638 Transactions. 



8. Stood/ the youth/ful 8vej/dal, 

 He raised/ his voice/ in call/iiig : 

 The walls/ of rock/ were rent/ asun/der, 

 The moun/tain qui/vered as,' 'twere fall/ing. 



14. If now/ I must/ ai'ouse/ me / 



From sleep/ and trance/ abi/ding, / • 

 Thou/ on ways/ full ma/ny / 

 Soon/ shalt forth/ be ri/ding. / 



17. Yet/ shall I give/ thee the ring/ of red gold/. 

 Upon/ thy hand/ it shall glow/ then : 

 Once/ thou hast found/ her thy mai/den high-born/. 

 Thyself/ she shall full/ well know/ then. 



28. Li/on and/ the un/tamed bear/ 



They stood/ and the door/ defen/ded : 



And ne/ver li/'ving man/ might en/ter therein/, 



Sa/ving young Svej/dal him/ befrien/ded. 



48. Now has/ the youth/ful Svej/dal / 



O'er come/ both fear ' and pain/ that encum/bered, 

 Nor fet/ter they/ the mai/den high-born/, 

 Full deep/ at his side/ she slum/ bered. 

 Good heed of thy speech have ! 



Most observable is the great variety of the rhythm ; du^ole and triple units 

 do not meet in antagonism, they blend in harmony. In stanza 4 the 

 Ballad returns to full Eomance, unless a unit of four syllables, with a minor 

 mid-stress, be admitted as the second unit of the last line. In stanza 8 a 

 feminme Nibelungen (similar to stanzas 16, 21, and 43 of " Agnes and the 

 Merman ") is followed by a feminine Romance. Stanza 14 is comjDosed of 

 two duple feminme Nibelungen verses, and contrasted with these are the 

 verses of stanza 17, which are almost full triple feminine Ballad. In 

 stanza 28 the first half of a Romance verse contains a quadruple unit 

 which would, were its due mid-stress allowed, make a line of five stresses, 

 followed by one of four ; in fact, a nine-stressed Romance verse would 

 result. To British ears these heavy verses will sound unnatural, and 

 unmusical, if not harsh ; yet they are of value — apart always from their 

 undoubted natural beauty and delightfulness — as illustrations of types of 

 verse through which our own smoothest (and often too smooth) Ballad 

 poetry has passed. Nor have they yet lost their pristine melody to the 

 folk of the lands wherein they were cradled. Moreover, may we not in our 

 own beloved psalms (unmetrical, save the mark !) find four, five, or more 

 words huddled together about a single stress ? The struggle against con- 

 formity to type must ever have been sharp, and it certainly was long- 

 continued ; but wheresoever there was poetry there was, irrespective of 

 the " form," imperishable beauty ; and it is this very immortality of 

 loveliness that has preserved so many of the crude media through which 

 the divine light passed from man to man, from age to age — one might 

 almost say from everlasting to everlasting. The myriad-man caught the 

 cry of the struggle : he spoke of either the Romance or the Ballad when 



he spoke of the 



. . . stretched metre of an antique song : 



and of a surety he refers to the struggle between the two in the " Mid- 

 summer Night's Dream." 



Quince. Well, we will have such a prologue ; and it shall be written 

 in eight and six. 



Bottom. No, make it two tnorc ; let it be written in eight and eight. 



(" A Midsummer Night's Dream," III, i.) 



Two lines of eight and si.x: (syllables) is Ballad ; eight and eight, Romance. 



