[Previous page]... He makes his promise good.
The man who by this steady course
Has happiness ensur'd
When earth's foundations shake, will stand
By Providence secur'd.
We may justly consider, therefore, verses of five feet as the
longest the language sustains, and it is remarkable that not only
this length, though the extreme, is generally the most esteemed, but
that it is the only one which has dignity enough to support blank
verse, that is, verse without rhyme. This is attempted in no other
measure. It constitutes, therefore, the most precious part of our
poetry. The poet, unfettered by rhyme, is at liberty to prune his
diction of those tautologies, those feeble nothings necessary to
introtrude the rhyming word. With no other trammel than that of
measure he is able to condense his thoughts and images and to leave
nothing but what is truly poetical. When enveloped in all the pomp
and majesty of his subject he sometimes even throws off the restraint
of the regular pause:
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse! that on the sacred top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos.
Then stay'd the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things
One foot he centred, and the other turn'd
Round, through the vast profundity obscure
And said, "Thus far extend."
There are but two regular pauses in this whole passage of seven
verses. They are constantly drowned by the majesty of the rhythm and
sense. But nothing less than this can authorize such a license.
Take the following proof from the same author:
Again, God said, "Let there be firmament
Amid the waters, and let it divide
The waters from the waters;" and God made
The firmament.
-- MILTON 7:261
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made
the firmament.
-- GENESIS 1:6
I have here placed Moses and Milton side by side, that he who
can may distinguish which verse belongs to the poet. To do this he
will not have the aid either of the sentiment, diction or measure of
poetry. The original is so servilely copied that though it be cut
into pieces of ten syllables, no pause is marked between these
portions.
What proves the excellence of blank verse is that the taste
lasts longer than that for rhyme. The fondness for the jingle leaves
us with that for the rattles and baubles of childhood, and if we
continue to read rhymed verse at a later period of life it is such
only where the poet has had force enough to bring great beauties of
thought and diction into this form. When young any composition
pleases which unites a little sense, some imagination, and some
rhythm, in doses however small. But as we advance in life these
things fall off one by one, and I suspect we are left at last with
only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with Homer alone. He like
Hope travels on nor quits us when we die.
Having noted the different lengths of line which the English
poet may give to his verse it must be further observed that he may
intermingle these in the same verse according to his fancy.
The following are selected as examples:
A tear bedews my Delia's eye,
To think yon playful kid must die;
From crystal spring, and flowery mead,
Must, in his prime of life, recede!
She tells with what delight he stood,
To trace his features in the flood;
Then skipp'd aloof with quaint amaze,
And then drew near again to gaze.
-- SHENSTONE
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
-- GRAY
There shall my plaintive song recount
Dark themes of hopeless woe,
And faster than the drooping fount
I'll teach mine eyes to flow.
There leaves, in spite of Autumn green
Shall shade the hallow'd ground,
And Spring will there again be seen
To call forth flowers around.
-- SHENSTONE
O Health! capricious maid!
Why dost thou shun my peaceful bower,
Where I had hope to share thy power,
And bless thy lasting aid?
-- SHENSTONE
The man whose mind, on virtue bent
Pursues some greatly good intent
With undivided aim
Serene beholds the angry crowd
Nor can their clamors fierce and loud
His stubborn purpose tame.
Ye gentle Bards! give ear,
Who talk of amorous rage,
Who spoil the lily, rob the rose,
Come learn of me to weep your woes:
"O sweet! O sweet Anne Page!"
-- SHENSTONE
Too long a stranger to repose,
At length from Pain's abhorred couch I rose
And wander'd forth alone,
To court once more the balmy breeze,
And catch the verdure of the trees,
Ere yet their charms were flown.
-- SHENSTONE
O thou, by Nature taught
To breathe her genuine thought,
In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong;
Who first, on mountains wild,
In Fancy, loveliest child,
Thy babe, and Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song!
-- COLLINS
'Twas in a land of learning,
The Muse's favorite city,
Such pranks of late
Were play'd by a rat,
As -- tempt one to be witty.
-- SHENSTONE
Yet stay, O stay! celestial Pow'rs!
And with a hand of kind regard
Dispel the boisterous storm that low'rs
Destruction on the fav'rite bard;
O watch with me his last expiring breath
And snatch him from the arms of dark oblivious death.
-- GRAY
What is grandeur, what is power?
Heavier toil, superior pain.
What the bright reward we gain?
The grateful memory of the good.
Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
The bee's collected treasures sweet,
Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet
The still small voice of gratitude.
Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive, kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display;
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone --
We frolic while 'tis May.
-- GRAY
Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;
Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.
Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods.
-- COLLINS
Though the license to intermingle the different measures admits
an infinitude of combinations, yet this becomes less and less
pleasing in proportion as they depart from that simplicity and
regularity of which the ear is most sensible. When these are wholly
or nearly neglected, as in the lyric pieces, the poet renounces one
of the most fascinating charms of his art. He must then look well to
his matter and supply in sublimity or other beauties the loss of
regular measure. In effect these pieces are seldom read twice.
TRAVEL JOURNALS
A Tour to some of the Gardens of England
[Memorandums made on a tour to some of the gardens in England,
described by Whateley in his book on gardening.] While his
descriptions, in point of style, are models of perfect elegance and
classical correctness, they are as remarkable for their exactness. I
always walked over the gardens with his book in my hand, examined
with attention the particular spots he described, found them so
justly characterized by him as to be easily recognized, and saw with
wonder, that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him
from the truth. My inquiries were directed chiefly to such practical
things as might enable me to estimate the expense of making and
maintaining a garden in that style. My journey was in the months of
March and April, 1786.
Chiswick. -- Belongs to Duke of Devonshire. A garden about
six acres; -- the octagonal dome has an ill effect, both within and
without: the garden shows still too much of art. An obelisk of very
ill effect; another in the middle of a pond useless.
Hampton-Court. -- Old fashioned. Clipt yews grown wild.
Twickenham. -- Pope's original garden, three and a half
acres. Sir Wm. Stanhope added one and a half acre. This is a long
narrow slip, grass and trees in the middle, walk all round. Now Sir
Wellbore Ellis's. Obelisk at bottom of Pope's garden, as monument to
his mother. Inscription, "Ah! Editha, matrum optima, mulierum
amantissima, Vale." The house about thirty yards from the Thames: the
ground shelves gently to the water side; on the back of the house
passes the street, and beyond that the garden. The grotto is under
the street, and goes out level to the water. In the centre of the
garden a mound with a spiral walk round it. A rookery.
Esher-Place. -- The house in a bottom near the river; on the
other side the ground rises pretty much. The road by which we come
to the house forms a dividing line in the middle of the front; on the
right are heights, rising one beyond and above another, with clumps
of trees; on the farthest a temple. A hollow filled up with a clump
of trees, the tallest in the bottom, so that the top is quite flat.
On the left the ground descends. Clumps of trees, the clumps on each
hand balance finely -- most lovely mixture of concave and convex.
The garden is of about forty-five acres, besides the park which
joins. Belongs to Lady Frances Pelham.
Claremont. -- Lord Clive's. Nothing remarkable.
Paynshill. -- Mr. Hopkins. Three hundred and twenty-three
acres, garden and park all in one. Well described by Whateley.
Grotto said to have cost pound 7,000. Whateley says one of the
bridges is of stone, but both now are of wood, the lower sixty feet
high: there is too much evergreen. The dwelling-house built by
Hopkins, ill-situated: he has not been there in five years. He lived
there four years while building the present house. It is not
finished; its architecture is incorrect. A Doric temple, beautiful.
Woburn. -- Belongs to Lord Peters. Lord Loughborough is the
present tenant for two lives. Four people to the farm, four to the
pleasure garden, four to the kitchen garden. All are intermixed, the
pleasure garden being merely a highly-ornamented walk through and
round the divisions of the farm and kitchen garden.
Caversham. -- Sold by Lord Cadogan to Major Marsac.
Twenty-five acres of garden, four hundred acres of park, six acres ...
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