Chapter VI: The Last Stage--Tennyson to Swinburne

[Sidenote: From Keats to Tennyson.]

The lesson of the last chapter, if properly learnt, will have shown the substitution of a more really "correct," because wider and freer, view of English prosody than that which had produced the narrow and blinkered pseudo-correctness of the eighteenth century, and the way in which this extension was, whether consciously or unconsciously, utilised by the great poets of 1798-1830. Consciously, however, this lesson was not learnt by all of these poets themselves; yet it spread, and rapidly became the general, if not yet the acknowledged, principle of English poetry. It is observable in most and in all the best of what have been called the "Intermediates"--the poets who were born between 1790 and 1810, such as Beddoes and Darley,[108] Macaulay and Praed. But in Tennyson at once and in Browning--the one born just before, the other just after, the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century--it manifests itself in the most unmistakable degree; so much so, indeed, as to have actually puzzled, if not shocked, Coleridge himself, the greatest restorer of its mainspring. Tennyson's first volumes are open to many just criticisms. But if the student will turn to the scanned examples of the "Hollyhock Song" and the "Dying Swan" given previously, he will see that the young poet, so far from having "begun to write without knowing very well what metre is," had begun with an almost absolutely perfect knowledge of it, whatever his shortcomings in other matters might be.[109]

[Sidenote: Tennyson himself.]

The variety of metres in which this accomplishment was shown was extraordinary, and was no doubt felt by contemporaries to be bewildering. Even from the poets of the first Romantic school they had been principally (though of course not entirely) accustomed to lines of the same length, couched in more or less uniform metre throughout. The pieces which composed the two volumes of 1830 and 1832, even before they were revised and augmented in 1842, contained a greater variety of metres than had been seen in the same bulk of work of any single English poet from Chaucer to Keats. There was blank verse, if not at first quite of the absolute perfection which it reached ten years later, of a new and remarkable pattern, adjusting the Miltonic paragraph to a much more fluent movement, and quite discarding the Thomsonian stiffness. There were Spenserians (in the opening of the "Lotos-Eaters") of the very best kind. There was a little very fine decasyllabic couplet. But the great majority of the poems were lyrics, couched in a dazzling variety of metres. It was not only that the poet expanded the apparent but not real "irregularity" of Shakespeare into examples such as the two noted above. It was not merely that, as in the "Lotos-Eaters" itself and "The Vision of Sin,"[110] he arranged different metres in the same piece on the principles of an elaborate musical symphony. The way in which he handled metres previously known must have startled--indeed we know that it did startle--the precisians still more.

[Sidenote: Special example of his manipulation of the quatrain.]

A good instance of this is the threefold rehandling of the old decasyllabic quatrain, familiar to everybody from Dryden's _Annus Mirabilis_ and Gray's _Elegy_. This quatrain itself, as a consequence of its gravity, is rather apt to be monotonous. Simple shortening of the even verses gives rather better outline, but not much less--in fact even greater--monotony. In three different poems Tennyson handles it in three different ways. "The Poet"[111] is couched in 10, 6, 10, 4, giving a succinct and rather sententious metre, which suits admirably for the sharply cut cumulative phrases of that fine piece. But, by this shortening, ten syllables, the equivalent of a whole line, were lost; and this gave too little room for description, and especially for the series of pictures, in scene- or figure-painting, which form so large a part of the other two poems and communicate to them such extraordinary charm. So, in the "Palace of Art," Tennyson "eked" the stanza, extending the second line to eights and the fifth to sixes.[112] This, besides actually giving a little more room, admits more varied "fingering," together with an effect of outline, which is wonderfully attractive--a taper, but with a swell in it. In the "Dream of Fair Women"--more narrative and with larger aims--he wanted more space still, and a form that would link itself better. He gets this by keeping _three_ decasyllables with a final six.[113] This is an exceedingly cunning as well as beautiful device, for, on the one hand, the large majority of decasyllables, batched in threes, assists the narrative effect, which is always hard to achieve with stanzas of very irregular outline; and, on the other, the short final line serves at once as finial to the individual stanza, and hinge to join it to the next.

Many examples could be given, and may be found in the larger _History_, but these will suffice, with the addition that Tennyson continued his experimentation to the very last, as in the remarkable metre of "Kapiolani," and that his handling of blank verse, like Shakespeare, became almost perilous in its freedom, by the temptation that it offered to others to traverse the bounds, though he himself never actually did so.

[Sidenote: Browning.]

Browning, who was to illustrate the prosodic lesson of the century with, if possible, an even greater variety, did not exactly begin in that direction; though his prosodic practice was almost equally independent after the very first. That "very first"--_Pauline_--showed a distinct effort to imitate the blank verse of Shelley; and this was continued, though with more idiosyncrasy, in the dramatically arranged, but not really dramatic, _Paracelsus_, which had, however, one or two beautiful lyrics of a kind also to some extent Shelleyan. The blank verse in these two is not much equivalenced, nor even very much enjambed, but it runs with a peculiar _breathlessness_ from verse to verse, even if each be fairly complete in itself. And this breathlessness continues--being, indeed, the main source of the much-talked-of "obscurity" of the piece--in _Sordello_. Here the couplet used is utterly opposed to that of the eighteenth century; but, once more, it is by no means the enjambed variety of the seventeenth. It is almost a kind to itself, progressing in immense involved paragraphs (often largely parenthetic) after a fashion which almost drowns the rhyme, even if there be definite stops at the end of the verses.

Fortunately, after this, in _Bells and Pomegranates_, he devoted a large part of his attention to lyric, in which he produced examples exquisite in quality and inexhaustible in variety.[114] His octosyllables in _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day_ are daringly equivalenced, and rhymed still more daringly, but very effective; and much later, in _Fifine at the Fair_, he almost succeeded in making the continuous Alexandrine a real success. But the bulk of his immense work in later days was written in blank verse, as strongly equivalenced as his octosyllables. Browning was never an incorrect prosodist; even his rhymes, though frequently extravagant, are almost always defensible; and it is a vulgar error to think him even rough in verse, though he was so in diction. But he, once more, pushed the lesson of variety to its extreme in one way.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Browning.]

His wife, both before and after she became his wife, gave a third important example of this attention to lyric, and this determination to give it the most multitudinous and original forms. She had one unfortunate, and indeed disgusting, prosodic defect--a toleration of, if not a positive preference for, really atrocious rhymes. But her ear for metre was quite differently tuned, and often exquisite; though (as was _not_ the case with her husband) her bad rhymes, and, as was the case with him, though in a different way, her extravagant diction, sometimes created a false idea of metrical carelessness.

[Sidenote: Matthew Arnold.]

But, in a way, the most remarkable witness to the general tendency of the period was to be found in Mr. Matthew Arnold, who disapproved of Tennyson, and must (though personal friendship seems to have prevented him from saying so) have disapproved of the Brownings still more. For all Mr. Arnold's "classical" tastes, in different senses of that word, he became "romantic" in his variety of lyric forms, in his handling of them, in his dealing with the couplet, and in the adoption of elaborate stanza forms for his longer poems. Only his blank verse is of somewhat classical pattern, and of this he did not write very much.

[Sidenote: Later poets--The Rosettis.]

In the poets who specially represent the last half of the nineteenth century (with, in one case and the chief of all, an actual extension over nearly the whole of the first decade of the twentieth)--and who consisted mainly of the school often, though not very accurately, called Pre-Raphaelite--these tendencies are exhibited to a still greater extent, and in some cases, beyond all doubt, consciously followed and elaborated. In Dante and Christina Rossetti, brother and sister--more remarkable for genius perhaps than any brother and sister in history, literary or other,--but especially in the brother, the Italian and English elements blended. Dante showed, though in great variety, more of the Italian tendency to slow and stately music; Christina, more of the English to light and rapid movement as well. But both thoroughly mastered the secrets of equivalence, as well as those of largely broken and variegated line-length and stanza-arrangement. The sonnets of both are the finest, on what is called the Italian model, in our language, and Christina's command, both of simple song metres and of regular short verse--almost Skeltonic in apparent character, but far apart from doggerel--is specially noticeable. She is indeed one of the most daring of experimenters in metrical licence, but, even more than Browning's, her verse, with all its audacity, never transgresses the laws of prosodic music.[115]

Earlier to appear than Rossetti, except in little-read periodicals, but a younger man, was William Morris, whose place in the history of English prosody is a very important one. In his first book, _The Defence of Guenevere_, he tried, with remarkable success, a very large number of lyrical metres, sometimes exhibiting great originality of substitution. He passed from this to a still more remarkable revival of the enjambed decasyllabic couplet in _The Life and Death of Jason_ and part of _The Earthly Paradise_, following not so much Keats as the best of the early seventeenth-century examples. With this, in _The Earthly Paradise_ itself, he combined octosyllabic couplet of almost more exceptional quality still--very little equivalenced, but varied by pause and fingering in a manner which only Gower in his very finest passage, and Keats in the fragment of the _Eve of St. Mark_, had achieved. He also wrote excellent rhyme-royal. In _Love is Enough_, besides many more beautiful lyrical devices, he endeavoured a sort of alliterative semi-metrical rhythm of fifteenth-century kind, which has not pleased every one; but in _Sigurd the Volsung_, while still hovering about the same period, he pitched upon one of the numerous arrangements of the fourteener and perfected it into a thoroughly great metre.[124]

[Sidenote: Mr. Swinburne.]

Although not an artist in quite so many kinds of verse as Morris, and confining himself as a rule to strict metre, Algernon Charles Swinburne was, however, by far the greatest metrist of this group and time, and one of the greatest in the history of English poetry. In his copious critical work he did not bestow much explicit attention on matters prosodic; but when he did, made important remarks, and once gave one of the most important to be found definitely expressed by any English poet. This was to the effect, that English would always lend itself readily and successfully to any combinations of iamb, trochee, or anapæst, never to those of dactyl and spondee. He himself produced magnificent verse which looks like dactylic hexameter or elegiac, but is really (and was meant by him for) anapæstic work with anacrusis and catalexis. He wrote beautiful choriambics and more beautiful Sapphics. But these, at least the last two, were merely experiments and _tours de force_. He also experimented in the artificial French forms (_v. inf._). But his principal work was straightforward composition in the direct lines of the English poetical inheritance, utilising to the utmost all the liberties of equivalence and substitution on the principles of Tennyson, but never abusing them, and informing particular metres with a spirit that made them entirely his own. His blank verse, though sometimes exceedingly fine, was also sometimes a little too voluble; and of his couplets much the same may be said in both ways. But in lyric--giving that word the widest possible extension--he is unsurpassed as to variety and individuality of practice, while, in two striking cases, he made improvements of the most remarkable kind on previous improvements made by others.[125]

The first of these was the fresh adaptation (after FitzGerald, but with an important difference) of the decasyllabic quatrain in _Laus Veneris_. The translator of _Omar Khayyám_ had, with great effect, made the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme together, leaving the third entirely blank. Mr. Swinburne made the third line of each of his pairs of quatrains rhyme as well, a completion of the music which has a very fine effect. And a still greater achievement was the shortening of the last line of the "Praed Metre," which makes one of the most beautiful arrangements to be found in English. But it is perhaps only in these two that even guidance of any definite kind can be assigned. For the most part the prosodic effect is produced by original extension of the general laws, and by entirely individual fingering of particular metres. Nothing in the whole range of English poetry is more remarkable than the handling, in this way, of the ordinary Long Measure with alternate redundance in "At a Month's End";[126] and the examples of other varied metres, also given below, will complete the exposition, as far as it can be done in anything but a monograph of great extent.

[Sidenote: Others.]

Many poets, in the later years of the nineteenth century, have been remarkable for prosodic accomplishment; but, except in the outside department of experiment in quantitative and classical metres, they have rarely touched principle. Arthur E. O'Shaughnessy[127] and James Thomson the Second showed extraordinary proficiency, the first in the more rapid, the second in the statelier variation of metre. Canon Dixon, who was sometimes extremely happy in lyric,[128] wrote, in _Mano_, the one long English poem in _terza rima_, but without removing the objections which seem to hold, in our language, against the arrangement that is so magnificent in the _Divina Commedia_. In the late 'seventies a fancy came in, and remained for some time, of reviving the artificial French (and to some extent English) metres of the fifteenth and earlier centuries--ballades, rondeaux, triolets, etc. Mr. George Meredith, when he employed verse and not prose, used a considerable number of odd measures unusually rhythmed, as well as others perfectly adjusted to the demands of the ear. Mr. Henley and others carried on the rhymeless revival from Mr. Arnold, and yet others, such as the late Mr. John Davidson, while using rhyme reviled it. A few attempts have recently been made at "_stress_-metres"--rebellious to any uniform system of scansion, even with full liberty of substitution, and, in fact, irregularly rhythmed prose. But nothing really good and unquestionably poetic has been produced which will not obey the principles set forth in this treatise, and everything really good has furnished fresh illustrations of them.[129]

FOOTNOTES:

[108] Especially in these two, as here:

_Half Alex._ Winds | ŏf thĕ Wēst, | arise!
_Alex._ Hesper|ĭăn bāl|mĭĕst āirs, | O waft | back those |
sweet sighs
_Dec. couplet._ {To her | that breathes | them from | her own |
pure skies,
{Dew-drop|ping, mixt | with Dawn's | engold|ened dyes
_Half Alex._ O'er my | unhap|py eyes!
_Fourteener._ From prim|rose bed | and wil|low bank | where your |
moss cra|dle lies.
_Alex._ O! from | your rush|y bowers | to waft | back her |
sweet sighs--
_Half Alex._ Winds | of the West, | arise!

(DARLEY.)

If thou | wilt ease | thine heart
Of love | and all | its smart,
Then sleep, | dear, sleep;
And not | a sor|row
Hang a|ny tear | on your | eyelash|es;
Lie still | and deep,
Sad soul, | until | the sea-|wave wash|es
The rim | ŏ' thĕ sūn | tŏ-mōr|row
In east|ern sky.

(BEDDOES.)

The redundant syllables are specially marked off here, to bring out their contrast with the acatalectic lines.

[109] Macaulay's prosody is mostly plain sailing; but in _The Last Buccaneer_ he has (perhaps following Moore) attempted a rather unusual rhythm. See _Hist. Pros._ iii. 135-137. For Praed _v. sup._ p. 114.

[110] This did not appear till 1842.

[111]

The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.

[112]

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well."

[113]

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
_The Legend of Good Women_, long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below.

[114] A few examples may be given:--

(1) Oh || heart! oh! | blood that | freezes, | blood that | burns!
Earth's re|turns
For whole | centu|ries of | folly, | noise, and | sin!
Shut them | in
With their | triumphs | and their | glories, | and the | rest;
Love is | best.

(_Love, among the Ruins._)

(Regular trochees alternately trimeter and monometer, but both catalectic. _One_ monosyllabic substitution.)

(2) What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?
We ride | and I see | her bosom heave.
There's ma|ny a crown | for who can reach.
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
A soldier's doing! what atones?
They scratch his name | on the Ab|bey stones.
My ri|ding is bet|ter, by their leave.

(_The Last Ride Together._)

(Iambic dimeter stanza; three or four trisyllabic substitutions.)

(3) Oh, | what a dawn | of day!
How the March | sun feels | like May!
All is blue | again
After last | night's rain,
And the South | dries the haw|thorn spray.
On|ly, my Love's | away!
I'd as lief | that the blue | were grey.

(Iambic-anapæstic with monosyllabic feet admitted into partnership.)

(4) Is all | our fire | of ship|wreck wood,
Oak ¦ and | pine?
Oh, for | the ills | half-un|derstood,
The dim | dead woe |
Long ¦ a|go
Befallen | this bit|ter coast | of France!
Well, poor | sailors | took their | chance]
I ¦ take | mine.

(Iambic-trochaic; or, if monosyllabic initial feet be granted in some lines, all iambic, and perhaps better so.)

[115]

(a) Morning | and eve|ning
Maids heard | the gob|lins cry:
"Come buy | our or|chard fruits,
Come buy, | come buy:
Apples and | quinces,
Lemons and | oranges,
Plump unpecked | cherries,
Melons and | raspberries." [116]
. . . . . . .

(Where, as almost always, the dactylic lines can be made anapæstic with anacrusis, "Mel|ons and rasp|berries," etc.)

(b) She clipped | a pre|cious gold|en lock,
She dropped | a tear | more rare | than pearl,
Then sucked | their fruit | globes fair | or red.
Sweeter | than hon|ey from | the rock,
Stronger | than man-|rejoic|ing wine,
Clearer | than wa|ter flowed | that juice. [117]

(c) But ev|er in | the noon|light
She pined | and pined | away;
Sought them | by night | and day,
Found them | no more, | but dwin|dled and | grew grey;
Then fell | with the | first snow,
While to | this day | no grass | will grow
Where she | lies low:
I plant|ed dai|sies there | a year | ago
That nev|er blow. [118]

(d) Laughed every | goblin
When they | spied her | peeping:
Came towards her | hobbling,
Flying, | running, | leaping, |
Puffing and | blowing. [119]

(2) Where sun|less riv|ers weep
Their waves | into | the deep,
She sleeps | a charm|èd sleep:
Awake | her not.

Led by | a sin|gle star,
She came | from ver|y far,
To seek, | where sha|dows are,
Her plea|sant lot. [120]

(3) Come to | me in | the si|lence of | the night;
Come in | the speak|ing si|lence of | a dream;
Come with | soft round|ed cheeks | and eyes | as bright
As sun|light on | a stream;
Come back | in tears,
O mem|ory, | hope, love, | of fin|ished years. [121]

(4) One by one | slowly,
Ah | how sad | and slow!
Wailing and | praying
The spir|its rise | and go:
Clear stainless | spirits,
White, as | white as | snow;
Pale spirits, | wailing
For an | over|throw. [122]

(5) "Oh! whence | do you come,|| my de|ar friend, | to me?
With your gold|en hair || all fallen | below | your knee,
And your face | as white || as snow|drops on | the lea,
And your voice | as hol||low as | the hol|low sea?" [123]

(This last extract is a most audacious, but quite justifiable, fingering of the ordinary five-foot iambic line, with substitutions and adaptations which give it now anapæstic, now trochaic undertone. The first exhibits, in a batch of five from _Goblin Market_, the same audacity and the same success in varying line-_length_ as well as constitution; (2), (3), and (4), with more of what is commonly called "regularity," show the same various address.)

[116] Iamb and trochee followed by dactyl and trochee.

[117] Pure iambic dimeter with a trochee or two.

[118] Iambic, with length varied from two to five feet.

[119] Dactyl and trochee, or mere trochee.

[120] Iambic.

[121] Iambic, with some trochaic beginnings.

[122] Dactylic-trochaic and iambic alternately.

[123] Really "irregular." Norm dimeter anapæstic--

̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̆ ̄

but largely varied in rhythm and length. Best scanned as above, with strong pause, making _five_ feet.

[124] For examples of Morris's prosody see Scanned Conspectus.

[125] Examples of lyric:

(1) You have cho|sen and clung | to the chance | they sent | you,
Life sweet | as per|fume, and pure | as prayer;
But will | it not one | day in heav|en repent | you?
Will they sol|ace you whol|ly, the days | that were?
Will you lift | up your eyes | between sad|ness and bliss?
Meet mine | and see | where the great | love is,
And trem|ble and turn | and be changed? | Content | you,
The gate | is strait; | I shall not | be there.

(Anapæstic dimeter with iambic substitution and redundance. A most perfect combination.)

(2) If love | were what | the rose | is
And I | were like | the leaf,
Our lives | would grow | togeth|er
In sad | or sing|ing wea|ther,
Blown fields | or flower|ful clo|ses,
Green plea|sure or | grey grief:
If love | were what | the rose | is
And I | were like | the leaf.

(Pure iambics. Dimeter catalectic and brachycatalectic by turns.)

(3) When the | game be|gan be|tween them | for a | jest,
He played | king and | she played | queen to | match the | best.
Laughter | soft as | tears, and | tears that | turned to |
laughter,
These were | things she | sought for | years and | sorrowed |
after.

(Trochaic trimeter catalectic; quite pure throughout.)

[126]

As a | star feels | the sun | and fal|ters,
Touched to | death by | divin|er eyes--
As on | the old gods' | untend|ed altars
The old fire | of with|ered wor|ship dies.

("Long measure"; but completely transfigured by the redundance and double rhyme in the odd places, and the trochaic and anapæstic substitution.)

[127]

We | are the mu|sic-mak|ers,
And we | are the dream|ers of dreams,
Wan|dering by lone | sea-break|ers,
And sit|ting by de|solate streams:
World-los|ers and world-|forsakers,
On whom | the pale | moon gleams;
For we | are the mov|ers and shak|ers
Of the world | for ev|er, it seems.

(Anapæsts used with singular skill.)

The stars are dimly seen among the shadows of the bay,
And lights that win are seen in strife with lights that die away.

The wave is very still--the rudder loosens in our hand;
The zephyr will not fill our sail, and waft us to the land;
O precious is the pause between the winds that come and go,
And sweet the silence of the shores between the ebb and flow.
. . . . . . .
Say, shall we sing of day or night, fair land or mighty ocean,
Of any rapturous delight or any dear emotion,
Of any joy that is on earth, or hope that is above,
The holy country of our birth, or any song of love?
. . . . . . .
Our heart in all our life is like the hand of one who steers
A bark upon an ocean rife with dangers and with fears:
The joys, the hopes, like waves or wings, bear up this life of ours--
Short as a song of all these things that make up all its hours.

(The old fourteener--but made almost new by the great variation of pause, by occasional redundance, and by the grouping of the lines.)

[128]

If ev|er thou | didst creep
From out | the world | of sleep,
When the sun | slips | and the moon | dips,
If ev|er thou | wast born;
Or upon | the starv|ing lips
Of the gray | uncol|oured morn.

(Especial effect produced by the anapæsts and monosyllabic feet of line 3.)

Thou go|est more | and more
To the sil|ent things: | thy hair | is hoar,
Emp|tier thy wear|y face: | like to | the shore
Far-ru|ined, and | the deso|late bil|low white
That recedes | and leaves | it waif-wrin|kled, gap-|rocked, weak.
The shore | and the bil|low white
Groan|--they cry | and rest | not: they | would speak
And call | the eter|nal Night
To cease | them for ev|er, bid|ding new | things is|sue
From her | cold tis|sue:
Night | that is ev|er young, | nor knows | decay,
Though old|er by | eter|nity | than they.

(Very fine "modern Pindaric," with extremely well-managed substitution.)

[129] For some supposed exceptions _v. sup._ last section of Scanned Conspectus, pp. 128-130. One of the most interesting things in the study of prosody is the tracing of the history of lyric forms. Examples have been given above, and more will be found below; but _completeness_ is here again impossible. Again, also, the "principles," properly followed out, will carry the student safely through all such investigations, as, for instance, that into the connection of Mr. Swinburne's "Anima Anceps" with Curran's "Deserter," and the entire pedigree of both. Perhaps it may be well to add that, where a choriambic effect occurs (̄ ̆ ̆ ̄), choice is often, if not always, open between scansion as trochee and iamb or as monosyllabic foot and anapæst. This has been already indicated expressly in some examples. See, especially, pp. 183, 184, 212.