465 
Wherein old dintes of deep woutules did re- 
main, 
The cruel marks of many a bloody field; 
Yet arines till that time did he never wield. 
His angry steed did chide his foaming bitt, 
As much disdaining to the curb to y ield : 
A jolly knight he seem’d, and faire did sit. 
As one for knightly guests and fierce en- 
counters fitt.” 
A stanza more polished in its structnre is 
adopted by Mr. Sotheby in his admirable 
translation of Wieland’s Oberon. 1 he fol- 
ing passage describes Rezia’s first interview 
with the Hermit • 
“ Rezia, at once entranced in holy bliss. 
Aw’d by his look, that beams celestial grace. 
Bows, as before the genius of the place, 
And prints his wrinkled hand with pious kiss. 
Touched by his gracious mien or friendly air, 
His beard that swept his breast with silver 
hair, 
Her soul this stranger as her sire reveres ; 
A second look has banish’d all iier fears : 
Each reads the other’s heart, nor finds a 
stranger there.” 
The most popular stanza is that appropriate 
to the ballad, which is composed of four lines 
with interchanging rhymes. Such is the mea- 
sure of Goldsmith’s beautiful tale of Edwin 
and Angelina: 
“ Turn, gentle hermit of the dale, 
And guide my lonely way, 
To where yon taper cheers the vale 
With hospitable ray.” 
And such, with the remission of rhyme in the 
first and third lines, is the measure of Chevy 
Chace: 
“ God save the king, and bless the land. 
In plenty, joy, and peace; 
And grant henceforth that foul debate 
’Twixt noblemen may cease !” 
The elegiac stanza consists of four alter- 
nately responsive lines ot ten syllables each: 
it is well adapted to short poems; but in com- 
position ' of any length, its slow monotonous ! 
cadence becomes oppressive to the ear. In i 
the celebrated eleg\ of Gray, its defects, 
however, are all concealed by a profusion of 
poetical beauties ; and by the graceful muse 
of Hammond its fetters are rendered elegant 
and Ornamental : 
Why should the lover quit his pleasing 
iiome, 
In search of danger on some foreign ground ? 
Or from iiis weeping fair ungrateful roam. 
And risk in every stroke a double wound ? 
Aid better far, beneath the spreading shade, 
With cheerful friends to drain the sprightly 
bowl, 
To sing the beauties of my darling maid. 
And on the sweet idea feast my soul.” 
The common anapestic verse, of eleven and 
twelve syllables, in which the accent tails on 
every third syllable, has generally been ap- 
propriated to humorous subjects : when 
formed into the stanza, it assumes a different 
character. In the noble war-song of Burns it 
is however a strain truly sublime; and in the 
following passage flows with equal sweetness 
and pathos : 
“ ’Tis night, and the landscape is lovely 
no more : 
I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for 
you ; 
POETRY. 
For morn is approaching, your charms to 
restore. 
Perfum’d with fresh fragrance, and glittering 
with dew. 
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn ; 
Kind nature the embryo blossom will save : 
But when shall spring visit the mouldering 
urn ? 
Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the 
grave ?” 
This stanza is, from the intractable nature 
of the anapestic measure, of difficult execu- 
tion. In that employed by Cowper in the 
following instance,; constructed on similar 
principles, the syllables are less numerous, 
and the cadence is in general more harmoni- 
ous : 
“ I am monarch of all I survey, 
My right there is none to dispute; 
From the centre, all round to the sea, 
I am lord of the fowl and the brute. 
O Solitude ! where are the charms 
That sages have seen in thy face? 
Better dwell in the midst of alarms 
Than reign in this desolate place.” 
The occurrence of double rhymes is nei- 
ther very frequent nor very easy in English 
verse; they are chiefly employed in songs, 
and are seldom admitted in the higher order 
of lyrical composition. The following pas- 
sage from Dryden’s ode on St. Cecilia’s 
day, affords the most happy example of this 
kind of verse in our language : 
“ Softly sweet in Lydian measure*. 
Soon he sooth’d his soul to pleasures; 
War, he sung, is toil and trouble. 
Honour but an empty bubble; 
Never ending, still beginning. 
Fighting still, and still destroying : 
If the world be worth thy winning, 
Think, oh ! think it worth enjoying. ” 
The simplest and most fluent of all verse is 
the couplet of eight syllables. Jn this mea- 
sure Milton has written his two exquisite 
poems, the Allegro and Penseroso : 
“ And may at length my weary age 
Find out the peaceful hermitage. 
The hairy gown' and mossy cell. 
Where 1 may sit, and rightly spell 
Of every star that heaven doth shew. 
And every herb that sips the dew. 
Till old experience do attain 
To something like prophetic strain !” 
Pope and Gray are generally considered as 
the most correct writers of rhyme ; and 
Drydcn, who knew the affluence of the Eng- 
lish language, has in his own compositions 
exhibited all its various capacities of har- 
mony and versification. 
Blank, verse 
Is composed of lines of ten syllables 
each, which flow into each other without the 
intervention of rhymes ; its metrical prin- 
ciple resides in its pauses, which should be 
so judiciously spread as never to suffer the 
accompaniment of rhyme tube missed. Of the 
few poets who have attempted this species of 
composition, Milton first, and after him, 
Thomson, Armstrong, Akenside, and Cowper, 
are pre-eminent. The amplitude of M ilton’s 
verse is unequalled: it dilates with the au- 
thor’s thought, it harmonizes with the rea- 
der’s Sentiment, and its varied cadence alter- 
nately rolls with majesty, or falls in a melli- 
fluent strain of melody on the unwearied and 
unsated ear. The principle of this exquisite 
mechanism has been lately referred by a ju- 
dicious critic (the Rev. Mr. Crowe, in his 
Lectures at the Royal Institution), to Milton’s 
bold practice of distributing m separate lines, 
words so nearly connected (such as the prepo- 
sition governing the noun, and the pronoun 
attached to the verb) as almost to appear 
indivisible. Fhat this practice, which Mr. 
Crowe calls breaking the natural joint of the 
sentence, is favourable to the freedom of 
blank verse, cannot be disputed; but it may 
be questioned whether the poet was himself 
conscious of the mechanism which he em- 
ployed, or was directed by any other princi- 
ple than his own acute sensibility to harmony. 
Flie following short extracts may illustrate 
the differenefe of style perceptible in the 
various writers of blank verse : 
“ 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 secret top 
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire 
The shepherd who first taught the chosen; 
seed, 
In the beginning how the heavens and earth 
Rose out of chaos; or if Sion. hill 
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that, 
flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song ; 
That with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
'Filings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” 
Milton. 
“ lie comes! he comes! in every breeze, the 
power 
Of philosophic melancholy comes: 
His near approach the sudden-starting tear. 
The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air, 
Fhe soften’d feature, and the beating heart 
Pierc’d deep with many a virtuous pang, de- 
clare. 
O’er all the soul his sacred influence breathes. 
Inflames imagination, through the breast 
Infuse - every tenderness, and far 
Beyond dim earth exults the swelling 
thought.” Thomson. 
“ From heaven my strains begin ; front 
heaven descends 
The flame of genius to the chosen heart. 
And beauty with poetic wonder join’d 
And inspiration. Ere the rising sen 
Shone o’er the deep, or mid the vault of 
night 
The moon her silver lamp suspended ; ere 
r Fhe vales with spring were watered, or with 
groves 
Ot oak, or pine, theantient hills were crown’d; 
Then the great Spirit whom his works adore. 
Within his own deep essence view’d the 
forms. 
The forms eternal of created things : 
’Fhe radiant sun, the moon’s nocturnal lamp, 
r l lie mountains and the streams, the ample 
stores 
Of earth, of heaven, of nature. From the first. 
On that full scene his love divine he fix’d, 
11 is admiration ; till in time complete. 
What lie admired and lov’d, his vital power 
Unfolded into being.” 
Akenside. 
