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"Meire og Minne Moga heimdaller. |
Gab Ginunga Enn Gras huerge." |
This verse was used by the old poets of the Saxons in Britain. The epic of "Beowulf" is written in this style and so are the poems of Caedmon, the noted paraphraser of the scriptures. An authoritative writer says:
"The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was neither modulated according to foot-measure, like that of the Greeks and Romans, nor written with rhymes, like that of modern languages. Its chief and universal characteristic was a very regular alliteration, so arranged that in every couplet there should be two principal words in the first line beginning with the same letter, which letter must also be the initial of the first word on which the stress of the voice falls in the second line. The only approach to a metrical system yet discovered is that two risings and two fallings of the voice seem necessary to each perfect line."
A specimen of this alliterative verse from the works of Caedmon shows the peculiarity of the construction.
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"Se him cwom to frofre. & to feorh-nere. Mid lufan & mid lisse. Se thone lig tosceaf. Halig and heofon-beohrt. Hatan fyres. Tosweop hine & toswende. Thurh tha swithan miht. Ligges leoma."[31] |
The reader will note the alliteration of the l's in the third and fourth lines, and the h's in the next two. The change in vowel sounds following the consonants was deemed by Wagner as of especial value in music.
As the English language developed, this method of rhythmic construction remained in use, and we find that it is used in such old poems as "Piers Plowman's Vision" (about 1350).
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"In a Somer Season when hot was the Sunne, I Shope me into Shroubs as I a Shepe were; Habite as an Harmet, unHoly of werkes, Went Wyde in thys world Wonders to heare." |
Wagner, however, modelled his verse on that of the original writers of it, as their language was more closely affiliated with German than the early English was. He made an exhaustive study of the constitution of the staff-rhyme, and saw in its conservation of the elementary principles of poetic speech the factor necessary to the perfection of an organic union with music. For those who have studied the conventional formulas of musical expression—the major and minor modes, chromatic progressions, the declamatory style as opposed to the pure cantilena, the crescendo and diminuendo, the agitato—know that all these have been transferred from the natural employment of vocal tone and articulation in speech as influenced by the emotions which these musical symbols are intended to represent. And we know, too, that the reflex action of music in producing in the hearer the emotions which it aims to depict is due to its adoption of methods founded on man's oral expression of his feeling. Wagner saw in the staff-rhyme the first attempt to systemise into poetry the elevated speech of emotion, and he discerned in it technical features admirably suited to his plan. In "Opera and Drama" he says:
"In Stabreim the kindred speech-roots are fitted to one another in such a way that, just as they sound alike to the physical ear, they also knit like objects into one collective image in which the Feeling may utter its conclusions about them. Their sensibly cognisable resemblance they win either from a kinship of the vowel sounds, especially when these stand open in front without any initial consonant ('Erb und eigen.' 'Immer und ewig'); or from the sameness of the initial consonant itself, which characterises the likeness as one belonging peculiarly to the object ('Ross und Reiter.' 'Froh und frei'); or again, from the sameness of the terminal consonant that closes up the root from behind (as an assonance), provided the individualising force of the word lies in that terminal ('Hand und Mund.' 'Recht und Pflicht')."