I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise:
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips—
As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse,
Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes—
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.
(Observe how fine this couplet is, and how personal. We have seen how Keats studied Dryden: this is as if Dryden had studied Keats.)
(f) Mr. Swinburne (Tristram of Lyonesse):
Love, that is first and last of all things made,
The light that has the living world for shade,
The spirit that for tem|poral veil | has on
The souls of all men, wo|ven in un|ison,
One fi|ery rai|ment with all lives inwrought
And lights of sun|ny and star|ry deed and thought.
(In this splendid metre the characteristics of stopped and enjambed couplet are to a great extent combined. Considerable anapæstic substitution to gain speed.)
XL. Nineteenth-Century Blank Verse (Wordsworth to Mr. Swinburne)
(a) Wordsworth ("Yew Trees"):
Beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries—ghostly shapes
May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
Sīlĕnce | and Foresight, Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow;—there to celebrate,
As in a na|tural tem|ple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring | from Glaramara's inmost caves.
(The student should notice the difference, slight but distinctly perceptible, from the Miltonic model.)
(b) Shelley (Alastor):