XLVII. The Various Attempts at "Hexameters" in English
(a) Earlier (Elizabethan):
All travel|lers do | gladly re|port great | praise of U|lysses,
For that he | knew many | men's man|nĕrs and | saw many | cities.
(Watson, ap. Asch. Schoolmaster, p. 73, ed. Arber.)
But thē | Queene in | meane while | carks quan|dare deepe | anguisht,
Her wound | fed by Ve|nus, with | firebayt | smoldred is | hooked:
Thee wights | doughtye man|hood, leagd | with gen|tilytye | nobil,
His woords | fitlye | placed, with his | heunly | phisnomye | pleasing,
March throgh her | hert mas|tring, all in | her breste deepelye she | printeth.
(Stanyhurst, Æn. iv. 1-5, ed. Arber, p. 94.)
What might I | call this | tree? A | Laurell? | O bonny | Laurell.
Needes to thy | bowes will I | bow this | knee and | vayle my bo|netto.
(Harvey in letter to Spenser, Eliz. Crit. Essays,
ed. Gregory Smith, i. 106.)
See yee the | blindefold|ēd pretie | god, that | feathered | archer
Of lo|vērs mise|ries || which maketh | his bloodie | game.
(Spenser in letter to Harvey, ibid. i. 99.)
(All these tried to accommodate—though sometimes rather roughly—English pronunciation to such of the rules of Latin quantity, by "nature" and "position," as could be applied. Some of them even tried to make general rules for English quantity. But the wiser, from Ascham to Campion, admitted that dactylic rhythm was difficult, if not impossible, to keep up in our language.)
(b) Later Georgian and Victorian.
(1) Coleridge (Specimen c. 1799?):
In ¦ the hex|am¦eter | ri¦ses the | foun¦tain's | sil¦very | col¦umn;
In ¦ the pen|ta¦meter | aye || fall¦ing in | mel¦ody | back.
(A very fair attempt, but already showing the natural tendency of the lines, when poetically rhythmed, to anapæstic—the dotted—scansion.)
(2) Southey (Vision of Judgment):
'Twas at that | sober | hour when the | light of | day is re|ceding
And from sur|rounding | things the | hues wherewith | day has a|dorned them
Fade like the | hopes of | youth, till the | beauty of | each has de|parted.
(Anapæstic run avoided with some skill, save now and then; but at the cost of weak beginnings, frequent, and admitted, substitution of trochaic for spondaic effect, and, above all, as in line 1, an ugly rocking-horse division into three batches of two feet each instead of the proper 2-1/2 + 3-1/2 or 3-1/2 + 2-1/2.)
(3) Longfellow (Evangeline):
Long with|in had been | spread the | snow-white | cloth on the | table;
There stood the | wheaten | loaf, and the | honey | fragrant with | wild flowers;
There stood the | tankard of | ale and the | cheese fresh | brought | from the | dairy;
And at the | head of the | board the | great arm-|chair of the | farmer.
Thus did Ev|angeline | wait at her | father's | door as the | sunset
Threw the long | shadows of | trees o'er the | broad am|brosial | meadows.
Ah! on her | spirit with|in a | deeper | shadow had | fallen.
(A popular, tunable sort of rhythm, obtained by a very large proportion of dactyls—often really giving (and always when really good) the anapæstic effect,—unhesitating adoption of trochees and even pyrrhics for spondees, and not seldom the Southeyan split at feet 2 and 4. An essentially rickety measure.)
(4) Clough—earlier (in the Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich—Evangeline type, but with more spondees and spondaic endings):
I was quite | right last | night, it | is too sōon, tōo | sudden.
(5) Later he attempted English "quantitative" things of this kind:
Tō thĕ păl|āte grāte|ful; more | luscious | were not in | Eden;
and
Unto the | sweet flut|ing, girls, of a swarthy shĕphērd.
This deliberate neglect of pronunciation ("pălāte" for "pālăte," "shĕphērd" for "shēphĕrd") has, in the last half-century or so, developed itself into a still more deliberate crusade against pronunciation; it being supposed that a conflict of accent and quantity has something attractive about it. Thus the late Mr. Stone wrote as a hexameter:
Is my | weary tră|vāil[47] end|ēd? Much | further is | īn store.
(6) On the other hand, Kingsley's Andromeda—the best poem of some length intended for English hexameters—is clearly, though not consciously, anapæstic, as thus:
O|ver the moun|tain aloft | ran a rush | and a roll | and a roar|ing
Down|ward the breeze | came malig|nant and leapt | with a howl | to the wa|ter,
Roar|ing in cran|ny and crag | till the pil|lars and clefts | of the ba|salt
Rang | like a god-|swept lyre.
And Mr. Swinburne did the same thing (see above) consciously.