Part 10 (1/2)

(Note here the subst.i.tutions for special imitative effect.)

Sh.e.l.ley's To a Skylark is in trochaic metre of 3-stress and 6-stress lines.

Dactylic lines are not common except in the imitations of the cla.s.sical hexameter. Hood's familiar Bridge of Sighs in 2-stress lines, and Tennyson's still more familiar Charge of the Light Brigade (which is, however, only partly dactylic) are good ill.u.s.trations.

Iambic lines are by very far the most frequent in English verse. No special examples need therefore be given except of the less usual 6-stress and 7-stress lines. On blank verse see pages 133 ff.

The 6-stress line is called the alexandrine (probably from the name of an Old French poem in this metre). It is still the standard line in cla.s.sical French verse; but the French alexandrine differs from the English, princ.i.p.ally in having four stresses instead of six. In English it is usually awkward when used for long stretches, and tends to split into 3 + 3. Lowell called it ”the droning old alexandrine.” It was employed for several long poems in Middle English; and certain of the Elizabethans tried it: Surrey, Sidney, and Drayton--Drayton's Polyolbion (1613) contains about 15,000 alexandrines. It has not commended itself to modern poets, with one exception, for sustained work. Browning wrote his Fifine at the Fair (1872) in this measure; and while he succeeded in relieving it of some of its monotony, he only demonstrated again its unfitness, in English, for continuous use. A peculiar musical effect is obtained from it, however, by Mr. Siegfried Sa.s.soon in his Picture-Show:

And still they come and go: and this is all I know-- That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show, Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way, With glad or grievous hearts I'll never understand Because Time spins so fast, and they've no time to stay Beyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand.

On the other hand, as the last line of the Spenserian and similar stanzas the alexandrine has proved very melodious and effective, largely by contrast with the shorter lines. A few isolated examples will ill.u.s.trate some of its powers, but of course the whole stanza should be read together.

And streames of purple bloud new die the verdant fields.

SPENSER, Faerie Queen, I, 2, 17.

Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.

Ibid., I, 1, 34.

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep.

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

MILTON, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowings speak his woes.

BYRON, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, I, lxxvi.

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.

Ibid., III, ii.

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

KEATS, Eve of St. Agnes, xxvii.

Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.

Sh.e.l.lEY, Revolt of Islam, I, iv.

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

Sh.e.l.lEY, Adonais, xxi.

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

Ibid., xl.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Sh.e.l.lEY, To a Skylark.

The slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

TENNYSON, Lotos Eaters.

Alexandrines were occasionally in the eighteenth century (and more frequently in the late seventeenth) inserted among heroic couplets for variety and special effect, as in Pope's

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

Odyssey, XI, 737-738.

But Pope himself condemned the 'needless alexandrine'

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Essay on Criticism, 357.

One of the oldest lines of modern English verse is the so-called septenary (septenarius), having had a nearly continuous tradition from the twelfth-century Poema Morale down (in its divided form) to the present. It began as a single line of seven stresses or fourteen syllables, and continued to be used as such through the Elizabethan period, and sporadically even later.[44] But on account of its customary pause after the fourth foot, it very early broke into two short lines of four and three stresses each, and thus the septenary couplet became the ballad stanza. For example,