SOME ENGLISH METRES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3292, 18 April 1917, Page 53

SOME ENGLISH METRES.

By Jessie Mackay. If the average New Zealander were suddenly asked to define poetry, it is ten to one that he would say boldly, "Lines that rhyme," so completely has rhyme become the popular cuokoo of the poet's' nest, throwing out the other occupants. If the average classically-schooled Englishman "were asked the same question, the memory of Latin quantities rattling in his brain would constrain him to pop out the definition, "Lines that scan." But if their fathers had been asked, the question 1500 years ago, they would have said without hesitation, "Lines that sing." And theirs would have been the best answer of the three. But call the grammarian to counsel, and he makes a longer tale of it, and speaks of lines subject to the regular accentuation of syllables, and to the counting of those accentuated syllable-groups to make feet. He speaks, also, of the artistic arrangement of words in order to convey word-pictures or word music. There he would mention the technical effects that attain these objects—rhyme, alliteration, assonance, vowel-music, consonantal selection, and so forth—from all of which we might gather that poetry consists of lines that may rhyme, that must scan, and that ought to sing. (To scan is to count correctly the number and order of . accentuated syllable-groups in lines and versss.) We should have learned, that is to say, that poetry may be devoid of rhyme, alliteration, and other obvious euphonic "devices, but unless it scans it is technically not poetry. Here steps in the full-blown prosodist ■ —anatomist of the skeleton of poetry. He jangles on about the common iambic measure, with its unaccented syllable followed by an accented, as bemoan: of the trochee, with its accented syllable , followed by the unaccented, as holy: of ) the anapest, with its two unaccented syllable followed by an accented, as martinet; and the rare dactyl, with its accented syllable followed by ,two unaccented, as messenger. These are dryasdust matters we will have little to. do with.

But the friendly, familiar word, metre (measure) stands on a human basis, so to speak, and in common usage, at least, takes in the arrangement of rhyme as ■well as accent. It is to some of these metres or verse-forms in use among Eng-lish-speaking poets that I wish to draw attention. at present. The first English poetry, the models of which came over with the gleemen of Hengist and Horsa in the fifth century, is rough, jerky, virile stuff. Short bristling lines, little accent, no rhyme, some alliteration, grave, gloomy, yet resonant and manly echoes from, a battle-sounding past —that is what we find in "Browney," that oldest of Saxon, nay, of Germanic, epics, the scene of which, deemed at first to be laid in the far north, Denmark, perhaps, is by others believed to have been adapted to Whitby, in Northumberland. Beowulf, a great warrior, comes to rid King Hrothgar of a monster, the Grendel. Here is the description of the home of the monster and his horrific mother, also slain bv the hero : They a lone land Dwell in, wolf-lurking places, Windy nesses, Fearful fen-paths, Where the fell-streazn 'Neath the nesses's mists Down descendeth Flood under feld, Nor is it far hencs By mile-measure, That the mere standeth. Over it hang Eindy groves; ( ' A wood fast of roots The water over-canopies. There may {one) every night A dread wondeo.' sec. Fire in the flood. None so sage liveth Of men's bairns - That (he) the bottom wots. This is the kind of metre which an old Icelandic scald describes as "short, sharp-sounding: each like a sword-blow." In Caedmon, the poet-monk of Whitby, we find an altered theme, but much the same form. In his sacred epic of creation Satan ascends thus from the nether pit to fight for man's soul: — Began himself to equip God's calumniator. Prompt in arms He had an insolent mind. The chief his helmet on head set And it full strongly bound, Braced it with clasps. He knew many speeches of guileful words. He turned him from thence, Whirled himself through the doors of hell (He had a strong mind). Lion-like in air, In murderous mood, » He dashed that fire aside. Yet in this fierce, uncouth Teutonic poetry, devoid of love, of laughter, of grace, there are nevertheless the strong, telling, resonant making of courtly Chaucer, classic Spenser, and royal Shakespeare. It sings, if but with the sibylant, rapid swing of the sword. The centuries go by. Anglo-Saxon poetry is growing, affected somewhat by Church Latin, affected somewhat by the Norman French of the Conquest, and the later French of the northern minstrels and southern troubadours, but keeping its old character to a large extent, as seen in Layamon's "Brut," or history of Britain, written in King John's reign. Alliteration is there, but less marked, and an uncertain element of rhyme has come in from France. The oldest English partsong, written probably in Henry Ill's reign, a little later than Layamon, shows not only rhyme but a jaunty, tripping lyric form, as well as the faint beginning of Nature-poetry: Summer is a-coming in, Loud sing, cuckoo I Groweth eeed and hloweth mead, And springeth the wood new. Sing, cuckoo, cuckoo. Ewe bleateth after lamb, Loweth after calf cow. Bullock etarteth, buck vertetb, Merry sing, cuckoo! Well eing thou, ouckoo,

Nor cease to sing now, Sing, cuckoo, cuckoo. The fourteenth century was destined to be a turning point in English verse-craft. Two contrasted poets tower above the crowds of monkish or minstrel singers who dealt in borrowed fashions with themes of heaven and earth. Langland, the little-known author of the long allegory, "Piers Plowman," stands in true succession to the strong, grave, simple AngloSaxon poets of the far away past. He holds by alliteration as his main grace, though his verse is well accented round, and firm as their rough lines were not: he will owe nothing to that intrusive French rhyme, now so common. Here ia the opening of "Piers Plowman," where Langland?* true poet of the, people, will take no loftier character than that of a "shepe," or shepherd:— In a sorrtmer .season when soft was the soune, I shope me in. shrouds as I aslsepe were, In habit as an her mite, unholy of workes, Werit myde in this world, wondres to here. But on a May morning on Malvern hills, Me befel a ferly, of fairy, me thought; I was weary forwandered and went me to reste Under a brode bank, by a burn's side. And as I lay and lened and looked in the waters, I slumbered in a sleepyng, it sweyened, so merye. But English poetry Avas taken, transformed, and moulded into new forms by Langland's great contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer. Though of no noble family, Chaucer had the best education the times afforded, and subsequent residence at- the court and travels in France and _ Italy gave him a familiarity with the highest culture of Western Europe, which his genius incorporated with the strong, sound body of English verse proper. Before his 'time that verse was either of a more or less uncouth Teutonic school, or it was a hardly assimilated copy of French forms. Chaucer gave it a new structure that brought it into the literacy family of Europe, and g'ave it a body that lived on till the next great growing-time under Elizabeth, two centuries later. Of the various metres used by Chaucer we will note only that used for the bulk of the "Canterbury Tales," and so identified with that holy pilgrim cavalcade as to be called henceforth Riding Rhyme, as well as Heroic- Couplet. We have to remember that where the modern ear detects a perpetual halt it was carried off in Chaucer's time by the prevalent "feminine ending," or final sounded "e," long dropped or mute. Here is one of his shrewd, kindly character-sketch as from the "Canterbury Tales"—the holy prioress, Madam Eglantine: — There was also a Noune a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was full symple and coy; Hire greatest oath ne was not but by Saint Loy; And sche was cleped Madam Englentine. Ful wel sche sang the servise divyne Entuned in hire nose ful semely: And Frensch sche spak ful fair* and fetysly, After the schooi.of Stratford at Bowe, For Frensch of Parys was to hire unlmowe. At. mete weli-taught wase sche withalle; Sche let no morsel from her llppes falle, No wette hire fingers in her sauce deepe: But for to speken of hire conscience, Sche was so charitable and so pitous, Sche would weepe if that sche sawe a mous Caught in a trappe. if it were deed or bledde.' Of smale hpdde sche tha.+ eohe fodde With roasted flesh or milk or wasiel breed. But sore wep*. sche if oon of them were deed, Or if men smote it'with a yerde smerte; And all was conscience and tender herte.

We may fill up the period between Chaucer and the Tudor poets with that lasting beauty of English verse, the ballad, which in "Havelock," "King Horn," and other rough forms, was in use long before that. But the ' "Nut-brown Maid," written probably about the close of the Wars of the Roses, shows a high elegance and refinement of art. It is in the balladmetre proper—in line 3 of alternate tetrameters (four feet) and trimeters (three feet), the third and four lines rhyming, and also a hidden or middle rhyme within the line itself. The tale is the trial of a maiden's constancy by her lover, who pretends to be under sentence of death for some unknown fault. She answers thus: — 0 Lord, what is this world's bliss That changeth as the moon? My. summer's day in lusty May Is darked before the noon. 1 hear you say "Farewell." Nay, nay, "We depart not so soon. "Why say ye so? Whither will ye go. Alas! what have ye done? All my welfare to sorrow and care Should change if ye were gone; For in my mind, of all mankind, I love but you alone. He: I can believe, it shall you grieve, And somewhat you distrain; But afterward your paines hard Within a day or twain Shall soon aslake; and ye shall take Comfort to you again. Why should ye ought, for to make thought? Your labour were in. vain. And thus I do, and pray to you, As heartily as I can; For' I must to the greenwood go, Alone, a banished man. She: Now sith that ye have showed to me The secret of your mind, I shall be plain to you again, Like as ye shall me find; Sith it is so that ye will go, I will not stay behind. Shall never be said, the Nut-brown Maid Was to her love unkind; Make you ready, for so am I, Although it were anon; For in my mind, of all mankind, I love but you >alon». Mark how this form reappears after long centuries in the "Ancient Mariner." which Professor Saintsbury calls the most perfect example of ballad-metre. Even the hidden rhyme in the first and third lines is carefully reproduced in this haunting and purely English echo of the Plantagenet ballad-time:— At length did croes an albatross, Thorough the fog it came; Ab if it hid been a Christian soul We hailed it, in God's name.

It ate tho food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew; Tho ice did split with a thunder fit; The hclnisman steered us through. And a good south wind sprang up behind, The albatross did follow; And every day for food or play Carno to the mariner's hollo I In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke whit©, Glimmered the white moonshine. "God save thee, ancient mariner, From tho fiends that plague thee thus! Why look'st thou so?" " With my crossbow, I shot the albatross." But all can praise tho rich flexibility of the old ballad-metre in tho master-hand of Coleridge. As the wierd tale unfolds, and horror and disaster melt into shadowy, tender retrospect, the form insensibly alters to fit the mood': It ceased; yet still the sails made on, A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In tho leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Before quitting the interval between Chaucer and the Elizabethans we may note the ballade, one of the arbitrary French forms in vogue among the lesser poets of the Middle Ages—a form far enough removed from the ballad proper, consisting of three set verses, each ending with the same line, and followed by an envoy quatrain. Of this ballade by Austin Dobson the first verse and the Envoy will suffice : Ship to the roadstead, rolled, What does thou? O, once more Regain the port. Behold! Thy sides are bare of oar, Thy tall mast wounded sore Of Africus, end see, What shall thy spars restore? — Tempt not the tyrant seal Envoy. Ship of the State, before A care, and now to me A hope in my heart's core, Tempt not the tyrant sea. Other imported forms of the Tudor time were the little love-song called the madrigal, the graceful rondeau, and the plaintive little rondel. Either then or later the airy villanelle crossed the Channel also. All these are set and counted to the very line and syllable, and, all repeat lines at fixed intervals, the whole arrangement irresistibly recalling a carving _of cherry stones rather than an outpouring of emotion. Yet these small, intricate verses are a homage in their way to the laws of poetry, and a corrective of loose and slovenly writing. Our New Zealand poet, Mr Johannes Andersen, has excelled in these delicate constructions, and this of his is an artistic and tender example of the rondel: When gorgeous days have fall'n away, The half-grey eve is doubly clear; And in the star-rayed atmosphere The night is lovely as the day. So calm the eve, th© soft lights stray In ripples on the reedy 'mere, When gorgeous days have fall'n away And lixtlf-grey eve is doubly clear. When wiseless youth has played its play, And life is surer, more sincere, Lovers ceaseless afterglows appear More truly coloured, though less gay, When gorgeous days have fall'n away. Sometimes, indeed, these measures fit deeper effects. Here, for example, is a rondeau of the hour, by G. W. Harvey. And the hour has given it that depth and passion which we do not look for in this usually evanescent, form : If we return, will England be Just England still to you and me — The place where we must earn our bread? We who have walked among the dead, And watched the smile of agony, And seen the price of liberty, Which we have tajec-n carelessly From other hands. Nay, we shall dread, If we return, Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily The thing that men have died to free. Our English field shall blossom red In all the blood that has been shed, By men whose guardians are we, If we return. (To be Continued.)