Chapter XII: Part TWO: I. Four-Stress Verse (5)

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

(JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE: _To Night_. ab. 1825. In _The Book of the Sonnet_, i. 258.)

This famous sonnet was called by Coleridge "the best in the English language." He seems, however, to have been led to this opinion rather by the thought than the form.

I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(SHELLEY: _Ozymandias of Egypt_. 1817.)

Shelley wrote but few sonnets, and all but one (_To the Nile_) are irregular in structure. The rime-scheme of the present specimen is, of course, wholly eccentric.

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the Grasshopper's; he takes the lead
In summer luxury; he has never done
With his delights, for, when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

(KEATS: _The Grasshopper and Cricket_. 1817.)

Keats's sonnets are for the most part regular in both rime-scheme and bipartite structure; but a number of the posthumous sonnets are in the English form. The present specimen (which competes with the more familiar sonnet on _Chapman's Homer_ for the chief place among those of Keats) is a particularly good example of the bipartite structure and its organic relation to the thought of the sonnet.

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
With the first sight of thee didst make our race
Forever stare! O flat and shocking face,
Grimly divided from the breast below!
Thou that on dry land horribly dost go
With a split body and most ridiculous pace,
Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!
O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,
How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry
And dreary sloth! What particle canst thou share
Of the only blessed life, the watery?
I sometimes see of ye an actual _pair_
Go by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.

(LEIGH HUNT: _The Fish to the Man_. 1836.)

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors,--another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Fill'd by dead eyes, too tender to know change?
That's hardest! If to conquer love, has tried,
To conquer grief tries more, as all things prove:
For grief indeed is love, and grief beside.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love--
Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

(ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, xxxv. 1850.)

The forty-four _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ (the title, of course, being purely fanciful) constitute one of the chief sonnet-sequences of the modern period. While true to the Italian rime-structure, Mrs. Browning cannot be said to have treated the sonnet either as a two-part poem or as a unit. Only three of the series, says Professor Corson (the first, fourth, and thirteenth), "can be said to realize with any distinctness the idea and the peculiar artistic effect of the sonnet proper." Hence while calling them "the most beautiful love-poems in the language," he thinks "they cannot be classed as sonnets." (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 175, 176.)

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,--
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
A sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,--its converse, to what Power 'tis due:--
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

(ROSSETTI: Sonnet preceding _The House of Life_. 1881.)

When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,--
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

(ROSSETTI: _The House of Life_: Sonnet iv. _Lovesight_. 1870.)

The sonnets of Rossetti are undoubtedly the most perfect representatives of the Italian form in English poetry of the nineteenth century, and _The House of Life_ (in 101 sonnets) is probably to be regarded as the most important sonnet-sequence since the Elizabethan age. The bipartite character of Rossetti's sonnets is marked, in editions of his poems, by the printing of the octave and sestet with a space between them.

They rose to where their sovran eagle sails,
They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night
Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales
Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,
And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight
Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight
By thousands down the crags and through the vales.
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernagora! never since thine own
Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm
Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.

(TENNYSON: _Montenegro_. 1877.)

It is curious that the two chief representatives of English poetry of the Victorian period, Tennyson and Browning, should neither of them have given much attention to the sonnet nor have achieved any notable success in the form. Among Tennyson's poems there are some seventeen sonnets, of which the present specimen was considered by the poet to be the best. It represents a common form of the bipartite structure, where the octave is a narrative, and the sestet a comment upon what has been narrated. In the following specimen, from Matthew Arnold, the structure is similar. Lentzner quotes the _East London_, in his monograph on the English sonnet, as a case where the octave represents the thought in particular, the sestet in the abstract; in other cases the order is the reverse.

'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his window seen
In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
'Ill and o'er-worked, how fare you in this scene?'
'Bravely!' said he, 'for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread!'
O human soul! so long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam,
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _East London_. 1867.)

"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men--each in his degree
Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?
But little do or can the best of us:
That little is achieved through Liberty.
Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus--
His fellow shall continue bound? Not I.
Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."

(BROWNING: _Why I am a Liberal_. 1885.)

Browning's sonnets are few in number, mostly occasional, and none of them can be considered notable. For a study of them, see the article by Lentzner in _Anglia_, vol. xi. p. 500. Dr. Lentzner includes nine in his list, not all of which are included in Browning's collected poems. Three are so closely connected as practically to form a poem in three stanzas (appended to _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, 1883).

One saith: the whole world is a Comedy
Played for the mirth of God upon his throne,
Whereof the hidden meanings will be known
When Michael's trumpet thrills through earth and sea.
Fate is the dramaturge; Necessity
Allots the parts; the scenes, by Nature shown,
Embrace each element and every zone,
Ordered with infinite variety.Another
saith: no calm-eyed Sophocles
Indites the tragedy of human doom,
But some cold scornful Aristophanes,
Whose zanies gape and gibber in thick gloom,
While nightingales, shrill 'mid the shivering trees,
Jar on the silence of the neighboring tomb.

(JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS: from _Sonnets on the Thought of Death_. ab. 1880.)

Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach
Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear,
The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear
A restless lore like that the billows teach;
For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach
From its own depths, and rest within you, dear,
As, through the billowy voices yearning here,
Great Nature strives to find a human speech.
A sonnet is a wave of melody:
From heaving waters of the impassioned soul
A billow of tidal music one and whole
Flows in the octave; then, returning free,
Its ebbing surges in the sestet roll
Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.

(THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON: _The Sonnet's Voice; a Metrical Lesson by the Sea-shore_. _Athenæum_, Sept. 17, 1881.)

The "sonnet on the sonnet" has become so familiar in recent times that a volume of such sonnets has been compiled, and a writer of humorous verse has satirized the fashion in a "Sonnet on the Sonnet on the Sonnet." Doubtless the two specimens quoted from Wordsworth lead all others of the class; but the present specimen is an interesting attempt to represent the characteristic metrical expressiveness of the form.

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

(LONGFELLOW: _Sonnets on the Divina Commedia_, i. 1864.)

Caliph, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late
"Abdul the Damned," and would recall my word.
It merged thee with the unillustrious herd
Who crowd the approaches to the infernal gate--
Spirits gregarious, equal in their state
As is the innumerable ocean bird,
Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heard
On Ailsa or Iona desolate.
For, in a world where cruel deeds abound,
The merely damned are legion: with such souls
Is not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?
Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureoles
Dost shine supreme, incomparably crowned,
Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.

(WILLIAM WATSON: _To the Sultan_, in _The Year of Shame_. 1897.)

Mr. William Archer says of Mr. Watson's political sonnets, that the form becomes in his hands "a weapon like the sling of David. In the octave he whirls it round and round with ever-gathering momentum, and in the sestet sends his scorn or rebuke singing through the air, arrow-straight to its mark." (_Poets of the Younger Generation_, p. 503.)

B.--THE ENGLISH (SHAKSPERIAN) SONNET

From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race:
Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate:
The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe face
Wilde Cambers clifs, did geve her lively heate:
Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest:
Her sire, an Erle; her dame, of princes blood.
From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest,
With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food.
Honsdon did first present her to mine yien:
Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine:
And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind, her vertues from above.
Happy is he that can obtaine her love.

(EARL OF SURREY: _Description and praise of his love Geraldine_. In Tottel's _Songs and Sonnets_, p. 9. Pub. 1557.)

Surrey experimented with the Italian sonnet as it had been introduced into England by his master Wyatt, but soon devised a variation from the Italian form, and wrote a majority of his sonnets in the new English form (nine out of the sixteen which are printed in Tottel's Miscellany). This new form is divided, not into octave and sestet, but into three quatrains, with alternate rime, and a couplet. It produces, therefore, an effect quite different from that of the legitimate Italian sonnet, the couplet at the end giving it a more epigrammatic structure. Surrey's form seems more consonant with common English taste for simplicity of rime-structure, and, besides being honored by its adoption by Shakspere, has remained a favorite side by side with the more "correct" original.[37]

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw.
O make me in those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

(SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, xxxix. ab. 1580.)

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish, and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of to-morrow;
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

(SAMUEL DANIEL: _Care-charmer Sleep_. 1592.)

Daniel was one of the most skilful of the Elizabethans in the use of the English form of the sonnet. The greater number of his _Sonnets to Delia_ are of this type. The subject of the present sonnet was a fashionable one in the sixteenth century (compare Sidney's, quoted above).

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,--
Nay I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
--Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!

(DRAYTON: _Love's Farewell_. 1594.)

Rossetti called this sonnet "perhaps the best in the language." Drayton's sonnet-sequence, the _Idea_, follows the Shaksperian form; and the present specimen illustrates how the important division of this type of sonnet is between the quatrains and the final couplet.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand;
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man! said she, that dost in vain essay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I); let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name,--
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

(SPENSER: _Amoretti_, lxxv. 1595.)

The sonnets in Spenser's collected poems number 177, of which fifty-six are in the common English (Surrey) form, the remainder--like the present specimen--riming _ababbcbccdcdee_. This order of rimes reminds us of that in the Spenserian stanza, and must have been devised by Spenser at about the same time. It has never been adopted by other poets.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate;
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee--and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

(SHAKSPERE: _Sonnet_ xxix. 1609.)

That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by:
--This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

(SHAKSPERE: _Sonnet_ lxxiii. 1609.)

These two specimens, perhaps the favorites of as many readers as any which could be chosen, must serve to represent the sonnets of Shakspere. The whole number of these is 154, and all are in the English form. Slight irregularities in the rime-scheme will be found in about fifteen. Number 99 has fifteen lines and 126 (sometimes called the Epilogue to the first part of the series) has only twelve. Number 20 is wholly based on feminine rimes.[38]

Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

(GEORGE HERBERT: _Sin_. 1631.)

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Ph[oe]bus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine,
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain;
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.

(GRAY: _On the Death of Richard West_. 1742.)

On the place of this sonnet in the eighteenth century, see p. 277, above.

Oh it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily-persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold
'Twixt crimson bank; and then, a traveler, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or listening to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard who, on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

(COLERIDGE: _Fancy in Nubibus_. 1819.)

The sonnets of Coleridge, as has already been noted, were written under the influence of those of Bowles, and are not of the Italian type. He defined the sonnet as "a short poem in which some lonely feeling is developed," thus emphasizing, like Wordsworth, the idea of unity rather than of progressive structure.

Darkly, as by some gloomed mirror glassed,
Herein at times the brooding eye beholds
The great scarred visage of the pompous Past,
But oftener only the embroidered folds
And soiled regality of his rent robe,
Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
And cumber with their trailing pride the globe,
And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes;
Till the world seems a world of husks and bones
Where sightless Seers and Immortals dead,
Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
Invincible armies long since vanquished,
And powerless potentates and foolish sages
Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.

(WILLIAM WATSON: _History_.)

FOOTNOTES:

[35] It will perhaps be found of interest to reproduce the "Ten Commandments of the Sonnet" given by Mr. Sharp in his Introduction to _Sonnets of this Century_ (p. lxxviii):

"1. The sonnet must consist of fourteen decasyllabic lines.

"2. Its octave, or major system, whether or not this be marked by a pause in the cadence after the eighth line, must (unless cast in the Shakespearian mould) follow a prescribed arrangement in the rhyme-sounds--namely, the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth lines must rhyme on the same sound, and the second, third, sixth, and seventh on another.

"3. Its sestet, or minor system, may be arranged with more freedom, but a rhymed couplet at the close is only allowable when the form is the English or Shakespearian.

"4. No terminal should also occur in any other portion of any other line in the same system; and the rhyme-sounds (1) of the octave should be harmoniously at variance, and (2) the rhyme-sounds of the sestet should be entirely distinct in intonation from those of the octave....

"5. It must have no slovenliness of diction, no weak or indeterminate terminations, no vagueness of conception, and no obscurity.

"6. It must be absolutely complete in itself--_i.e._, it must be the evolution of one thought, or one emotion, or one poetically apprehended fact.

"7. It should have the characteristic of apparent inevitableness, and in expression be ample, yet reticent....

"8. The continuity of the thought, idea, or emotion must be unbroken throughout.

"9. Continuous sonority must be maintained from the first phrase to the last.

"10. The end must be more impressive than the commencement."

These rules of course represent the ideal of the strictest Italian form, and are by no means derived from the prevailing practice of English poets.

[36] On the structure and history of the sonnet, see Schipper, as cited above; C. Tomlinson: _The Sonnet, its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry_ (1874); K. Lentzner: _Ueber das Sonett und seine Gestaltung in der englischen Dichtung bis Milton_ (1886); Leigh Hunt and S. A. Lee: _The Book of the Sonnet_ (with introductory essay, 1867); W. Sharp: _Sonnets of This Century_ (with essay, 1886); S. Waddington: _English Sonnets by Poets of the Past_, and _English Sonnets by Living Poets_; Hall Caine: _Sonnets of Three Centuries_ (1882); H. Corson: _Primer of English Verse_, chap. x.

[37] In 1575, when Gascoigne wrote his _Notes of Instruction_, he found it necessary to say: "Some thinke that all Poemes (being short) may be called Sonets, as in deede it is a diminutive worde derived of _Sonare_, but yet I can beste allowe to call those Sonnets whiche are of fouretene lynes, every line conteyning tenne syllables. The firste twelve do ryme in staves of foure lines by crosse meetre, and the last two ryming togither do conclude the whole." (Arber's Reprint, pp. 38, 39.) It is, of course, the English sonnet which Gascoigne thus describes.

[38] Shakspere also introduced sonnets into some of his earlier plays: _Love's Labor's Lost_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Romeo and Juliet_, and _Henry V._ See Fleay's _Chronicle of the English Drama_, vol. ii. p. 224, and Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, p. xxx.

V. THE ODE

The term Ode is used of English poetry with considerable vagueness. The Century Dictionary defines the word thus: "A lyric poem expressive of exalted or enthusiastic emotion, especially one of complex or irregular metrical form; originally and strictly, such a composition intended to be sung." Compare with this the definition of Mr. Gosse, in his collection of _English Odes_: "Any strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with one dignified theme."

Viewed from the purely metrical standpoint, English odes are commonly either (_a_) regular Pindaric odes, imitative of the structure of the Greek ode, or (_b_) irregular, so-called "Pindaric" or "Cowleyan" odes. A third group may be made of forms based on the imitation of the choral odes of the Greek drama. There is also a class of odes called "Horatian," made up of simple lyrical stanzas; the name "ode" is applied here only because of the content of the poem or because of resemblance to the so-called odes (properly _carmina_ or songs) of Horace, and since these Horatian odes show no metrical peculiarities they will not be represented here.[39]

The characteristic effect of the ode is produced by the varying lengths of lines employed, and the varying distances at which the rimes answer one another. This variety, in the hands of a master of verse, is capable of splendid effectiveness, but it gives dangerous license to the unskilled writer.

A.--REGULAR PINDARIC

III.^{1} _The Strophe, or Turn_

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, noble Lucius, then for wine,
And let thy looks with gladness shine;
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 friendship'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 shine.

(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 classical 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, Athenæum 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 shell 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 god the gift, a god 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 entitled 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
appetite than he could do if always cloyed with the same quantities
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 latitude
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 principal, 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 Alcæus, 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 goddess, in that feeling hour,
When most its sounds would court thy ears,
Let not my shell'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 hoary,
He pass'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 analogous 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 analogous 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." (Athenæum 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 pass'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 shivering 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.
Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,
Which does to rage begin,
And this steep hill would gallop up with violent course;
'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse,
Fierce, and unbroken yet,
Impatient of the spur or bit;
Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place;
Disdains the servile law of any settled pace;
Conscious and proud of his own natural force,
'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.

(COWLEY: _The Resurrection_, strophes iii. and iv. 1656).

Cowley, as has already appeared, introduced the irregular ode into English poetry, calling it "Pindaric" under a misapprehension of the real structure of the Greek odes. He published fifteen "Pindarique Odes" in 1656 (see the Preface to these, in Grosart's edition of his works, vol. ii. p. 4). The present specimen illustrates the really not unskilful use which Cowley made of the varying cadences of the form, and also sets forth--in the amusing concluding lines--his own idea of its difficulties.

Under the influence of Cowley's odes, the new form speedily became popular. According to Dr. Johnson, "this lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately over-spread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they who could do nothing else could write like Pindar." (_Life of Cowley_.) Compare also the remarks of Mr. Gosse: "Until the days of Collins and Gray, the ode modelled upon Cowley was not only the universal medium for congratulatory lyrics and pompous occasional pieces, but it was almost the only variety permitted to the melancholy generations over whom the heroic couplet reigned supreme." (_Seventeenth Century Studies_, p. 216.)

It has been the habit of modern critics to treat the irregularities of the Cowleyan ode with no little contempt, and it is undoubtedly true that in the hands of small poets its liberties are dangerous; but it is also true that some of the greatest modern poets have adopted the form for some of their best work, and that they have generally preferred it to that of the regular Pindaric ode.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat
The judging God shall close the book of Fate,
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those cloth'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learn'd below.

(DRYDEN: _To the Pious Memory of Mistress Anne Killigrew_, strophe x. 1686.)

See also specimen from the _Ode for St. Cecilia's Day_, quoted above, p. 52.

Dryden's odes for St. Cecilia's Day (especially the _Alexander's Feast_) are among the most highly esteemed of his poems; but parts, at least, of the ode on Mistress Killigrew are no less fine, and in this case we have a purely literary ode, whose irregularities are not designed--as in the case of the others--to fit choral rendering. The conclusion of the ode, here quoted, seems to owe something of both substance and form to the conclusion of Cowley's Resurrection Ode (see preceding specimen). Dr. Johnson called Dryden's Killigrew Ode "undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced."

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial.
He, with viny crown advancing,
First to the lively pipe his hand addrest;
But soon he saw the brisk awak'ning viol,
Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids,
Amidst the festal sounding shades,
To some unwearied minstrel dancing,
While, as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings,
Love fram'd with Mirth a gay fantastic round;
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,
And he, amidst his frolic play,
As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

(COLLINS: _The Passions._ 1746.)

I marked Ambition in his war-array!
I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry--
"Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay!
Groans not her chariot on its onward way?"
Fly, mailed Monarch, fly!
Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
No more on murder's lurid face
The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
Manes of the unnumbered slain!
Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain!
Ye that erst at Ismail's tower,
When human ruin choked the streams,
Fell in conquest's glutted hour,
Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams!
Spirits of the uncoffined slain,
Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,
Rush around her narrow dwelling!
The exterminating fiend is fled--
(Foul her life, and dark her doom)--
Mighty armies of the dead
Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb!
Then with prophetic song relate
Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

(COLERIDGE: _Ode on the Departing Year_, strophe iii. 1796.)

This ode was evidently intended to be in the regular Pindaric form, and was divided into strophes, antistrophes, and epodes; but it soon broke into irregularity. On Coleridge's odes see some remarks by Mr. Theodore Watts in the article on Poetry in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day....
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

(WORDSWORTH: _Intimations of Immortality_, strophes v. and ix. 1807.)

In this poem the English ode may be said to have reached its high-water mark. Professor Corson observes: "The several metres are felt, in the course of the reading of the Ode, to be organic--inseparable from what each is employed to express. The rhymes, too, with their varying degrees of emphasis, according to the nearness or remoteness, and the length, of the rhyming verses, are equally a part of the expression.... The feelings of the reader of English poetry get to be set, so to speak, to the pentameter measure, as in that measure the largest portion of English poetry is written; and, accordingly, other measures derive some effect from that fact. In the theme-metre, generally, the more reflective portions of the Ode, its deeper tones, are expressed. The gladder notes come in the shorter metres.... Wordsworth never wrote any poem of which it can be more truly said than of his great Ode, 'Of the soul the body form doth take.'" (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 32-34.)

Then gentle winds arose
With many a mingled close
Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-odor keen;
And where the Baian ocean
Welters with airlike motion,
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,
It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm;
I sailed, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves
Of the dead kings of Melody.
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal ether; heaven stripped bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,
There streamed a sunlight vapor, like the standard
Of some ethereal host;
Whilst from the coast,
Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate--
They seize me--I must speak them--be they fate!

(SHELLEY: _Ode to Naples_, strophe ii. 1819.)

Bury the Great Duke
With an empire's lamentation,
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London's central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,
Let the long long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low....

... We revere, and while we hear
The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting toward eternity,
Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,
Until we doubt not that for one so true
There must be other nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be.
For though the Giant Ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will;
Though world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?
On God and Godlike men we build our trust.
Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears:
The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears:
The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears;
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
He is gone who seemed so great.--
Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in state,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him.
Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him.
God accept him, Christ receive him.

(TENNYSON: _On the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, strophes i, ii, iii, ix (in part). 1852.)