English Verse Part 58

There is some room for difference of judgment as to whether a given line is "end-stopped" or "run-on"; but with occasional exceptions the presence or want of a mark of punctuation may be made the determining element. Obviously one may find such clear phrase-pauses, without punctuation, as will justify the caption "end-stopped."

There is far more divergence of judgment in the recognition of the cesura. Some writers on prosody treat practically every line of ten syllables as having a cesural pause, and certainly some slight phrase-pause may almost always be found. In the following table, however, the cesura has been recognized only when there is a grammatical or rhetorical pause so considerable as--in most cases--to require a mark of punctuation. Such a verse, then, as--

"Fate s.n.a.t.c.h'd her early to the pitying sky"

is counted as having "no cesura." The cesura is counted as "medial" when occurring after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable; elsewhere it is regarded as "variant." The significance of this distinction is very clear in the comparison of the heroic couplet of the "cla.s.sical" with that of the "romantic" school of poets.[60]

It is in the last group of facts, those relating to subst.i.tuted feet, that the subjective element is most embarra.s.sing. There can be no very general agreement among readers as to the degree of accent necessary to change a pair of syllables from an "iambus" to a "pyrrhic" or a "spondee." The other two forms of subst.i.tution (inverted accent, giving "trochees," and trisyllabic feet, giving "anapests") are somewhat more definitely determinable. In the following table the naming of all these feet is based on what is believed to be the natural reading of the verse, with a due regard for both rhetorical and metrical accent. In the verse--

"By these the springs of property were bent"

the fourth foot is counted a pyrrhic; so also in this--

"Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews,"

although here a certain secondary accent on the eighth syllable is possible. In such a verse as--

"There is a path on the sea's azure floor"

the third foot is counted a pyrrhic and the fourth a spondee.[61]

One may get, then, from a table of this sort, a general view of the character of any particular piece of verse, in respect to the poet's preference for run-on lines, for feminine endings, for breaking the verse into two equal parts, for varying the cesura, or for subst.i.tuting exceptional feet. The description would be more nearly complete if there were also indicated the _places_ in the verse where subst.i.tuted feet occur; a trochee in the second foot is a very different thing from one in the first; but it is difficult to tabulate facts of this order without complicating one's results beyond the point of serviceable clearness.

Some students of verse are doubtless offended by the use of statistics in connection with a subject of this kind; and it is easy to ridicule the obvious incongruity of mathematical methods and poetry. A recent magazine critic makes merry over certain statistical studies in rhythm, carried on in a laboratory by recording the beats in nursery-rimes on the one hand and in hymns on the other. "There is a certain cla.s.s of problems," he observes most justly, "whose external aspects may possibly yield to statistical tabulation, but which in the last resort must be spiritually discerned."[62] Poetry is unquestionably of this cla.s.s. Yet this would not seem to forbid the study, by scientific methods, of those "external aspects" admittedly susceptible of tabulation. One is not likely to recommend elementary students to count trochees and cesuras in order to increase their appreciation of good verse. But when one comes to the point of generalizing as to the laws or history of verse-forms, it is well to have a method of correction, representable in figures black and white, for the vague impressions which are all that appreciative reading can give. Perhaps the real service of such a method as has just been described is to prevent one from making hasty generalizations which statistics will not support.

Obviously the same system can be applied to blank verse, with the omission of the second category in the table. A convenient method of making such a study is to use sheets of paper ruled for twenty-five lines and seven columns. Each horizontal line represents a line of verse a.n.a.lyzed. The columns are headed "Cesura," "T," "P," "S," "A," "Run-on,"

and "Fem. Ending." A cesural pause between the third and fourth syllables is indicated by the figures 3/4 in the first column. A trochee in the first foot is indicated by the figure 1 in the "T" column; a spondee in the fourth foot by the figure 4 in the "S" column; and so on.

A simple check-mark in the sixth or seventh column indicates respectively a case of _enjambement_ or of feminine ending. When the tabulation is complete, one can easily note the proportion of run-on lines and exceptional cesuras, and can also determine at a glance not only the number of exceptional feet but the parts of the verse in which they occur.

In the following table the figures regarding the couplets of Spenser are based on his _Mother Hubbard's Tale_; those relating to Joseph Hall, on the Satires of his _Virgidemiarum_ (see p. 182); those relating to Leigh Hunt, on _The Story of Rimini_; those relating to Keats, on _Endymion_; to Browning, on _Sordello_.

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- | Chaucer | |Joseph | | | (ab. |Spenser | Hall |Jonson |Waller | 1385) |(1591) |(1597) |(1616) |(ab. 1650) ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- Run-on | | | | | Lines | 16 | 14 | 10 | 26 | 16 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- Run-on | | | | | Couplets | 7 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 2 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- Medial | | | | | Cesura | 33 | 31 | 37 | 48 | 50 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- No | | | | | Cesura | 58 | 64 | 58 | 29 | 42 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- Variant | | | | | Cesura | 9 | 5 | 5 | 23 | 8 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- Feminine | | | | | Endings | 64 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 0 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- [a] | | | | | Trochees | 15 | 13 | 18 | 22 | 23 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- [a] | | | | | Pyrrhics | 26 | 29 | 24 | 35 | 46 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- [a] | | | | | Spondees | 0 | 13 | 14 | 18 | 14 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+----------- [a] | | | | | Anapests | 4 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 ---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- | | | Leigh | | |Dryden |Pope | Hunt | Keats |Browning |(ab. 1680) |(ab. 1725) | (1816) |(1818) |(1840) ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- Run-on | | | | | Lines | 11 | 4 | 13 | 40 | 58 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- Run-on | | | | | Couplets | 1 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 27 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- Medial | | | | | Cesura | 52 | 47 | 46 | 53 | 30 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- No | | | | | Cesura | 40 | 44 | 35 | 27 | 25 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- Variant | | | | | Cesura | 8 | 9 | 19 | 20 | 45 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- Feminine | | | | | Endings | 0 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 0 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- [a] | | | | | Trochees | 15 | 25 | 29 | 29 | 34 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- [a] | | | | | Pyrrhics | 46 | 27 | 40 | 37 | 34 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- [a] | | | | | Spondees | 1 | 11 | 9 | 19 | 19 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------- [a] | | | | | Anapests | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 ---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] No account is taken in the table of more than a single occurrence of the same exceptional foot in any one line.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] Here a word of caution is needed. It will be observed that the regularly balanced line of the cla.s.sical couplet requires not only a medial pause, but also a pause at the end. Hence where we find, as in the verse of Keats, a large number of medial cesuras but at the same time a very large number of "run-on" lines, the characteristic effect of the medial pause is almost entirely lost, and the number of medial pauses is not significant.

[61] This combination (of pyrrhic and spondee) is of course very frequent; and where both subst.i.tutions occur together, the general average of accents is maintained, only with exchange of position. On the other hand, where there appears a large number of pyrrhics with almost no spondees (as in the case of Dryden), a different sort of verse is indicated,--one where the lines gain a certain lightness and rapidity from the lack of the full number of fully accented syllables.

[62] "Divination by Statistics," in the _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1902.