English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
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