English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
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translations where this problem is grappled with; the first is a well-known fragment, the second a portion of a still unpublished translation of the Inferno, reproduced here by the courtesy of the author.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
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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.)
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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.)
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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.)
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Þe grace