XXVI. The Stopped Heroic Couplet (1580-1660)

(a) Spenser (Mother Hubberd's Tale), v. sup. p. [62].

(b) Drayton (Heroical Epistles, "Suffolk to Margaret"):

We all do breathe upon this earthly ball,
Likewise one Heav'n encompasseth us all;
No banishment can be to us assigned
Who doth retain a true resolved mind;
Man in himself a little world doth bear,
His soul the monarch ever ruling there;
Wherever then his body doth remain
He is a king that in himself doth reign.

(Here all the characteristics of the eighteenth-century couplet may be found—the central cæsura or split, the balance of the two halves, the completion of sense in the couplet and almost in the line.)

If fictious light I mix with Truth Divine
And fill these lines with other praise than Thine. (i. 2.)

We further seek what their offences be:
Guiltless I quit; guilty I set them free. (ii. 5.)

Thro' love the hazard of fierce war to prove,
Famous for arms, but famous more for love. (iii. 40.)

In fashions wayward, and in love unkind,
For Cupid deigns not wound a currish mind. (iv. 46.)

(Observe here the tendency, not merely to balance, but to positive antithesis, in the halves.)

(d) Beaumont, Sir John:

The relish of the Muse consists in rhyme:
One verse must meet another like a chime.
Our Saxon shortness hath peculiar grace
In choice of words fit for the ending-place,
Which leave impression in the mind as well
As closing sounds of some delightful bell.

(e) Sandys.

Compare the openings of Job I. and II.:

In Hus, a land which near the sun's uprise
And northern confines of Sabæa lies,
A great example of perfection reigned,
His name was Job, his soul with guilt unstained.

Again when all the radiant sons of light
Before His throne appeared, Whose only sight
Beatitude infused; the Inveterate Foe,
In fogs ascending from the depth below,
Profaned their blest assembly.

(f) Waller:

With the sweet sound of this harmonious lay
About the keel delighted dolphins play;
Too sure a sign of sea's ensuing rage
Which must anon this royal troop engage;
To whom soft sleep seems more secure and sweet
Within the town commanded by our fleet.

(g) Cowley (Davideis):

Lo! with pure hands thy heavenly fire to take,
My well-chang'd muse I a pure vestal make.
From Earth's vain joys and Love's soft witchcraft free,
I consecrate my Magdalene to thee.
Lo, this great work, a temple to thy praise
On polish'd pillars of strong verse I raise—
A temple where if thou vouchsafe to dwell
It Solomon's and Herod's shall excel.

(It should be observed on these that in Beaumont, Sandys I., Waller, and Cowley the separation of the couplets is strictly maintained; in Sandys II. not. In fact, this passage, but for the rhymes, has almost the run of Miltonic blank verse. Waller once approaches an initial trochee or "inversion of accent" in "With the." Here Cowley is pretty regular. But not far off may be found such a line as—

Themselves at first against themselves they excite;

where he must either have intended "they-ex-" to be elided or have meant an anapæstic ending of the kind so common in the dramatists his contemporaries. And he constantly uses (explicitly defending it) the Alexandrine, as in—

or—

while he often employs trochees or spondees. He does not use the triplet in the Davideis, but does elsewhere, and, after Virgil, he sometimes indulges in half-lines.)