Chapter V: Part ONE: English Verse (2)

This form is almost unknown. In the following lines we find five-stress catalectic verse of dactyls and trochees combined:

Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

(SWINBURNE: _A Century of Roundels._)

_Six-stress iambic._

(For specimens, see Part Two.)

_Six-stress trochaic._

(With alternate lines catalectic:)

Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,
Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:
King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;
God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.

(SWINBURNE: _The Last Oracle._)

_Six-stress anapestic._

For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of
the foam,
That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter
and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand,
home.

(TENNYSON: _Maud_, I. i. 1855.)

(See note on p. 41.)

All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering: all over
impends
An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and
descends,
That exalts and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence
of heart
As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and
hearkens apart.

(SWINBURNE: _The Garden of Cymodoce_, in _Songs of the Springtides_.)

_Six-stress dactylic._

(For this, see chiefly Part Two.)

(Catalectic:)

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an ass for thy paains:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.

(TENNYSON: _Northern Farmer--new style._ ab. 1860.)

Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a
daughter
Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.

(SWINBURNE: _Hesperia._)

_Seven-stress iambic._

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so
fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

(BYRON: _Stanzas for Music._ 1815.)

Here we have anacrusis in lines 2 and 4.

Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter darkness
hurled--
Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled--
Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our
world.

(KIPLING: _Wolcott Balestier._)

(See also under Seven-stress Verse, in Part Two.)

_Seven-stress trochaic._

(Catalectic:)

Clear the way, my lords and lackeys, you have had your day.
Here you have your answer, England's yea against your nay;
Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way!

(SWINBURNE: _Clear the Way._)

_Seven-stress anapestic._

(With feminine ending:)

Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the
leaves' generations,
That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and
shadowlike nations,
Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of
creatures fast fleeing,
Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date
of our being.

(SWINBURNE: _The Birds_, from Aristophanes.)

Of this translation Mr. Swinburne says that it was undertaken from a consideration of the fact that the "marvellous metrical invention of the anapestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapestic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent." ... "I have not attempted," he says further, "the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees.... My main desire ... was to renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who

'dance as 'twere to the music
Their own hoofs make.'"

(_Studies in Song_, p. 68.)

_Seven-stress dactylic._

This form of verse may be said to be wanting. Schipper quotes as possible examples some lines which (as he remarks) seem to be made merely for the metrical purpose:

"Out of the kingdom of Christ shall be gathered, by angels o'er
Satan victorious,
All that offendeth, that lieth, that faileth to honor his name
ever glorious."

(_Englische Metrik_, vol. ii. p. 419.)

_Eight-stress iambic._

This is almost unknown in English verse, because where conceivably occurring it shows an irresistible tendency to break up into two halves of four stresses each. William Webbe, in his _Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586), quoted these lines as "the longest verse in length which I have seen used in English":

"Where virtue wants and vice abounds, there wealth is but a baited
hook,
To make men swallow down their bane, before on danger deep they
look."

_Eight-stress trochaic._

(Catalectic:)

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of
sight.

(TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall._ 1842.)

Open then I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,--
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door.

(POE: _The Raven._ 1845.)

Night, in utmost noon forlorn and strong, with heart athirst and
fasting,
Hungers here, barred up forever, whence as one whom dreams affright,
Day recoils before the low-browed lintel threatening doom and
casting Night.

(SWINBURNE: _Night in Guernsey._)

In the last line of this specimen we have a nine-accent verse,--very rare in English poetry.

The tendency of all eight-accent lines being to break up into halves of four accents, the distinction between four-stress and eight-stress verse may be at times only a question of printing. Thus, Thackeray's _Sorrows of Werther_ might be regarded as eight-stress trochaic, though commonly printed in short lines:

"Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter.
Would you know how first he saw her?
She was cutting bread and butter."

_Eight-stress anapestic._

Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendor
of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that
fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and
branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow, or of frost that
out-lightens all flowers till it fade,
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night
than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had
the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that
enkindle the season they smite.

(SWINBURNE: _March._)

_Eight-stress dactylic._

Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently
bearing
Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing
and daring.

(LONGFELLOW: _Golden Legend_, iv. 1851.)

The breathlessly continuous character of such long anapestic or dactylic lines may of course be interrupted, by way of relief, by the substitution of iambi or trochees. In the specimen from Swinburne such a resting-place is found in line 3, where a light syllable is omitted after _winds_. In the specimen from Longfellow the words _high-way_, _distant_, _human_, of course, fill the places of complete dactyls.

COMBINATIONS AND SUBSTITUTIONS

i. _Verses in which different sorts of feet are more or less regularly combined_.

In the morning, O so early, my beloved, my beloved,
All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease:
'Twas a thrush sang in my garden, "Hear the story, hear the story!"
And the lark sang "Give us glory!" and the dove said "Give us peace."

(JEAN INGELOW: _Give us Love and Give us Peace._)

Fair is our lot--O goodly is our heritage!
(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!)
For the Lord our God Most High
He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth!

(KIPLING: _A Song of the English._)

In both these specimens the full accent regularly recurs in only the alternate feet. Thus while the first specimen is technically eight-stress trochaic, there are in the normal reading of it only four full accents to the line. In other words the first, third, fifth, and seventh feet are regularly pyrrhics. (See p. 55.) The same thing appears in the specimen from Kipling: _ye_, _and_, _in_ (in line 2) are accented only in a distinctly secondary fashion. Some have suggested, for such rhythms as these, the recognition of a foot made up of one stressed and three unstressed syllables. Lanier represents such measures (in _The Science of English Verse_) in four-eight time.

Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go.

(BROWNING: _Prospice._)

Here the tendency is to use iambi and anapests in alternate feet; see especially lines 2, 3, and 5.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

(BROWNING: _Abt Vogler._)

Here we have a hexameter which is neither iambic nor anapestic, but a combination of the two rhythms. So in the following specimens dissyllabic and trisyllabic feet are used interchangeably.

When the lamp is shatter'd
The light in the dust lies dead--
When the cloud is scatter'd
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remember'd not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

(SHELLEY: _The Flight of Love._)

The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word
Is soft at the least wave's lapse in a still small reach.
From bay unto bay, on quest of a goal deferred,
From headland ever to headland and breach to breach,
Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach.

(SWINBURNE: _The Seaboard._)

England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy
glory, free,
Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he
worships thee;
None may sing thee: the sea-bird's wing beats down our songs as it
hails the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _The Armada_, vii.)

This life of ours is a wild Æolian harp of many a joyous strain,
But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls
in pain.

(LONGFELLOW: _The Golden Legend_, iv.)

Come away, come away, Death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

(SHAKSPERE: _Twelfth Night_, II. iv.)

The characteristic irregularity in this stanza is the variation from trochaic to iambic rhythm. In this case the variations are in part due, no doubt, to the fact that the words were written for music.

Maud with her exquisite face,
And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,
And feet like sunny gems on an English green,
Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,
Singing of Death, and of Honor that cannot die,
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean
And myself so languid and base.

(TENNYSON: _Maud_, I. v.)

In this specimen the characteristic rhythm of lines 1, 4, and 5 is dactylic, that of the remainder anapestic-iambic.

The trumpet's loud clangor
Excites us to arms
With shrill notes of anger
And mortal alarms.
The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries, hark! the foes come;
Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.
The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers
The woes of helpless lovers,
Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

(DRYDEN: _Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, 1687.)

In this famous stanza the rhythm changes for obvious purposes of imitative representation.

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
She sighed, she looked up through the clear green sea;
She said, "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
I said, "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"
She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

... Down, down, down!
Down to the depths of the sea!
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun!"
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the spindle drops from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh,
For the cold strange eyes of a little mermaiden,
And the gleam of her golden hair.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _The Forsaken Merman._)

Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbbed and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round:
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew.

(TENNYSON: _Vision of Sin._)

ii. _Verses in which individual feet are altered from the metrical scheme._

Even in metre exhibiting no marked irregularities, it is of course rather exceptional than otherwise to find all the feet in a verse conforming to the type-foot of the metre. Departures from the typical metre may be conveniently classified in five groups: Deficiency in accent; excess of accent; inversion of accent; light syllable added to dissyllabic foot; light syllable omitted in trisyllabic foot.

Deficiency of accent is the most common of all the variations, if we understand by "accent" such syllabic stress as would be ordinarily appreciable in the reading of the word in question. It would be safe to say that in English five-stress iambic verse, read with only the ordinary etymological and rhetorical accents, twenty-five per cent of the verses lack the full five stresses characteristic of the type. In many cases, too, a foot with deficiency in stress is compensated for by another foot in the same verse showing excess of stress. Feet thus deficient in stress may conveniently be called _pyrrhics_, the pyrrhic being understood as made up of two unstressed syllables. This term has never become fully domesticated in English prosody, and some object to its use on the ground that we have no feet wholly without stress. Its use in the sense just indicated, however, seems to be an unquestionable convenience.

Excess of accent, while less common than deficiency of accent, is even more easily recognizable. The foot containing two stressed syllables, even though one of the stresses may be distinctly stronger than the other, may conveniently be called a _spondee_.

Inversion of accent is exceedingly familiar, especially at the beginning of the verse and after the medial pause. It consists, technically speaking, in the substitution of a trochee for an iambus or an iambus for a trochee (the latter very rarely).

A light syllable inserted in dissyllabic measure is not unusual, though by no means so common as the variations previously enumerated. Such a syllable is frequently spoken of as "hypermetrical"; or, the variation may be considered as the substitution of an anapest for an iambus, in iambic measure, or the substitution of a dactyl for a trochee, in trochaic measure.

The omission of one of the two light syllables from the foot in trisyllabic verse is so common as to make it difficult to find pure anapestic or dactylic verse in English. This fact is due in part to preference for dissyllabic measures, and in part to the usual indifference, in all Germanic verse, to accuracy in the number of light syllables. The variation may frequently be regarded as involving a prolongation of the light syllable of the foot, or a pause equal to the time of the omitted syllable; technically speaking, it consists in the substitution of an iambus for an anapest, or a trochee for a dactyl.

Examples of all these variations may best be found in the specimens of verse included in the preceding pages. A few specimens of detail are added here, for the sake of greater clearness.

_Deficiency in accent (substituted pyrrhic)._

To further this, Achit_ophel_ unites
The malcontents of all the Israelites,
Whose differing par_ties he_ could wisely join
For several ends to serve the same design;
The best (_and of_ the princes some were such)
Who thought the power of mon_archy_ too much;
Mistaken men and patr_iots in_ their hearts,
Not wick_ed, but_ seduced by impious arts;
By these the springs of prop_erty_ were bent,
And wound so high they crack'd the gov_ernment_.

(DRYDEN: _Absalom and Achitophel_, I.)

_Excess of accent (substituted spondee)._

And ten _low words_ oft creep in one _dull line_.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism._)

_Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens_, and shades of death.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, II. 621.)

_See, see_ where Christ's _blood streams_ in the firmament!

(MARLOWE: _Faustus_, sc. xvi.)

O great, _just, good God! Mis_erable me!

(BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book_, VI.)

A tree's _head snaps_--and there, _there, there, there, there_!

(BROWNING: _Caliban upon Setebos._)

_Inversion of accent (substituted trochee)._

Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
_Gorged with_ the dearest morsel of the earth.

(SHAKSPERE: _Romeo and Juliet_, V. iii. 45 f.)

Finds tongues in trees, _books in_ the running brooks,
_Sermons_ in stones, and good in every thing.

(_As You Like It_, II. i. 16 f.)

The watery kingdom whose ambitious head
_Spits in_ the face of heaven.

(_Merchant of Venice_, II. vii. 44 f.)

Long lines of cliff _breaking_ have left a chasm.

(TENNYSON: _Enoch Arden._)

There whirled her white robe like a blossomed branch
_Rapt to_ the horrible fall: a glance I gave,
No more; but woman-vested as I was
_Plunged; and_ the flood _drew; yet_ I caught her; then
_Oaring_ one arm,...

(TENNYSON: _The Princess._)

_Stabbed through_ the heart's affections to the heart!
_Seethed like_ a kid in its own mother's milk!
_Killed with_ a word worse than a life of blows!

(TENNYSON: _Merlin and Vivien._)

He flowed
_Right for_ the polar star, past Orgunje,
_Brimming_, and bright, and large; then sands begin,...

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: _Sohrab and Rustum._)

_Hypermetrical syllable (substituted anapest)._

_Let me see, let me see_, is not the leaf turn'd down?

(SHAKSPERE: _Julius Cæsar_, IV. iii. 271.)

Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hug_est that swim_ the ocean stream.

(MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, I. 201 f.)

This passage was one of those where Bentley made himself ridiculous in his edition of Milton. "To smooth it" he changed the lines to read--

"Leviathan, whom God the vastest made
Of all the kinds that swim the ocean stream,"--

not perceiving, what Cowper pointed out, that Milton had designedly used "the word _hugest_ where it may have the clumsiest effect.... Smoothness was not the thing to be consulted when the Leviathan was in question."

So he with diff_iculty_ and labour hard
Moved on, with diff_iculty_ and labour he.

(_ib._ II. 1021 f.)

The sweep
Of some precip_itous rivulet to_ the wave.

(TENNYSON: _Enoch Arden._)

The sound of many a heav_ily galloping_ hoof.

(TENNYSON: _Geraint and Enid._)

I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds,...
Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her
_The Abominable_, that uninvited came.

(TENNYSON: _[OE]none._)

_Do you see_ this square old yellow book I toss
_I' the air_, and catch again, and twirl about
_By the crumpl_ed vellum covers; pure crude fact--

(BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book_, I.)

That plant
Shall never wave its tangles light_ly and soft_ly
As a queen's languid and imperial arm.

(BROWNING: _Paracelsus_, I.)

A distinction should be made between these hypermetrical syllables which change the character of the foot from dissyllabic to trisyllabic, and syllables (in a sense hypermetrical) which are slurred or elided in the reading. The word _radiance_, for example, is regarded as trisyllabic in prose, but in the verse--

"Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned,"

it is made dissyllabic by instinctive compression, and in no proper sense makes an anapest of the fifth foot. Of the same character are the numerous cases where a vowel is elided before another vowel--especially the vowel of the article _the_.[7] On the elisions of Milton's verse, see Mr. Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_; on those of Shakspere's verse, see Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_. In modern verse the use of elision and slurring is ordinarily that found in common speech.

_Omitted syllable (substituted iambus)._

As a vision of heaven from the hollows of ocean,
that none but a god _might see_,
_Rose out_ of the silence _of things unknown_
of a presence, a form, _a might_,
And we heard as a prophet that hears _God's mes_sage
against him, and may _not flee_.

(SWINBURNE: _Death of Richard Wagner._)

See also specimens on pp. 42, 43, 48, above.

Mr. Mayor considers the question as to how far substitution of other than the typical foot may be carried in a verse, without destroying the genuineness of the fundamental rhythm. His conclusions are these:

(1) The limit of trochaic substitution is three feet out of five, with the final foot iambic; or two out of five, if the fifth foot is inverted.

(2) A spondee is allowable in any position; the limit is four out of five, with either the fourth or fifth foot remaining iambic.

(3) A pyrrhic may occur in any position; the limit is three out of five, with the other feet preferably spondees.

(4) The limit for trisyllabic substitution is three out of five.

(_Chapters on English Metre_, chap. V.)

Professor Corson discusses the æsthetic effect of these changes from the typical metre: "The true metrical artist ... never indulges in variety for variety's sake.... All metrical effects are to a great extent _relative_--and relativity of effect depends, of course, upon having a standard in the mind or feelings.... Now the more closely the poet adheres to his standard--to the even tenor (modulus) of his verse--so long as there is no logical nor æsthetic motive for departing from it, the more effective do his departures become when they are sufficiently motived. All non-significant departures weaken the significant ones.... The normal tenor of the verse is presumed to represent the normal tenor of the feeling which produces it. And departures from that normal tenor represent, or should represent, variations in the normal tenor of the feeling. Outside of the general law ... of the slurring or suppression of extra light syllables, which do not go for anything in the expression, an exceptional foot must result in emphasis, whether intended or not, either logical or emotional.... A great poet is presumed to have metrical skill; and where ripples occur in the stream of his verse, they will generally be found to justify themselves as organic; _i.e._ they are a part of the expression."

(_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 48-50.)

On the æsthetic symbolism of various metrical movements, see G. L. Raymond's _Poetry as a Representative Art_, pp. 113 ff.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The names of the several kinds of feet are of course borrowed from classical prosody, where they are used to mark feet made up not of accented and unaccented, but of long and short syllables. The different significance of the terms as applied to the verse of different languages has given rise to some confusion, and it is proposed by some to abandon the classical terms; their use, however, seems to be too well established in English to permit of change. Some would even abandon the attempt to measure English verse by feet, contending that its rhythm is too free to admit of any such measuring process; thus, see Mr. J. M. Robertson, in the Appendix to _New Essays toward a Critical Method_, and Mr. J. A. Symonds in his _Blank Verse_. See also in Mr. Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_, Appendix G "On the Use of Greek Terminology in English Prosody." (1901 ed. p. 77.)

[7] On the historical problem of the distinction between elided and genuinely hypermetrical syllables in the French and English decasyllabic verse, see Motheré: _Les théories du vers héroique anglais et ses relations avec la versification française_ (Havre, 1886).

III. THE STANZA

The stanza, or strophe, is the largest unit of verse-measure ordinarily recognized. It is based not so much on rhythmical divisions as on periods either rhetorical or melodic; that is, a short stanza will roughly correspond to the period of a sentence, and a long one to that of a paragraph, while in lyrical verse the original idea was to conform the stanza to the melody for which it was written. Thus Schipper observes: "The word strophe properly signifies a _turning_, and originally indicated the return of the song, as sung, to the melody with which it began." Schipper defines a stanza as a group of verses of a certain number, so combined that all the stanzas of the same poem will be identical in the number, the length, and the metre of the corresponding verses; in rimed verse, also, the arrangement of the rimes will be identical. (See _Grundriss_, p. 268.)

The form of a stanza, then, is determined and described (the fundamental metre being assumed) by the number of verses, the length of verses, and the arrangement of rimes. The usual and convenient method of indicating these conditions is to represent all the verses that rime together by the same letter, while the number of feet in the verse is written like an algebraic exponent. Thus a quatrain in "common metre" (four-stress and three-stress lines), riming alternately, is represented by the formula _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_.

* * * * *

The appearance of the stanza in English verse is always the sign of foreign influence. The West Germanic verse, as far back as we have specimens of it, is uniformly _stichic_ (that is, marked by no periods save those of the individual verse), not _stanzaic_.[8] On the other hand, we find the stanza in the Old Norse verse. Sievers's view is that originally the two sorts of verse existed side by side, the stanzaic being preferred for chorus delivery, the stichic for individual recitation; one form at length crowding out the other.

The great organizer of the stanza is, of course, the element of rime. While unrimed stanzas are familiar in classical verse, the two innovations, rime and stanza, were introduced together into English verse, under both Latin and French influences, and have almost invariably been associated. For notes on the history of the beginnings of stanza-forms in English, see therefore under Rime, in the following section.

TERCETS

Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Ph[oe]nix and the Turtle._ 1601.)

O praise the Lord, his wonders tell,
Whose mercy shines in Israel,
At length redeem'd from sin and hell.

(GEORGE SANDYS: _Paraphrase upon Luke i._ ab. 1630.)

Love, making all things else his foes,
Like a fierce torrent overflows
Whatever doth his course oppose.

(SIR JNO. DENHAM: _Against Love._ ab. 1640.)

Children, keep up that harmless play:
Your kindred angels plainly say
By God's authority ye may.

(LANDOR: _Children Playing in a Churchyard._ 1858.)

Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible She
That shall command my heart and me;

Where'er she lie,
Lock'd up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:...

--Meet you her, my Wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye call'd, my absent kisses.

(CRASHAW: _Wishes for the Supposed Mistress._ 1646.)

I said, "I toil beneath the curse,
But, knowing not the universe,
I fear to slide from bad to worse.

"And that, in seeking to undo
One riddle, and to find the true,
I knit a hundred others new."

(TENNYSON: _The Two Voices._ 1833.)

Like the swell of some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,
May glides onward into June.

(LONGFELLOW: _Maidenhood._ 1842.)

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

(HERRICK: _To Julia._ 1648)

The fear was on the cattle, for the gale was on the sea,
An' the pens broke up on the lower deck an' let the creatures free--
An' the lights went out on the lower deck, an' no one down but me.

(KIPLING: _Mulholland's Contract._)

_Terza rima_ (_aba_, _bcb_, etc.).

A spending hand that alway poureth out
Had need to have a bringer in as fast;
And on the stone that still doth turn about

There groweth no moss. These proverbs yet do last:
Reason hath set them in so sure a place,
That length of years their force can never waste.

When I remember this, and eke the case
Wherein thou stand'st, I thought forthwith to write,
Bryan, to thee. Who knows how great a grace,...

(SIR THOMAS WYATT: _How to use the court and himself therein, written to Sir Francis Bryan._ ab. 1542.)

The _terza rima_ is, strictly speaking, a scheme of continuous verse rather than a stanza, each tercet being united by the rime-scheme to the preceding. Its use in English has always been slight, and always due to conscious imitation of the Italian. No successful attempt has been made to use it for a long poem, as Dante did in the _Divina Commedia_. Wyatt's specimen is the earliest in English; he chose the form for his three satires imitating those of Alamanni.

Once, O sweet once, I saw with dread oppressed
Her whom I dread; so that with prostrate lying
Her length the earth Love's chiefe clothing dressed.
I saw that riches fall, and fell a crying:--
Let not dead earth enjoy so deare a cover,
But decke therewith my soule for your sake dying;
Lay all your feare upon your fearfull lover:
Shine, eyes, on me, that both our lives be guarded:
So I your sight, you shall your selves recover.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Thyrsis and Dorus_, in the _Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations
Muse a vain thing, the kings of earth upstand
With power, and princes in their congregations

Lay deep their plots together through each land
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear?
"Let us break off," say they, "by strength of hand

Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
Their twisted cords." He who in Heaven doth dwell
Shall laugh.

(MILTON: _Psalm II._ 1653.)

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, oh hear!

(SHELLEY: _Ode to the West Wind._ 1819.)

In this case the tercets are united in groups of three to form a strophe of fourteen lines together with a final couplet riming with the middle line of the preceding tercet.

The true has no value beyond the sham:
As well the counter as coin, I submit,
When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
Venture as warily, use the same skill,
Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

If you choose to play!--is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

(BROWNING: _The Statue and the Bust._ 1855.)

The effort to translate Dante in the original metre is especially interesting, and marked by great difficulties; to furnish the necessary rimes, without introducing expletive words that mar the simplicity of the original, being a serious problem. The following are interesting specimens of translations where this problem is grappled with; the first is a well-known fragment, the second a portion of a still unpublished translation of the _Inferno_, reproduced here by the courtesy of the author.

Then she to me: "The greatest of all woes
Is to remind us of our happy days
In misery, and that thy teacher knows.
But if to learn our passion's first root preys
Upon thy spirit with such sympathy,
I will do even as he who weeps and says.
We read one day for pastime, seated nigh,
Of Lancelot, how love enchained him too.
We were alone, quite unsuspiciously.
But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hue
All o'er discolored by that reading were;
But one point only wholly us o'erthrew;
When we read the long-sighed-for smile of her,
To be thus kissed by such devoted lover,
He who from me can be divided ne'er
Kissed my mouth, trembling in the act all over.
Accursed was the book and he who wrote!
That day no further leaf did we uncover."

(BYRON: _Francesca of Rimini_, from Dante's _Inferno_, Canto V. 1820.)

"Wherefore for thee I think and deem it well
Thou follow me, and I will bring about
Thy passage thither where the eternal dwell.
There shalt thou hearken the despairing shout,
Shalt see the ancient spirits with woe opprest,
Who craving for the second death cry out.
Then shalt thou those behold who are at rest
Amid the flame, because their hopes aspire
To come, when it may be, among the blest.
If to ascend to these be thy desire,
Thereto shall be a soul of worthier strain;
Thee shall I leave with her when I retire:
Because the Emperor who there doth reign,
For I rebellious was to his decree,
Wills that his city none by me attain.
In all parts ruleth, and there reigneth he,--
There is his city and his lofty throne:
O happy they who thereto chosen be!"

(MELVILLE B. ANDERSON: _Dante's Inferno_, Canto i. ll. 112-129.)

QUATRAINS

_aaaa_

Suete iesu, king of blysse,
Myn huerte love, min huerte lisse,
Þou art suete myd ywisse,
Wo is him þat þe shal misse!

(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253--12th century, Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p. 191.)

_aabb_

O Lord, that rul'st our mortal line,
How through the world Thy name doth shine;
Thou hast of Thy unmatched glory
Upon the heavens engrav'd Thy story.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Psalm viii._ ab. 1580.)

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

(SHELLEY: _The Sensitive Plant._ 1820.)

_abcb_

In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song.

(Ballad of _Robin Hood and the Monk_. In Gummere's _English Ballads_, p. 77.)

This is the familiar stanza of the early ballads. The omission of rime in the third line signalizes the fact that the stanza could be (and was) regarded indifferently as made up either of two long lines or four short ones. Thus the famous Chevy Chase ballad is found (Ashmole Ms., of about 1560) written in long lines:

"The yngglyshe men hade ther bowys ybent yer hartes wer good ynoughe
The first off arros that the shote off seven skore spear-men the
sloughe."

(See in Flügel's _Neuenglisches Lesebuch_, vol. i. p. 199.)

The same thing occurs also where there are two rimes to the stanza. Originally, the extra internal rime was no doubt the cause of the breaking up of the long couplet into two short lines. (See examples in Part Two, in the case of the septenary.)

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fair!
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae fu' o' care!

(BURNS: _Bonnie Doon._ ab. 1790.)

_abab_

Þe grace of god ful of mi[gh]t
Þat is king and ever was,
Mote among us ali[gh]t
And [gh]ive us alle is swet grace.

(From the Harleian Ms. 913. In Mätzner's _Altenglische Sprachproben_, vol. i. p. 125.)

Furnivall prints this in long lines with internal rime, which of itself seems to form the short-line stanza from the long lines.

Of al this world the wyde compas
Hit wol not in myn armes tweyne.--
Who-so mochel wol embrace
Litel thereof he shal distreyne.

(CHAUCER: _Proverb._ ab. 1380.)

When youth had led me half the race,
That Cupid's scourge me caus'd to run,
I looked back to meet the place
From whence my weary course begun.

(EARL OF SURREY: _Description of the restless state of a lover._ ab. 1545.)

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry.

(BEN JONSON: _Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy._ 1616.)

And now the weary world's great medicine, Sleep,
This learned host dispensed to every guest,
Which shuts those wounds where injured lovers weep,
And flies oppressors to relieve the opprest.

(SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT: _Gondibert_, Bk. i. Canto 6. 1651)

Now like a maiden queen she will behold
From her high turrets hourly suitors come;
The East with incense and the West with gold
Will stand like suppliants to receive her doom.

(DRYDEN: _Annus Mirabilis_, stanza 297. 1667.)

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

(GRAY: _Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard._ 1751.)

To Davenant's _Gondibert_ is usually traced the use of this "heroic" stanza (_abab_ in iambic five-stress lines) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his preface the author said: "I believed it would be more pleasant to the reader, in a work of length, to give this respite or pause, between every stanza, ... than to run him out of breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rime by any lowliness of cadence make the sound less heroic, but rather adapt it to a plain and stately composing of music." Dryden followed Davenant in using the stanza for his _Annus Mirabilis_, saying in his preface: "I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us.... I have always found the couplet verse most easy (though not so proper for this occasion), for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labor of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it further on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together." Dryden did not use the stanza again, however, and it is obviously unsuited to a long narrative poem. Saintsbury says: "With regard to the nobility and dignity of this stanza, it may safely be said that _Annus Mirabilis_ itself, the best poem ever written therein, killed it by exposing its faults.... It is chargeable with more than the disjointedness of the couplet, without the possibility of relief; while, on the other hand, the quatrains have not, like the Spenserian stave or the _ottava rima_, sufficient bulk to form units in themselves." (_Life of Dryden_, Men of Letters Series, p. 34.)

It is hard to say what Mr. Saintsbury means in speaking of the _Annus Mirabilis_ as the best poem ever written in the heroic quatrain, when we remember that it is the quatrain of Gray's _Elegy_. On the possible sources of his use of it, see Gosse's _Life of Gray_, in the Men of Letters Series, p. 98 (also his _From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 140). Mr. Gosse refers to the use of the quatrain by Sir John Davies in the _Nosce Teipsum_ (1599), with which Gray was familiar, and (in addition to Davenant, Dryden, and Hobbes's _Homer_) to the _Love Elegies_ of James Hammond, published 1743. "It is believed that the printing of Hammond's verses incited Gray to begin his _Churchyard Elegy_, and to make the four-line stanza the basis of most of his harmonies.... The measure itself, from first to last, is an attempt to render in English the solemn alternation of passion and reserve, the interchange of imploring and desponding tones, that is found in the Latin elegiac; and Gray gave his poem, when he first published it, an outward resemblance to the text of Tibullus by printing it without any stanzaic pauses." Mr. Gosse neglects the elegies of William Shenstone, which were also in the quatrain, and some of which had apparently been published before the _Churchyard Elegy_. On this matter see Beers's _Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_, p. 137, where Shenstone is said to have borrowed the stanza from Hammond, and Gray from Shenstone. Shenstone, in his _Prefatory Essay on Elegy_, defended the metrical form and referred to the elegies of Hammond. "Heroic metre, with alternate rhyme, seems well enough adapted to this species of poetry; and, however exceptionable upon other occasions, its inconveniencies appear to lose their weight in shorter elegies, and its advantages seem to acquire an additional importance. The world has an admirable example of its beauty in a collection of elegies not long since published." (Chalmers's _English Poets_, vol. xiii. p. 264.)

For there was Milton like a seraph strong,
Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;
And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song,
And somewhat grimly smiled.

(TENNYSON: _The Palace of Art._ 1833.)

_abba_

Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling,
Do invite a stealing Kiss.
Now will I but venture this;
Who will read, must first learn spelling.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella_, Song ii. ab. 1580.)

Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

(SHAKSPERE: _The Ph[oe]nix and the Turtle_, 1601.)

Though beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours of whom I sing, be such
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet is't your virtue now I raise.

(BEN JONSON: _Elegy_, in _Underwoods_. 1616.)

Lord, in thine anger do not reprehend me,
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject,
And very weak and faint; heal and amend me.

(MILTON: _Psalm vi._ 1653.)

Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh,
The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!
Nor meanly thus complain of fortune's power,
When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.

(COLERIDGE: _To a Friend._ ab. 1795.)

Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
Heard in each hour, crept off; and then
The ruffled silence spread again,
Like water that a pebble stirs.

(ROSSETTI: _My Sister's Sleep._ 1850.)

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

(TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_, xxvii. 1850.)

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare

The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tasselled wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow

The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odor streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."

(TENNYSON: _ibid._, lxxxiv.)

This stanza (_abba_ in four-stress iambics) is commonly known as the "_In Memoriam_ stanza," from its familiar use by Tennyson. Tennyson is indeed said to have invented it for his own use, not knowing of its earlier appearance in the works of Jonson and Rossetti. Professor Corson has an interesting passage on the poetic quality of the stanza: "By the rhyme-scheme of the quatrain, the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza is reduced, the second and third verses being most closely braced by the rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to that sweet continuity of flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read, aloud of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and fourth, verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding rhymes more emphatic." Compare the stanza quoted above from section xxvii. with the transposed form:

"I feel it when I sorrow most;
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

On the passage quoted from section lxxxiv. Professor Corson also observes: "The four stanzas of which it is composed constitute but one period, the sense being suspended till the close. The rhyme-emphasis is so distributed that any one, hearing the poem read, would hardly be sensible of any of the slightest checks in the continuous and even movement of the verse.... There is no other section of _In Memoriam_ in which the artistic motive of the stanza is so evident." (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 70-77.)

_aaba_

Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes entendeth,
Which now my breast, surcharg'd, to music lendeth!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Only in you my song begins and endeth.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Astrophel and Stella._ Song i, ab. 1580.)

Here the third line (the same in all the stanzas) has an additional internal rime.

Oh, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and--sans end!

(EDW. FITZGERALD: _Paraphrase of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam._ 1859.)

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand.

(Tennyson: _To the Rev. F. D. Maurice._ 1854.)

This delightful stanza (used also by Tennyson in _The Daisy_) seems to be an imitation of the well-known Alcaic stanza of Horace:

"Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec jam sustineant onus
Silvae laborantes, geluque
Flumina constiterint acuto."

Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air would wash and long leaves cover me,
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

(SWINBURNE: _Laus Veneris._)

REFRAIN STANZAS

In this group of refrain stanzas there is no attempt to make the range of illustrations complete, but only to suggest how the refrain idea has been variously used in forming the structure of the stanza. In some cases, for example, it will be seen that the refrain is a mere appendage or _coda_ to the stanza; in others it is made by rime a part of the organized structure.

Blow, northerne wynd,
Sent þou my suetyng!
Blow, norþern wynd,
Blou! blou! blou!

(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253; Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen_, p. 168.)

I that in heill wes and glaidness,
Am trublit now with gret seikness,
And feblit with infirmitie;
_Timor Mortis conturbat me._

(WILLIAM DUNBAR: _Lament for the Makaris._ ab. 1500.)

Now Simmer blinks on flowery braes,
And o'er the crystal streamlets plays;
Come, let us spend the lightsome days
In the birks of Aberfeldy.

(BURNS: _The Birks of Aberfeldy._ 1787.)

I wish I were where Helen lies;
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies
On fair Kirconnell lea!

(_Fair Helen_; old ballad.)

O sing unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more at holy-day,
Like a running river be.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree.

(CHATTERTON: Minstrel's Roundelay from _Ælla_. ab. 1770.)

The twentieth year is well-nigh past,
Since first our sky was overcast;
Ah, would that this might be the last!
My Mary!

(COWPER: _My Mary._ 1793.)

Duncan Gray cam' here to woo--
Ha, ha, the wooing o't!
On blithe Yule night, when we were fou--
Ha, ha, the wooing o't!
Maggie coost her head fu' heigh,
Looked asklent and unco skeigh,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh;
Ha, ha, the wooing o't!

(BURNS: _Duncan Gray._ ab. 1790.)

My heart is wasted with my woe,
Oriana.
There is no rest for me below,
Oriana.
When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow,
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,
Oriana,
Alone I wander to and fro,
Oriana.

(TENNYSON: _Ballad of Oriana._ ab. 1830.)

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
(Toll slowly)
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness--
Round our restlessness His rest.

(ELIZABETH B. BROWNING: _Rhyme of the Duchess May._ ab. 1845.)

"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

(ROSSETTI: _Sister Helen._ 1870.)

Laetabundus
Exultet fidelis chorus,
Alleluia!
Egidio psallat coetus
Iste laetus,
Alleluia!

(ST. BERNARD: _De Nativitate Domini._)

Sermone Marcus Tullius,
Fortuna Cesar Julius
Tibi non equantur.
Tibi summa prudentia,
Prefulgens et potentia
Celesti dono dantur.

(From a 12th c. MS.: _Regulae de Rhythmis._ In Schipper's _Englische Metrik_, vol. i. p. 354.)

Quant li solleiz conviset en leon
En icel tens qu'est ortus pliadon
Perunt matin,
Une pulcellet odit molt gent plorer
Et son ami dolcement regreter,
Ex si lli dis.

(Early French version of the _Song of Songs_, quoted in LEWIS's _Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification_, p. 89.)

The special form of refrain stanza appearing in the first of these foreign specimens (the Alleluia hymn form) is generally thought to have been the source of the "tail-rime stanza" illustrated in the other two specimens, and in the several pages which follow. The characteristic feature of this stanza is the presence of two short lines riming together and serving as "tails" to the first and second parts of the body of the stanza. The same name appears in all the languages: "versus caudati" in the mediæval Latin, "rime couée" in the French, and "Schweifreim" in modern German. It is easy to see, what the following specimens illustrate, how stanzas constructed on this fundamental principle might be varied greatly in particular forms, according to the number, length, and rime-arrangement of the longer lines.

Men may merci have, traytour not to save, for luf ne for awe,
Atteynt of traytorie, suld haf no mercie, wiþ no maner lawe.

(ROBERT MANNING of Brunne: _Chronicle._ ab. 1330.)

For Edward gode dede
Þe Baliol did him mede
a wikked bounte.
Turne we ageyn to rede
and on our geste to spede
a Maddok þer left we. (_Ibid._)

Manning's chronicle was a translation of the French chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft. Although the translator designed to avoid the various complicated measures used in the original, and kept pretty closely to alexandrines (see p. 254, below), in the passages here represented he followed the tail-rime of the original. In the first case the stanza form is not represented in the manuscript, though of course implicit in the rimes. The name of the stanza, "rime couée," appears very early in Manning's Prologue, in the famous passage in which he expressed his preference for metrical simplicity: