English Verse Part 11

Leviathan, which G.o.d of all his works Created hug_est that swim_ the ocean stream.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, I. 201 f.)

This pa.s.sage was one of those where Bentley made himself ridiculous in his edition of Milton. "To smooth it" he changed the lines to read--

"Leviathan, whom G.o.d the vastest made Of all the kinds that swim the ocean stream,"--

not perceiving, what Cowper pointed out, that Milton had designedly used "the word _hugest_ where it may have the clumsiest effect....

Smoothness was not the thing to be consulted when the Leviathan was in question."

So he with diff_iculty_ and labour hard Moved on, with diff_iculty_ and labour he.

(_ib._ II. 1021 f.)

The sweep Of some precip_itous rivulet to_ the wave.

(TENNYSON: _Enoch Arden._)

The sound of many a heav_ily galloping_ hoof.

(TENNYSON: _Geraint and Enid._)

I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds,...

Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her _The Abominable_, that uninvited came.

(TENNYSON: _none._)

_Do you see_ this square old yellow book I toss _I' the air_, and catch again, and twirl about _By the crumpl_ed vellum covers; pure crude fact--

(BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book_, I.)

That plant Shall never wave its tangles light_ly and soft_ly As a queen's languid and imperial arm.

(BROWNING: _Paracelsus_, I.)

A distinction should be made between these hypermetrical syllables which change the character of the foot from dissyllabic to trisyllabic, and syllables (in a sense hypermetrical) which are slurred or elided in the reading. The word _radiance_, for example, is regarded as trisyllabic in prose, but in the verse--

"Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned,"

it is made dissyllabic by instinctive compression, and in no proper sense makes an anapest of the fifth foot. Of the same character are the numerous cases where a vowel is elided before another vowel--especially the vowel of the article _the_.[7] On the elisions of Milton's verse, see Mr. Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_; on those of Shakspere's verse, see Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_. In modern verse the use of elision and slurring is ordinarily that found in common speech.

_Omitted syllable (subst.i.tuted iambus)._

As a vision of heaven from the hollows of ocean, that none but a G.o.d _might see_, _Rose out_ of the silence _of things unknown_ of a presence, a form, _a might_, And we heard as a prophet that hears _G.o.d's mes_sage against him, and may _not flee_.

(SWINBURNE: _Death of Richard Wagner._)

See also specimens on pp. 42, 43, 48, above.

Mr. Mayor considers the question as to how far subst.i.tution of other than the typical foot may be carried in a verse, without destroying the genuineness of the fundamental rhythm. His conclusions are these:

(1) The limit of trochaic subst.i.tution is three feet out of five, with the final foot iambic; or two out of five, if the fifth foot is inverted.

(2) A spondee is allowable in any position; the limit is four out of five, with either the fourth or fifth foot remaining iambic.

(3) A pyrrhic may occur in any position; the limit is three out of five, with the other feet preferably spondees.

(4) The limit for trisyllabic subst.i.tution is three out of five.

(_Chapters on English Metre_, chap. V.)

Professor Corson discusses the aesthetic effect of these changes from the typical metre: "The true metrical artist ... never indulges in variety for variety's sake.... All metrical effects are to a great extent _relative_--and relativity of effect depends, of course, upon having a standard in the mind or feelings.... Now the more closely the poet adheres to his standard--to the even tenor (modulus) of his verse--so long as there is no logical nor aesthetic motive for departing from it, the more effective do his departures become when they are sufficiently motived. All non-significant departures weaken the significant ones....

The normal tenor of the verse is presumed to represent the normal tenor of the feeling which produces it. And departures from that normal tenor represent, or should represent, variations in the normal tenor of the feeling. Outside of the general law ... of the slurring or suppression of extra light syllables, which do not go for anything in the expression, an exceptional foot must result in emphasis, whether intended or not, either logical or emotional.... A great poet is presumed to have metrical skill; and where ripples occur in the stream of his verse, they will generally be found to justify themselves as organic; _i.e._ they are a part of the expression."

(_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 48-50.)

On the aesthetic symbolism of various metrical movements, see G. L.

Raymond's _Poetry as a Representative Art_, pp. 113 ff.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The names of the several kinds of feet are of course borrowed from cla.s.sical prosody, where they are used to mark feet made up not of accented and unaccented, but of long and short syllables. The different significance of the terms as applied to the verse of different languages has given rise to some confusion, and it is proposed by some to abandon the cla.s.sical terms; their use, however, seems to be too well established in English to permit of change. Some would even abandon the attempt to measure English verse by feet, contending that its rhythm is too free to admit of any such measuring process; thus, see Mr. J. M.

Robertson, in the Appendix to _New Essays toward a Critical Method_, and Mr. J. A. Symonds in his _Blank Verse_. See also in Mr. Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_, Appendix G "On the Use of Greek Terminology in English Prosody." (1901 ed. p. 77.)

[7] On the historical problem of the distinction between elided and genuinely hypermetrical syllables in the French and English decasyllabic verse, see Mothere: _Les theories du vers heroique anglais et ses relations avec la versification francaise_ (Havre, 1886).

III. THE STANZA

The stanza, or strophe, is the largest unit of verse-measure ordinarily recognized. It is based not so much on rhythmical divisions as on periods either rhetorical or melodic; that is, a short stanza will roughly correspond to the period of a sentence, and a long one to that of a paragraph, while in lyrical verse the original idea was to conform the stanza to the melody for which it was written. Thus Schipper observes: "The word strophe properly signifies a _turning_, and originally indicated the return of the song, as sung, to the melody with which it began." Schipper defines a stanza as a group of verses of a certain number, so combined that all the stanzas of the same poem will be identical in the number, the length, and the metre of the corresponding verses; in rimed verse, also, the arrangement of the rimes will be identical. (See _Grundriss_, p. 268.)

The form of a stanza, then, is determined and described (the fundamental metre being a.s.sumed) by the number of verses, the length of verses, and the arrangement of rimes. The usual and convenient method of indicating these conditions is to represent all the verses that rime together by the same letter, while the number of feet in the verse is written like an algebraic exponent. Thus a quatrain in "common metre" (four-stress and three-stress lines), riming alternately, is represented by the formula _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_.

The appearance of the stanza in English verse is always the sign of foreign influence. The West Germanic verse, as far back as we have specimens of it, is uniformly _stichic_ (that is, marked by no periods save those of the individual verse), not _stanzaic_.[8] On the other hand, we find the stanza in the Old Norse verse. Sievers's view is that originally the two sorts of verse existed side by side, the stanzaic being preferred for chorus delivery, the stichic for individual recitation; one form at length crowding out the other.

The great organizer of the stanza is, of course, the element of rime.

While unrimed stanzas are familiar in cla.s.sical verse, the two innovations, rime and stanza, were introduced together into English verse, under both Latin and French influences, and have almost invariably been a.s.sociated. For notes on the history of the beginnings of stanza-forms in English, see therefore under Rime, in the following section.

TERCETS