Part 11 (2/2)

for its simple music, its suppleness, its power of forcing

brevity: ”the best metrical form which intelligence, as

distinct from poetical feeling, can employ.” (Makers of

Literature, p. 104.)

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The following characteristic examples ill.u.s.trate the chief varieties of the couplet. (Again, they should be supplemented by the reading of longer pa.s.sages. Pope's couplet, in particular, with its perfection of form according to a few well-marked formulas, reveals its great weakness, monotony, only in the consecutive reading of several pages.)

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertue engendred is the flour; Whan Zephyrus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in here corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seken straunge strondes, To feme halwes, kouthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every s.h.i.+res ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seeke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

CHAUCER, Canterbury Tales, Prologue.

The Husbandman was meanly well content Triall to make of his endevourment; And, home him leading, lent to him the charge Of all his flocke, with libertie full large, Giving accompt of th' annuall increce Both of their lambes, and of their woolly fleece.

Thus is this Ape become a shepheard swaine, And the false Foxe his dog (G.o.d give them paine!) For ere the yeare have halfe his course out-run, And doo returne from whence he first begun, They shall him make an ill accompt of thrift.

SPENSER, Mother Hubberd's Tale.

And in the midst a silver altar stood: There Hero, sacrificing turtles' blood, Kneel'd to the ground, veiling her eyelids close; And modestly they open'd as she rose: Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head; And thus Leander was enamoured.

Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gaz'd, Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd, Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strook: Such force and virtue hath an amorous look.

It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.

MARLOWE, Hero and Leander.

But when the far-off isle he touch'd, he went Up from the blue sea to the continent, And reach'd the ample cavern of the Queen, Whom he found within; without seldom seen.

A sun-like fire upon the hearth did flame; The matter precious, and divine the frame; Of cedar cleft and incense was the pile, That breathed an odour round about the isle.

Herself was seated in an inner room, Whom sweetly sing he heard, and at her loom, About a curious web, whose yarn she threw In with a golden shuttle. A grove grew In endless spring about her cavern round, With odorous cypress, pines, and poplars crown'd.

CHAPMAN, Odyssey, V.

Though Chapman sometimes uses the pause and run-on lines freely, the regularity of the foot makes for a certain stiffness and inflexibility.

She, she is gone; she's gone; when thou know'st this, What fragmentary rubbish this world is Thou know'st, and that it is not worth a thought; He honours it too much that thinks it nought.

Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom, Which brings a taper to the outward room, Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light, And after brings it nearer to thy sight; For such approaches doth heaven make in death.

DONNE, Anatomy of the World.

Donne's metres were notoriously careless--or deliberately irregular.

They therefore stand somewhat out of place in the general trend of development.

O how I long my careless limbs to lay Under the plantain's shade, and all the day With amorous airs my fancy entertain; Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!

No pa.s.sion there in my free breast should move, None but the sweet and best of pa.s.sions, love!

There while I sing, if gentle Love be by, That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high; With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name, I'll make the list'ning savages grow tame.

WALLER, Battle of the Summer Islands.

Waller, though his lifetime (1605-87) embraces that of Milton, is the natural precursor of the eighteenth century. His couplets are almost all characteristic of eighteenth-century couplets, which seem to seek perfection within themselves. The aim of Waller, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson was primarily to exalt the couplet and extract from it all its potentialities, not to obscure it by varied pauses and run-on lines.

Waller was praised by the best critics of his own and the following generation for the great 'sweetness' and smoothness of his verse.

Of these the false Achitophel was first; A name to all succeeding ages curst: For close designs and crooked counsels fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfix'd in principles and place; In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I.

All human things are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.

This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire and had govern'd long; In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute.

This aged prince, now flouris.h.i.+ng in peace And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the State.

DRYDEN, MacFlecknoe.

It is interesting, from a metrical point of view, to compare Chaucer's couplets with Dryden's where he is translating Chaucer, e. g., in the Knight's Tale and Palamon and Arcite.

Between 1664 and 1678 it became the fas.h.i.+on, partly as a reaction against the liberties of the late Elizabethan blank verse, and partly under French influence, to write drama in heroic couplets. But the undertaking soon proved abortive.

Others for Language all their care express, And value books, as women men, for dress; Their praise is still,--the style is excellent; The sense, they humbly take upon content.

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: False eloquence, like the prismatic gla.s.s, Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place; The face of nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it s.h.i.+nes upon; It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

POPE, Essay on Criticism.

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