1

Each having a white wicker,' overbrimmed
With April's tender younglings;' next, well trimmed,
A crowd of shepherds' with as sunburned looks

As may be read of' in Arcadian books;

Such' as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity,' for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity' o'erflowing die

In music through the vales of Thessaly."

Equally fine is the varied melody of the young poet's blank verse:

"As when,' upon a trancéd summer night,

Those green-robed senators' of mighty woods,
Tall oaks,' branch-charméd by the earnest stars,
Dream,' and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual' solitary gust

Which comes upon the silence,' and dies off,
As if the ebbing air' had but one wave;

So came these words and went.'

Before adverting to other characters and peculiarities of English versification generally, a very few words may be Isaid in reference to those measures that exceed the decasyllabic in length. Lines of eleven feet have never been used in the composition of great or extended poems. When employed in lyrics and occasional pieces, the rhythm has usually been thus regulated:

"Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where, cold and unhonoured, his relics are laid;
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears which we shed

As (the) night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head."

This rhythmical arrangement seems to be the natural one, and composes merely the normal line of nine syllables, with a prefix of two others. Some other forms of the eleven-syllabled line may be found in lyrical collections, and more particularly in the works of Thomas Moore, who, writing to pre-existing music, has produced specimens of almost every variety of rhythm of which the English language is capable.

The measure of twelve syllables has been employed by one eminent and true poet in the composition of a work of importance. The "Polyolbion" of Drayton is here alluded to. As in the case of other verses of an even number of yllables, the regular alternation of short and long seems

most suitable to lines of twelve. Drayton thought so, as the following brief extract descriptive of Robin Hood will show:

66 Then, taking them to rest, his merry men and he

Slept many a summer's night beneath the greenwood tree.
From wealthy abbots' chests, and churls' abundant store,
What oftentimes he took he shared among the poor;

No lordly bishop came in lusty Robin's way,
To him before he went, but for his pass must pay;
The widow in distress he graciously relieved,

And remedied the wrongs of many a virgin grieved."

It is superfluous to dwell on accentuation or pauses here, the line being commonly divided into two even parts, or, in truth, two six-syllabled lines. The rhythm, however, is often arranged differently in lyrics, as the first

lines of some of those of Moore will evince.

"As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow."

"We may roam through this world like a child at a feast."
"Like the bright lamp that shone in Kildare's holy fane."

In these instances, two short syllables and a long one occur in alternation throughout the twelve. Moore has given other varieties of this measure, as—

"Through grief and through danger, thy smile hath cheered my

way;

"

but these are merely capriccios to suit certain music, and need not occupy our time here. The same poet has even a line of thirteen syllables.

"At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly."

This measure is a most awkward one, certainly. The line of fourteen syllables is more natural, and was used in at least one long piece called "Albion's England," by Thomas Warner, a rhymer of the sixteenth century. A maid is advised whom to love in these terms:

"The ploughman's labour hath no end, and he a churl will prove;
The craftsman hath more work on hand than fitteth one to love;
The merchant, trafficking abroad, suspects his wife at home;
A youth will play the wanton, and an old will play the mome;
Then choose a shepherd."

This is but the lumbering dodeca-syllabic verse rendered more lumbering still by two fresh feet, it will be generally

66

allowed. In fact, these lines of twelve and fourteen feet have only been used effectively as Alexandrines," or single lines introduced to wind up, or heighten the force of, passages in the heroic or the octo-syllabic measure. Pope ridicules this practice, though it was a favourite one with Dryden:

"A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along."

In Dryden's Ode to Music, the following instances of the two kinds of Alexandrines occur:

"Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire."

"And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain." By giving lines of ten, twelve, and fourteen syllables in succession, as he occasionally does in his translation of Virgil, Dryden brings passages with artistic skill to a very noble climax. But the Alexandrine is now nearly obsolete in our poetry.

The most common features and peculiarities of English Versification have now received a share of attention. Measure and Rhythm, Accent and Pause, have all been duly noticed. There are yet other points, however, connected with the subject, which merit equal attention from the student of poetical composition. Every rule that has been mentioned may be preserved, and still most inharmonious verse may be the result. The greatest poets, either from experience or innate musical taste, adopted additional means to arrive at perfect versification. Pope points to some of these in his well-known lines:

"The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.

The poet, as all will of course see, here exemplifies the meaning of his lines practically in their structure. The Greek and Roman writers were quite aware of the effect of congruous sound and sense. Virgil has several famous lines constructed on this principle, as—

"Monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." (A monster, horrid, formless, gross, and blind.)

To give a better idea of the efficient way in which the poet has roughened the above verse to suit the picture of a monster, one of his ordinary lines may be quoted:—

"Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas."

But it is wrong to call this an ordinary line, since Dr
Johnson considered it to be the most musical in
any human
language. Ovid, again, has made the sense and sound (and
also construction) agree finely in the following passage:—

"Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos,
Et quod tentabam dicere versus erat."

Pope has imitated these lines, and applied them to himself, the signification being simply

"I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. Among our own great bards, Milton stands peculiarly distinguished for success in the use of this ornament of verse. The Allegro and Penseroso exhibit various exquisite instances.

In the Paradise Lost, again, there occur many passages rendered forcible in the extreme by the adaptation of sound to sense. Thus

"Him the Almighty power

Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition."

Still more remarkable is the following passage, as expressive of slow and toilsome travel:

"The fiend

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."

The chief mean of attaining general harmony in verse is a

free and happy distribution of the vowel-sounds. For producing a special harmony, consonant with special signification, other rules require to be followed. But, in the first place, let us look particularly to the means of rendering verse simply and aggregately melodious. It must not be supposed, as many are apt to do, that even the most illustrious poets considered it beneath them to attend to such minutiæ as the distribution of the vowels in their verses. Look at the grand opening of Paradise Lost. It is scarcely conceivable that the remarkable variation of the vowels there, on which the effect will be found largely to depend, can have been the result of chance. No one line, almost, it will be seen, gives the same vowel-sound twice.

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the heavenly seat,

Sing, heavenly Muse."

The following stanza of Leyden was considered by Scott one of the most musical in the language, and it is rendered so mainly by its vowel variety:—

"How sweetly swell on Jura's heath
The murmurs of the mountain bee!
How sweetly mourns the writhed shell,
Of Jura's shore, its parent sea!"

A passage from the "Laodamia" of Wordsworth may be pointed to as an equally striking illustration of the same rule:

"He

Spake of heroic arts in graver mood
Revived, with finer harmony pursued;
Of all that is most beauteous-imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,

An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams;

Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey."

Wordsworth, who was in truth a perfect master of this species of melody, as the "Excursion" will prove to all those who look thereinto attentively, has scarcely once repeated the same exact sound in any two words, of any one