Some of the finest and most dignified poetry in English literature is written in Blank Verse, that is, verse without rime. Iambic pentameter is used in regular blank verse. Since there is no rime, the lines are arranged, not in stanzas, but in paragraphs that correspond to the outline of the thought. Blank verse has been used by Milton in his epics, by Shakespeare and other dramatists, by Tennyson in some of his longer poems, by Bryant in his best nature poems, and by many other English poets who have treated sublime and profound themes. It is particularly suitable for such themes because, not calling attention by rime to the end of the lines, it admits of longer, more sweeping rhythmic phrasing.

Poetry with rime is occasionally written in paragraphs (topic divisions) instead of stanzas (rime-scheme divisions). See Longfellow's Building of the Ship and Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal. There is rime in these poems, but no fixed and repeated rime-scheme to bind the lines into formal stanzas.

Blank verse must by no means be considered a form of prose. Though it has no rime, it has all the metrical construction of poetry, and in every other respect follows poetic conventions.

3. THE KINDS OF POETRY

Poetry is divided according to its subject-matter into several kinds.

1. The Narrative Poem is written to tell a story. It may relate legends of persons, of places, or of nations; it may tell stories from real life, or those furnished by the imagination. Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Enoch Arden, Longfellow's Evangeline, Hiawatha, and Miles Standish are examples of narrative poetry.

An important kind of narrative poetry is the Epic. Some

epics are the product of primitive peoples, survivals of the life and thought of a pre-historic age. Such are the Greek Iliad and the Old English Beowulf. These unite into one poem legends and myths perhaps sung as short and separate hymns by the tribes at their festivals and dances. The joining was probably done by a single poet after the tribe had gained some degree of culture. Other epics, as Virgil's Eneid and Milton's Paradise Lost, are the work of one poet living in a time of culture, who has turned a legend of national or ecclesiastical interest into a noble poem.

Ballads are short narrative poems that have grown up among the people in a primitive state of society. The real folk-ballad was probably a chant with a refrain, an accompaniment to a dance. Its subject would naturally be an event of tribal or local interest the deed of a hero, the manifestation of the supernatural in ghosts or elves, etc., etc. Since these folk-songs grew up before the tribe could write, we have no ballads in their earliest form, just as we have not the earliest form of any folk-epic. Our oldest English ballads deal with chivalry and legends of history, with the supernatural, with love, with personal prowess, and with tragic themes. Some of the most interesting are those that tell of the deeds of Robin Hood and of the border wars between England and Scotland. Just as some culture poets have imitated the early epic form, many modern poets have written ballads. Cowper's John Gilpin, Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor, Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome are examples of the modern ballad.

2. A Drama is written to be acted on the stage. It may be in prose or in poetry, or partly in prose and partly in poetry. It may be in riming poetry or in blank verse. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream contains prose, short riming lines,

longer riming lines, and blank verse. It is interesting to study the play to find out why the poet used each form of expression as he did.

The dramatic form is too complicated to be studied thoroughly in a short, general treatise, but we may define here briefly the two great moods of the drama - tragedy and comedy.

Tragedy presents a human being in conflict with a force that is too strong for him and finally causes his overthrow. This overwhelming force may be the outcome of his own sin, as in Macbeth, where the hero sealed his own doom, physical as well as moral, when he murdered Duncan and drove Duncan's son to England, to return with an avenging army. Or the destroying force may be the result of the hero's error; Othello was the victim of a mistaken jealousy. But however the force may be awakened, the end of tragedy is disaster.

In Comedy the danger is only apparent, or, at any rate, not overwhelming. The end of comedy is a happy solution of the difficulties of the hero. If any person meets disaster, it is the villain, at whose overthrow we are pleased. Since comedy does not move us to "pity or terror," it may properly contain much that is laughable. A comedy is often the working out, through a series of blunders, of an amusingly perplexing situation, as Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. It often presents droll characters, as Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan's Rivals. Yet some of our best comedy is not particularly laughable; it is simply the development to a happy conclusion of a situation more or less complex.

A tragedy may, for particular reasons, contain laughable scenes. See De Quincey's On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.

Occasionally a work written in dramatic form is not suited to

presentation on the stage, usually because it involves too little action. Such a piece is called a "closet drama."

3. Lyric poetry is the immediate expression of the feeling of the poet his desire, his love, his hope, his fear, his grief. The early lyrics were sungas indeed was early poetry of other kinds by a minstrel to the accompaniment of the lyre; hence the term lyric. Lyric poems are usually short; or a long lyric may be composed of a series of short poems, as Tennyson's In Memoriam. The reason for briefness is that intense emotion cannot be long sustained. Descriptive, meditative poetry is usually of lyric character, e. g., Bryant's nature poems.

The most dignified lyric is the Ode. With sustained dignity it expresses emotions profound and exalted, and deals with some elevated subject, as a national celebration or an important anniversary. Though the ancient ode was of perfectly regular construction, the English ode is generally irregular in length of line and stanza, and in arrangement of rime. Some excellent English odes are Dryden's Alexander's Feast, Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality, Lowell's Commemoration Ode. A stanza of an ode is often called a strophe.

4. A Didactic poem appeals more to the intellect than a lyric, which is strongly emotional. Didactic poetry cannot, therefore, be the highest kind, since the appeal of poetry is not merely to the intellect. Pope's Essay on Man deals with philosophical questions; his Essay on Criticism with rules of rhetoric and literary criticism. A didactic poem may have for its subject a political question, as the political satires of Dryden. It may express party or class spirit, as Butler's Hudibras, a satire on Puritanism.

AN EXERCISE ON METER AND STANZA

Study meter and stanza forms in the following poems.

1. Whittier, Maud Muller.

2. Whittier, The Barefoot Boy.

3. Bryant, Green River.

4. Longfellow, The Village Blacksmith.

5. Longfellow, The Children's Hour.

6. Longfellow, Three Friends of Mine. 7. Longfellow, My Lost Youth.

8. Poe, Annabel Lee.

9. Poe, The Haunted Palace.

10. Shelley, The Cloud.

11. Thomas Hood, The Bridge of Sighs. 12. Thomas Hood, The Song of the Shirt.

13. Walter Scott, Lochinvar.

14. Caroline E. Norton, Bingen on the Rhine.

15. Longfellow's Sonnets: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, The Sound of the Sea, In the Churchyard at Tarrytown, Eliot's Oak, To the River Rhone, The Three Silences of Molinos, Wapentake.