What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:
When we mind labor, then only, we're too old—
What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees
(Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil),
I hope to get safely out of the turmoil
And arrive one day at the land of the Gypsies,
And find my lady, or hear the last news of her
From some old thief and son of Lucifer,
His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
Sunburned all over like an Æthiop.
(Browning: The Flight of the Duchess, xvii.)
These passages illustrate sufficiently the grotesque effects of double and triple rime in English verse,—effects of which Byron and Browning are the unquestioned masters. Professor Corson observes that the double rime is to be regarded as the means of "some special emphasis," whether serious or humorous. More commonly the effect is humorous, of course, as in Don Juan, where the rimes indicate "the lowering of the poetic key—the reduction of true poetic seriousness." The rimes in the Flight of the Duchess Mr. Edmund Gurney has said sometimes "produce the effect of jokes made during the performance of a symphony." The specimen which follows illustrates the use of these double and triple rimes for a wholly serious purpose. Professor Corson remarks that in this case the rime serves "as a most effective foil to the melancholy theme. It is not unlike the laughter of frenzied grief." It is interesting to note that in the Italian language, where double rimes are almost constant, masculine rimes are sometimes used for grotesque effect in the same way that English poets use the feminine.
Perishing gloomily,
Spurred by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest.—
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast.
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!
(Thomas Hood: The Bridge of Sighs.)
Roll the strong stream of it
Up, till the scream of it
Wake from a dream of it
Children that sleep,
Seamen that fare for them
Forth, with a prayer for them;
Shall not God care for them,
Angels not keep?
Spare not the surges
Thy stormy scourges;
Spare us the dirges
Of wives that weep.
Turn back the waves for us:
Dig no fresh graves for us,
Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep.
(Swinburne: Winter in Northumberland, xiv.)
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods he came.
(Sidney Lanier: A Ballad of Trees and the Master.)