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3.

Rime Royal, or Chaucerian Heptastich, a stanza of seven lines riming a babbcc. This was a favourite metre with Chaucer; e.g. The Clerk's Tale, The Man of Law's Tale, Troilus. James I. of Scotland has it in The King's Quair, hence Royal; and Shakespeare in Lucrece. The following is from Lucrece.

"The little birds that tune their morning's joy
Make her moans mad with their sweet melody:
For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;
Sad souls are slain in merry company;
Grief best is pleased with grief's society:

True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed

When with like semblance it is sympathised."

4. Ottava Rima, a stanza of eight lines riming abababcc: the metre of Byron's Don Juan.

"And first one universal shriek there rushed

Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash

Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry

Of some strong swimmer in his agony."

5. The Spenserian Stanza, of eight pentameters followed by one hexameter, or Alexandrine. The rime sequence is ababbcbcc. Spenser used it in The Faerie Queene: it is his invention, "one of the crowning achievements of poetical inspiration in form." This stanza has been adopted by Thomson, The Castle of Indolence; Shenstone, The Schoolmistress; Beattie, The Minstrel; Burns, The Cotter's Saturday Night; Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming; Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais; Keats, The Eve of St Agnes; Byron, Childe Harold; Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters.

The example is from The Faerie Queene.

"Both roof and floor and walls were all of gold,
But overgrown with dust and old decay,

And hid in darkness that none could behold

The hue thereof; for view of cheerful day

Did never in that house itself display,

But a faint shadow of uncertain light :

Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away,

Or as the moon, clothed with a cloudy night,

Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright.”

THE SONNET. The sonnet is a poem of fourteen iambic pentameters. It arose in Italy, and the Italian, or Petrarchan, form has only four or five rimes-two in the first eight lines, the octave; two or three in the last six, the sestet. Wyatt and Surrey introduced the Italian sonnet into English. The paucity of rimes in English for any one word led to a modification of the rime arrangement. Shakespeare's sonnets consist of three quatrains riming alternately and rounded off by a couplet: seven rimes in all. Milton reverted to the Italian form; with variations of the rime order in the sestet. Shakespeare's rime arrangement is a babcdcdefefgg; as in the following

"From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still; and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play."

With Shakespeare's riming, contrast Milton's in his Sonnet to the Nightingale.

"O Nightingale that on yon bloomy spray

Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love. O, if Jove's will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate

Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh;
As thou from year to year hast sung too late

For my relief, yet hadst no reason why.

Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.”

Milton

Here the rime sequence is abbaabba cdcdcd. has other forms in the sestet: for example, cde dce; cde cde; cddcdc. Other poets following the Italian form make limited modifications; as Byron in his Sonnet on Chillon, abba acca dedede.

Besides the sonneteers already named, we may note Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Drummond, Jonson, Gray, Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, Keats, Mrs E. B. Browning, Rossetti, M. Arnold, Tennyson. For other examples of sonnets, see chap. xv.

IAMBIC TETRAMETER, OR OCTOSYLLABIC. This, in couplets, is frequently employed for lighter narrative. Scott has it in his romantic poems, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, etc. To avoid monotony Scott introduces trimeters and varies the rime sequence. The following extract from The Lady of the Lake shows his couplet form and one type of variation.

"The Minstrel came once more to view
The eastern ridge of Benvenue,
For ere he parted, he would say
Farewell to lovely Loch Achray-
Where shall he find in foreign land
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand!
There is no breeze upon the fern,
Nor ripple on the lake,

Upon her eyry nods the erne,

The deer has sought the brake;
The small birds will not sing aloud,
The springing trout lies still,

So darkly glooms yon thunder cloud
That swathes, as with a purple shroud,
Benledi's distant hill."

Other poems in octosyllabics are Chaucer's House of Fame; Gower's Confessio Amantis; Butler's Hudibras; Burns's Tam o' Shanter; Byron's Giaour, and Bride of Abydos; Moore's Lalla Rookh; Wordsworth's White Doe of Rylstone.

OCTOSYLLABIC QUATRAIN. This quatrain rimes abba; as in Tennyson's In Memoriam.

"I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods."

BALLAD METRE. This metre was originally a seven-foot iambic couplet, sometimes called fourteeners from the number of syllables. Chapman uses this long couplet for parts of his translation of Homer.

"As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,
And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high prospects and
the brows

Of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows,
And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight,
When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light."

The distinct break after the fourth foot caused the couplet to become a four-line stanza, of alternate tetrameter and trimeter lines. The first and third lines often rime as well as the second and fourth. The traditional ballads will supply examples. This metre has been widely used; as by Cowper in John Gilpin. "John Gilpin was a citizen

Of credit and renown,

A trainband captain eke was he

Of famous London town."

The following from Goldsmith shows the first line and the third riming.

"Good people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song;

And if you find it wondrous short,

It cannot hold you long."

The Common Metre of the metrical psalms and hymns is of the same form.

TROCHAICS. Only two of the English trochaics require attention. 1. The seven-syllable trochaic. This consists of

four trochees, but the unaccented syllable of the last trochee is dropped; as in Jonson's Hymn to Diana.

2.

"Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,

Seated in thy silver chair,

State in wonted manner keep."

The fifteen-syllable trochaic couplet; as in Tennyson's Locksley Hall.

"Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn : Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn."

Here also the unaccented syllable of the final trochee is dropped. When it is retained, we have a sixteen-syllable line as this line from Poe's Raven.

"Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in a bleak December."

ANAPAESTIC. It is sufficient to note the four-foot line. Iambuses are frequently substituted. In the example, from Cowper's Poplar Field, the second line has four anapaests; but the first line is iambus, anapaest, iambus, anapaest.

"The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.”

Lochiel's Warning by Campbell and Retaliation by Goldsmith are in anapaests.

DACTYLIC. Hood's Bridge of Sighs exemplifies one dactylic

metre.

"Mad from life's history,

Glad to death's mystery,
Swift to be hurled-
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world!"

Another kind appears in Tennyson's Charge of the Light

Brigade.

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