CHAPTER IX RIMELESS STANZAS Rime, the rack of finest wits, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Wresting words from their true calling, Jointing syllables, drowning letters, Greek was free from rime's infection, Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, But rests foiled. BEN JONSON: A Fit of Rime against Rime. In the various types of stanza which have been considered, in the sonnet and in the other fixed forms, rime serves to indicate the metrical scheme which the ear is to expect. Now and again, one line or another in the quatrain, or in a longer stanza, may be left unmated; and often a refrain is rimeless. Yet the importance of rime is indisputable; indeed one might declare that its necessity is almost undeniable. At least, this much must be admitted that in our modern English the stanza, whatsoever its length, seems to insist upon its sequence of terminal rimes, and that in consequence of this apparent insistence very few lyrics have been able to sing themselves into the memory and to capture a popularity which is at once wide and enduring, unless they have soared aloft on the wings of rime. In the epic and in the drama, poetry can get along very well without the tinkle of the terminal syllables; in fact, English poetry of this lofty species seems to reject rime, as needless and even enfeebling. But in lyrical poetry, whether it is confined in a single stanza or extended to a sequence of stanzas, rime appears to be almost obligatory. George Meredith went so far as to insist that "in lyrics the demand for music is imperative, and, as quantity is denied to the English tongue, rimes there must be." If rime is absent, our ears are deprived of a delight which they have learned to anticipate. Rime supplies to the stanza its architectural outline; and it is the steel-frame for the firm construction of the towering ode. If the rime is lacking, our ears miss it and they have to strain to make sure of the stanzaic form. This may be due merely to long traditions in English verse; or more probably it may be ascribed to some unexplored peculiarity of our modern languages. Certainly the lack of rime does not interfere with the charm of the lyrics of the Greeks, of the Latins, and of the Hebrews. The French, it may be noted, are even more dependent upon rime than we are; they have never been able to develop blank verse; and both their epic and their tragic poetry gladly wears the fetters of the riming couplet, made even more galling by the rule that a pair of masculine rimes shall always alternate with a pair of feminine rimes. Yet many poets have composed English lyrics in rimeless stanzas of varying length; and not a few of them have produced poems of unquestionable grace and beauty. Nevertheless, the fact remains that scarcely any poet of our language has achieved one of his major successes with an unrimed lyric; and it is always upon his lyrics adorned with chiming ends that his reputation rests. In English the rimeless lyric is sporadic and abnormal; and yet these experiments in stanzas without rime are significant and interesting. If we limit the word couplet, as perhaps we should, to describe a pair of lines which rime together, we have the word distich to describe a pair of unrimed lines. For inscriptions, for memorial purposes, the distich has a proved fitness. In so brief a lyric the necessity for rime is less obvious. Here is a distich of Emerson's: This passing moment is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild. Here are three lines of Landor's on Shakspere: In poetry there is but one supreme, Though there are many angels round his throne, There is a lapidary concision like that of an Attic inscription in these three lines of Emerson's: No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, The unrimed quatrain is infrequent in English verse; and yet a few stately specimens are available. Here is one from Emerson : There is a time when the romance of life Should be shut up, and closed with double clasp: That none can blow away falls into it. In these little lyrics, the ear has scarce time to awaken to the expectancy of rime before the poem comes to its end. But when the lyric consists of several stanzas the absence of the rime is soon noted; and although this may be forgiven, still it is likely to be more or less disconcerting, especially if the stanza chosen is familiar, as in this "Etching" of Henley's: Two and thirty is the plowman; He's a man of gallant inches, But his face is wan and sunken, And his eyes are large and brilliant, And his knees. This stanza seems to cry aloud for its customary rimes; and there is a wanton bravado in depriving us of them. The unrimed lyric is more acceptable when it avoids the well-known stanzaic forms wherein rime is traditional and when it employs a less rigid frame, freer in its movement. This Longfellow felt with his intuitive feeling for felicity of presentation. Here are the opening quatrains of his greeting "To an Old Danish Song-Book": Welcome, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside, The ungrateful world Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, This is excellent in its mating of style and substance. These unrimed quatrains justify themselves; they do not demand rime; they would not be bettered by it. There is an even bolder irregularity in the opening of "The Saga of King Olaf":— I am the God Thor, I am the War God, Here amid icebergs Cannot withstand it ! Longfellow had an easy mastery of rime when he chose to exert it, yet he liked to forego its aid and to lift up a lyric without the assistance of the expected pairs of terminal words. His song on "The Bells of Lynn" is written in distichs, with a refrain at the end of every second line: O curfew of the setting sun! O Bells of Lynn ! From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted, Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight, |