Part 12 (1/2)
Meantime the Grecians in a ring beheld The coursers bounding o'er the dusty field.
The first who marked them was the Cretan king; High on a rising ground, above the ring, The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey He well observ'd the chief who led the way, And heard from far his animating cries, And saw the foremost steed with sharpen'd eyes.
POPE, Iliad, XXIII.
Pope's couplets represent the acme of polish and metrical dexterity--a perfect instrument for wit and satire.[51] Thus in the mock-heroic Rape of the Lock these well-modeled couplets prove their mettle, but in the translation of Homer their fatal limitations are easily apparent.
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[51] See Pope's own a.n.a.lysis of his system of verse in a
letter to Cromwell, November 25, 1710.
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Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!
How often have I paus'd on every charm, The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topt the neighboring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made....
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made: But a bold peasantry, a country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.
GOLDSMITH, The Deserted Village.
The departure from the petrified couplet was gradual and natural, and influenced greatly by the simpler language and content of the verses.
These two specimens show Goldsmith writing in two manners, only a few lines apart. Still freer are Cowper's couplets in his On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) and Crabbe in his earlier work, still practised the eighteenth-century couplet (in the Tales of the Hall, 1819, Crabbe varied it to a considerable degree), but the new spirit of the Romantic Movement leavened all the metrical forms, as it did the themes, of poetry.
Compare the following examples.
One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One heaven, one h.e.l.l, one immortality, And one annihilation.
Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
Sh.e.l.lEY, Epipsychidion.
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-s.h.i.+fting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons....
Sh.e.l.lEY, Julian and Maddalo.
'Twas far too strange and wonderful for sadness; Sharpening, by degrees, his appet.i.te To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light, The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly, But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy; A dusky empire and its diadems; One faint eternal eventide of gems.
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold, Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told, With all its lines abrupt and angular.
KEATS, Endymion, II.
Ay, happiness Awaited me; the way life should be used Was to acquire, and deeds like you conduced To teach it by a self-revealment, deemed Life's very use, so long! Whatever seemed Progress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayed My reaching it--no pleasure. I have laid The ladder down; I climb not; still, aloft The platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft, I dared not entertain, elude me; yet Never of what they promised could I get A glimpse till now!
BROWNING, Sordello, III.
She thanked men,--good! but thanked Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say ...
BROWNING, My Last d.u.c.h.ess.
It hath been seen and yet it shall be seen That out of tender mouths G.o.d's praise hath been Made perfect, and with wood and simple string He hath played music sweet as shawm-playing To please himself with softness of all sound; And no small thing but hath been sometime found Full sweet of use, and no such humbleness But G.o.d hath bruised withal the sentences And evidence of wise men witnessing; No leaf that is so soft a hidden thing It never shall get sight of the great sun; The strength of ten has been the strength of one, And lowliness has waxed imperious.
SWINBURNE, St. Dorothy.
_Three-Line Stanza_
Stanzas of three lines riming _aaa_ (called tercets or triplets) are not very common. Familiar, however, is Herrick's Upon Julia's Clothes:
Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows That liquifaction of her clothes!
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see That brave vibration each way free; O how that glittering taketh me!
Other examples are: Threnos (in The Phnix and the Turtle), Herbert's Trinity Sunday, Quarles' Shortness of Life, Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Tennyson's The Two Voices, Swinburne's After a Reading, and Clear the Way; and (with a simple refrain) Cowper's To Mary:
The twentieth year is well-nigh past, Since first our sky was overcast; Ah, would that this might be the last!