English Verse Part 26

In all the types many variations are found. The beginning of the line may show anacrusis, and two short syllables may take the place of a long syllable; while an indeterminate number of light syllables may often be introduced before or after the princ.i.p.al accents.

Hafa us al?fed _lucis auctor_, aet we motun her _merueri_ G.o.dd?dum begietan _gaudia in celo_, ?r we motun _maxima regna_ secan and gesittan _sedibus altis_, lifgan in lisse _lucis et pacis_, agan eardinga _almae let.i.tae_, brucan bl?ddaga _blandem et mitem_ geseon sigora Frean _sine fine_, and him lof singan _laude perenne_ eadge mid englum _Alleluia_.

(From the Anglo-Saxon _Phnix_. ab. 700 A.D.)

These closing lines of the poem furnish an important opportunity to compare the Latin half-lines with those in Anglo-Saxon. Each half seems to be influenced by the metrical nature of the other; the Anglo-Saxon being a little more regular in the number of syllables than usual, the Latin less regular. Since, to the ear of the writer, the two halves of each verse were doubtless fairly equivalent, metrically, and since each of the Latin half-lines appears to have two accents, these combination verses have been thought to be an argument for the "two-accent" theory of Anglo-Saxon verse. On the other hand, the advocates of the four-accent theory would read the Latin half-lines with four stresses each, on the ground that nearly every syllable was stressed in the chanting of such religious verse (_lu-cis auc-tor_, etc.).

See also the specimens on pp. 13 and 14, above.

Alle beon he blie at to my song lye: A song ihc schal ?ou singe Of Mury e kinge.

King he was bi weste So longe so hit laste.

G.o.dhild het his quen, Fairer ne mi?te non ben.

He hadde a sone at het Horn, Fairer ne mi?te non beo born, Ne no rein upon birine, Ne sunne upon bischine.

(_King Horn_, ll. 1-12. ab. 1200-1250.)

The metre of _King Horn_ is very irregular, and has proved somewhat puzzling to scholars. It seems to be the direct result of the primitive "long line" broken into two halves by internal rime. The number of accents varies greatly: we may have verses which are easily read with two, such as--

"Into schupes borde At the furst worde."

Yet these it is evident might also be read with three accents, as in the following couplet also:

"The se bigan to flowe, And Horn child to rowe."

According as one reads the Anglo-Saxon verse with two or four accents to the half-line, he will regard the typical half-line of _King Horn_ as made up of two or four accents. If the fundamental number was two, the additional accented syllables were doubtless introduced under the influence of the French eight-syllable couplet. It is not difficult to see how the more regular (Latin or French) and the less regular (native) measures might have been confused, and soon have coalesced in popular use. Ten Brink, reading the _King Horn_ lines with four accents, speaks of them as "formed entirely on the Teutonic principle, with two accents upon the sonorous close of the verse, so that it appears to be an organic continuation of the chief form in Layamon and in aelfred's _Proverbs_. This circ.u.mstance makes the poem exceptional among the early English romances." He also speaks of "an unmistakably strophic construction in the text as we have it." (_English Literature_, Kennedy translation, vol. i. p. 227.)

Anon out of e north est e noys bigynes: When boe brees con blowe upon blo watteres, Ro? rakkes per ros with rudnyng anunder, e see sou?ed ful sore, gret selly to here, e wyndes on e wonne water so wrastel togeder, at e wawes ful wode waltered so hi?e And efte busched to e abyme, at breed fysches, Durst nowhere for ro? arest at e bothem.

When e breth and e brok and e bote metten, Hit watz a ioyles gyn, at Ionas watz inne; For hit reled on roun upon e ro?e yes.

(_Patience_, ll. 137-147. ab. 1375.)

Til e kny?t com hym-self, kachande his blonk, Sy? hym byde at e bay, his burne? bysyde, He ly?tes luflych adoun, leve? his corsour, Brayde? out a bry?t bront, & bigly forth stryde?, Founde? fast ur? the for, er e felle byde, e wylde wat? war of e wy?e with weppen in honde.

Hef hy?ly e here, so hetterly he fnast, at fele ferde for e freke?, lest felle hym e worre e swyn sette? hym out on e segge even, at e burne & e bor were boe upon hepe?, In e wy?t-est of e water, e worre had at oer; For e mon merkke? hym wel, as ay mette fyrst, Set sadly e scharp in e slot even, Hit hym up to e hult, at e hert schyndered, & he ?arrande hym ?elde, & ?edoun e water, ful tyt; A hundreth hounde? hym hent, at bremely con hym bite, Burne? him bro?t to bent, & dogge? to dethe endite.

(_Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, strophe xviii. ab. 1375.)

These two specimens, both doubtless the work of the same author (to whom are also attributed the _Pearl_ and _Cleanness_), represent the patriotic revival of the alliterative long line by contemporaries of Chaucer in the latter half of the fourteenth century. In _Sir Gawayne_ the rimeless long line is gathered into strophes, each of which concludes with four riming lines. (See above, p. 109.)

For a.n.a.lysis of this revived alliterative verse, see a valuable article by Dr. Luick, _Die Englische Stabreimzeile im 14n, 15n, und 16n Jahrhundert_, in _Anglia_, vol. xi. pp. 392 and 553. Luick a.n.a.lyzes not only the poems of the "Pearl poet," but also the _Troy Book_, the _Alexander Fragments_, _William of Palerne_, _Joseph of Arimathea_, _Morte Arthure_, and minor poems. He finds the _Troy Book_ the most regular alliterative poem of Middle English, but in all of the group a general tendency to preserve not only the early laws of alliteration but also the "five types" of Sievers's Anglo-Saxon metrics. Dr. Luick attributes the final decline of the old measure in large degree to the falling away of the final syllables in _-e_, etc.; without these numerous feminine endings the primitive "long line" was impossible. This he regards as regrettable, since the old alliterative verse, "growing up on native soil with the language itself," represented the natural accent-relations of the Germanic languages, especially the recognition of two princ.i.p.al degrees of accent; whereas the modern rimed verse requires the reduction of this to a uniform "tick-tack"

of alternating stress and non-stress.

He put on his back a good plate-jack, And on his head a cap of steel, With sword and buckler by his side; O gin he did not become them weel!

(_Ballad of Bewick and Grahame_. In GUMMERE'S _English Ballads_, p.

176.)

The regular stanza of the old ballads was of this four-stress type, with extra light syllables admitted anywhere yet not in great numbers. More commonly, however, the fourth stress was lost from the second and fourth lines. (See p. 264, below.)

I thanke hym full thraly, and sir, I saie hym the same, But what marvelous materes dyd this myron ther mell?

For all the lordis langage his lipps, sir, wer lame, For any spirringes in that s.p.a.ce no speche walde he spell.

(_York Mystery Plays: The Trial before Pilate_. Ed. L. T. SMITH, p.

322.)

As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche, Sat pesynge and patching of Hodg her mans briche, By chance or misfortune, as shee her geare tost, In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost.

(_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, Prologue. 1566.)

In these specimens we have the later descendant of the long line as used in the early drama of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,--the "tumbling verse," regular in rhythm and rime, but indifferent to the number of syllables.[17] Sometimes, where most regular, as in lines 2-4 of the second specimen, the measure approximates closely to regular four-stress anapestic.

The time was once, and may againe retorne, (For ought may happen that hath bene beforne), When shepheards had none inheritaunce, Ne of land, nor fee in sufferaunce, But what might arise of the bare sheepe, (Were it more or lesse) which they did keepe.

Well ywis was it with shepheards thoe: Nought having, nought feared they to forgoe; For Pan himselfe was their inheritaunce, And little them served for their mayntenaunce.

The shepheards G.o.d so wel them guided, That of nought they were unprovided; b.u.t.ter enough, honye, milke, and whay, And their flockes' fleeces them to araye.

(SPENSER: _The Shepherd's Calendar, May._ 1579.)

Spenser's use of the tumbling verse in the _Shepherd's Calendar_ was a part of his imitation of older forms for the sake of an uncultivated, bucolic effect. In his hands the irregular measure showed a tendency to reduce itself to regular ten-syllable lines, like the first two of the present specimen, which, by themselves, might easily be read as decasyllabic iambics. On this, see further under Five-Stress Verse.

Spenser was perhaps the last cultivated poet to use the irregular measure, until we come to modern imitators of the early popular poetry.

The following specimen is of this cla.s.s.

It was up in the morn we rose betimes From the hall-floor hard by the row of limes.

It was but John the Red and I, And we were the brethren of Gregory; And Gregory the Wright was one Of the valiant men beneath the sun, And what he bade us that we did, For ne'er he kept his counsel hid.

So out we went, and the clattering latch Woke up the swallows under the thatch.

It was dark in the porch, but our scythes we felt, And thrust the whetstone under the belt.

Through the cold garden boughs we went Where the tumbling roses shed their scent.

Then out a-gates and away we strode O'er the dewy straws on the dusty road, And there was the mead by the town-reeve's close Where the hedge was sweet with the wilding rose.

(WILLIAM MORRIS: _The Folk-Mote by the River._ In _Poems by the Way_.

1896.)

B.--SYLLABLE-COUNTING (OCTOSYLLABIC COUPLET)

The more regular four-stress verse, in rimed couplets showing a tendency to be octosyllabic, we have seen to be generally attributed to the influence of the French octosyllabics, which were in common use in late mediaeval French poetry, such as that of Wace and Chrestien de Troyes.

According to Stengel (in Grober's _Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie_), this octosyllabic French verse goes back to a lost vulgar Latin verse; this view is opposed by Dr. C. M. Lewis, in his _Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification_ (Yale Studies in English, 1898), who finds its origin in the tetrameter of the Latin hymns. Dr. Lewis also attributes to this Latin verse more direct influence on English verse than is commonly a.s.sumed. Thus he finds in it, rather than in the French octosyllabics, the model of the verse of the _Pater Noster_, quoted below. The argument is briefly this: the Latin verse was both accentual and syllabic; the French verse was syllabic but not accentual; that of the _Pater Noster_ is accentual but not syllabic; hence it is more nearly like the Latin than the French. A stanza of the Latin tetrameter, cited by Dr.

Lewis from the hymn _Aurora lucis rutilat_, is as follows:

"Tristes erat apostoli de nece sui Domini, quem pna mortis crudeli servi d.a.m.narunt impii."

Compare these lines from the _Brut_ of Wace:

"Adunt apela Cordeille qui esteit sa plus joes ne fille; pur ce que il l'aveit plus chiere que Ragau ne la premiere quida que el e cuneust que plus chier des al tres l'eust.

Cordeil le out bien escute et bien out en sun cuer note c.u.ment ses deus sorurs parloent, c.u.ment lur pere losengoent."

The last four verses of this pa.s.sage are cited by Schipper as ill.u.s.trating the regular iambic character of the French octosyllabics; but Dr. Lewis regards the measure as purely syllabic, with no regard for alternation of accents, and instances the earlier lines of the pa.s.sage as being quite as nearly anapestic as iambic. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 107, and Lewis's monograph, as cited above, pp. 73 ff. See also Crow: _Zur Geschichte des Kurzen Reimpaares in Mittel Englisch._) Dr. Lewis's conclusion is: "We may therefore sum up the whole history of our octosyllabic verse in this way: we borrowed its number of accents from the Latin, but owing to the vitality of our own native traditions we at first borrowed nothing further; the syllabic character of the verse (so far as it has been imported at all), came in only gradually, against stubborn resistance; and it came not directly from the Latin, but indirectly, through the French" (pp. 97, 98). Some of these statements are open to question; but however we may interpret the French verse of Wace and his contemporaries, it is obvious that in English the influence of the Latin and the French poetry would very naturally be fused, with no necessarily clear conception of definite verse-structure. Whether under French or Latin influence, however, the new tendency was for the more accurate counting of syllables. We may see some suggestion of this in the verses of St.

G.o.dric, quoted on p. 126, above, although they are not regularly iambic. The poem on the "Eleven Pains of h.e.l.l" (in the _Old English Miscellany_) shows the French influence clearly marked by the language of its opening verses: