and a six-line tail-rime stanza by the addition of internal rime (a α bg 7 71⁄2 bg): The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew The furrow followed free: We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. The extended six-line stanza a, b, c, b, d, bg is used by Longfellow in The Slave's Dream and The Village Blacksmith and by Rossetti in The Blessed Damozel: The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven. In the ballad stanza the rime is generally confined to the second and fourth lines (a, b, c, b), but the first and third may also rime (a, b3 84 bg), e.g.: In somer when the leves spryng, By adding a fifth short riming line Rossetti forms the stanza of The Staff and Scrip (a̸ b ̧ à ̧ bg b2): Her eyes were like the wave within; Like water-reeds the poise Of her soft body, dainty thin; And like the water's noise Her plaintive voice. By doubling the common metre eight-line stanzas (a bз c1 bg d e f еg or a bз a b c d c1 d2), used by Burns in some poems (Highland Mary, Winter, Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots - The Rigs o' Barley etc.) result. By adding a short refrain verse a nine-line stanza is formed; cp. e.g. The Holy Fair (a, b, a, bз c1 dg c1 dg E2): Upon a simmer Sunday morn, I walked forth to view the corn, The risin' sun, owre Galston muirs, Wi' glorious light was glintin'; The nine-line stanza of Halloween, A Dream, The Ordination is similar. § 230. Elegiac Stanza. Alternate rime a bab was much used in ME., and has remained in NE. (§ 170 note.) We find four-line stanzas with alternate rime in Wyatt and Surrey, e.g. a b a b (Tottel's Miscellany, Arber's Reprint p. 78), a bab (pp. 24, 27, 41, 51, 58, 63.) or a bab (pp. 27, 65.). In the latter case there is sometimes at the end of the poem, as in Surrey's sonnets, a rimed couplet, so that we really have a six-line stanza a babcc (§ 236). In dramas of the sixteenth century, also, the fourline stanza a bab, is much used; Gismond of Salern in Love (Brandl, Quellen des weltlichen Dramas vor Shakespeare QF. 70, p. 539 ff.) and Lady Carew's Tragedy of Mariam (§ 221) are written almost entirely in such stanzas. Shakespeare in his early dramas, e.g. in Romeo and Juliet frequently uses quatrains amongst the rimed couplets. Quatrains also form the foundation of Surrey's sonnets (§ 248), of the Venus and Adonis stanza (§ 236) and of the Spenserian stanza. In the seventeenth century Davenant uses the four-line stanza a bab in his Gondibert and Dryden in Annus Mirabilis. This elegiac stanza became most widely known through Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard (1751): The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Gosse (Alden, p. 73) says of it: "The measure itself, from first to last, is an attempt to render in English the solemn alternation of passion and reserve, the interchange of imploring and desponding tones, that is found in the Latin elegiac." In the nineteenth century both a bab, and a b a b are much used. Longfellow adds a refrain (a ba bb) in his translation of Uhland's Glück von Edenhall: Of Edenhall, the youthful Lord Bids sound the festal trumpet's call; He rises at the banquet board And cries, 'mid the drunken revellers all, 'Now bring me the Luck of Edenhall!' In Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women the last verse is shortened (a b ag bg): I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade, Sung by the morning star of song, who made His music heard below; Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still. § 231. In Memoriam Stanza. The stanza abba is not found in ME., but the form cddde occurs at the end of the thirteenline stanza (§ 175). In the sixteenth century however we find a b bag in Wyatt (p. 76): Suffisèd not (madame) that you did teare My wofull hart, but thus also to rent The weping paper that to you I sent Wherof eche letter was written with a teare, a b ba in Sidney (Alden, p. 74): Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling, Now will I but venture this; Who will read, must first learn spelling, and in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle: Here the anthem doth commence: In a mutual flame from hence. Owing to Milton and the sonnet writers of the nineteenth century, who imitate the Italian sonnet, the rime order (abba ab bag) became the rule for the sonnet. But Tennyson's In Memoriam is the classical example of a four-line stanza abba: I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; But, for the unquiet heart and brain, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Corson (Primer of English Verse, p. 75) says of the In Memoriam-stanza: "The poem could not have laid hold of so many hearts as it has, had the rhymes been alternate, even if the thought element had been the same. The atmosphere of the poem would not have served so well to conduct the indefinitely spiritual element which constitutes the essential life of the poem." |