English Verse Part 6

In this specimen lines 2, 5, 6, and 8 show initial truncation, the first light syllable being missing.

(With two-stress verse:)

His desire is a dureless content, And a trustless joy; He is won with a world of despair And is lost with a toy....

But true love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning, Never sick, never old, never dead, From itself never turning.

(SIR WALTER RALEIGH (?): _Pilgrim to Pilgrim_. In MS. Rawl. 85; in Sch.e.l.ling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, p. 3.)

"The metres of the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign are so overwhelmingly iambic," Professor Sch.e.l.ling observes, "that this perfectly metrical, if somewhat irregular, anapaestic movement comes like a surprise. Professor Gummere, of Haverford College, calls my attention to three epigrams--printed among the poems of Raleigh, ed. Hannah, p.

55--all of them in more or less limping anapaests, but not of this measure. It is quite possible that the time to which these verses were sung may have affected the measure." (Notes to _Elizabethan Lyrics_, pp.

211, 212.)

(With initial truncation:)

She gazed, as I slowly withdrew, My path I could hardly discern; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.

(SHENSTONE: _Pastoral Ballad._ 1743.)

Mr. Saintsbury praises highly the anapests of Shenstone (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. iii. p. 272), saying that he "taught the metre to a greater poet than himself, Cowper, and these two between them have written almost everything that is worth reading in it, if we put avowed parody and burlesque out of the question." But this is probably to be regarded as overstating the case.

(With feminine ending:)

If you go over desert and mountain, Far into the country of sorrow, To-day and to-night and to-morrow, And maybe for months and for years; You shall come, with a heart that is bursting For trouble and toiling and thirsting, You shall certainly come to the fountain At length,--to the Fountain of Tears.

(ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY: _The Fountain of Tears._ 1870.)

Here the extra light syllable at the end of the line is really the initial light syllable of the following line, as in the specimen on p.

29, above.

So this is a psalm of the waters,-- The wavering, wandering waters: With languages learned in the forest, With secrets of earth's lonely caverns, The mystical waters go by me On errands of love and of beauty, On emba.s.sies friendly and gentle, With s.h.i.+mmer of brown and of silver.

(S. WEIR MITCh.e.l.l: _A Psalm of the Waters._ 1890.)

Here, also, the final light syllable might be said to take the place of the missing initial syllable; but the structure of the verse, with the fact that the initial anapest is always truncated and that the final syllable is never accented, indicates that the verse as it stands is the norm of the poem--three-stress anapestic, with initial truncation and feminine ending.

_Three-stress dactylic._

(Catalectic:)

This is a spray the Bird clung to, Making it blossom with pleasure, Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, Fit for her nest and her treasure.

(BROWNING: _Misconceptions_. 1855.)

_Four-stress iambic._

(For specimens, see Part Two.)

_Four-stress trochaic._

Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness, Lithe as panther forest-roaming, Long-armed naiad, when she dances, On a stream of ether floating.

(GEORGE ELIOT: Song from _The Spanish Gypsy_, Book i. 1868.)

Westward, westward Hiawatha Sailed into the fiery sunset, Sailed into the purple vapors, Sailed into the dusk of evening.

(LONGFELLOW: _Hiawatha_. 1855.)

Honour, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing, Hourly joys be still upon you!

Juno sings her blessings on you.

(SHAKSPERE: Juno's Song in _The Tempest_, IV. i. ab. 1610.)

(Catalectic:)

On a day, alack the day!

Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom pa.s.sing fair Playing in the wanton air: Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, can pa.s.sage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wish himself the heaven's breath.

(SHAKSPERE: _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV. 3. ab. 1590.)

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek.

(MILTON: _L'Allegro_. 1634.)

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host's Canary wine?

Or are fruits of Paradise Sweeter than those dainty pies Of venison? O generous food!

Drest as though bold Robin Hood Would, with his maid Marian, Sup and bowse from horn and can.

(KEATS: _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_. 1820.)

_Four-stress anapestic._

What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows The difference there is betwixt nature and art: I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose: And they have my whimsies; but thou hast my heart.

(PRIOR: _A Better Answer_. ab. 1710.)

Prior's anapests well ill.u.s.trate the appropriateness of the measure for light tripping effects, such as are sought _vers de societe_. See also the measure of Goldsmith's _Retaliation_, especially the pa.s.sage beginning--

"Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can; An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man."

The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning, The murmuring streamlet winds clear through the vale; The hawthorn trees blow in the dews of the morning, And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale.

(BURNS: _The Chevalier's Lament_. 1788.)