(Milton: Samson Agonistes, ll. 1636-1652. 1671.)
The blank verse of Milton is characterized by greater freedom and flexibility than that of any earlier poet. The single line practically ceases to be the unit of the verse, which is divided rather into metrical paragraphs, or, as some would even call them, stanzas. Professor Corson quotes an interesting passage from a letter of Coleridge, giving an account of a conversation in which Wordsworth expressed his view of this sort of blank verse. "My friend gave his definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted (the English iambic blank verse above all) in the apt arrangement of pauses and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,
with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic vigor of single lines, which were indeed injurious to the total effect, except where they were introduced for some specific purpose." (Corson's Primer of English Verse, p. 218.) In like manner Mr. Symonds says: "The most sonorous passages begin and end with interrupted lines, including in one organic structure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphs of fluent melody.... In these structures there are many pauses which enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are perfect, none satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, until the final and deliberate close is reached." (Blank Verse pp. 56, 57.)
In Milton's own prefatory note to Paradise Lost, he called his blank verse "English heroic verse without rime." Rime he spoke of as "the invention of a barbarous age, ... graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets,"—not least among them, he might have said, being John Milton himself. He described also the special character of his verse in saying that "true musical delight ... consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another,"—that is, by enjambement. "This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, ... that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."[32]
It appears from this note that Milton regarded his heroic blank verse as a different measure from the familiar dramatic blank verse. The latter he used in Samson Agonistes, the verse-structure of which will be seen to differ from that of Paradise Lost; the most salient distinction is the more frequent use of feminine endings. Mr. Symonds remarks interestingly on the "difference between Shaksperian and Miltonic, between dramatic and epical blank verse. The one is simple in construction and progressive, the other is complex and stationary.... The one exhibits a thought, in the process of formation, developing itself from the excited fancy of the speaker. The other presents to us an image crystallized and perfect in the poet's mind; the one is in time, the other in space—the one is a growing and the other a complete organism.... The one, if we may play upon a fancy, resembles Music, and the other Architecture." (Blank Verse, p. 58.)
Methinks I do not want
That huge long train of fawning followers,
That swept a furlong after me.
'Tis true I am alone;
So was the godhead, ere he made the world,
And better served himself than served by nature.
And yet I have a soul
Above this humble fate. I could command,
Love to do good, give largely to true merit,
All that a king should do; but though these are not
My province, I have scene enough within
To exercise my virtue.
All that a heart, so fixed as mine, can move,
Is, that my niggard fortune starves my love.
(Dryden: Marriage à la Mode, III. i. 1672.)
She lay, and leaned her cheek upon her hand,
And cast a look so languishingly sweet,
As if, secure of all beholders' hearts,
Neglecting, she could take them: boys, like Cupids,
Stood fanning, with their painted wings, the winds
That played about her face: but if she smiled,
A darting glory seemed to blaze abroad,
That men's desiring eyes were never wearied,
But hung upon the object. To soft flutes
The silver oars kept time; and while they played,
The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight,
And both to thought. 'Twas heaven, or somewhat more;
(Dryden: All for Love, III. i. 1678.)