"First as in fear, step after step, she stole
Down the long tower stairs, hesitating"

without worrying about its irregular feet. And one can hear the breathless mutter in

"Muttering and murmuring at his ear, 'Quick, Quick!'"

and the gallop of horses in

"The sound of many a heavily galloping hoof"

and the dignified roll of congregational music in

"Singing the hundredth Psalm, that grand old Puritan anthem,"

even if one does not know much about Greek meter. Nevertheless these names help to make metrical effects tangible and lead to a keener appreciation of the poet's art.

Meter adapted to subject

matter

The meter of a poem should be adapted to the mood of the subject matter. In the selections quoted, it is clear that the meter is skilfully varied in order to suggest the mood which the poet wishes to create. Often within the same poem the meter is shifted to harmonize with the changing mood. When the meter is inappropriate for the mood, the poem necessarily loses in effectiveness.

PATTERN IN POETRY

As we have seen, one of the most tangible differences between poetry and prose is that the words of poetry are arranged in some definite pattern of rhythmically harmonious verses. Some poetic patterns are simple, some complex; most of them except those of free verse are more or less rigid in form.

Pattern in poetry is the plan according to which a stanza

and verse

is built up. A stanza is a definitely arranged group of rhythmically harmonious verses. The structural unit of Pattern, stanza, the stanza is the verse which is a single line of poetry. We determine the pattern of a poem either by its stanza form or by its verse form. If a poem is not divided into stanzas, we determine its pattern by its metrical name and its rhyme scheme. If a poem is divided into stanzas, we determine its pattern by the number of verses in a stanza, by the metrical name of these verses, and by the rhyme scheme of the whole stanza.

Blank verse

Among the most common forms in English poetry is blank verse which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. As we have already seen, the rhythm in blank verse is saved from monotony and given what is known as paragraph structure by the skilful use of end-stopped and run-on lines and cesuras. It is the easiest kind of poetry to write poorly and the hardest to write well, for it depends on exceedingly subtle variations in the meter for perfect rhythm and tone color. The best blank verse in English is found in Shakespeare's plays, in Milton's Paradise Lost, in certain sections of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, in Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, and in Keats's Hyperion. The Idylls of the King are not perfect blank verse, but they offer numerous examples of the varied tone color that may be secured by it. Sections of The Passing of Arthur are particularly worth study for the shifting accents and the surging ebb and flow of the rhythm. The Idylls of the King contain interesting experiments in the adaptation of sound to both sense and mood. The rhymed couplet is a poem made up of iambic tetramRhymed coup- eter lines rhyming successively a, a, b, b, c, c, etc.

lets and heroic couplets

"Around their prows the ocean roars

And chafes beneath their thousand oars."

The heroic couplet has the same rhyme scheme and the same iambic foot, but it is pentameter (five-stress) instead of tetrameter (four-stress).

"Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair."

Couplets are easy to write, and are effective in light, epigrammatic verse or any verse that requires speed. They are, however, difficult for slow movement as they are in constant danger of becoming monotonous and trivial. For this reason Keats refers to them scornfully as "rocking-horse" meter. Some modern poets have used couplets skilfully in long poems without making them monotonous. They achieve their effect by variation in the rhyme scheme and by the use of end-stopped and run-on lines and of cesuras. John Masefield's Reynard the Fox is a particularly striking example of what may be done with this pattern of the rhymed couplet. Dryden, and Pope, poets of the eighteenth century, are famous for their brilliant use of the heroic couplet.

The tercet pattern is a stanza form made up of three verses, usually, but not always, iambic tetrameter, rhyming variously. Sometimes stanzas in this pattern Tercet

are knit together by rhyming the last line of one stanza with the first line of the next. Sometimes the three lines of a stanza rhyme, for example:

"Standing, with reluctant feet,

Where the brook and river meet

Womanhood and childhood fleet!"

The quatrain is a four-verse stanza. The most familiar form of the quatrain is the old English ballad meter, which is a stanza made up of alternating iambic Quatrain tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines rhyming a b, c b, as in:

"The sheriff dwelled in Nottingham

He was fain he was agone

And Robin and his merry men

Went to the wood anon."

This may be varied by making all the lines of equal length or by changing the rhyme scheme. A familiar variation is the In Memoriam stanza named from its use in Tennyson's poem. This is iambic tetrameter in all four verses rhyming a b, ba, for example:

"He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day."

The quatrain is an easy and popular pattern susceptible of many variations. In narrative verse it has been found most natural. Many of our most loved American poems by Longfellow and Whittier are in this pattern.

The Spenserian stanza is a nine verse stanza the first eight verses of which are iambic pentameter while the ninth verse Spenserian contains an extra foot. It rhymes a b, a b, stanza

bc, bc, c. It derives its name from Edmund Spenser, an Elizabethan poet who used it in his greatest poem, The Faerie Queene. It is the meter of Shelley's Adonais, of Byron's Childe Harold, and of Keats's Eve of St. Agnes. It is well adapted to beautiful variations of tone color and to elaborate imagery. Ideas can be effectively developed in this stanza where the added length of the final line gives an excellent opportunity for climax. Notice the effective climax in the last line of this Spenserian stanza from Byron's Childe Harold:

"There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell;

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!"

And notice the shifting music rising to a superb climax in the final stanza from Adonais, one of the most beautiful uses of this pattern in our language:

"The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!

I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;

Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

The ottava rima is a stanza pattern borrowed by Byron from the Italian of Dante. It is an eight-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming a b, a b, a b, c c. It Ottava rima is the pattern of much of Byron's Don Juan

and of Keats's Isabella. The following stanza from Isabella is ottava rima:

"O Melancholy, linger here awhile!
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us-O sigh!
Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;
Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,
And make a pale light in your cypress glooms,
Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs."