Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Purely trochaic is William Blake's SONGS OF INNOCENCE: INTRODUCTION Piping down the valleys wild, L Piping songs of pleasant glee, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb!" "Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; While he wept with joy to hear. "Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read." And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, Every child may joy to hear. William Blake (1757-1827) The reader should, perhaps, here be cautioned to remember that mere metrical regularity does not produce a great poem. The irregularities found in English poetry contribute toward the marvelous musical range which is one of its chief glories. When poets vary from the metrical norm of a poem, their variations are, however, usually subtle. The same number of accented syllables in successive lines, irrespective of the number and position of the unaccented syllables, affords a crude sort of rhythm. Such work is found in the verse themes of college freshmen, in rude ballads, and in the obituary columns of country newspapers; it is found in no great or careful poetry. On the other hand, poetry suffers rather than gains from too regular a pattern. An easy metrical fluency can with practice be acquired by almost any educated person. Swinburne and Poe, well-nigh faultless in technique, are the easiest poets to parody or imitate. The monotonous recurrence of stress and the unvaried rimes of Pope's heroic couplets make his lines seem monotonous and plodding to the modern ear. The lines thus far quoted have not, it will have been observed, the same number of feet. In "She Walks in Beauty" each line has four feet; in "Bonnie Doon" lines of four feet alternate with lines of three; and other line lengths will be found elsewhere in the chapter. For convenience in discussing the length of lines, the following terminology is employed. A line consisting of a single foot is called a monometer; a line of two feet, a dimeter; three, trimeter; four, tetrameter; five, pentameter; six, hexameter; seven, heptameter; eight, octameter; nine, nonameter. Lines of eight and seven feet can, in fact, often be resolved into two shorter lines. Herrick's poem "Upon his Departure Hence❞—— Thus I Pass by As one consists of six lines of iambic monometer. A nonameter poem, Tennyson's "To Vergil," is quoted below. Needless to say these extremes are rare. The great bulk of English poetry is written in lines of three, four, five, or six feet, lines of four and five feet occurring most frequently. In this connection it should be emphasized that the number of feet in a line is determined not by the number of syllables, but by the number of accented syllables. For instance, the seven-syllable line scanned ax | ax | ax | a contains four feet, while the nine-syllable line xxaxxa| xxax contains but three. Poems, especially lyric poems, are usually divided into stanzas, metrical units each of which has the same pattern with regard to the number of the lines, the length of the lines, and the rime. Stanzas are metrical units and often, though not necessarily, thought units. In describing the structure of stanzas, critics sometimes employ certain formulas making for brevity. Letters of the alphabet are used to indicate the rime arrangement, the stanza from "Bonnie Doon" being, for instance, said to rime abcb. A number prefixed to the symbol (xa, etc.) for a foot indicates the number of feet to the line; an iambic tetrameter, for example, is described as 4xa. If this symbol is placed in parentheses, a figure outside indicates the number of lines to the stanza. The stanza 1 of "She Walks in Beauty" can thus be briefly described by the formula 6(4xa), riming ababab. If a stanza is complicated in structure, nothing is gained by these symbols, which are chiefly valuable as a means of concise description. The majority of stanzas have no name, and new combinations of lines and rimes may be invented by a poet as they seem needed. A few stanzas are, however, sufficiently well known to be named. The stanza quoted from "Bonnie Doon" is termed the ballad stanza, because ancient English folk poetry was often cast in that form. In hymnals this stanza is designated by the term common meter (C.M.) The rime may be abcb or abab. Other stanzas bearing descriptive names, or the names of great authors who have popularized them, will be noted as they are exemplified in the selections. Certain other questions of interest to the student of verse can be better understood after a careful reading of the following poem. Swinburne was one of the great master melodists of the English tongue. If he had had a thought-content worthy of his form, it would be hard to ascribe to him any save the highest place in Victorian poetry. He was a poet of sensuous beauty, of ancient Greece, of Republican patriotism, of child life, and of stormy and desolate nature. "The Garden of Proserpine" -as typical as it is superb-gives a pagan view of death; but, as in much that this author wrote, the splendid rhythm and melody lull one into forgetfulness of the subject. This poem should be compared with the author's sonorous, anapestic "Hymn to Proserpine.' THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE B Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems I am tired of tears and laughter, For men that sow to reap: Here life has death for neighbour, No growth of moor or coppice, For dead men deadly wine. |