Of this poem Mr. C. H. Herford says: "The Story of Rimini is the starting-point of that free or Chaucerian treatment of the heroic couplet, and of the colloquial style, eschewing epigram and full of familiar turns, which Shelley in Julian and Maddalo and Keats in Lamia made classical." (Age of Wordsworth, p. 83.) The treatment of the couplet is still characterized by but slight use of run-on lines, and a preference for the medial cesura; but on the other hand there is a large degree of freedom in the inversion of accents and other alterations of the regular stress. Compare the last line of the present specimen, and such other lines as
"Of crimson cloths hanging a hand of snow."
"Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's crest."
"'Who's there?' said that sweet voice, kindly and clear."
"The other with the tears streaming down both his cheeks."
The last of these lines, an alexandrine, is also characteristic. Hunt imitated Dryden in the use of both alexandrine and triplet. Of the latter he said: "I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the triplet to the reader's eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It has a look like the bridge of a lute." (Preface to Works, 1832.) Mr. A. J. Kent, in an article in the Fortnightly Review, says of Leigh Hunt that "he became the greatest master since the days of Dryden" of the heroic couplet. (1881, p. 224.)
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
(Keats: Endymion, ll. 1-24. 1818.)
In the couplet of Keats, and of a number of his successors, we have a really different measure from the "heroic couplet" proper. The individual line and the couplet alike cease to be prominent units of the verse. The effect is therefore closely allied to that of blank verse; the rimes, not being emphasized by marked pauses, serving rather as means of tone color than as organizers of the verse. See Mr. Saintsbury's remarks (quoted in the notes on Dryden, p. [195], above), on "lines made musical by the rhymes rather than divided by them." In like manner Mr. Symonds says that "the couplets of Marlowe, Fletcher, Shelley, and Keats follow the laws of blank verse, and add rhyme—that is to say, their periods and pauses are entirely determined by the sense." (Blank Verse, p. 66.) This is true of the couplets of Shelley and Keats, and to a less degree of those of Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, but will hardly apply to Marlowe, nor, as we have seen, to the Elizabethans in general.[24]
There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn.
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore,
Under the gray beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not.
(Shelley: Epipsychidion, ll. 190-200. 1821.)
Shelley carries the free treatment of this measure to the utmost limit. The couplet is not felt to be of significance, and many lines are so irregular in stress as to make scansion difficult. Compare this passage:
"The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet
Keeps up her love-lament; and the owls flit
Round the evening tower; and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance."[25]