[Previous page]... The soul is on a rack, the rack of rest.
-- YOUNG
O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude, to be alone.
Communion sweet! communion large and high!
Our reason, guardian angel, and our God!
Then nearest these, when others most remote;
And all, ere long, shall be remote, but these.
-- YOUNG
By nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build
Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes.
As we the fatal sisters could outspin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
-- YOUNG
Cowards die many times before their deaths:
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life, but for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar, so were you;
We both have fed as well, and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
I am far from presuming to give this accentuation as perfect.
No two persons will accent the same passage alike. No person but a
real adept would accent it twice alike. Perhaps two real adepts who
should utter the same passage with infinite perfection yet by
throwing the energy into different words might produce very different
effects. I suppose that in those passages of Shakespeare, for
example, no man but Garrick ever drew their full tone out of them, if
I may borrow an expression from music. Let those who are disposed to
criticise, therefore, try a few experiments themselves. I have
essayed these short passages to let the foreigner see that the accent
is not equal; that they are not to be read monotonously. I chose,
too, the most pregnant passages, those wherein every word teems with
latent meaning, that he might form an idea of the degrees of
excellence of which this art is capable. He must not apprehend that
all poets present the same difficulty. It is only the most brilliant
passages. The great mass, even of good poetry, is easily enough
read. Take the following examples, wherein little differences in the
enunciation will not change the meaning sensibly.
Here, in cool grot and mossy cell,
We rural fays and faeries dwell;
Though rarely seen by mortal eye,
When the pale Moon, ascending high,
Darts through yon lines her quivering beams,
We frisk it near these crystal streams.
Her beams, reflected from the wave,
Afford the light our revels crave;
The turf, with daisies broider'd o'er,
Exceeds, we wot, the Parian floor;
Nor yet for artful strains we call,
But listen to the water's fall.
Would you then taste our tranquil scene,
Be sure your bosoms be serene:
Devoid of hate, devoid of strife,
Devoid of all that poisons life:
And much it 'vails you, in their place
To graft the love of human race.
And tread with awe these favor'd bowers,
Nor wound the shrubs, nor bruise the flowers;
So may your path with sweets abound;
So may your couch with rest be crown'd!
But harm betide the wayward swain,
Who dares our hallow'd haunts profane!
-- SHENSTONE
To fair Fidele's grassy tomb
Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing Spring.
No wailing ghost shall dare appear
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove,
But shepherd lads assemble here,
And melting virgins own their love.
No wither'd witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew;
The red-breast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gather'd flowers,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.
When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake thy sylvan cell;
Or 'midst the chase on every plain,
The tender thought on thee shall dwell.
Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Belov'd, till life can charm no more
And mourn'd, till Pity's self be dead.
-- COLLINS
OF THE LENGTH OF VERSE
Having spoken of feet which are only the constituent part of
verse, it becomes necessary to say something of its larger divisions,
and even of the verse itself. For what is a verse? This question
naturally occurs, and it is not sufficiently answered by saying it is
a whole line. Should the printer think proper to print the following
passage in this manner:
{Os eipon oy paidos orezato phaidimos Ektor. aps d' o pais
pros kolpon eyzonoio tithenes eklinthe iachon, patros philoy opsin
atychtheis, tarbesas chalkon te ide lophon ippiochaiten, deinon ap
akrotates korythos neyonta noesas ek d' egelasse pater te philos kai
potnia meter. aytik' apo kratos koryth' eileto phaidimos Ektor, kai
ten men katetheken epi chthoni pamphanoosan aytar o g' on philon yion
epei kyse pele te chersin, eipen epeyxamenos Dii t' alloisin te
theoisi Zey alloi te theoi, dote de kai tonde genesthai paid' emon,
os kai ego per, ariprepea Troessin, ode bien t' agathon kai 'Ilioy
iphi anassein kai pote tis eipoi, 'patros g' ode pollon ameinon' ek
polemoy anionta pheroi d' enara brotoenta kteinas deion andra,
chareie de frena meter. Os eipon alochoio philes en chersin etheke
paid' eon e d' ara min keodei dexato kolpo dakryoen gelasasa posis d'
eleese noesas, cheiri te min katerexen epos t' ephat' ek t' onomaze}
it would still be verse; it would still immortalize its author
were every other syllable of his compositions lost. The poet then
does not depend on the printer to give a character to his work. He
has studied the human ear. He has discovered that in any rhythmical
composition the ear is pleased to find at certain regular intervals a
pause where it may rest, by which it may divide the composition into
parts, as a piece of music is divided into bars. He contrives to
mark this division by a pause in the sense or at least by an
emphatical word which may force the pause so that the ear may feel
the regular return of the pause. The interval then between these
regular pauses constitutes a verse. In the morsel before cited this
interval comprehends six feet, and though it is written in the manner
of prose, yet he who can read it without pausing at every sixth foot,
like him who is insensible to the charm of music, who is insensible
of love or of gratitude, is an unfavored son of nature to whom she
has given a faculty fewer than to others of her children, one source
of pleasure the less in a world where there are none to spare. A
well-organized ear makes the pause regularly whether it be printed as
verse or as prose. But not only the organization of the ear but the
character of the language have influence in determining the length of
the verse. Otherwise the constitution of the ear being the same with
all nations the verse would be of the same length in all languages,
which is not the case. But the difference in language occasions the
ear to be pleased with a difference of interval in the pause. The
language of Homer enabled him to compose in verse of six feet; the
English language cannot bear this. They may be of one, two, three,
four, or five feet, as in the following examples:
One foot.
Turning
Burning
Changing
Ranging
I mourn
I sigh
I burn
I die
Let us part --
Let us part
Will you break
My poor heart?
Two feet.
Flow'ry mountains
Mossy fountains
Shady woods
Crystal floods
To me the rose
No longer glows
Ev'ry plant
Has lost its scent.
Prithee Cupid no more
Hurl thy darts at threescore
To thy girls and thy boys
Give thy pains and thy joys.
Three feet.
Farewell fear and sorrow
Pleasure till to-morrow.
Yes, ev'ry flow'r that blows
I passed unheeded by
Till this enchanting rose
Had fix'd my wand'ring eye.
-- CUNNINGHAM
The rose though a beautiful red
Looks faded to Phyllis's bloom;
And the breeze from the bean-flower bed
To her breath's but a feeble perfume;
A lily I plucked in full pride
Its freshness with hers to compare,
And foolishly thought till I try'd
The flow'ret was equally fair.
-- CUNNINGHAM
Four feet.
From the dark tremendous cell
Where the fiends of magic dwell
Now the sun hath left the skies
Daughters of Enchantment, rise!
-- CUNNINGHAM
Come Hope, and to my pensive eye
Thy far foreseeing tube apply
Whose kind deception steals us o'er
The gloomy waste that lies before.
-- LANGHORNE
`Mongst lords and fine ladies we shepherds are told
The dearest affections are barter'd for gold
That discord in wedlock is often their lot
While Cupid and Hymen shake hands in a cot.
-- CUNNINGHAM
Here the parisyllabic alone bears one foot more.
Oh liberty! thou goddess heav'nly bright
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight,
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eas'd of her load subjection grows more light,
And Poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.
-- ADDISON
The last line furnishes an instance of six feet, usually called an
Alexandrian; but no piece is ever wholly in that measure. A single line only
is tolerated now and then, and is never a beauty. Formerly it was thought
that the language bore lines of seven feet in length, as in the following:
`Tis he whose ev'ry thought and deed by rules of virtue
moves;
Whose gen'rous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart
disproves
Who never did a slander forge his neighbor's fame to
wound;
Nor listen to a false report by malice whisper'd round.
-- PSALM 15
But a little attention shows that there is as regular a pause
at the fourth foot as at the seventh, and as verse takes its
denomination from the shortest regular intervals, this is no more
than an alternate verse of four and of three feet. It is, therefore,
usually written as in the following stanzas of the same piece:
Who to his plighted vows and trust
Has ever firmly stood
And, though he promise to his loss,
...
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