CHAPTER X

THE COUPLET

With the substitution of heroic for unrimed verse, the theory and practice of harmony in English composition were altered. What was essentially national in our poetry-the music of sustained periods, elastic in their structure, and governed by the subtlest laws of melody in recurring consonants and vowels was sacrificed for the artificial eloquence and monotonous cadence of the couplet. For a century and a half the summit of all excellence in versification was the construction of neat pairs of lines, smooth indeed and polished, but scarcely varying in their form.-JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS: Blank Verse.

FOR the expression of lyrical sentiment, the poets have generally chosen some form of the stanza, a single quatrain, an octave, a sonnet, a ballade, or a sequence of whatever unit they have deemed most fit for their purpose. For narrative, they have also employed not infrequently a succession of stanzas, notably in the ballad, which sets forth a story running over from one quatrain into another until the tale is told. But more often the poets have preferred not to cut up their narrative into equal parts and not to confine themselves within the narrow limits of any stanza-form.

If the poet decides that his story will profit by the aid of rime, he is likely to select one of three meters, anapestic tetrameter, iambic tetrameter, or iambic pentameter, generally riming in couplets. Of these three the iambic pentameter, commonly known as the "heroic couplet," has been most frequently employed. The heroic couplet has served not only for narrative, but also for contemplative, philosophic, descriptive

and satiric expression. It demands more detailed consideration here than either of the other meters; and these had therefore better be discussed briefly before the heroic couplet itself is analyzed. And as the anapestic tetrameter has been less often employed than the iambic tetrameter, it may be considered first.

Although Byron has chosen to print "The Destruction of Sennacherib" in stanzas of four lines each, its movement is continuous and the unit of construction rather is the single couplet than the pair of couplets joined to suggest a quatrain to the eye. The ear would find it almost impossible to detect any break between the successive quatrains. Indeed, the three final stanzas begin each of them with an and which ties them closely to their predecessor :

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

The essential quality of this meter, as it is disclosed in this poem of Byron's, is swiftness; it has an irresistible onward rush, due to the anapestic rhythm itself. This is the reason why Browning used anapests in his galloping lines on " How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix."

This same rapidity we find earlier, here and there, in Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," for example, in these two lines: :-

The princes applaud, with a furious joy ;

And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy.

Yet the same meter is employed by Cowper in "The Poplar Field," wherein he is striving rather for an unhurried effect:

The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade,
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade ;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view
Of my favorite field, and the bank where they grew,
And now in the grass behold they are laid,

And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

Although Cowper chose this meter for a contemplative poem, it has been employed most often in humorous verse, and more especially in satire. Its briskness, its facility, its easy brilliancy aid the versifier to make his lines glittering and pointed. There can be no bet

ter example of this than Goldsmith's delicate and delightful "Retaliation":

Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind,

He has not left a wiser or better behind.

His pencil was striking, resistless and grand ;
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.

To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering;

When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing;
When they talked of Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

Possibly it was a recalling of the success with which Goldsmith had used this meter for his gallery of portraits that led Lowell to choose it also for the series of character-studies which he included in "A Fable for Critics," in which he is as acute as Goldsmith, although a little less tolerant, as well as a little more wilfully clever in the invention of novel rimes:

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge,
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make people of common sense damn meters,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind.

Lowell's criticism of Bryant is as candid and as acute as his criticism of Poe; and it is also quite as ingenious in its riming and in its rhythmic swing:

There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified,
Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' nights

With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation
(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation),
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,

But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,
He's too smooth and polished to hang any zeal on:
Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em,
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm ;
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,

Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

These extracts from Goldsmith and from Lowell serve to exemplify the privilege of commingling double and treble rimes with the single rimes which are the staple of the anapestic tetrameter. Indeed, when this meter is used for a humorous or satiric purpose there is an almost irresistible temptation to devise unexpected rimes and to decorate the edges with soundcombinations never before attempted. The lyrist has also the privilege of substituting iambics for anapests, more often in the first foot, but also on occasion in the second or third; — although this privilege can be availed of only at the peril of slackening the swift movement. And the versifier may even inject, now and again, a couplet of dimeters, without retarding the flow of his lines. This is what Barham did unhesitatingly in his "Ingoldsby Legends," as will be seen in this extract from "The Jackdaw of Rheims":

The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,

He called for his candle, his bell, and his book :

In holy anger, and pious grief,

He solemnly curs'd that rascally thief!

He curs'd him at board, he curs'd him in bed,
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head!
He curs'd him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He curs'd him in eating, he curs'd him in drinking,
He curs'd him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking ;
He curs'd him in sitting, in standing, in lying ;
He curs'd him in walking, in riding, in flying;
He curs'd him in living, he curs'd him dying!