Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism

by F. V. N. Painter

"Eternity, with all its years,
Stands present to Thy view;
To Thee there's nothing old appears,
To Thee there's nothing new."

The short-meter stanza consists of four iambic lines, the first, second, and fourth being trimeter, and the third tetrameter. The rhymes are alternate; as,

"Let good or ill befall,
It must be good for me;
Secure of having Thee in all,
Of having all in Thee."

53. Blank Verse. Unrhymed poetry, usually in iambic pentameter measure, is known as blank verse. It is our ordinary epic and dramatic verse, as exemplified in Shakespeare and Milton. Blank verse has greater freedom than rhymed verse, but the attainment of a high degree of excellence in it is scarcely less difficult. It approaches the ease and freedom of prose, and perhaps for that reason it is apt to sink below a high level of poetry.

Apart from its diction and meter, the harmony of blank verse depends upon two things,—namely, its pauses and its periods. The rhythmical pause occurring in a line is called a cæsura. Though usually falling near the middle of the line, the cæsural pause may occur at any point, and sometimes there may be two cæsuras. There is generally a rhythmical pause at the end of a verse, and when this pause is stressed by a completion of the sense the line is said to be "end-stopt"; but if the sense awaits completion in the following verse, the line is said to be "run-on." The French name enjambement is sometimes used to designate a "run-on" line. The following extract from Thomson will serve to illustrate the cæsural pauses, as well as "end-stopt" and "run-on" lines:

"These as they change, | Almighty Father, | these
Are but the varied God. | The rolling year
Is full of thee. | Forth in the pleasant Spring
Thy beauty walks, | thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; | the softening air is balm;
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
And every sense, | and every heart, is joy.
Then comes thy glory | in the summer months
With light and heat refulgent. | Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection | through the swelling year."

By period is meant the conclusion of the sentence. The period or end of a sentence may fall at the end of a line or at any point in it. The period serves to break up the poem into longer or shorter parts. In Milton the sentences are generally long, and the periods thus break up the poem into a sort of stanza of varying length. "Run-on" lines are the prevailing type; and this fact, in connection with the length of the sentences and the constant shifting of the pauses, imparts to his "Paradise Lost" its peculiar organ roll. The following passage will serve to make this clear:

"Of man's first disobedience, | and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, | whose mortal taste
Brought death into our world, | and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, | till one greater Man
Restore us, | and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, | that on the secret top
Of Oreb, | or of Sinai, | didst inspire
That shepherd | who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning | how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos.

"Or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, | and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, | I thence
Invoke thy aid | to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight | intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, | while it pursues
Things unattempted yet | in prose or rhyme."

These sixteen lines practically make two stanzas. Twelve lines, or three fourths of the whole number, are "run-on." The cæsural pause, as will be seen on counting the feet in connection with which they occur, is exceedingly varied.