624 Transactions. 



Romance. 

 Ye banks and braes o' bonie Doon, how can ye bloom sae fresh and fair ? 



Ballad. 

 There blew a drowsy, drowsy wind, deep sleep upon me fell, 



Nibelungen. 

 From Greenland's icy mountains, and India's coral strand, 



Alexandrine. 

 What love of thine own kind ? What ignorance of pain ? 



and the dubious 



Unpaused Alexandrine. 

 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 



To show their connection and variation, these may be divided, — 



Ye banks/ and braes/ o' bo/nie Doon/, how can/ ye bloom/ sae fresh/ and fair ?/ 

 There blew/ a drow/sy, drow/sy wind/, deep sleep/ upon/ me fell/, / 



From Gi'cen/land's i/cy moun/ tains, / and In/dia's co/ral stiand/, / 



What love/ of thine/ own kind ?/ / What ig/norance/ of pain ?/ / 



In pro/fuse strains/ of un/preme/dita/ted art/ / (?) / 



The last is so irregular that it almost seems to repudiate kinship with the 

 others ; nevertheless, as its development from the Alexandrine can be 

 traced, its existence must be recognized. The above examples are all pure 

 duple ; the triple metres follow precisely the same laws, so it will be suffi- 

 cient merely to quote a verse of each variation : — 



The glad/ birds are sing/ing, the flow/rets are spring/ing, o'er mea/dow and 



moun/tain and down/ in the vale/ ; 

 The cup/ was all fill'd/, and the leaves/ were all wet/, and it seem'd/, to a fan/ciful 



view/, / 



We sat/ down and wept/ by the wa/ters / of Ba/bel and thought/ of the 



day/ / 



Ah sun/Hower ! wea/ry of time/, / who coun/test the steps/of the 



sun/ ; / 



Consi/der it well/ : each tone/ of our scale/ in itself/ is nought/ ; / (?) / 



Then, again, there is the not yet etheralized quadruple metre, of which 

 the following are examples of Komance and Ballad : — 



And the bush/ hath friends to meet/ him, and their kind/ly voices greet/ him 

 in the mur/mur of the bree/zes and the ri/ver on its bars/. 



There was move/ment at the sta/tion, for the word/ had passed around/ that 

 the colt/ from old Regret/ had got away/, / 



These three — duple, triple, and quadruple — are the extremes of type of the 

 Romance verse and its developments ; and over this verse of eight units, 

 each unit with its triple variation of sound and its fourth variation of 

 pause — over this octave of verse — the poets of Britain's Helicon have 

 breathed their hearts into the immortality of song. 



Section II. 



1. The poems heretofore considered have been those whose stanzas 

 contain an exact number of full verse-units — that is, every verse in the 

 stanza is complete of its kind — Romance, Ballad, Nibelungen, or 

 Alexandrine. There is, however, another form of stanza which, whilst not 

 nearly so common as the perfect form, is yet sufficiently common to demand 

 consideration when deciding upon the " verse-unit." It is a " fixed varia- 

 tion," and any variation that can become fixed must have a large amount 

 of inherent vitality — must be closely akin to the parent form. 



