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The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

(Wordsworth, Upon Westminster Bridge.)

Scorn not the sonnet! Critic, you have frowned
Mindless of its just honours. With this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrach's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound,
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp,

It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains — alas, too few! (Wordsworth).

You silvery billows breaking on the beach

Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From its own depths, and rest within you, dear, As through the billowy voices yearning here Great nature strives to find a human speech.

sonnet is wave of melody;

From heaving waters of the impassioned soul
A billow of tidal music one and whole

Flows in the 'octave'; then returning free,

Its ebbing surges in the 'sestet' roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea. (Theodore Watts-Dunton, The Sonnet's Voice.)

§ 250. French Stanzas.

Some artificial forms of French and Provençal lyrics were imitated in English but were never widely spread. It is a characteristic of some of these poems that one or two verses are repeated in certain positions. The scheme of the triolet is A Ba Aab AB, of the roundel A B ba ab A Bab ba A B (the repeated verses are shown by capitals). In the rondeau only the initial words of the first verse (a) are repeated after the eighth and thirteenth verses: a abba aab (a) a a b b a (a), so too in the nine-line roundel of Swinburne after the third and ninth verses: a b a (a) bab aba (a) (A Century of Roundels, Poet. Works V, 115-193). The scheme of the vilanelle is Alb A2 ab A1 a b A2 ab A1 a b A2 ab A1 A2.

The sestine, which comes from Provençal poetry, consists of six six-line stanzas and a three-line conclusion. The six riming words of the first stanza appear in the following stanzas in continually changing order. The scheme is I a bedef, U faebdc, III cfdabe, IV ecbfad, V dea

cfb, VI bdfeca. Finally the riming words appear in their original order in the caesura and at the end of the three verses of the envoy; cp. Swinburne's Sestina (Poet. Works III, 34), but here the riming words have a different order in the envoy. Swinburne also wrote a Double Sestina (The Complaint of Lisa, Poet. Works III, 42), which consists of twelve twelve-line stanzas and a six-line conclusion with a similarly changing order of the riming words.

For examples of these stanzas and for further details see Schipper EM II, 886-935, Alden, EV, 358-388, Parsons EV 115-130, Johnson, Forms of Engl. Verse, 301-324 and Russell, Sonnets on the Sonnet, 85-98.

Indexes.

Numbers refer to paragraphs.

Index I

Accent, hovering 190. 206, in-

verted 206.

Accented metre 2.
Alexandrine 155, 212.
Alliteration 91. 97. 98. 105,

Chaucer's 193, crossed 94,
defined 4, double 93, en-
jambement of 95, in Brut
109, in ME. 159, in NE. 210,
simple 92, variety in 99,
vowel 97, words used 96.
Alliterative verse 12. 15, in
ME. 106. 156-59, later 85,
origin of 13.
Anacrusis 28.
Arsis 3.

Assonance 141. 142.

Ballade 195. 205.

Bar 3.

Bestiary 134.

Blank Verse 201. 205. 216,
before and after Shaks. 218,
in XVIII and XIX cent. 220,
Milton's 219, Shakespeare's
217.

Bob-verse 174-5. 184.

[blocks in formation]

Genesis and Exodus 125.

Gliding endings 64.

Glottal stop 97.

Heroic verse 186-192 213.

Hexameter 205. 224.

Hoccleve 196.

Iamb 217.

Inversion 187.

Josephslied 133.

Latin hymns 119, metres 245,
Psalms 90, septenary 127,
verse 124. 126.

Lagamon 107.

Lengthened lines 11. 86-90.
Level Stress 73. 78.
Long lines 83.

Lydgate 197.

Masc. endings 64.
Member 3. 4.

Members and bars 123, four

61, in Brut 114.
Member theory, four 63.
Metrical tests 217.

Monopressures 209.

More 37. 42. 55.

Octave 248.

On god ureisun 130.

Opening 165. 166, 169.

Orrm 129.

Ottava rima 194. 205. 213.

226. 247.

Parts of Speech in OE. verse
79. 80, in ME. verse 159.
Pedes 165, 194

Pindaric ode 213. 242. 243.

Poema morale 128.

Poulter's measure 167. 212.

228.

Prefixes, laws of 51.

Quantitative metre 2.

Quantity 207.

Quatrains 166.

Refrain 164.

Resolved stress 28.
Rhyme royal 194.
Rhythm def. 1, rising and
falling 204.

Rime, breaking 167. 183, 187.

191, broken 139. 146, Chau-
cer's 193, def. 4, double
147-8, fem. 137, French
145, gliding 138, identical
144-7. 149, impure 141, in
Brut 110, inexact 143, in
ME. 105, in NE. 210, in
OE. 100, masc. 136, posi-
tion of 150, tail 150. 154,
unstressed syll. 140.
Rondeau 205. 250.

Roundel 250.

Schwellverse 11. 86-90.

Scotch poets 198

Septenary 158. 199. 211, in

NE. 211.

Sestet 248,

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