XXXVI. Rhymeless Attempts (Collins to Shelley)
(a) Collins (Ode to Evening):
If aught | of oat|en stop | or pas|toral song
May hope, | O pen|sive Eve, | to soothe | thine ear
Like thy | own sol|emn springs,
Thy springs | and dy|ing gales.
(Perfectly regular heroics and sixes; "pastoral" most probably intended to be "past'ral.")
(b) Sayers (Choruses of Moina):
I.
Hail to | her whom | Frea | loves,
Moina | hail!
When first | thine in|fant eyes | beheld
The beam | of day,
Frea | from Val|halla's | groves
Mark'd thy | birth in | silent | joy;
Frea, | sweetly | smiling saw
The swift-|wing'd mes|senger | of love
Bearing | in her | rosy | hand
The gold-|tipt horn | of gods.
(This—which is fairly but not wholly free from the fault noted in II.—is ordinary iambic and trochaic mixture.)
II.
Dark, dark | is Moi|na's bed,
On earth's | hard lap | she lies.
[Where is | the beau|teous form
That he|roes loved?]
[Where is | the beam|ing eye,
The rud|dy cheek?]
Cold, cold | is Moi|na's bed,
And shall | no lay | of death
[With pleas|ing mur|mur soothe
Her part|ed soul?]
[Shall no | tear wet | the grave
Where Moi|na lies?]
The bards | shall raise | the lay | of death,
The bards | shall soothe | her part|ed soul,
[And drop | the tear | of grief
On Moi|na's grave.]
(It will be observed that each of the couplets enclosed in square brackets is simply a blank-verse line, arbitrarily split. This is probably the result of the effort at rhymeless stanza. Observe the unbroken iambic rhythm—another danger.)
(c) Southey (Thalaba):
How beau|tiful | is Night!
A dew|y fresh|ness fills | the si|lent air;
No mist | obscures, | nor cloud | nor speck | nor stain
Brēaks thĕ | serene | of heaven:
In full-|orbed glo|ry yon|der moon | divine
Rōlls thrōugh | the dark | blue depths.
Beneath | her stead|y ray
The des|ert-cir|cle spreads,
Līke thĕ | rōund ō|cean, gir|dled with | the sky.
How beau|tiful | is Night!
(Iambic lines of various lengths with trochaic and spondaic but no other substitution (there are anapæsts elsewhere). The couplet-six, or split Alexandrine, is intentional, but Southey expressly avoids split heroics.)
(d) Shelley (Queen Mab):
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean's wave
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!