English Verse Part 43

It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear: A lily of a day Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant of flower and light.

In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.

III.^{2} _The Antistrophe, or Counter-turn_

Call, n.o.ble Lucius, then for wine, And let thy looks with gladness s.h.i.+ne; Accept this garland, plant it on thy head, And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead.

He leap'd the present age, Possess'd with holy rage, To see that bright eternal day; Of which we priests and poets say Such truths as we expect for happy men: And there he lives with memory, and Ben.

III.^{3} _The Epode, or Stand_

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went, Himself, to rest, Or taste a part of that full joy he meant To have express'd, In this bright asterism!-- Where it were friends.h.i.+p's schism, Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry, To separate these twi- Lights, the Dioscuri; And keep the one half from his Harry.

But fate doth so alternate the design, Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must s.h.i.+ne.

(BEN JONSON: _A Pindaric Ode on the death of Sir H. Morison_. 1629.)

This ode of Jonson's is apparently the earliest, and remained for a long time the only, notable English ode based on the strict structure of the Greek original. The Greek ode was commonly divided into the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode; the strophe and antistrophe being identical in structure, though varying in different odes, and the epode being of different structure. Jonson therefore followed the cla.s.sical form carefully, and introduced English terms to express the original three divisions.

Professor Bronson observes, in his Introduction to the Odes of Collins: "It is a commonplace that the Pindaric Ode in English is an artificial exotic, of slight native force, and unable to reproduce the effects of the Greek original. The reason is obvious. The Greek odes were accompanied by music and dancing, the singers moving to one side during the strophe, retracing their steps during the antistrophe, ... and standing still during the epode. The ear was thus helped by the eye, and the divisions of the ode were distinct and significant. But in an English Pindaric the elaborate correspondences and differences between strophe, antistrophe, and epode are lost upon most readers, and even the critical reader derives from them a pleasure intellectual rather than sensuous." (Edition of Collins, Athenaeum Press Series, Introduction, pp.

lxxiv, lxxv.)

I^{1}

Daughter of Memory, immortal Muse, Calliope, what poet wilt thou choose, Of Anna's name to sing?

To whom wilt thou thy fire impart, Thy lyre, thy voice, and tuneful art, Whom raise sublime on thy ethereal wing, And consecrate with dews of thy Castalian spring?

I^{2}

Without thy aid, the most aspiring mind Must flag beneath, to narrow flights confin'd, Striving to rise in vain; Nor e'er can hope with equal lays To celebrate bright Virtue's praise.

Thine aid obtain'd, even I, the humblest swain, May climb Pierian heights, and quit the lowly plain.

I^{3}

High in the starry orb is hung, And next Alcides' guardian arm, That harp to which thy Orpheus sung, Who woods and rocks and winds could charm; That harp which on Cyllene's shady hill, When first the vocal sh.e.l.l was found, With more than mortal skill Inventor Hermes taught to sound: Hermes on bright Latona's son, By sweet persuasion won, The wondrous work bestow'd; Latona's son, to thine Indulgent, gave the gift divine: A G.o.d the gift, a G.o.d th' invention show'd.

(CONGREVE: _A Pindaric Ode on the victorious progress of her Majesty's Arms_. 1706.)

To Congreve is due the credit for the revival of the regular ode in the eighteenth century, after it had been long forgotten by English poets.

Meantime the irregular form, devised by Cowley, had become popular; and against the license of this Congreve protested in his _Discourse on the Pindaric Ode_, prefixed to his Ode of 1706. (See Mr. Gosse's Introduction to _English Odes_, p. xvii., and his _Life of Congreve_, p.

158.)

Congreve said in his Discourse: "The following ode is an attempt towards restoring the regularity of the ancient lyric poetry, which seems to be altogether forgotten, or unknown, by our English writers. There is nothing more frequent among us than a sort of poems ent.i.tled Pindaric Odes, pretending to be written in imitation of the manner and style of Pindar, and yet I do not know that there is to this day extant, in our language, one ode contrived after his model.... The character of these late Pindarics is a bundle of rambling incoherent thoughts, expressed in a like parcel of irregular stanzas, which also consist of such another complication of disproportioned, uncertain, and perplexed verses and rhymes....

On the contrary, there is nothing more regular than the odes of Pindar, both as to the exact observation of the measures and numbers of his stanzas and verses, and the perpetual coherence of his thoughts....

"Though there be no necessity that our triumphal odes should consist of the three afore-mentioned stanzas, yet if the reader can observe that the great variation of the numbers in the third stanza (call it epode, or what you please) has a pleasing effect in the ode, and makes him return to the first and second stanzas with more appet.i.te than he could do if always cloyed with the same quant.i.ties and measures, I cannot see why some use may not be made of Pindar's example, to the great improvement of the English ode. There is certainly a pleasure in beholding anything that has art and difficulty in the contrivance, especially if it appears so carefully executed that the difficulty does not show itself till it is sought for....

"Having mentioned Mr. Cowley, it may very well be expected that something should be said of him, at a time when the imitation of Pindar is the theme of our discourse. But there is that great deference due to the memory, great parts, and learning, of that gentleman, that I think nothing should be objected to the lat.i.tude he has taken in his Pindaric odes. The beauty of his verses is an atonement for the irregularity of his stanzas.... Yet I must beg leave to add that I believe those irregular odes of Mr. Cowley may have been the princ.i.p.al, though innocent, occasion of so many deformed poems since, which, instead of being true pictures of Pindar, have (to use the Italian painters' term) been only caricatures of him."

(_Discourse on the Pindaric Ode_, in Chalmers's _English Poets_, vol. x.

p. 300.)

Who shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life The youths whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, Applauding Freedom lov'd of old to view?

What new Alcaeus, fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing (What place so fit to seal a deed renowned?), Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing, It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound?

O G.o.ddess, in that feeling hour, When most its sounds would court thy ears, Let not my sh.e.l.l's misguided power E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears.

No, Freedom, no, I will not tell How Rome before thy weeping face, With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell, Push'd by a wild and artless race From off its wide ambitious base, When Time his Northern sons of spoil awoke, And all the blended work of strength and grace, With many a rude repeated stroke, And many a barb'rous yell, to thousand fragments broke....

Beyond the measure vast of thought, The works the wizard Time has wrought!

The Gaul, 'tis held of antique story, Saw Britain link'd to his now adverse strand; No sea between, nor cliff sublime and h.o.a.ry, He pa.s.s'd with unwet feet thro' all our land.

To the blown Baltic then, they say, The wild waves found another way, Where Orcas howls, his wolfish mountains rounding; Till all the banded West at once 'gan rise, A wide wild storm ev'n Nature's self confounding, With'ring her giant sons with strange uncouth surprise.

This pillar'd earth so firm and wide, By winds and inward labors torn, In thunders dread was push'd aside, And down the should'ring billows borne.

And see, like gems, her laughing train, The little isles on every side!

Mona, once hid from those who search the main, Where thousand elfin shapes abide, And Wight, who checks the west'ring tide; For thee consenting Heaven has each bestowed, A fair attendant on her sovereign pride.

To thee this blest divorce she ow'd, For thou hast made her vales thy lov'd, thy last abode!

(COLLINS: _Ode to Liberty_, strophe and antistrophe. 1746.)

This ode consists of strophe, epode, antistrophe, and second epode. The antistrophe corresponds metrically to the strophe, as usual; the epodes are in four-stress couplets. It was Collins's habit to place the epode between the strophe and antistrophe, perhaps, as Professor Bronson suggests, in order that it may produce "an impression of its own a.n.a.logous to that of the Greek epode, namely, an impression of relief and repose." Mr. Bronson says further of Collins's odes: "Collins was less scholarly than Gray, but he was bolder and more original; and consciously or unconsciously he so constructed his odes that their organic parts stand out clearly distinct and produce effects a.n.a.logous to those produced by the Greek ode. In brief, his method was, first, to make large divisions of the thought correspond to the large divisions of the form; and, second, to throw out into relief the complex strophe and antistrophe by contrasting them with a simple epode. The reader may not perceive the minute correspondences in form between strophe and antistrophe, but he can hardly fail to feel that the two answer to one another in a general way." (Athenaeum Press edition of Collins, Introduction, p. lxxv.)

III^{1}

Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon strayed, To him the mighty Mother did unveil Her awful face. The dauntless Child Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.

This pencil take (she said) whose colors clear Richly paint the vernal year; Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!

This can unlock the gates of Joy, Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.

III^{2}

Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' Abyss to spy, He pa.s.s'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time; The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where Angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Clos'd his eyes in endless night.

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace.

III^{3}

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!

Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

But ah! 'tis heard no more-- Oh! Lyre divine, what daring spirit Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, That the Theban Eagle bear Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air; Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun; Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far--but far above the great.

(GRAY: _The Progress of Poesy._ 1757.)

Gray's _Progress of Poesy_ is probably to be regarded as the chief of all English odes of the regular Pindaric form. Mr. Lowell said, indeed, that it "overflies all other English lyrics like an eagle." _The Bard_ is in precisely the same form, and shows the same skill in the wielding of the intricately varying melodies of the lines of different length.

B.--IRREGULAR (COWLEYAN)

Whom thunder's dismal noise, And all that Prophets and Apostles louder spake, And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice, Could not, whilst they liv'd, awake, This mightier sound shall make When dead t' arise, And open tombs, and open eyes, To the long sluggards of five thousand years.

This mightier sound shall wake its hearers' ears.

Then shall the scatter'd atoms crowding come Back to their ancient home.

Some from birds, from fishes some, Some from earth, and some from seas, Some from beasts, and some from trees.

Some descend from clouds on high, Some from metals upwards fly, And where th' attending soul naked and s.h.i.+vering stands, Meet, salute, and join their hands, As dispers'd soldiers at the trumpet's call Haste to their colors all.

Unhappy most, like tortur'd men, Their joints new set, to be new-rack'd again, To mountains they for shelter pray; The mountains shake, and run about no less confus'd than they.

Stop, stop, my Muse! allay thy vig'rous heat, Kindled at a hint so great.