Andersen. — Classification of Verse. 513 



Lawson's "Australian Bards and Busk Keviewers," and instead of humorous 

 they are ridiculous : — 



(11.) If you sing of waving grasses where the plains are dry as bricks, 

 And discover shining rivers where there's only nuid and sticks ; 

 If you picture " mighty forests " where the mulga spoils the view — 

 You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too. 



8. There are, of course, many English poems with suggestions of the 

 quadruple metre, and it is these suggestions that the Australian has taken, 

 forming from them a basic quadruple unit. The loose lilt is evident in 

 the Hon. Mrs. Norton's " Biugen on the Rhine," and it gives charming 

 effects to S. Ferguson's dehghtful Irish ballad " The Fairy Thorn " :— 



(12.) They're glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve. 

 Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare ; 

 The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave, 

 And the crags in the ghostly air. 



Christina Rossetti's " Amor Mundi," too, is on the verge of the quadruple 

 metre ; parts, indeed, have crossed the border-Une : — 



(13.) "0 where are you going with your love-locks flowing, 

 On the west wind blowing along this valley track ? " 

 " The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye, 

 We shall escape the uphill by never turning back." 



9. When the quadruple unit makes its appearance in triple metre, 



as in Scott's stanza, — 



(14.) He is gone on the raowntain. 

 He is lost to the forest. 

 Like a summer dried ioxxntain. 

 When our need was the sorest. 



— it is evident that it is caused only by the feminine rimes, which add a 



syllable to the following triple unit. In Scott's stanza this occurs in the 



middle of the verse as well as at the end : — 



(14a.) He is gone on the mountam, he is lost to the iorest. 



Like a summer dried ionntain, ivhen our need was the sorest. 



The quadruple unit is twice avoided in the above stanza by taking one of 

 the syllables from the three-syllabled unit following the feminine rime. 

 These avoidances come as reliefs in reading : the stanza has certainly a not 

 altogether unpleasing strangeness ; but its very rarity shows that it is an 

 unnatural form. 



10. It is admitted that when the quadruple unit is most apparent 

 in Australian poetry that poetry is not the highest. It is, however, the 

 jorm that is under consideration rather than the spirit ; and for laws of 

 form a nursery-rime is as valuable as play of Shakspeare, an Australian 

 ballad as an epic of Milton. In verse like " Constable M'Carty's Investiga- 

 tions," by Lawson, there is absolutely no room for doubt of the existence of 

 the quadruple unit : — 



(15.) Most unpleasantly adjacent to the haunts of lower orders 



Stood a " terrace " in the city when the current year began. 

 And a notice indicated there were vacancies for boarders 

 In the middle house, and lodgings for a single gentleman. 



It may be objected that when the unit is thus proved to exist the poetry 



is at the same time proved not to exist ; but the triple unit was once in 



like manner considered incapable of being made the vehicle of elevated 



poetry, and was banished. Keats, a poet of keenest vision in duple metre, 



was a poetaster in triple ; Init from the days of Cowper the triple metre 



17— Trans. 



