Historical Manual of English Prosody

by George Saintsbury

XLVIII. Minor Imitations of Classical Metres

(a) Sapphics (Watts):

When the | fierce North-|wind with his | airy | forces
Bears up | the Bal|tic to a | foaming | fury,
And the | red light|ning with a | storm of | hail comes
Rushing a|main down.

This illustrates—as do the pieces which it, beyond all doubt, patterned, though in succession rather than directly (Cowper's "Hatred and Vengeance," Southey's "Cold was the Night Wind," and Canning's triumphant parody of this latter, the "Needy Knifegrinder")—the unyokeableness of classical metres—when not merely iambic, trochaic, or anapæstic—to English rhythm. The proper run of the Sapphic line is—

tumti-tumtum-tumtity-tumti-tum	{	-ti	;
		-tum

but this constantly in English, though not so much in the first line as elsewhere, changes itself into

tumtity-tum	{	-tum	|| tumtiti-titumty.
		-ti

Mr. Swinburne has got it right, but only as a tour de force, and, as in line 2, not always quite certainly.

Saw the | white im|placable | Aphro|dite,
Saw the | hair un|bound and the | feet un|sandalled
Shine as | fire of | sunset on | western |waters,
Saw the re|luctant.

But Southey and Canning always suggest the wrong:

Shē hăd nŏ ¦ hōme, thē̆ ¦ wōrld wăs ăll ¦ bĕfōre hĕr,

and

Stōry̆, sĭr? ¦ Blēss yŏu! ¦ Ī hăve nŏne ¦ tŏ tēll yŏu;

(b) Alcaics (Tennyson):

O migh|ty-mouthed | in|ventor of | harmonies,
O skilled | to sing | of | Time or E|ternity,
God-gift|ed or|gan-voice | of Eng|land,
Milton, a | name to re|sound for | ages.

(Correct, but not natural.)

(c) Hendecasyllabics (Coleridge):

Hear, my be|loved, an | old Mi|lesian | story!—
High, and em|bosom'd in | congre|gated | laurels,
Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland;
In the dim distance, amid the skiey billows,
Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had blest it.

(These very pretty lines exhibit a most curious instance of the unconscious force of the prosodic genius of a language. Coleridge was a good classical scholar, and quite enough of a mathematician to know the difference between 11 and 12. Yet every one of these hendecasyllabics will be found to be a dodecasyllabic; the poet having substituted (as in English prosody is quite allowable) an initial dactyl for the dissyllabic foot of the original metre. Once more this shows the English impatience of classical form.)

(d) Hendecasyllabics (Tennyson):

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus.
.. .. .. .
Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty metre.

A triumph, but a criticism as well, as its own ending shows:

As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art—

or "versicultural" rather.

(e) Galliambics.

These have been tried splendidly by Tennyson in Boadicea, interestingly by Mr. George Meredith in Phaethon, unsuccessfully by the late Mr. Grant Allen in his version of the Atys of Catullus. But the metre is not quite plain sailing even in Greek and Latin, and it is therefore better to leave it alone here and return to it in Glossary.