When all Thy mercies, O my God, Transported with the view, I'm lost In wonder, love, and praise. Long, short, and common metre are the favorite hymnstanzas. Five-line stanzas (Shelley's To a Skylark) and six-line stanzas (Longfellow's The Village Blacksmith) are also used. The seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter is called Chaucerian stanza (because used by Chaucer), or Rhyme Royal (because adopted by King James I of Scotland). In this the first four lines are an alternately rhyming quatrain; the fifth line rhymes. with the fourth, and the last two lines form a couplet. Ottava Rima is an eight-line stanza of iambic pentameter, the first six lines rhyming alternately, the last two lines forming a couplet (Byron's Don Juan). The Spenserian stanza, invented by the author of the Faery Queene, consists of nine lines, the first eight being iambic pentameters, and the ninth an Alexandrine (iambic hexameter); the first and third lines rhyming together; also the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; also the sixth, eighth, and ninth. Burns used this stanza in the Cotter's Saturday Night. A canto consists of a number of stanzas which together make up a natural division of a long poem. Scott's Lady of the Lake has six cantos. The Sonnet is a lyric of fourteen iambic pentameter lines arranged according to a prescribed order of rhyme, and usually restricted to the expression of a single sentiment. Mr. R. W. Gilder shows the strict order of rhymes in the following; the column of letters to the right indicating the scheme of end-rhymes: What is a sonnet? 'Tis a pearly shell A two-edged sword, a star, a song - ah me! a b b a α b b a d This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath, c shadow falls: A sea this is - beware who ventureth! e с d e Sonnet writers do not hold uniformly to this scheme of rhyme-order. Wyatt, Surrey, Shakespeare, Milton, and other sonneteers since their time, show a variety in the number and order of rhymes. A. Name the poem you like best. In what metre is it written? Scan the first four lines. B. Open at random a volume of Longfellow's poems. Scan the first stanza of four successive poems. Name the metres. C. What was Poe's favorite metre? Bryant's? Thackeray's? Emerson's? Pope's? D. How many different kinds of metre can you find in the poems in this book? CHAPTER XII. FIGURES OF SPEECH. Definition. 172. A figure of speech is a form of expression which departs widely and strikingly in certain specified ways from what is literal, straightforward, and matter-of-fact. The ways must be specified, otherwise there will be no distinction between figurative language and language that is simply picturesque or imaginative. Shakespeare says, for example: "I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news," When the entire passage departs widely and strikingly from what is plain, literal, and matter-of-fact, yet only the last line, because it contains the word "swallowing," would ordinarily be called figurative. The names of the most common figures are as follows: 1. Metaphor. 2. Simile. 3. Synecdoche. 4. Metonymy. 6. Apostrophe. 11. Irony. 9. Climax. 5. Personification. 10. Anticlimax. 1. Figures of Imagery. — In this class may be placed figurative expressions which differ from the literal in that they arouse in the mind of the reader vivid images of things. Metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, personification, apostrophe, and allegory may be assigned to this division. 2. Figures of Arrangement. These are figures in which there is some peculiar and striking arrangement of words, phrases, clauses, or sentences corresponding to some peculiar succession of ideas in the mind. The figures-if they may be called figures-which fall under this head are antithesis and climax. 3. Figures of Contradiction. This term, in default of a better, may be applied to forms of expression in which there is an apparent contradiction between the thought to be expressed and the form in which it finds expression. Here belong anticlimax (in the good sense), irony, epigram, hyperbole, and interrogation. Hyperbole, however, may be classed also as a figure of imagery. These three groups will be taken up in order, and the separate figures defined and illustrated. Figures of Imagery. 174. Metaphor. A metaphor is an expression in which one object is spoken of under the image of another. Thus a gust of wind which heralds a storm may be spoken of under the image of a frightened man, as in the following from Lowell's Summer Storm: Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh, And tramples the grass with terrified feet. Or the stars may be spoken of under the image of flowers, as in Longfellow's Evangeline :— Silently one by one in the infinite meadows of heaven Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. Or the operations of the memory may be spoken of under the image of the resurrection: His (Milton's) poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power, and there would seem at first sight to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. MACAULAY: Essay on Milton. Simile. In the simile an object is represented to the imagination as being like some other object, or as acting like some other object. In the following passage from Wordsworth, the evening is represented as being like a nun at her devotions:— The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration. Sir Isaac Newton compared his discoveries in science to the actions of a child picking up pebbles on the beach: I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the |