English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
Ha, ha, the wooing o't!
Maggie coost her head fu' heigh,
Looked asklent and unco skeigh,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh;
Ha, ha, the wooing o't!
(Burns: Duncan Gray. ab. 1790.)
My heart is wasted with my woe,
Oriana.
There is no rest for me below,
Oriana.
When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow,
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,
Oriana,
Alone I wander to and fro,
Oriana.
(Tennyson: Ballad of Oriana. ab. 1830.)
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
(Toll slowly)
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness—
Round our restlessness His rest.
(Elizabeth B. Browning: Rhyme of the Duchess May. ab. 1845.)
"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)
(Rossetti: Sister Helen. 1870.)
Laetabundus
Exultet fidelis chorus,
Alleluia!
Egidio psallat coetus
Iste laetus,
Alleluia!
(St. Bernard: De Nativitate Domini.)
Sermone Marcus Tullius,
Fortuna Cesar Julius
Tibi non equantur.
Tibi summa prudentia,
Prefulgens et potentia
Celesti dono dantur.
(From a 12th c. MS.: Regulae de Rhythmis. In Schipper's Englische Metrik, vol. i. p. 354.)
Quant li solleiz conviset en leon
En icel tens qu'est ortus pliadon
Perunt matin,
Une pulcellet odit molt gent plorer
Et son ami dolcement regreter,
Ex si lli dis.
(Early French version of the Song of Songs, quoted in Lewis's Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification, p. 89.)
The special form of refrain stanza appearing in the first of these foreign specimens (the Alleluia hymn form) is generally thought to have been the source of the "tail-rime stanza" illustrated in the other two specimens, and in the several pages which follow. The characteristic feature of this stanza is the presence of two short lines riming together and serving as "tails" to the first and second parts of the body of the stanza. The same name appears in all the languages: "versus caudati" in the mediæval Latin, "rime couée" in the French, and "Schweifreim" in modern German. It is easy to see, what the following specimens illustrate, how stanzas constructed on this fundamental principle might be varied greatly in particular forms, according to the number, length, and rime-arrangement of the longer lines.
Men may merci have, traytour not to save, for luf ne for awe,
Atteynt of traytorie, suld haf no mercie, wiþ no maner lawe.
(Robert Manning of Brunne: Chronicle. ab. 1330.)
For Edward gode dede
Þe Baliol did him mede
a wikked bounte.
Turne we ageyn to rede
and on our geste to spede
a Maddok þer left we.
(Ibid.)
Manning's chronicle was a translation of the French chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft. Although the translator designed to avoid the various complicated measures used in the original, and kept pretty closely to alexandrines (see p. 254, below), in the passages here represented he followed the tail-rime of the original. In the first case the stanza form is not represented in the manuscript, though of course implicit in the rimes. The name of the stanza, "rime couée," appears very early in Manning's Prologue, in the famous passage in which he expressed his preference for metrical simplicity:
Als þai haf wrytenn and sayd
Haf I alle in myn Inglis layd,
In symple speche as I couthe,
That is lightest in mannes mouthe.
I mad noght for no disours,
Ne for no seggers no harpours,
Bot for þe luf of symple menn
That strange Inglis cann not kenn.
For many it ere that strange Inglis
In ryme wate never what it is,
And bot þai wist what it mente
Ellis me thoght it were alle shente.
I made it not for to be praysed,
Bot at þe lewed menn were aysed.
If it were made in ryme couwee,
Or in strangere or entrelace,
Þat rede Inglis it ere inowe
Þat couthe not haf coppled a kowe,
Þat outhere in couwee or in baston
Som suld haf ben fordon,
So þat fele men þat it herde
Suld not witte howe þat it ferde.
… And forsoth I couth noght
So strange Inglis as þai wroght,
And menn besoght me many a tyme
To turne it bot in light ryme.
þai sayd, if I in strange it turne,
To here it manyon suld skurne.
For it ere names fulle selcouthe,
þat ere not used now in mouthe.
And therfore for the comonalte,
þat blythely wild listen to me,
On light lange I it begann,
For luf of the lewed mann.
(Hearne ed., vol. i. pp. xcix, c.)
Lines 15–22 may be paraphrased thus: "If it were made in rime couée, in rime strangere, or rime entrelacée, there are plenty of those who read English who could not have put the tail-verses together; so that either in the tail-verse or the baston some would have been confused, and many men that heard it would not know how it went." The "interlaced" (alternate) rime was a familiar form. Baston seems usually to be an equivalent for "stanza" or "stave." It seems uncertain whether by rime strangere Manning had in mind any particular form of stanza or rime-arrangement.
Stand wel, moder, under rode,
Byholt þy sone wiþ glade mode;
Blyþe, moder, myht þou be!
Sone, hou shulde y blyþe stonde?
Y se þin fet, y se þin honde
Nayled to þe harde tre.
(Song