XLI. The Non-Equivalenced Octosyllable of Keats and Morris
(a) Keats (Eve of St. Mark):
Upon a Sabbath day it fell;
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell,
That called the folk to evening-prayer;
The city streets were clean and fair
From wholesome drench of April rains;
And on the western window-panes
The chilly sunset faintly told
Of unmatured green valleys cold,
Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,
Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,
Of primroses by sheltered rills,
And daisies on the aguish hills.
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell:
The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies,
Warm from their fire-side orat'ries,
And moving, with demurest air,
To even-song and vesper prayer.
Each archèd porch, and entry low,
Was filled with patient folk and slow,
With whispers hush, and shuffling feet,
While played the organ loud and sweet.
(b) Morris (The Ring given to Venus):
By then his eyes were opened wide.
Already up the grey hillside
The backs of two were turned to him:
One, like a young man tall and slim,
Whose heels with rosy wings were dight;
One like a woman clad in white,
With glittering wings of many a hue,
Still changing, and whose shape none knew.
In aftertime would Laurence say
That though the moonshine, cold and grey,
Flooded the lonely earth that night,
These creatures in the moon's despite
Were coloured clear, as though the sun
Shone through the earth to light each one—
And terrible was that to see.
(Here the effect is entirely achieved by dividing the couplets, with full stops or strong pauses at the end of the first line, and running the sense of the second into the first of the next; by considerable variations of internal pause, and by placing emphatic or brightly coloured words at different spots. Equivalence is practically limited to such things as "glittering," "aguish," "many a," etc., where it is at minimum strength.)
XLII. The Continuous Alexandrine (Drayton and Browning)
(a) Drayton (Polyolbion):
Whenas the pliant Muse, with fair and even flight,
Betwixt her silver wings is wafted to the Wight,—
That Isle, which jutting out into the sea so far,
Her offspring traineth up in exercise of war;
Those pirates to put back, that oft purloin her trade,
Or Spaniards or the French attempting to invade.
Of all the southern isles she holds the highest place,
And evermore hath been the great'st in Britain's grace.
Not one of all her nymphs her sovereign fav'reth thus,
Embracèd in the arms of old Oceanus.
For none of her account so near her bosom stand,
'Twixt Penwith's furthest point and Goodwin's queachy sand.
(b) Browning (Fifine at the Fair):