 198, 
 
 263. 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 8, 100, 
 
 152. 
 
 Story of Rimini, 222. 
 Strayed Reveler, 184, 196, 198. 
 " Study of Meter, A," Omond, 
 
 quotation from, 31, 267. 
 ' Style in Literature," Stevenson, 
 
 quotation from, 101. 
 Sub Rosa, 155. 
 Substitution, 19, 28, 204. 
 Suppressions, 24. 28. 
 Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 
 
 227. 
 Swinburne, Algernon C., 32, 35, 40, 
 
 55, 66, 68, 74, 76, 82, 83, 84, 112, 114, 
 
 120, 123, 149, 152, 153, 161, 164, 166, 
 
 167, 169, 191, 195, 210, 224. 
 Symonds, John Addington, 182, 200, 
 
 226, 230, 234, 235, 236, 239. 
 
 Tarn o' Shanter, 206. 
 
 Tears and Laughter, 126. 
 
 Tears, Idle Tears, 181. 
 
 Tempest, The,2&L. 
 
 Ten-line stanza, 117. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 23, 24, 25, 
 40, 43, 53, 54, 57, 83, 84, 85, 88, 90, 91, 
 93, 95, 97, 106, 109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 
 124, 139, 181, 183, 190, 191, 242, 258, 
 259. 
 
 Terminal rimes, 33. 
 
 Terminal trochee, 18. 
 Termination, natural, of rhythm^ 
 
 50. 
 
 Thalaba, 186, 198. 
 Thanatopsis, 242. 
 Theocritus, 159. 
 Ttkere, little girl, don't cry, 95. 
 Thirteen-line stanza, 120. 
 Thomson, James, 241. 
 Time I've lost in wooing, The, 117. 
 To a Mouse, 123. 
 To a Rose, 113. 
 To a Waterfowl, 109. 
 To an Old Danish Sony-Book, 179. 
 To my mere English Censure, 213. 
 To Violets, 111. 
 To Walt Whitman in America, 
 
 123. 
 
 Toccata of GaluppVs, A, 105. 
 Tone-Color, 73. 
 Treble rimes, 47, 50, 63. 
 Trench, Richard C., 139. 
 Trente-six Ballades Joyeuses, 161. 
 Trimeter, 17, 18, 186. 
 Triolet, 146. 
 Triolet-sequences, 146. 
 Triplet, 104, 111, 126. 
 Tristram of Lyonesse, 224. 
 Trochaic meters, pauses in, 21. 
 Trochaic octameter, 115 ; tetrameter, 
 
 17, 105, 148; trimeter, 17. 
 Trochaic rhythm, 32. 
 Trochaic rhythms, 32; termination 
 
 of, 50. 
 
 Trumbull, John, 205. 
 Truth about Horace, 68. 
 "Twelve Good Rules," Dobson, 
 
 quoted, 168. 
 
 Twenty-four-line stan/a, 120. 
 Tunllght on Tweed, 88. 
 Two Voices, 106. 
 
 Ulalume, 82, 100, 119. 
 Unexpected rimes, 63. 
 IJnrimed dactylic trimeter, 186. 
 Unrimed hexameter, 188. 
 Unseen Spirits, 121. 
 
 Variation of feet, 19. 
 Vers de soci^te, 108, 169. 
 Versification of the Greeks and Bo- 
 mans, 16. 
 
 Village Blacksmith, 78, 121. 
 Villanelle, 157. 
 Villon, 157, 160.
 
 INDEX 
 
 275 
 
 Voice of the Sea, 92. 
 Voiture, 147, 154, 157. 
 Vowel, identity of the, 62. 
 
 Wagner, 81. 
 
 Walker's Riming Dictionary, 250. 
 
 Waller, Edmund, 113, 209, 213, 214, 
 
 216. 
 
 Wanderer, 151. 
 Watson, William, 183. 
 Webster, Daniel, 204. 
 Webster, John, 235, 236. 
 ' What is Poetry? ' ' Hunt, quotation 
 
 from, 102. 
 What is the German Fatherland ? 
 
 40. 
 When Lilacs last in the Dooryard 
 
 loom'd, 197, 199. 
 
 When the Frost is on the Punkin, 
 
 89. 
 
 White, Gleeson, 263. 
 White Doe, The, 206. 
 Whitman, Walt, 40, 50, 94, 196, 199, 
 
 255. 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf , 63, 57, 60, 
 
 103, 127, 206. 
 
 Willis, Nathaniel P., 121. 
 Wordsworth, William, 2, 25, 43, 57, 
 
 68, 136, 139, 206, 241, 242, 253, 254, 
 
 259. 
 Written on the First Leaf of an AL* 
 
 bum,, 126. 
 Wyatt, Thomas, 153. 
 
 Yankee Doodle, 40. 
 Young Lockinvar, 264.

 
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