The Form of Poetry
...sed according to the meaning of the phrase. In turn, when phrases are grouped into sentences the stresses in the phrases may shift. Again , the stressing of a sentence may be changed in its wording, to suggest different meanings by different intonation patterns. The opening lines of Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight" show a pattern of stresses with few complica-tions: The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, then, is the rhythm of all language, including prose as well as poetry. In prose the distribution of stresses may be very irregular—that is, few or no, or many unstressed syllables may fall between the stressed syllables, and there may be no discernible pattern to the recurrence of stresses. In verse we can usually identify an ideal regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. This ideal pattern is called the meter of the verse, and we call it ideal, for the actual distribution of stresses rarely conforms to the pattern very long without a momentary deviation. Still there is a general tendency which may be thought of as the meter—the ideal pattern—struggling to confine the logical rhythms of the sentences. We can usually identify the ideal pattern without great difficulty and discover the effect of the degree of conformity of the actual rhythm to the ideal meter. It is customary to divide the metric line into units called feet, each foot usually containing one stressed syllable and its associated unstressed syllables. (In the spondee both syllables are stressed.) The most important foot in Eng-lish verse is the iamb, or iambic foot, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (^'): My heart | is like a sing | ing bird Whose nest | is in | a wa | tered shoot. By far the greater bulk of English verse is written in a basically iambic meter. Several other meters, of the number of possible ones, are of sufficient frequency to be identified here. The trochee or trochaic foot is another two-syllable foot; the accented syllable comes first ('"): There they | are, my | fifty | men and | women Naming | me the | fifty | poems | finished! Two trisyllabic feet appear with some frequency in English verse. The commoner of these is the anapest (~~'), which, like the iamb, is called a rising meter because the accent occurs at the end of the foot: ~ ~ ' For the moon | never beams without bring | ing me dreams Of the beau | tiful An | nabel Lee; And the stars | never rise but I feel | the bright eyes Of the beau tiful An | nabel Lee. The effect of anapestic lines is often light and swift. The lines also tend to fall into singsong, especially when the verse is thoroughly regular as it is here, or when the regularity is reinforced by internal rhymes, such as beams, dreams in the first of these lines and rise, eyes in the third. In this example the effect is further strengthened by the identity of the second and fourth lines so that the poem can be read acceptably, if at all, only by varying the intensity of stresses and muting the ideal meter through a greater than usual attention to the logical rhythm. The trisyllabic foot in falling meter is called a dactyl （ ` ~~). It is the least frequently used of the four major English meters and is more important as a source of substitute feet than as a predominant meter. Note also that since the foot ends in two unaccented syllables, the rhyme must be either feminine triple rhyme, or, as in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," the unusual and awkward rhyming of unaccented syllables only. Hence, dactylic lines are likely to be unrhymed, as in Evangeline, or a substitution is made for the final dactyl. Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" shows the triple feminine rhyme in lines 1 and 3 of each stanza and the substitution of a single accent in lines 2 and 4: One more un | fortunate Weary of | breath, Rashly im | portunate, Gone to her| death! Several kinds of variation on these basic meters are possible. Two later lines of Christina Rossetti's "A Birthday," which we have cited as an example of iambic meter, show a frequent kind of variation: Raise me | a dais of silk | and down; Hang it | with vair | and pur | ple dyes; Here the imperative requires stress on the verb, which is the first syllable of each line, so that the first foot is a trochee. Note also that some diversity of reading is possible here: dais may be pronounced as one syllable with a long a, in which case the foot is a normal iamb. If, however, the reader chooses to pronounce the word with two syllables (da-is), as is usual, the third foot might be thought of as having two unstressed syllables before the stressed one (-is of silk), in which case it would be an anapest. Actually the tendency would be to slur -is and of together into a single unstressed syllable so that once again we would have an iambic foot. Other variations appear in the following basically trochaic stanza： Out u | pon it! | I have | loved Three whole | days to | gether; And am | like to | love three | more, If it | prove fair | weather. Notice that a trochaic foot at the end of a line produces a feminine rhyme as in the second and fourth lines. If the poet wishes to avoid excessive use of feminine rhymes, he may leave the lines unrhymed as Browning does in the sample of trochaic meter we cited earlier. More often he produces a masculine rhyme by omitting the final unstressed syllable as in lines 1 and 3 of the present example. Thus he gains the advantage of beginning the line with a stress, as he could not with an ordinary iambic line (though he often gets this benefit by substituting a trochee for the first iamb), and at the same end the line with a stress to secure a masculine rhyme. Obviously there will occasionally be a difference of opinion as to whether the basic meter is iambic or trochaic, the one or the other modified by any of a number of substitutions or variations. In addition, several feet in this stanza contain two stressed syllables. This foot is called a spondee, or spondaic foot ("). It is used as a substitude foot where great emphasis is to be placed on a phrase, or where an abrupt, forceful movement is appropriate. Only rarely does it provide the prevailing meter of a line. Sometimes the shifting of an accent will leave a foot of two unaccented syllables: And of | ten for | pure doubt | and dread She sobbed, | made gid | dy in | the head. Such a foot is called a pyrrhus or pyrrhic foot (~~). It cannot provide the prevailing meter of a line. Scansion, or marking stressed and unstressed syllables and then dividing the line into feet, is only approximate, for it seems to imply that all the stresses are equally heavy. Actually, a good reader will indicate a subtle variety of intensity in stresses in response to the sense of the lines. Here again are two lines of Christina Rossetti's "A Birthday": My heart | is like | a sing | ing bird Whose nest | is in | a wa | tered shoot. Most readers will stress heart and bird more heavily than like and sing more heavily than like; yet clearly even like is much more heavily stressed than any of the four unstressed syllables. For purposes of identifying the meter, all the stresses may be treated as equal; for purposes of reading aloud or determining the precise meaning of a line, the stressing must mediate between the ideal meter and the logical distribution of accents in the sentence. We can indicate one possible reading of a stanza quoted earlier by letting higher numbers indicate heavier stress: Out u | pon it! | I have | loved Three whole | days to | gether; And am | like to | love three | more, If it | prove fair | weather. Thus the ideal meter is not wholly obliterated but is subtly modified by the logic of the phrases. It is often useful to observe the length of lines in a given poem in terms of feet. Since the commonly used feet consist of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllables, the number of feet will normally coincide with the number of stresses but will not have a constant relationship with the number of syllables. The terms used for line lengths are these: a one-foot line is called monometer (mo-nom-e-ter); two-foot line, dimeter (dim-e-ter); three-foot line, trimeter (trim-e-ter); four-foot line, tetrameter (te-tram-e-ter); five-foot line, pentameter (pen-tarn-e-ter); six-foot line, hexameter (hex-ame-ter). Longer lines are theoretically possible, but they are of such infrequent occurrence as to be of no concern here. In addition, they are usually best considered as a forcible joining of shorter lines so that what looks like heptameter may actually be an alternation of tetrameter and trimeter lines. These terms are joined with the names of feet to describe the ideal meter of various lines. Thus the meter of Blake's "The Tyger" is trochaic tetrameter, while the most frequent English line, used in sonnets, heroic couplets, blank verse, and a variety of other situations, is iambic pentameter. Our examples have already shown that line lengths vary sometimes from the established length of the ideal meter. These variations are so irregular that most of the special vocabulary for such variations is of little value. One such change, though, is frequent enough to warrant some attention. Occasionally an iambic pentameter line will be extended by the addition of one extra foot to produce an Alexandrine. Spenser regularly uses such lines to conclude his characteristic stanzas, and they occur occasionally elsewhere. In the Spenserian stanza, the Alexandrine brings the stanza to rest, rounds it off, and concludes it. No such generalization covers other situations, though, for an Alexandrine may seem either accelerated or retarded in relation to the surrounding pentameter lines. The Form of Poetry (3) 作者：佚名 2. LINES OF VERSE Another element in the rhythm of poetry is the natural pause within a line known as a caesura. In many lines the logic of phrasing produces a brief interruption along with a fall in pitch somewhere near the middle of the line: A time there was, || ere England's griefs began. In very long lines, as in the hexameter of Evangeline, secondary caesuras appear within the halves; indeed, any line longer than ten syllables tends to break into two parts, and in audible reading it will sound like two lines. The skillful poet finds in the caesura one more tool for shaping verse to his ends: he can enhance regularity by a precise placing of the caesura in the same place in each succeeding line, or he can give a loose, flowing, or informally conversational effect to his lines by varying the position of the caesura. Compare the practice of the following examples, assuming the position of the caesura to coincide with the internal mark of punctuation in each line: Be judge yourself, I'll bring it to the test, Which is the basest creature, man or beast: Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey; But savage man alone, does man betray. Pressed by necessity, they kill for food; Man undoes man, to do himself no good. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train . . . The reader can find clues to the significance of the lines or to an effective oral reading of them by observing the caesura position along with the other elements of form. Lines may further be distinguished as end stopped or run on. The end-stopped line coincides with a logical unit of thought so that the line is usually ended by a mark of punctuation. The run-on (or enjambed) line contains a part of a unit of thought, or parts of two units of thought; the stops marked by punctuation are within the lines, or the thought units run through two or more lines, so that only a few of the lines are end stopped. Again, the poet can manipulate this feature of verse for a variety of effects. We cannot generalize in such a way as to account for all cases, but among the effects possible are a swiftly continuous argument or an easily flowing discourse produced by run-on lines as against a flatly oracular utterance produced by end-stopped lines. Notice that in the first example cited in the preceding paragraph all the lines are end stopped, whereas in the second example, all are run on. This quality, along with the difference in handling the caesura and along with the fact that the first example is rhymed and the second unrhymed, accounts for the striking differences in movement, tempo, and mood of two iambic pentameter passages. 3. STANZA FORMS Finally, we should examine some of the ways in which lines are grouped to produce large structural units. Sometimes lines are irregularly grouped so that the divisions correspond to important stages in the development of the narrative or discussion. Such units vary in length and are not marked by any set scheme of rhymes, if, indeed, the lines are rhymed at all. These groupings are called verse paragraphs. They are likely to appear in long poems in blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter— and in free verse. Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" provides a good example. Groups of a definite number of lines, bound together by a rhyme scheme that reappears in each successive group, are called stanzas. (The term verse is sometimes incorrectly substituted for stanza. It should be reserved for its popular use in connection with songs, or to designate a single line of poetry.) Pairs of two successive lines are called couplets. They are likely to be rhymed, or if unrhymed, the second line of the couplet will be end stopped. Rhymed couplets may be open, that is, the second line will be run on so that the movement of the verse is free and continuous from one couplet to the next: A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower of quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing . . . Closed couplets are self-contained. The first line is likely to be end stopped; the second line is sure to be. The effect is more formal and epigrammatic or more oracular than the free movement of open couplets: Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die, Expatiate free o'er all this scene of Man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot, Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Couplets are frequently written in iambic or trochaic tetrameter; in either meter they are often called octosyllabic couplets to call attention to the eight-syllable length of each line. Even more frequently, couplets are in iambic pentameter and are often called decasyllabic couplets. The closed decasyllabic couplet is sometimes known as a heroic couplet. This unit, illustrated in the preceding paragraph, was used in the Restoration and eighteenth century, most notably by Dryden and Pope, for epic (heroic) or mock-heroic verse. It frequently showed a logical balance or antithesis pivoted about the caesura, or developed through the two lines of the couplet, and reinforced by alliteration and the rhyme: Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots swordknots strive, Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive. It is still usual, by the way, to print couplets without stanza spacing, and some writers do not refer to couplets as stanzas, reserving this term for longer units set off by spacing. Three successive rhyming lines as a variation in a sequence of heroic couplets are known as a triplet. In older printing practice, triplets were marked by a brace joining the three rhymes at the right end of the lines. Three rhyming lines, of whatever length, handled as an independent stanza, form a tercet. Usually the three lines have the same rhyme, but other arrangements are possible if only two of the lines rhyme. An old development of the tercet, borrowed from Dante, is terzd rima, iambic pentameter lines in which the first tercet rhymes a b a. The second tercet picks up the rhyme of the middle line in the first tercet so that its scheme is b c b. This pattern is repeated; the whole poem is tightly linked by its rhymes: As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream:— Methought I sat beside a public way Thick with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, Similar linking will appear also in the Spenserian stanza and the Spenserian sonnet. A four-line stanza is known as a quatrain. Here some interesting variations are possible, not only because of the different line lengths and meters available, but also because the rhymes can be arranged in several ways. A common form rhymes a b a b: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. When the lines are of iambic pentameter, as they are here, the stanza is known as the heroic or elegiac stanza, the latter term from Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," from which we have quoted. Some quatrains rhyme two lines only, thus: x a x a. One such quatrain the ballad stanza, in which tetrameter and trimeter lines alternate: There lived a Wife at Usher's Well, And a wealthy wife was she; She had three stout and stalwart sons, And sent them o'er the sea. Note, by the way, that ballads are not always composed in this stanza form. Another variation encloses the second rhyme within the first one: a b b a. This stanza is called an envelope quatrain or, if in iambic tetrameter; the In Memoriam stanza, from Tennyson's memorable use of it: Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapped about the bones. An interesting special variety is the Rubdiydt quatrain, iambic pentameter lines rhyming a a x a: Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has Sung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. Here the richness of the thrice-repeated rhyme is relieved by the unrhyming line, but enough similarity of line endings remains to make the quatrain tightly self-contained and to lend the quality of prophetic utterance to a "philosophic" poem. Once we have passed four lines, the possible variations in stanza form are too numerous to describe in detail, and we add only the few stanza forms that have been used with some frequency or that show some distinctive features. Of the seven-line stanzas, rime royal is interesting because of its effective use by Chaucer and some of his successors: Look how a tigress that hath lost her whelp Runs fiercely ranging through the woods astray, And seeing herself deprived of hope or help, Furiously assaults what's in her way, To satisfy her wrath, not for a prey; So fell she on me in outrageous wise, As could disdain and jealousy devise. These are iambic pentameter lines rhyming a b a b b c c. Ottava-rima consists of eight iambic pentameter lines rhyming a b a b a b c c: He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch Before the door had given her to his eyes; And from her chamber window he would catch Her beauty farther than the falcon spies; And constant as her vespers would he watch, Because her face was turned to the same skies; And with sick longing all the night outwear, To hear her morning step upon the stair. This stanza requires a good bit of ingenuity in finding two sets of three successive rhymes for each stanza (to say nothing of the concluding couplet), but it has been used with great success in long poems. One notable nine-line form is the Spenserian stanza, devised by Spenser for The Faerie Queene, but also used successfully by such later poets as Keats and Byron: Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed, And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, Still must I on; for I am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. The first eight lines are iambic pentameter; the ninth is iambic hexameter; or an Alexandrine. The prolongation of the final line combines with the closed rhyme of the couplet to bring the stanza to the repose of a definite conclusion. Another Spenserian trait, shown also in Spenser's personal variation on the English sonnet, is the linking of rhymes, in which the second rhyme of the first quatrain becomes the first rhyme of the second quatrain. Thus the rhyme scheme is a b a b b c b c c. 4. THE SONNET We come now to what is perhaps the most esteemed stanza form, the sonnet. Its rather rigid rules have seemed a challenge to the poet to show how much range and variety he can create within the confines of its one hundred forty syllables, with the result that some of the most deftly fashioned poems in English, as well as many of the most intense and moving, take this form. The term sonnet normally designates a lyric of fourteen iambic pentameter lines rhyming in one of several ways. Two basic forms, distinguished by their rhyme schemes and by their logical development, are frequent in English. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet rhymes a b b a, a b b a, c d e, c d e. (The rhyming of the last six lines may vary; for example, c d, c d, c d is possible ) Such a sonnet tends to fall into two stages: the first eight lines form the octave, and the last six the sestet. This formal division is frequently reflected in the logical progress of the content. The octave will pose a problem, depict a situation, or offer an observation. The sestet will provide a resolution of this opening and bring the matter to a conclusion, somewhat in the manner of a responsive reading in a church service. A somewhat more widely used form is the English or Shakespeare sonnet, which rhymes a b a b, c d c d, e f e f, g g. Here the formal and logical divisions fall into three quatrains followed by a couplet. The quatrains...