English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
old Patrician Trees, so great and good!
Hail, ye Plebeian Underwood!
Where the poetic birds rejoice,
And for their quiet nests and plenteous food
Pay with their grateful voice.
(Cowley: Of Solitude. ab. 1650.)
To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings
Cleaving the western sky;
Winged too with wind it is, and winnowings
Of birds; as if the day's last hour in rings
Of strenuous flight must die.
(Rossetti: Sunset Wings. 1881.)
Ye dainty Nymphs, that in this blessed brook
Do bathe your breast,
Forsake your watery bowers, and hither look
At my request:
And eke you Virgins that on Parnasse dwell,
Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well,
Help me to blaze
Her worthy praise,
Which in her sex doth all excel.
(Spenser: The Shepherd's Calendar, April. 1579.)
You, that will a wonder know,
Go with me,
Two suns in a heaven of snow
Both burning be;
All they fire, that do but eye them,
But the snow's unmelted by them.
(Carew: In Praise of his Mistress. ab. 1635.)
Go, lovely Rose!
Tell her, that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
(Waller: Go, lovely Rose. ab. 1650.)
The use of short lines somewhat intricately introduced among longer ones, is characteristic of the stanzas of the lyrical poets of the first part of the seventeenth century. It may perhaps be traced in part to the influence of Donne.
Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop.
(Browning: Love among the Ruins. 1855.)
Compare with this (although it is not divided into stanzas) Herrick's Thanksgiving to God:
Lord, thou hast given me a cell
Wherein to dwell;
A little house, whose humble roof
Is weatherproof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry.
When God at first made Man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
(George Herbert: The Gifts of God. 1631.)
The following specimens illustrate various forms of stanzas distinguished by arrangement of rime, without reference to the length of lines:
abccb
In vain, through every changeful year
Did Nature lead him as before;
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
(Wordsworth: Peter Bell. 1798.)
ababb
Survival of the fittest, adaptation,
And all their other evolution terms,
Seem to omit one small consideration,
To wit, that tumblebugs and angleworms
Have souls: there's soul in everything that squirms.
(William Vaughn Moody: The Menagerie. 1901.)
aabbb
Mary mine that art Mary's Rose,
Come in to me from the garden-close.
The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,
And we marked not how the faint moon grew;
But the hidden stars are calling you.
(Rossetti: Rose Mary. 1881.)
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Hail seint michel, with the lange sper!
Fair beth thi winges: up thi scholder
Thou hast a rede kirtil a non to thi fote.
Thou ert best angle that ever god makid.
This vers is ful wel i-wrogȝt;
Hit is of wel furre y-brogȝt.
(Satire on the People of Kildare, from Harleian Ms. 913, in Guest's English Rhythms, Skeat ed., p. 616.)
aaaabb
What beauty would have lovely styled,
What manners pretty, nature mild,
What wonder perfect, all were filed
Upon record in this blest child.
And till the coming of the soul
To fetch the flesh, we keep the roll.
(Ben Jonson: Epitaph; Underwoods, liii. 1616.)
ababab
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies:
And all that's best of dark or bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
(Byron: She Walks in Beauty. 1815.)
ababcc
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
(Wordsworth: I wandered lonely as a cloud. 1804.)
O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!
Her eyes seen in her tears, tears in her eye;
Both crystals, where they view'd each other's sorrow—
Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;
But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.
(Shakspere: