The Principles of English Versification Part 11

_Short Couplet._ The short couplet in duple iambic-trochaic movement has proved its worth by its long history and the variety of its uses. The English borrowed it from the French octosyllabic verse, and employed it chiefly for long narrative poems. Chaucer used it in his earlier work, the Book of the d.u.c.h.ess, and the House of Fame; Butler in the serio-comic Hudibras; Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, and Morris in their Romantic narrative verse. For lyric purposes it was used by Shakespeare and other dramatists, by Milton in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and since then by most of the greater and lesser poets. But its effect, especially in long poems, is often monotonous because of the rapid recurrence of the rimes, and its powers are somewhat limited. Except under expert handling it is likely to turn into a dog-trot, and it seems sometimes to lack dignity where dignity is required. On the whole it is better for swift movement, for the obvious reason that the line is short: the frequent repet.i.tion of the unit, both line and couplet, produces the effect of hurry.

Never has the short couplet revealed its flexibility to better advantage than in Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and in Coleridge's Christabel. In Christabel Coleridge believed he was inventing a new prosodic principle, that of counting the stresses rather than the syllables;[46] and though he erred with respect to the originality of his principle, he succeeded in getting a freer movement than the couplet had had since Chaucer. Some of the roughness of Chaucer's short couplets is probably due to the imperfections of our texts, and some also to the haste with which he wrote--it is in this metre that the fatal facility of certain poets has proved the worst bane--but the Chaucerian couplet stands as a prototype (though not literally a model) of the freer flow of Byron's[47] and Morris's couplets, in contrast to those of Scott and Wordsworth, which resemble the stricter, syllable-counting couplets of Chaucer's friend Gower.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [46] See above, p. 66, n. 1. [47] Byron follows now one model, now another. In Parisina he consciously tried the metrical scheme of Christabel. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The chief drawbacks of the short couplet, besides monotony, are the tendency to diffuseness of language and looseness of grammatical structure (as in Chaucer and Scott, for instance), and rime-padding, i. e., the insertion of phrases and sometimes even irrelevant ideas, for the sake of the rime.

The chief sources of variety are subst.i.tution, pause, run-on lines, and division. The first is very apparent in the much-quoted pa.s.sage in Christabel:

The night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek-- There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

The pause offers more difficulties for the poet, and more opportunities; since the line is so short, and the rimes reinforce the regular metrical pause at the end of the line, important grammatical pauses cannot well occur in the middle of the line without danger of breaking the rhythm.

The logical pause must, therefore, usually coincide with the metrical and thus emphasize unduly the line unit. Moreover, the quick return of the rime sound causes the couplet itself to be felt as a unit and produces what are called 'closed couplets,' in which the two lines contain an independent idea. To avoid irksome uniformity in this regard three devices are customary: to 'run-on' the meaning from one line to the next, thus momentarily obscuring the metrical pause, to 'run-on' the couplets themselves, and to divide the couplet so that the second verse belongs to a new sentence or independent clause.

And thus, when they appeared at last, And all my bonds aside were cast, These heavy walls to me had grown A heritage--and all my own!

And half I felt as they were come 5 To tear me from a second home.

With spiders I had friends.h.i.+p made, And watched them in their sullen trade; Had seen the mice by moonlight play-- And why should I feel less than they? 10 We were all inmates of one place, And I, the monarch of each race, Had power to kill; yet, strange to tell!

In quiet we had learned to dwell.

My very chains and I grew friends, 15 So much a long communion tends To make us what we are:--even I Regained my freedom with a sigh.

BYRON, The Prisoner of Chillon.

In this pa.s.sage, which is on the whole conservative and stiff in movement, observe (1) how the pause in the middle of ll. 4, 13, and 17 helps to vary the measure; (2) how many of the verses end with a logical as well as metrical pause; (3) how in ll. 3, 5, 16, and 17 the meaning runs over without pause into the next lines; (4) how the first two couplets and the last two are run together, whereas the third and fourth are both closed and independent; and (5) how at ll. 9 and 10 the couplet is divided. This last device is not very frequent in the practice of any poet except Chaucer; it is well ill.u.s.trated, however, in these lines from Sh.e.l.ley's With a Guitar to Jane:

All this it knows; but will not tell To those that cannot question well The Spirit that inhabits it.

It talks according to the wit Of its companions; and no more ...

Two other means of varying the swing of the short couplet are to change the order of the rimes (as in the example above from Christabel) or introduce a third riming line (that is, to use triplets with the couplets), and to intermingle shorter lines, as Coleridge does occasionally in Christabel, and Byron at the beginning of The Prisoner of Chillon:

My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears.

_Heroic Couplet._ The 5-stress line, both rimed and unrimed, is the most flexible and best adapted to all kinds of subjects that English versification possesses. Its powers range through the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, the dignity of the sonnet, and the grandeur of Milton, to the satire of Pope and the informal conversational verse of Mr.

Robert Frost. The 4-stress line is too short, the 6-stress is too long (when it does not split into two equal parts); the 5-stress seems to hit the golden average. It is less inclined to 'go' by itself, and therefore is suitable for slow movements; on the other hand, it is easily divided by pauses and hence is easily relieved of monotony and adjustable to almost all tempos.[48]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [48] It is no doubt significant that the rhythmic pulses which come most naturally to us are in twos and threes and their multiples; while even to beat time in fives requires a special effort. In music 5/8 or 5/4 time is extremely rare. There is an example of the latter in Chopin's Sonata I (the larghetto movement). +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The earliest form, historically, of the 5-stress line in English was in rimed couplets; the first poet to use the rimed couplet continuously (as distinguished from occasional use in a stanza) was Chaucer.[49] Blank verse is a modification of the couplet by the simple omission of the rimes at the end.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [49] On the source and origin of the 5-stress couplet in English, authorities are in disagreement. See Alden, English Verse, pp. 177 ff., and the references there given. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The history of the heroic couplet may be divided into two periods, that of Chaucer and his followers, Gavin Douglas and Spenser, and that beginning with Marlowe, Chapman, and other Elizabethans and continuing down to the present. This division is peculiar, for it represents a double curve of development, the one comparatively short, the other long. Chaucer's couplet has all the marks of ease and freedom of a fully matured medium: great variety in the pauses, run-on lines and couplets, and divided couplets. (All the means of securing variety for the short couplet, explained above, apply _a fortiori_ to the heroic line.) Douglas, in large part, and Spenser pretty fully, adopted and preserved this unfettered movement, though the former antic.i.p.ates here and there the neat balance of the Popian couplet. Then the measure seems to have begun all over again, partly on account of an attack of syllable-counting, with close formal recognition of the line unit and the couplet unit, and gradually worked its way back to its original flexibility.[50]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [50] Note Professor Woodberry's praise of the heroic couplet for its simple music, its suppleness, its power of forcing brevity: "the best metrical form which intelligence, as distinct from poetical feeling, can employ." (Makers of Literature, p. 104.) +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The following characteristic examples ill.u.s.trate the chief varieties of the couplet. (Again, they should be supplemented by the reading of longer pa.s.sages. Pope's couplet, in particular, with its perfection of form according to a few well-marked formulas, reveals its great weakness, monotony, only in the consecutive reading of several pages.)

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertue engendred is the flour; Whan Zephyrus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in here corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seken straunge strondes, To feme halwes, kouthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every s.h.i.+res ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seeke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

CHAUCER, Canterbury Tales, Prologue.

The Husbandman was meanly well content Triall to make of his endevourment; And, home him leading, lent to him the charge Of all his flocke, with libertie full large, Giving accompt of th' annuall increce Both of their lambes, and of their woolly fleece.

Thus is this Ape become a shepheard swaine, And the false Foxe his dog (G.o.d give them paine!) For ere the yeare have halfe his course out-run, And doo returne from whence he first begun, They shall him make an ill accompt of thrift.

SPENSER, Mother Hubberd's Tale.

And in the midst a silver altar stood: There Hero, sacrificing turtles' blood, Kneel'd to the ground, veiling her eyelids close; And modestly they open'd as she rose: Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head; And thus Leander was enamoured.

Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gaz'd, Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd, Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strook: Such force and virtue hath an amorous look.

It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.

MARLOWE, Hero and Leander.

But when the far-off isle he touch'd, he went Up from the blue sea to the continent, And reach'd the ample cavern of the Queen, Whom he found within; without seldom seen.

A sun-like fire upon the hearth did flame; The matter precious, and divine the frame; Of cedar cleft and incense was the pile, That breathed an odour round about the isle.

Herself was seated in an inner room, Whom sweetly sing he heard, and at her loom, About a curious web, whose yarn she threw In with a golden shuttle. A grove grew In endless spring about her cavern round, With odorous cypress, pines, and poplars crown'd.

CHAPMAN, Odyssey, V.

Though Chapman sometimes uses the pause and run-on lines freely, the regularity of the foot makes for a certain stiffness and inflexibility.

She, she is gone; she's gone; when thou know'st this, What fragmentary rubbish this world is Thou know'st, and that it is not worth a thought; He honours it too much that thinks it nought.

Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom, Which brings a taper to the outward room, Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light, And after brings it nearer to thy sight; For such approaches doth heaven make in death.

DONNE, Anatomy of the World.

Donne's metres were notoriously careless--or deliberately irregular.

They therefore stand somewhat out of place in the general trend of development.

O how I long my careless limbs to lay Under the plantain's shade, and all the day With amorous airs my fancy entertain; Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!

No pa.s.sion there in my free breast should move, None but the sweet and best of pa.s.sions, love!

There while I sing, if gentle Love be by, That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high; With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name, I'll make the list'ning savages grow tame.

WALLER, Battle of the Summer Islands.

Waller, though his lifetime (1605-87) embraces that of Milton, is the natural precursor of the eighteenth century. His couplets are almost all characteristic of eighteenth-century couplets, which seem to seek perfection within themselves. The aim of Waller, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson was primarily to exalt the couplet and extract from it all its potentialities, not to obscure it by varied pauses and run-on lines.

Waller was praised by the best critics of his own and the following generation for the great 'sweetness' and smoothness of his verse.

Of these the false Achitophel was first; A name to all succeeding ages curst: For close designs and crooked counsels fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfix'd in principles and place; In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I.

All human things are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.

This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire and had govern'd long; In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute.

This aged prince, now flouris.h.i.+ng in peace And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the State.

DRYDEN, MacFlecknoe.

It is interesting, from a metrical point of view, to compare Chaucer's couplets with Dryden's where he is translating Chaucer, e. g., in the Knight's Tale and Palamon and Arcite.

Between 1664 and 1678 it became the fas.h.i.+on, partly as a reaction against the liberties of the late Elizabethan blank verse, and partly under French influence, to write drama in heroic couplets. But the undertaking soon proved abortive.

Others for Language all their care express, And value books, as women men, for dress; Their praise is still,--the style is excellent; The sense, they humbly take upon content.

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: False eloquence, like the prismatic gla.s.s, Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place; The face of nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it s.h.i.+nes upon; It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

POPE, Essay on Criticism.