XXXI. The Heroic Couplet from Dryden to Crabbe
(a) Dryden (early non-dramatic):
Our setting sun, from his declining seat,
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat;
And, when his love was bounded in a few
That were unhappy, that they might be true,
Made you the favourite of his last sad times,
That is, a sufferer in his subjects' crimes.
Thus, those first favours you received, were sent,
Like heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment:
Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,
E'en then took care to lay you softly by,
And wrapped your fate among her precious things,
Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king's.
(Note recurrent you and your employed like pauses to vary verse. Otherwise strictly "regular.")
(b) Dryden ("heroic"-dramatic type at best):
Fair though you are
As summer mornings, | and your eyes more bright
Than stars that twinkle ¦ in a winter's night;
Though you have eloquence to warm and move
Cold age ¦ and praying hermits ¦ into love;
Though Almahide with scorn ¦ rewards my care,—
Yet, | than to change, | 'tis nobler to despair.
My love's my soul; | and that from fate is free;
'Tis that unchanged and deathless part of me.
(Conquest of Granada II., III. iii.)
(Observe how the alternation of central pause, strongly (|) and weakly (¦) or hardly at all (no mark) emphasised, knits and shades the verse; and how, in the first line, there is positive enjambment. Yet there is still no trisyllabic substitution. This type is continued and perfected in the great satires and didactic pieces for argument and attack, and in the Fables for narrative. It admits, to relieve monotony, the Alexandrine (Hind and Panther, i. 23, 24))—
Their corps[e] to perish, but their kind to last,
So much | the death|less plant | the dy|ing fruit | surpassed;
the triplet (ibid. a little further)—
Can I believe eternal God could lie
Disguised in mortal mould and infancy,
That the great Maker of the world could die?
both combined (Palamon and Arcite, ii. 560-562)—
There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor's thought,
And mid|wife time | the ri|pened plot | to mur|der brought;
and sometimes the fourteener (Medal, 94)—
Thou leapst o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way.
(c) Passages from Garth, (1), and Pope, (2) and (3), to illustrate the mechanical character of the eighteenth-century couplet, the ease with which it can be shifted from decasyllabic to octosyllabic, and its peculiar construction of ridge-backed antithetic pause:
(1) With breathing fire his pitchy nostrils blow,
As from his sides he shakes the fleecy snow.
Around this hoary prince from wat'ry beds
His subject islands raise their verdant heads.
. . . . . . .
Eternal spring with smiling verdure here
Warms the mild air and crowns the youthful year.
. . . . . . .
The vine undressed her swelling clusters bears,
The labouring hind the mellow olive cheers.
(The Dispensary.)
(Read, omitting the interlined epithets, and you get perfectly fluent octosyllables.)
(2) First in these fields, I try the sylvan strains,
Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful plains.
Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring,
While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;
Let vernal airs thro' trembling osiers play
And Albion's cliffs resound the rural lay.
(Windsor Forest.)
Now this, in the same way, by the omission of some of the italicised gradus epithets, becomes—
First in these fields I try the strains,
Nor blush to sport on Windsor's plains.
Fair Thames, flow gently from thy spring,
While on thy banks [the] Muses sing;
Let vernal airs through osiers play
And Albion's cliffs resound the lay.
[Transcriber's Note: In the following example, first part of each line is angled up the page, and second part of each line is angled down.]
(3) Not with more glories in th' ethereal plain
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than issuing forth the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs and well-drest youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss and Infidels adore.
Her livelylooks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those.
Favours to none to all she smiles extends,
Oft she rejects but never once offends.
Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
And like the sun they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease and sweetness void of pride
Might hide her faults if Belles had faults to hide.
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look in her face and you'll forget them all.
(The Rape of the Lock.)
Of course Pope,[44] in the close of the Dunciad and elsewhere, has passages of the utmost dignity; and the antithetic arrangement is good for satire. But perhaps the finest passages of this class of couplet—certainly the finest with the Dunciad close—are the following, from
(d) Johnson (Vanity of Human Wishes—end):
Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?
Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
. . . . . . .
Yet, when the sense of sacred presence fires
And strong devotion to the skies aspires,
Pour forth thy favours for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned;
For love which scarce collective man can fill;
For patience sovereign o'er transmuted ill;
For faith that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat.
These goods for man the laws of Heaven ordain,
These goods He grants who grants the power to gain;
With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.
and
(e) Crabbe ("Delay brings Danger"—end):
Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh
On the red light that filled the eastern sky;
Oft had he stood before, alert and gay,
To hail the glories of the new-born day:
But now dejected, languid, listless, low,
He saw the wind upon the water blow,
And the cold stream curled onward as the gale
From the pine hill blew harshly down the dale;
On the right side the youth a wood surveyed,
With all its dark intensity of shade;
Where the rough wind alone was heard to move,
In this, the pause of nature and of love,
When now the young are reared, and when the old,
Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold—
Far to the left he saw the huts of men,
Half hid in mist, that hung upon the fen;
Before him swallows gathering for the sea,
Took their short flights and twittered on the lea;
And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done,
And slowly blackened in the sickly sun;
All these were sad in nature, or they took
Sadness from him, the likeness of his look
And of his mind—he pondered for a while,
Then met his Fanny with a borrowed smile.
(Observe, besides the other points mentioned, that trisyllabic feet practically never occur in Garth, Pope, and Johnson—"wat'ry for watery," and words like "ether(ea)l," "celest(ia)l," "happ(ie)r," being intended to take the benefit of elision, though, as a matter of fact, they give that of extension. Only Crabbe, in "gathering," may perhaps not have meant "gath'ring.")