818
B6 85
H3O
8
The VERSIFICATION of
ROBERT BROWNING
DISSERTATION
mrtual ful Imret of the requirementa for the degree of
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRES
COLUMBUS
:-



LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN |

The VERSIFICATION of
ROBERT BROWNING
7

The VERSIFICATION of
ROBERT BROWNING
BY
}
HARLAN HENTHORNE HATCHER, B.A., M.A.
1928
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
COLUMBUS
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
828
38850
H36
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, COLUMBUS, OHIO
Ерев
This St. Univ. Seb
4-20-1929
TO
D. H.
FOR HER SENSITIVE EAR
AND PATIENT HEART
}
PREFACE
THIS STUDY was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr.
C. E. Andrews, who is able to make prosody seem im-
portant to human happiness. The general point of
view from which it is written, and many of the prob-
lems with which it deals, were worked out in his sem-
inars in Poetic Rhythm. The study has had the advan-
tage of his constant interest and criticism, which, like
rivulets, have swelled the main current of the stream.
Professor M. O. Percival has been liberal with his time
and has made valuable suggestions. It is a pleasure to
thank, also, Professors J. V. Denney, J. R. Taylor, G.
H. McKnight, and Hans Kurath for their careful read-
ing of the manuscript, and for their helpful criticisms.
Professor W. L. Graves very kindly read the early
chapters, and Dr. M. B. Ogle the chapter on classical
rhythms.
H. H. H.
December 29, 1927.
Columbus, Ohio,
vii
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
CONTENTS
PART ONE. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Introduction.......
PAGE
...
3
9
Browning's Habits of Composition and
Revision..
Browning's Ear and Sense of Pattern 23
PART TWO. BLANK VERSE
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Blank Verse: General Characteristics 33
Variations in Blank Verse....
55
Chapter VI.
Variation with Two or More Trisyl-
labic Measures..
61
Chapter VII.
Blank-Verse Lines with Only Four
Measures..
75
Chapter VIII.
Direct Attack with Duple First-
Measure.....
81
Chapter IX.
Monosyllabic Measures.
85
Chapter X.
Elision...
95
Chapter XI.
Enjambment.
101
PART THREE. RHYMED VERSE
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Rhymes...
Stanza Forms.
. 107
• •
111
•
The Couplets
1 — Pentameter Couplets...
2-
3
Tetrameter Couplets..
Alexandrine Couplets..
Chapter XV.
Trochaic Verse..
The Triple Rhythms
Chapter XVI.
1 — Anapestic...
2 — Dactylic..
141
145
149
153
159
165
Chapter XVII. Duple-Triple Movement...
Chapter XVIII. Imitations of Classical Metres..
Chapter XIX.
BIBLIOGRAPHY..
169
•
175
Verse in Four-Four Time..
181
187
•
INDEX..
188
•
ix
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
THIS STUDY has attempted to show, by a minute ex-
amination of his poems, upon what metrical principles
Browning worked and what his actual practice was.
He never expressed himself about theory except in the
most general terms, and what he did say concerned
the subject matter of poetry rather than its form. He
quoted doggerel to people who came to the Casa Guidi
expecting to hear him talk about and recite his verse.
He did on occasion make light of poetic form for its
own sake; he called versification the "mere outward
crust" of the thought, and he spoke of the final mould-
ing of a poem as "hitching it into verse." This atti-
tude must have been something of a pose, however.
He studiously avoided mere prettiness and consciously
strewed nettles and burs as well as cowslips through
his poetic meadows. He thought poetry should be
solid and manly, not a "substitute for a cigar or a game
of dominoes to an idle man." All that he said about
versification could be summed up in the words of
Richard Rolle of Hampole,
For I rek noght, thogh the ryme be rude,
If the maters thar-of be gude.
or in his own words from the Inn Album,
That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
But, ah, the sense, ye Gods, the weighty sense! (1.17-18)
In fact, the principles of his art, like those of Shakes-
peare, are never consciously set forth by the poet him-
self; they must be discovered by a careful study of the
finished works.
་
3
4
Versification of Robert Browning
Everybody has impressions of Browning's versifica-
tion, that it is rough and harsh, or smooth and melodi-
ous, or something between the two; but no one has
undertaken to find out exactly what rules of verse or
system of prosody Browning practiced. Professor
Saintsbury writes pleasantly about Browning in those
important personal essays which comprise his History
of English Prosody, but the charmed (or impatient)
reader finds little to carry away with him; and a closer
examination of Browning's poems than Professor
Saintsbury was able to make sometimes leads one into
disagreement with his broad but confident generaliza-
tions, as when he says, "As a matter of fact Brown-
ing, though an audacious, is almost invariably a correct
prosodist-he goes often to the very edge, but hardly
ever over it." If being a correct prosodist means, as
we believe, never straining the metrical pattern beyond
the power of the reader to preserve it, even the qual-
ifying "almost invariably" and "hardly" are not
enough to preserve the generalization. But of this the
reader may judge when he has examined the follow-
ing chapters.
Whatever value the work may have is independent
of any one metrical theory. Everybody will agree in
general upon the validity and observability of the
phenomona in Browning's verse; many will disagree
with any system of prosody employed to describe
them. One must face this unfortunate situation, how-
ever, and beg that the attention of the reader be cen-
tered upon the phenomena rather than the method of
describing them. Some principle had of necessity to
be adopted to present the material at all, and we have
of course stated it in terms which seem to us best to
describe the principles of our verse.
We have proceeded therefore on the theory that the
Introduction
5
LO
1
fundamental characteristic of verse, which dis-
tinguishes it from prose, is that verse is regularly
divided into measures of approximately equal time in-
tervals by a succession of blows, or accents. These
measures, or time parts, by their regular recurrence,
give the ear the sense of rhythm. In this respect at
least verse and music are analogous.
The analogy could be pressed much farther if it were
advantageous to do so; but strict musical terms are
better suited to a general description of the funda-
mental nature of verse than of the details of a poet's
versification. The temporal equality of the measures
is taken for granted throughout the study, and time-
signature is omitted, except for dipodic or quadruple
measures in four-four time. But the distinctive ef-
fects of different lines are achieved not by the tem-
poral equality of the measures, but by their syllabic
structure. To say that ordinary (that is, not-dipodic)
verse is in three-eight or three-four time does not dis-
tinguish such different lines as,
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,-three slim shapes,
and
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
In the study of a poet's technique, therefore, detailed
consideration must be given to the variation in the
syllabic pattern of the lines; and the principles of his
versification can best be stated in terms of the syllabic
structure of the measures. It makes considerable dif-
ference whether the time of a measure is filled up by
one, two, three, or four syllables.
We have adopted the musical analogy by placing the
bar before the syllable which carries the accent, since
a measure cannot be felt to begin until the blow has
A
6
Versification of Robert Browning
set up a point in time from which to measure. This
division into measures sets up for each type of verse
a metrical pattern as its structural basis. For blank
verse it is one of five measures of two syllables each,
with the accent falling on the even ones. This pattern
is immediately established in the mind of the reader,
and in its ideal form it seldom exists elsewhere.
But it sets up within him the anticipation of its re-
currence, and his ear is always reaching forward, as
it were, to find its expectancy fulfilled in the words of
the poem.
But words arranged into phrases do not fit into a
continuously regular pattern; for we do not talk in
iambs or anapests. They occupy a little more or a lit-
tle less time than the reader expected, or the natural
speech rhythms resist the restraint or the confines of
the imposed metrical pattern. The reader is then
called upon to assimilate into the expected pattern
some unexpected elements, and this always introduces
an element of surprise. But it is precisely this subtle
conflict between the expected and the unexpected that
prevents monotony in good verse. The poets have been
careful to introduce certain departures from the an-
ticipated pattern to tease the ear away from the bore-
dom of finding only what it expects. So long as these
departures are not too far removed from the usual, the
ear is pleased and the versification is called good. If
they depart too far, or introduce conflicts which too
stubbornly resist order or cannot be assimilated into
the pattern at all, the expected pattern collapses on the
reader or the rhythm of the new phrases sets up a new
pattern of its own. This phenomenon occurs often in
Browning. He introduces lines which resist coercion
and ride lordly over the pattern of their neighbors with
a rhythm of their own.
Introduction
7
I
!
The study of a poet's versification therefore consists
in describing the patterns which different poems set
up in the mind of the reader, and in noting the types
of departures and their frequency which the poet in-
troduces and asks the reader to accept and assimilate
into this pattern. If he is a conservative poet, like
Milton, he will not depart very far from the expected
pattern; but if he is unconventional, individual, and
aggressive, he will call upon all the powers of his
reader, perhaps indeed make demands which he cannot
meet. If Browning could dance on the very edge, many
of his readers have grown dizzy and fallen over. He
was able to incorporate into his patterns elements
which less aggressive readers could not subdue.
No one will be greatly surprised that the study ter-
minates in rules less formal and precise than those
which Mr. Bridges was able to construct for Milton.
For Browning took the greatest freedom in his versifi-
cation and seemed conscious of no very definite rules
of any kind. But what he was trying to do, and what
he did do, we have attempted to set down in some de-
tail in the ensuing chapters.
CHAPTER II
HABITS OF COMPOSITION
AND REVISION
ROSSETTI SAID that Marston said that "Browning's
system of composition is to write down on a slate, in
prose, what he wants to say, and then turn it into
verse, striving after the greatest amount of condensa-
tion possible; thus, if an exclamation will suggest his
meaning, he substitutes this for a whole sentence." "
Undoubtedly this is another of the pleasant apocryphal
stories about Browning, but it illustrates a notion still
current as to his method of composition.
He did compose with great rapidity, two steps at a
time, as if he were rushing up the steps of the Casa
Guidi. His poetry shows the same boundless energy
that his personality reflected. Like most other poets,
he first worked out his poems in his head before he at-
tempted composition. Sometimes the plan of his work
came upon him immediately. He found the Old Yellow
Book in June, 1859, and mastered the contents on his
way home. It immediately laid powerful hold on his
imagination. Lehmann may have antedated the fol-
lowing incident (as Dowden suggests), but it could
easily be accurate. ""When I had read the book,' so
Browning told me, 'my plan was at once settled. I
went for a walk, gathered twelve pebbles from the
road, and put them at equal distances on the parapet
that bordered it. Those represented the twelve chap-
ters into which the poem is divided, and I adhered to
¹The Preraphaelite Brotherhood Journal, Feb. 28, 1850. Quoted, Dowden:
Life of Robert Browning, p. 36 (Everyman's ed.).
9
1
10
Versification of Robert Browning
19 2
that arrangement to the last,' The amazing
achievement of this poem is an example of Browning's
energy and industry.
3
There are conflicting statements about the time of
composition of The Ring and the Book, but apparently
it was written in about four years. In 1862 Browning
says the poem is fully conceived in his mind, but is still
unwritten. He began the actual composition in Oc-
tober, 1864, after the publication of Dramatis Per-
sonae was out of his way. The story of its progress
as told by Browning himself is recorded by Rossetti
in his diary for March 15, 1868. Browning had called
that Sunday. "He began it (The Ring and the Book)
in October '64. . . He says he writes day by day on
a regular systematic plan—some three hours in the
early part of the day; he seldom or never, unless in
quite brief poems, feels the inspiring impulse and sets
the thing down into words at the same time-often
stores up a subject long before he writes it. He has
written his forthcoming work all consecutively-not
some of the later parts before the earlier."4
The work was nearly complete at the time this was
written, but Browning was willing to delay its publi-
cation nearly eight months if necessary to its perfec-
tion. It began to appear in November, 1868, just four
years after its beginning. The actual composition had
consumed a little more than three years, and the com-
pleted poem contained 20,988 lines, almost exactly
twice as many as Paradise Lost with 10,565. It is
interesting to recall that Milton had made a tentative
beginning on his great epic in 1642, began composi-
2R. Lehmann: An Artist's Reminiscences, p. 224. Quoted, Dowden: op.
cit. p. 253.
3 I can find no evidence for the statement of Morton and others that the
work was composed in two years.
4 W. M. Rossetti: Rossetti Papers, 1862-1870, p. 302.
Composition and Revision
11
tion on the present form of the poem in 1657-8, and
published it in 1666 after nearly nine years of labor.
At the same rate, Milton would have required eighteen
years to write The Ring and the Book, while Brown-
ing would have tossed off Paradise Lost in a mere
eighteen months.5
6
Browning both planned and wrote Paracelsus in
about a year.
year. It is nearly half as long as Paradise
Lost (4,152 lines). Tennyson required three years to
write The Princess, which is almost a thousand lines
shorter than Paracelsus. If Browning is correct in
his dates in the letter to Milsand,' Sordello was writ-
ten in 1838, a little more than two years after Paracel-
sus. It is a long and difficult composition. According
to Rossetti's story which he had from Browning's
father, he could write a drama with unbelievable haste.
"Once when the poet was kept indoors a few days by
illness, his father, who was living in another house, on
going to visit him was each day received boisterously
and cheerfully with the words: 'I've done another act,
father.' He was writing The Blot on the Scutcheon,
and he finished it in five days." In his later life espe-
cially he usually finished a work on the day set. The
story of the Inn Album was decided upon and con-
structed in a single morning, to be carried out precisely
as planned. He considered twenty or thirty lines a day
a good rate of production, and his manuscript showed
few corrections. Luria was one of the very few of his
poems which caused him any continued travail.10 He
9
5 Milton's handicap must qualify these comparisons, but even so they are
extremely interesting.
• Published Dec. 25, 1847. He had 200 lines in a "butcher's book" May,
1845. (Lounsbury: Life and Times of Tennyson, p. 531.)
7 Preface to Sordello. 1863.
8 Letters of Dante G. Rossetti to Wm. Allingham, 1854-1870, p. 168.
⁹ Cary: Browning: Poet and Man, pp. 204-5.
10 See repeated references in the Browning Letters.
12
Versification of Robert Browning
apparently never spent a whole week trying to find the
right word, as Wordsworth was said to have done, and
Thomas Moore. Indeed, one must go back to the versa-
tile Elizabethans for a parallel to Browning's rapid
creation.
His general habits of composition were much like
those of other poets, allowing of course for individual
eccentricities. Coleridge composed while walking over
uneven ground, or breaking through struggling
branches of copsewood.11 The Ancient Mariner was
worked out on a walk over the Quantock Hills. Words-
worth always wrote, when he could, walking up and
down a straight gravel walk, or in some spot where
the continuity of his verse met with no collateral in-
terruption.12 Scott composed much on horseback.
Tennyson composed his verse in his garden, or in his
private tower, under clouds of smoke from his pipe.
There are few such anecdotes about Browning. Sharp,
in his Life of Browning, said that the inspiration for
Paracelsus came from midnight walks in Dulwich
woods, and that the poem was composed in part in the
open air with the glow of distant London with its
multitudes as the emotional background. As I Ride
was composed on horseback during a time when Brown-
ing was riding daily for his health.13
The habit of systematic daily composition which
Rossetti speaks of was certainly not developed until
late in life. The Letters show him following mood
rather than the clock. One can imagine The Ring and
the Book being composed three hours a day on schedule;
but not the Dramatic Lyrics. The method of working
out the plan of the poem before advancing to composi-
11 Hazlitt: My First Acquaintance With Poets.
12 Hazlitt: My First Acquaintance With Poets.
"Diary 1873." Living Age, 244:400.
13 Domett:
Composition and Revision
13
tion was probably his life-long habit. He left no un-
finished Christabels; nor would an interruption by
"some person from Porlock" have beheaded any of his
Kubla Khans.1
14
Browning probably revised as little as any poet that
ever lived. He had a vigorous way of writing finis at
the end of his poems; for they were Minerva born.
He gave them into the keeping of Levana while he
went on to the next thing. It is said that he often
did not recognize his own poetic offspring when they
were later presented to him in social gatherings, and
that he sometimes inquired of their paternity. He
possessed no complete edition of his own works until
the Browning Society gave him one.15 If Tennyson
criticized Browning for his volume,16 Browning was
outraged by Tennyson's acute sensitiveness to criti-
cism and his mania for revision. He wrote to Miss
Barrett, "For Keats and Tennyson to 'go softly all
their days' for a gruff word or two is quite inexplicable
to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the
Quarterly and does as they bid him, with the most
solemn face in the world-out goes this, in goes that,
all is changed and ranged. Oh me!" 17 And when
Tennyson made the drastic revisions in the 1842 edi-
tion of his poems, Browning wrote to Alfred Domett a
letter of deep concern for what he considered a ruth-
less tampering with his previous work.18 He could
never have any understanding of a Burton forever re-
14 W. Hall-Griffin said that the unexpected arrival of Capt. Loyd at
Hatcham one morning broke in upon the first inspiration for the Flight of
the Duchess, and changed the whole course of that poem. Living Age, 244:404.
15 Cary: p. 97.
16 James Knowles' articles on Tennyson in the Nineteenth Century, Jan-
uary, 1893. He writes that Tennyson told Browning that "if he got rid of
two-thirds, the remaining third would be finer." Tennyson thought limit
imperative, and that if he were to make any mark at all, it must be by
shortness; for his predecessors were all diffuse.
17 Browning Letters, Vol. I, p. 19. 18 Lounsbury's Tennyson, pp. 399-400.
14
Versification of Robert Browning
writing the same book, or a Thomson continually re-
vising The Seasons.
These criticisms of each other's poetry grew out of
their different poetic creeds which were exactly op-
posed. Browning was never concerned with mere
prettiness; he did not object to a few nettles in his
poetic meadows; he was not at all troubled by a few
geese in his boat. These things gave his popular con-
temporary the gravest concern.
Even
After publication, Browning confined his revision
almost entirely to correcting printer's errors.
his youthful Pauline, whose paternity he would gladly
have denied, was not rewritten when he reluctantly
reprinted it in the 1868 edition of his poetry to prevent
anyone else from printing it.19 Many another poet
would, like Jeremiah with his early sermons, have re-
vised them into contemporary respectability. But
Rosetti records in the Diary for February 13, 1868,
after a call from Browning, that Pauline is being “re-
published with proper press corrections-not any re-
writing, which he objects to." 20 We have already
19 Rossetti had discovered it in the British Museum, suspected its author-
ship, and copied it out in full. Browning thought it was dead and forgotten,
and he was glad of it. When Miss Barrett plead in vain for a copy of the
poem (for Browning declared to her that it had nothing to recommend it to
anybody, and that it was not even a good example of youthful precocity),
she threatened to send immediately to the bookseller for a copy. With char-
acteristic determination she said, "I shall have Pauline in a day or two-
yes, I shall and must, and WILL.” Browning wrote back, "Will you, and
must you have Pauline? If I could pray you to revoke that decision! For
it is altogether foolish and not boylike-and I shall, I confess, hate the notion
of running over it-yet commented it must be; more than mere correction!
I was unluckily precocious-but I had rather you SAW real infantine efforts
(verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this ambiguous,
feverish-Why not wait? When you speak of the 'Bookseller'-I smile, in
glorious security-having a whole bale of sheets at the house-top. He never
knew my name even! and I withdrew these after a very little time." (Letters,
Vol. I, p. 400.) Miss Barrett did not see Pauline just then.
20 Rossetti Papers, p. 299. He had written to Miss Barrett back in January
12, 1846, "Must you see Pauline? At least then let me wait a few days; to
correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the history of it;
what is necessary you should know before you see it." (Letters, p. 390.)
Composition and Revision
15
seen his attitude toward Tennyson's rewriting of his
poems.
It would be an error, however, to suppose from
these expressed aversions that Browning never did
revise or rewrite his poetry. The 1849 edition of the
Poems contained this preface: "Many of these pieces
were out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from
circulation, when the corrected edition, now submitted
to the reader, was prepared. The various Poems and
Dramas have received the author's most careful re-
vision." Careful revision does not of course mean
elaborate rewriting. The fragmentary Saul was pub-
lished on the advice of Miss Barrett; it was later re-
vised and lengthened into its present form.21 The
Flight of the Duchess was also published in fragmen-
tary form in Hood's Magazine "in an emergency," and
later expanded into its present form. Paracelsus un-
derwent frequent revisions, and Browning made many
minor omissions and additions. Nearly a third of the
lines were changed at one time or another between
1835-1888, but a comparison of the first and last edi-
tions shows that the revisions were very slight.
That, far from them...
becomes
That, when afar
•
(1835)
(1888)
becomes
That's beautiful is one! and when he learns
That every common sight he can enjoy. (1835)
That's beauteous proves alike! When Festus
learns
That every common pleasure of the world
(1888)
.the last hopes I conceived
Are fading even now. Old stories tell.. (1835)
21 A list of first readings is in H. E. Hersey's edition of Christmas Eve
and Easter Day and Other Poems.
16
Versification of Robert Browning
becomes
I said my latest hope
Is fading even now. A story tells...
•
(1888)
A few of the revisions are more drastic, usually, but
not always, illustrating Browning's passion for com-
pression, as when
becomes
and
becomes
Alas! as I forbode, this weighty talk
Has for its end no other than to revive. (1835)
Once more? Alas! As I foretold......(1888)
As you had your own soul: accordingly
I could go further back, and trace each bough
Of this wide-branching tree even to its birth;
Each full-grown passion to its outspring faint;
But I shall only dwell upon the intents
Which filled you when,..
(1835)
As you had your own soul and those intents
Which filled it when,....
•
(1888)
These few typical examples must serve for many.
They show us that in a youthful poem which he valued
he would revise with considerable ruthlessness.22 Even
Pauline came in for minor revisions in the 1887 edi-
tion of his poems.23
Sordello, the other long poem of his youth, was also
revised as it went through new editions in his col-
lected works. But these revisions were less elaborate
even than Paracelsus, and Book II remained un-
changed. Unlike his changes in Paracelsus, these
were, almost without a single exception, expansions.
of the earlier version, very probably due to the loud
22 A convenient place to study the revision of Paracelsus and Sordello is
G. W. Cook: Browning Guide-Book, pp. 265-279, where all the changes are
reprinted. So far as I know there is no variorum Browning.
23 The variant readings are reprinted in Poet Lore, 1:520.
Composition and Revision
17
criticisms of its extreme obscurity and compression,
just as Paracelsus was criticized for its prolixity. He
seriously considered rewriting the poem after Miss
Barrett criticized the tenuous continuity of its parts;
but he never got it done. He merely revised certain
parts of it in the second edition, and added descriptive
headings which help to bridge the gaps of obscurity.
When he decided to revise it, he asked for his friend
Domett's annotated copy of the poem. When the new
edition appeared it had adopted Domett's marginal
suggestions.24 We may illustrate the kind of revision
he made by a single example typical of all.
And round those three the Peoples formed a ring,
Suspended their own vengeance, chose await.... (1840)
becomes
And round those three the people formed a ring,
Of visionary judges whose award
He recognized in full-faces that barred
Henceforth return to the old careless life,
In whose great presence, therefore, his first strife
For their sakes must not be ignobly fought,
All these at once approved of him, he thought,
Suspended their own vengeance, chose await.. (1863)
Most of the changes were for the better, for Brown-
ing, while in the throes of composition, was not always
delicately selective in his diction.
What care he did take in revision seems to have been
largely due to the influence of Elizabeth Barrett. Her
influence on his view of life and love has been often
24 An example of the revision is given by Domett in the Living Age,
244:406. In the margin of the lines:
.gather fruits of one great gaze
At the noon-sun: look you! The same orange haze,—
The same blue stripe round that-and, i' the midst,
Book I, 579-581.
•
Domett had written after "At the noon-sun": "Rather the moon from the
description"; and after "i' the midst": "Why cut off the 'n'?" Browning,
who had borrowed Domett's copy of the poem, saw and adopted both sug-
gestions; he added the 'n' and changed the "noon-sun" to the "moon."
18
Versification of Robert Browning
observed; but her influence on the technical construc-
tion of his poetry was also tremendous. In his earlier
years, Browning worked alone without the aid of as-
sociation or advice of a fellow artist. Compared with
a person like Addison, who always showed his work
to several friends and scrupulously corrected and al-
tered what they felt was wrong, 25 Browning was a
literary hermit. He did not show his work to other
people before publication until he met Elizabeth. That
acquaintance began with an exchange of letters com-
plimenting each other's poetry; but before many days
it has ripened into friendly criticisms of each other's
work. Browning begins immediately to expand under
the loving warmth of her interest and her illuminating
comments on his work, and with characteristic en-
thusiasm he begins to talk to her about poems under
construction, and to seek her advice. This first
emergence from his literary solitude is attended by a
boyish self-consciousness. Writing to Elizabeth about
the unfinished Flight of the Duchess, he says, "And
The Flight of the Duchess, to leave nothing out, is only
the beginning of a story written some time ago, and
given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's notice
-the true stuff and story is all to come.
it is one
of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain Saul I
should like to show you one day-an ominous liking—
for nobody ever sees what I do till it is printed. But
as you do know the printed little part of me, I should
not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all I have really
done-written in the portfolio there-though that
would be far enough from this me, that wishes to you
now. I should like to write something in concert with
you, how I would try.” 26
25 Pope is responsible for this. Quoted in Spence's Anecdotes; Quoted as
footnote in Thackeray, English Humorists, under Addison.
28 Letters, Vol. I, p. 58.
Composition and Revision
19
It was under her influence that Browning first spoke
out in his own person instead of making other people
speak dramatically. He wrote, "You do what I always
wanted, hoped to do, and only seem now likely to do for
the first time. You speak out-you-I only make men
and women speak-give you truth broken into pris-
matic hues. "27 She wrote back that she wished he
would write a poem not connected either directly or
indirectly with the stage. Interestingly enough, in his
next volume of Bells and Pomegranates (No. VII,
1845), the first volume of poems after his acquaint-
ance with Elizabeth, we find that in fifteen of them
he has spoken in his own person. All of his work
previous to this date, with the possible exception of
one or two short lyrics, are dramatic.
After the acquaintance grew intimate, we find in
Browning a growing concern in his poetic diction, a
constant reliance upon Miss Barrett for criticisms
which were nearly always adopted. He revised his
poems with some care before publication, and so did
she. She went over his lines with minute care, pencil
in hand, making corrections and suggestions.28 He
had the greatest confidence in her critical judgment.
He kept revising The Duchess (as the Letters speak
of it) with her counsel, until it met with her approval
and she could write of it: "The Duchess appears to me
more than ever a new-minted golden coin—the rhythm
of it answering to your own description, 'Speech half
asleep, or song half awake?" You have right of trove
to these novel effects of rhythm."29 He paid loving
tribute to her for these criticisms, and his whole spirit
might best be shown by this passage from one of his
letters to her: "For the criticism itself, it is all true,
27 Ibid, I, p. 6.
28 Letters, especially Vol. I, pp. 148, 268, 138-9.
29 Ibid.
Vol. I, p. 253.
20
Versification of Robert Browning
-all the suggestions are to be adopted, the im-
provements accepted. I so thoroughly understand your
spirit in this, that, just in this beginning, I should
really like to have found some point in which I could
cooperate with your intention, and help my work by
disputing the effect of any alteration proposed, if it
ought to be disputed-that would answer your purpose
exactly as well as agreeing with you-so that the
benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot
dispute one point. All is for the best.
"So much for this Duchess-which I shall ever re-
joice in-wherever was a bud, even, in that strip of
May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs now. I shall let
it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and then
go over it, alter at the places, and do something for
the places where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to
get done." 30
It would be hard to imagine a better combination of
talent: the strong masculine vigor of Browning's
thought and phrases, skilfully refined by Miss Bar-
rett's almost too feminine delicacy and prettiness. It
is not without significance that the great lyrics and
dramatic monologues were composed or refined under
her influence; and that in these poems, in contrast to
those of both his early and later periods, there is dom-
inant a melody and a perfectness of poetic diction
which Tennyson himself seldom surpassed.
In the years which followed Mrs. Browning's death,
her critical function was carried on by Browning's
French friend Milsand. The Browning who bashfully
confesses to Elizabeth that no one ever sees the things
he writes is not the same Browning who in later years
leans heavily upon the advice of his foreign friend.
30 Letters, vol. I, p. 138-9. Many of Browning's critics wondered if others
were not written in the same way which escaped the notice of Elizabeth
Barrett.
Composition and Revision
21
The following letter from Browning to Milsand is re-
vealing. Under date of May 13, 1872, he writes:
DEAREST FRIEND:
The two proofs about which you inquire, the 'doubles' cor-
rected, were sent inadvertently, I think: whenever you get the
whole series, corrected, you will see for yourself
•
how in-
estimable your assistance has been. There is not one point to
which you called attention which I was not thereby enabled to
improve-in some cases essentially benefit. (He then speaks
of his purpose to punctuate all his past work on the principle
suggested by Milsand's corrections, and continues.) But the
other changes and elucidations are of vital importance: you
cannot think me so ignorant of what your purpose is in making
a correction, that, if I found it, in my opinion, no improvement,
I would adopt it all the same.
The fact is, in the case of a writer with my peculiarities and
habits, somebody quite ignorant of what I may have meant to
write, and only occupied with what is really written, ought to
supervise the thing produced. And I never hoped or dreamed
I should find such an intelligence as yours at my service....31
Here is Robert Browning gladly making any correction
suggested by his friend, even when he does not regard
it as an improvement; and seriously proposing to re-
vise all his punctuations on some principle which Mil-
sand has suggested!
But we would not make too much of this point. It
should go without saying that he revised. The sig-
nificant point for this study is that in comparison with
other poets, Browning was unusually rapid in com-
position and usually reluctant in revision. With the
exception of the lyrics revised in consultation with
Elizabeth, his revisions were in the interest of clear-
ness and accuracy rather than smoothness of rhythm
or beauty of expression. These qualities, as we have
seen, were not paramount in his theory of poetry, and
31 Quoted, Thomas Bentzon: "A French Friend of Browning,"
Scribner's, 20:108ff.
22
Versification of Robert Browning
he preferred conciseness to the long rhythmical periods
of Paradise Lost which have usually been considered
the glory of blank verse. There are, of course, other
elements to be reckoned with in a study of the pecu-
liarities of Browning's verse, but a knowledge of his
methods of composition and revision helps us to under-
stand some of the apparent roughness and uncouth-
ness of his verse.
CHAPTER III
BROWNING'S EAR AND SENSE OF PATTERN
WHEN CHARLES LAMB exclaimed, "I have no ear,"
he unconsciously uttered a profound metrical truth;
for human ears are not equally gifted with a sense
of rhythm. Elia could neither sing, hum, nor whistle
"God Save the King," and some intelligent people can-
not become aware of a continuous metrical pattern in
A Grammarian's Funeral, or give a satisfactory read-
ing of Saul or of Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.
Some ears like to have the prose phrases coincide
exactly with the metrical pattern, with the anvil ring-
ing on every stress. They are pleased with,
I have a boy of five years old;
His face is fair and fresh to see;
His limbs are cast in beauty's mould,
And dearly he loves me.
Others apparently do not sense metrical patterns at
all, and they anticipate no recurrence of time parts.
They lift the prose phrases from the metrical frame,
and, unconscious of the temporal uniformity of
verse, read it as though it were badly printed prose.
Who has not heard the following passage from The
Tempest read thus:
I' the commonwealth I would by contraries execute all things;
for no kind of traffic would I admit; no name of magistrate;
letters should not be known; riches, poverty, and use of service,
none;.
Still others are aggressively rhythmic in their feel-
ing for time, and can sense a metrical pattern vividly
enough to break up the most recalcitrant and unruly
23
24
Versification of Robert Browning
prose phrase into rhythmic units. The ear becomes
adjusted and standardized to this pattern; it reaches
on into the line with this expectancy, and finds what it
expects. It takes pleasure in metrical experiments,
and finds the same metrical pattern underneath such
pertinacious phrases as,
Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort.
(Inn A. 2.293)
and such frail cheese-cloth as,
Of feminine desirability. (Inn A. 2.205)
In the one it is able, by shifting the pitch on syllables
of equal importance in meaning, to bring out the
thought and at the same time satisfy the sense for
pattern. In the other the sense of time runs on so
lively and independently that the pattern is felt to
exist in the ear of the reader even though it is not
emphatically marked by stresses on every other sylla-
ble.
Browning is the great Cham of this third group, for
he is an aggressive timer; one whose subjective sense
of rhythm is so alert and robust that it arranges into
sensibly equal time parts which are experienced as
rhythmic any series or succession of sounds. He would
hardly be pleased with the smooth cadence of, let us
say, some of Robert Frost's verse where the lines have
a colloquial ease of movement which suggests good
prose without being opposed to monotonous regularity
if your fancy directs or your physiology compels such
a reading. Even Kipling's verse would not long please
Browning, if we may judge from his own practice;
for Kipling's phrases reinforce the metrical pattern
so that it sings itself to the primitive beat of a tom-
tom, while Browning's verse in the same patterns is
relieved by the constant pull between the primitive
M
Browning's Ear and Sense of Pattern
25
rhythm and the opposing phrases. He likes to lay vio-
lent hands upon rugged, prosaic phrases, and bend
them and break them and force them into patterns
which they do not naturally fit. This makes much of
his verse sound rough, often uncouth, especially to
unaggressive ears.
He composed with such ease and agility that he was
not fastidious in selecting his phrases, and he never
took what a poet like Tennyson would call scrupulous
pains with his versification. To use one of his own
phrases, he sometimes "hitches the thing into verse."
He considered versification "the mere outward crust"
of his thought, a consideration which seems to have
reminded many of his readers and critics that the crust
could be both hard and tough. An ear that can im-
pose upon a rough series of syllables a regular metrical
pattern, as Browning could and did, does not make
much effort to write smooth lines in which the prose
accents are exactly coincident with the metrical
stresses. The subjective feeling for pattern makes its
objective presence seem less important.
One is irresistably drawn toward the supposition.
that there must be a causal connection between his
personality and his prosody. For he was vigorous and
full of a restless and exuberant energy. He was pas-
sionately in love with life and its activity. While
Tennyson sat and smoked, or moved solemnly and
thoughtfully about his garden, Browning would bound
up the steps two at a time, crush a flower in his im-
patience to discover its soul, or rush to the opposite
end of the city to keep a social engagement. His verse
reflects the same rugged personality, the same over-
flowing energy.
He read his verse, not in a chanting monotone like
Tennyson or Rossetti, but dramatically with energetic
26
Versification of Robert Browning
observance of time; thundering out the Song of
David of Christopher Smart, tenderly restraining the
accents in Pompilia, and beating out the time of
Echetlos by stamping his foot on the stresses.¹ He
must have felt the same way when he wrote, stamping
his foot subjectively while he metered his lines as he
did objectively when he read them. It is impossible
to read some of them without following his example.
Except when he made a mistake, which was seldom
indeed, the pattern is there struggling out of the prose
phrasing if you can twist your thumbs in opposite
directions, stamp your foot, and find it.
His many triple and quadruple movements are good
illustrations of this aggressive sense of pattern. The
metre of Saul is hardly mistakable in the first line.
Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
and is unequivocal in lines like these:
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it un-
checked, (67)
Made a proffer of good to console him he slowly resumed (207)
Poems written in this anapestic movement usually fall
into an annoying sing-song, as The Old Oaken Bucket
and the anapestic poems of Byron and Bryant have
shown; for the phrases coincide exactly with the
metrical pattern. Browning, however, as prelimin-
ary steps toward making the movement pleasing to
his ear, adds a fifth measure to Byron's "Ye scenes of
my childhood, whose loved recollection," then rhymes
in couplets and eschews feminine endings. He care-
fully restrains his prose phrasings from reinforcing
the pattern and keeps them straining against its bonds,
so that many of the lines must be marked and stamped
1 Sidney Colvin: Some Personal Recollections: "Rossetti and Browning."
Scribner's, Vol. 61, 1920.
Browning's Ear and Sense of Pattern
27
before they can be read. But despite the conflict he
could feel the pattern in
Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right
hand
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to re-
mand (119-20)
and at the same time give "death," "life," "right,”
"helped," their proper emphasis. He could write,
I report, as a man may of God's work-all's love, yet all's law.
(242)
and feel the temporal importance of "man," and
"God's," as well as the sense importance of "may,"
and "work." I venture that any other poet of the
century would have written,
I report, as man may of God's work-all is love, yet all's law.
Tennyson wrote Locksley Hall in smooth, restrained
phrases which cling flexibly to the metrical pattern
like a smile to the lips; and as one reads, the metre
looks after itself.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
The phrases do not pull against the metre, the long
line drops lazily sometimes into two four-measure
lines, often into one four-measure line in four-four
time, and the thought is usually completed in a coup-
let. But Browning, in La Saisiaz and Clive, which are
in the same metre, seldom allows his phrases to rest
at ease with the pattern. He avoids the easy four-
plus-four, with phrases either shorter or longer than
expected; and instead of ending a thought in a couplet,
he allows it to run on through several lines. Still the
28
Versification of Robert Browning
aggressive timing ear will hear the Locksley Hall pat-
tern in,
Till the landing on the staircase saw escape the latest spark:
"Sleep you well!" "Sleep but as well, you!"-lazy love
and
quenched, all was dark. (81-82)
Splintered in the slab, this pink perfection of the cyclamen;
Scarce enough to heal and coat with amber gum the sloe-tree's
gash, (16-17)
The metre of A Grammarian's Funeral is often con-
sidered difficult, but beautiful and strange. It is an-
other instance of Browning's aggressive timing. The
long lines are pentameter couplets which fit into Sor-
dello without disturbance; they show no variation
not common to it, but they have a heavy proportion of
direct-attack lines and weak stresses which, through
repetition, tend to set up a new rhythm. The short
lines are adonics so familiar in the Odes of Horace.2
Each line by itself, or the long lines taken together,
are simple enough; it is the combination that is com-
plex. For the high percentage of direct-attack lines
with adonics between tends to confuse some ears which
do not go easily from one to the other. Even Brown-
ing himself may not have entirely escaped the dif-
ficulty when he was writing them.
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha even more clearly
illustrates this aggression which imposes upon ob-
streperous words a metrical pattern. The metre will
break down on the reader who cannot stamp his foot,
actually or figuratively, and the meaning will vanish
2 Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis,
qui feros cultus hominum recentum
voce formasti catus at decorae
more palaestrae,
(Bk. I, Ode X)
Browning's Ear and Sense of Pattern
29
for who cannot syncopate the prose accents over the
strong beat of the metre. Browning, apparently, could
do both, and found great delight in,
Hugues! I advise meâ poenâ
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the full organ,
Blare out the mode Palestrina.
He was subjectively so conscious of his pattern that
he often failed to make it clear to the reader in the
opening lines of his poems. His generous critic Eliza-
beth Barrett remonstrated with him against this per-
versity in these words:
"And the 'Laboratory' is hideous as you meant to make it:
only I object a little to your tendency.
which is almost a
habit, and is very observable in this poem I think,
of
making lines difficult for the reader to read . . . see the open-
ing lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere,
nor in them certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm
throws the reader's mind off the rail. . . and interrupts his
progress with you, and your influence with him." 3
The confusing beginning is,
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze through these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy-
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
where no two lines are the same.
He never reformed. He boomed out the measures
of Echetlos when he wrote them, but at what point is
the reader certain of the pattern? On first examina-
tion the first three lines seem to have nothing in com-
mon, and not until the fourth line does the reader
3 Letters, Vol. I, p. 135. (Letter for July 21, 1845.)
30
Versification of Robert Browning
recognize any striking similarity in the metre. It is
like the second.
Here is a story shall stir you! Stand up, Greeks dead and gone,
Who breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling on,
Did the deed and saved the world, for the day was Marathon!
No man but did his manliest, kept rank and fought away
In his tribe and file: up, back, out, down-was the spear-arm
play:
Like a wind-swept branchy wood, all spear-arms a-swing that
day!
But one man kept no rank, and his sole arm plied no spear,
As a flashing came and went, and a form i' the van, the rear,
Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here.
The sixth and seventh are new, the eighth is like the
third (except for an extra syllable), the ninth is new,
etc.
The line is loosely designed, but it is always divided
into two parts of three measures each, which may be
either duple or triple. It may begin with direct at-
tack, or with a single or double anacrusis.
But there is no end to the illustrations of this funda-
mental consideration of Browning's prosody. It
should be clear, however, that Browning not only had
an ear, but a very unusual one for a poet. It leapt
lightly over combinations of sounds which gave pause
to less aggressive ears, and took delight in lines which
must be subdued and conquered by a strong subjective
feeling for pattern. This fact is the key to many of
the peculiarities and much of the individuality of
Browning's verse.
BLANK VERSE
PART TWO
31
CHAPTER IV
BROWNING'S BLANK VERSE: GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS
TWO THIRDS of Browning's enormous quantity of
verse is written in unrhymed pentameters. And if
the volume is amazing, its flexibility is no less so. It
ranges in theme from the confession and defense of
Mr. Sludge, to that of the gentle Pompilia; from the
character drama of an old roué in the Inn Album, to
the search for the ultimate in Paracelsus; from the
theology of Cleon to that of Caliban; from Ned Bratts
to Andrea del Sarto. The versification is somewhat
different in each poem, as if the author had tried to
adapt his medium to his characters, but this dramatic
appropriateness is very rudimentary, and he would be
a bold man who tried to explain Browning's verse on
that assumption. But it does have a tremendous range
in music through all the variant chords from the
strains of exalted beauty in
O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,-
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,-
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart-
to the scabrous discords of
(R&B 1.1383-88)
And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,-nay, grave?
Your pupil does you better credit! No!
I parleyed with my pass-book,-rubbed my pair
At the big balance in my banker's hands,-
Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,-just wants
33
34
Versification of Robert Browning
Filling and signing,—and took train, resolved
To execute myself with decency
And let you win-if not Ten thousand quite,
Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst
(Inn Album 1.208-217)
Of firework-nosegay!
On all too few occasions it can sweep into the full
organ with tones not unworthy of Milton at some
moments, as in the passage in Aristophanes' Apology
which ends:
What if thy watery plural vastitude,
Rolling unanimous advance, had rushed,
Might upon might, a moment,-stood, one stare,
Sea-face to city-face, thy glaucous wave
Glassing that marbled last magnificence,—
Till fate's pale tremulous foam-flower tipped the gray,
And when wave broke and overswarmed and, sucked
To bounds back, multitudinously ceased,
Let land again breathe unconfused with sea,
Attiké was, Athenai was not now!
(20-29)
And perhaps on too many occasions it can fall into
feeble, high-pitched pipings like those of the Pope:
Civilization and the Emperor
Succeed to Christianity and the Pope.
One Emperor then, as one Pope now: meanwhile,
Anticipate a little! We tell thee "Take
Guido's life, sapped society shall crash,
Whereof the main prop was, is, and shall be
-Supremacy of husband over wife!"
(R&B 10.2023-29)
It slides from such elephantine lines as:
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye.
to such frail invertebrates as:
(Caliban 49)
Incontrovertably. Theodoric, (R&B 8.474)
There is a certain dramatic propriety in this range
which helps to justify it and which eases the reader
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
35
over what he would otherwise object to as prosaic if
not actually bad verse. The other explanatory element,
as we have seen, is Robert Browning.
His urge toward poetry was born to his admiration
of Shelley who had set fire to his youthful imagination,
and Pauline was its first fruit. Its metre is as much
the shadow of Shelley as its theme.
The most characteristic type of line in Shelley's
poetry is:
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home. (Alastor 138)
where the important adjectives are emphasized by
making monosyllabic measures of them preceding their
nouns. These lines are pleasing to the ear in verse of
restrained sentiment, for they put little strain upon
the iambic pattern. The young poet catches the tune
from his idol, and writes lines on the same model:
The wind murmuring in the damp copse. (Pauline 66)
Occasionally he catches the lyric note on a Shelley.
tune, and writes a passage like:
Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter
Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes.
I walked with thee who knew'st not a deep shame..
(Pauline 55-62)
Six of these lines use the adjectives after the manner
of Shelley, and the resulting movement is like that of
Alastor. In fact, the percentage of such lines is the
same in each poem-an average of twenty to the hun-
dred lines. Later, when he flames into his own orbit,

36
Versification of Robert Browning
lines of this type are not conspicuous in his versifica-
tion.
But although Pauline is full of these echoes from
another poet; although the metrical features of mono-
syllabic measures and weak stresses are frequently
imitative, there are in this first poem arresting evi-
dences of an embryo Browning who delights in smash-
ing the regularity of the metrical pattern with lines
full of rebellion and unexpectedness. He probably
learned them from no master.
Who has deceived God,—if such one should seek
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Drawing me to thee these build up a screen
Since all the wandering and all the weakness
Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross
(23)
(59)
(4)
(125)
(173)
Of his next effort, Paracelsus, the Athenaeum said
that "it was not without talent, but spoiled by obscur-
ity and only an imitation of Shelley." There is without
doubt considerable truth in the statement, but the
imitation of Shelley is more in its mood than in metre.
The mental drama rather than the outward events
gives the prevailing tone to it which tranquilizes the
movement of the verse. It hasn't a single "o' the,"
and only one "i' the." The verse is calm, monotonously
uniform if the later verse sets the standard, and with-
out the compression of the more vigorous monologues.
The easy movement of the lines leads him into the
prolixity which he tried to compress in the later re-
visions. He depended for variation upon feminine
endings, of which there is one in every ten lines (more
than in any other of his poems), and upon the double
anacrusis, which is usually an extra syllable and not
the result of a monosyllabic first-measure as in Shelley.
Triple measures, so prominent in the later poems, are
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
37
not frequent; many long passages are almost unbroken
in their regularity.
These first efforts are subdued, and flavored with a
romantic Weltschmerz from which the later Browning
is free. The versification has something of the same
quality, if versification may be considered as romantic.
It is not yet the instrument of the great monologues;
its tones are still feeble, and its range is limited. But
this is only 1835, and the poet is twenty-three. The
next ten years are full of the eight dramas which ex-
acted of him strict discipline in the dramatic method.
At the end of this apprenticeship, Browning has grown
into his full poetic stature; he has become a master
in his own right with a method as individual as its
subject. He has burst full-grown into the Browning of
Men and Women (184-, 5-).
There were important developments during those
ten years. The subdued tones of Pauline are gone, and
in their place are the dramatic passions, the self-re-
vealing speeches, the broken phrases and colloquial
ejaculations of the characters in the drama, who speak
with increasing ease and freedom. There is also a
growing roughness in the metre, due in part to the ex-
plosive character of the speeches, in part to the ex-
panding sense of freedom in the blank-verse medium.
Oh, where's the King's heir?-Gone!-the Crown Prince?
Gone!
Where's Savoy? Gone!-Sardinia?
Is left!
Gone! But Charles
Oh worst, worst, worst of all!
Tell me! What, Victor? He has made you King?
What's he then? What's to follow this? You, King?
(King Victor and King Charles)
(II. 339-41; 350-52)
38
Versification of Robert Browning
The weak feminine endings were discarded at the
end of this dramatic apprenticeship. Prior to Luria
these endings were a characteristic feature of Brown-
ing's versification; in Pauline, Paracelsus, and the
early dramas they had occurred at the comparatively
high rate of from five to ten per cent. In Luria, the
last of the dramas, they fall to four per cent, and they
all but disappear in Men and Women where five of the
nine blank-verse poems have none at all, three have
less than one per cent, and Fra Lippo Lippi has 1.57.
He never returned to them as a metrical device.¹
There is no sudden leap from the dramas to the dra-
matic monologues; rather the one shades into the
other, for the monologues are simply little dramas in
which only one of the actors speaks. Browning found
this form more congenial to his talents than conven-
tional drama, and cultivated it continuously to the end
of his days.
The peculiarity of his blank verse is due largely to
the exacting demands of the dramatic monologue for
which it was cultivated. And Browning was fully
aware of these demands. He speaks of them frequently
in his letters to Miss Barrett, recognizing the limita-
tions imposed by the medium, and the artistic dif-
ficulties which must be overcome. In one of his
earliest letters he writes, "You speak out, you-I only
make men and women speak-give you truth broken
into prismatic hues.
In another letter he com-
pared the work of the novelist with that of the poet.
"And what easy work these novelists have of it! A
Dramatic poet has to make you love or admire his men
"" 2
Chi-
1 For a complete table of the English Poets' use of the feminine ending
see Morton: The Technique of English Non-Dramatic Blank Verse.
cago, 1910.
2 Letters, Vol. I, page 6.
→
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
39
and women-they must do and say all that you are to
see and hear-really do it in your face, say it in your
ears, and it is wholly for you, in your power, to name,
characterize and so praise or blame, what is so said
and done. if you don't perceive of yourself, there
is no standing by, for the Author, and telling you. But
with the novelist, a scrape of the pen-out blurting of
a phrase, and the miracle is achieved-'Consuelo pos-
sessed to perfection this and the other gift'-what
would you more?" ³
3
It would tax one to state more specifically the de-
mands of the monologue. Here for an instant the spot
light is turned upon some soul in a critical moment;
and in that instant the situation must be presented,
the supposed audience or partners to the drama must
be introduced (for although they are necessary to the
situation they are never actually in focus), the motiva-
tion and course of the action must be made clear-all
in the uninterrupted monologue of a single character
who is painting his own picture while he speaks. These
are heavy demands, and in order to meet them, Brown-
ing resorts to interjections, replies, and rejoinders
which all but introduce dialogue; artful phrases, ex-
plosives, parenthetical asides, ellipses, short broken
sentences which reveal character and situation; all of
which help to give the lines their Browningesque color.
With these stylistic tricks he could build a monologue
so skillfully that the police and the compromising
neighborhood are as vivid as Lippo himself; or that
a minute character sketch could be written of the un-
seen and unheard Elvire in Fifine at the Fair. The
metre is almost always choppy, and never soars into
long passages of Miltonic harmony. But then one is
not likely to speak in Miltonic periods when rough
3 Letters, Vol. I, page 155.
40
Versification of Robert Browning
hands are fiddling on one's throat in a dark street at
midnight!
From Transcendentalism to Imperante Augusto,
Browning's blank verse bears the stamp imprinted by
the method of the dramatic monologue. With few ex-
ceptions the metre is rough and often rebellious in the
restraint of the pattern. In many instances this seems
to be by design; but dramatic appropriateness of lan-
guage is one of Browning's accomplishments only
within certain wide limits. The versification of Cleon
is different from that of Caliban-one is smooth and
restrained, the other is more primitive and strains
against the iambic pattern; Pompilia is quiet and mod-
ulated, Sludge and Blougram are vulgar and explosive;
The Pope is thoughtful soliloquy. But not one of them
is free from Browning's peculiarity of speech, despite
his dramatic detachment. And in the later poems,
there is no differentiation at all, as an illustration from
the Inn Album will show:
THE BOY:
Does he believe I fail to comprehend
He wants just one more final friendly snack
At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,
Marries renounces yielding friends such sport?'
(Inn A. 1.204-7)
THE MAN:
"I polished snob off to aristocrat?
You compliment me! father's apron still
Sticks out from son's court-vesture: still silk purse
Roughs finger with some bristle sow-ear-born!
(1.395-8)
I ended just by knocking head against
That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began
By getting bump from; as at last you too
May stumble o'er that stump which first of all
Bade me walk circumspectly.
(2.129-134)
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
41
THE GIRL:
Do you remember, at the library
We saw together somewhere, those two books
Somebody said were noticeworthy?
One
Lay wide on table, sprawled its painted leaves
For all the world's inspection; shut on shelf
Reclined the other volume, closed, clasped, locked,—
Clear to be let alone.
THE WOMAN:
(3.199-205)
You bid break trust,
This time, with who trusts me,-not simply bid
Me trust you, me who ruined but myself,
In trusting but myself!
THE AUTHOR:
(4.653-6)
Wicks are noisome-deep
(1.96-7)
In wax, to detriment of plated ware;
They slacken pace: the younger stops abrupt,
Discards cigar, looks his friend full in face.
(2.16-17)
From his early beginning as an admirer and imita-
tor of Shelley, through Paracelsus to the dramas, he
grows into his mastery of his own type of blank verse,
which is already full grown in Men and Women.
What, then, were the metrical principles upon which
this verse was built?
A close and sometimes painful study of his practice
reveals but two metrical rules from which he is never
known to depart:
1-A blank verse line must contain not less than nine, nor
more than fifteen syllables!
2-It must not have less than two heavily stressed syllables
nor more than ten!
The one exception to the first rule is clearly an accident
or an oversight:
Till Rome, that Rome whereof-this voice (R&B 9.721)
42
Versification of Robert Browning
Nine-syllable lines are not common, but they do occur:
Steadied him a moment, set him straight (R&B 4.289)
And in your name? I presume so much,
Plainly, and need so be put aside:
(R&B 7.1359)
(R&B 11.518)
Eleven- and twelve- syllable lines are not uncommon in
any English blank verse, but many of the poets had
in mind certain rules of elision with which to justify
them. There is no evidence that Browning had any
rules of elision at all. Thirteen-syllable lines are very
common in Browning:
This being a fatherly pat o' the cheek, no more. (R&B 4.1254)
Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
(R&B 7.6)
And Judge the Other, with even-a word and a wink (R&B 4.52)
From the terrible patience of God? "All which just means,
(R&B 11.1376)
(R&B 4.547)
I' the matrimonial thrust and parry, at least
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,-three slim shapes.
(Fra Lippo 59)
Fourteen-syllable lines are occasional:
O' the baker or candlestick-maker? In all the rest (R&B 4.590)
The aim o' the cruelty being so crueller still,
By comers and goers in Via Vittoria: eh?
Fifteen-syllables are infrequent:
(R&B 4.684)
(R&B 3.74)
O' the "Great and Terrible Name"? Shall the Heaven of
Heavens
(Sludge 1074)
To speak in terms of stresses, a line may have from
two to ten, but there are few clear cases of ten full
stresses.
There may be two stresses: i.e. three light ones must
be added.
Historical and philosophical
Unlimited in capability
Incontrovertibly. Theodoric,
Civilization and the Emperor
(Red C. N. C. C. 3.762)
(Cleon 326)
(R&B 8.474)
(R&B 10.2023)
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
43
There may be three stresses: i.e. two light ones must
be added.
At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge; (R&B 1.110)
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
(Caliban 24)
To account for the thawing of an icicle,
(R&B 4.857)
Impotent, penniless and miserable!
(R&B 4.923)
To error in a woman and a wife,
(R&B 9.848)
There may be four stresses: (with or without the
light stress.)
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.
Followed her parents i' the face o' the world,
But flirting flag-like i' the face o' the world
(Caliban 25)
(R&B 3.720)
(R&B 3.888)
There may be six stresses: i.e. one not required by
the metre:
-Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top-(Blougram 533)
Prayers move God; threats, and nothing else, move men!
(R&B 7.1608)
The poor, toils, moils and grinds the mill nor means
(Inn Album 6.113)
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
(How It Strikes 29)
(R&B 3.235)
Of some tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree,
There may be seven stresses: i.e. two not required
by the metre:
Be thou to me law, right, wrong, heaven and hell!
With my poor young good beauteous murdered wife:
(R&B 11.2180)
(R&B 11.1821)
There was a ripe round long black toothsome fruit,
(R&B 7.816)
Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,
(Blougram 611)
And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,
(How It Strikes 85)
44
Versification of Robert Browning
There may be eight stresses: i.e. three not required
by the metre:
If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found, (R&B 9.44)
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
(R&B 11.9)
Or else stop race you boast runs neck and neck, (R&B 10.1581)
Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort
(Inn Album 2.293)
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye
(Caliban 49)
O' the first young girl's hand and the first old fool's purse!
(R&B 5.450)
There may be nine stresses: i.e. four not required
by the metre:
To these stout tall rough bright-eyed, black-haired boys,
(R&B 10.929)
The hoarse shrill throat, see shut eyes, neck shot-forth,
(R&B 8.234)
(R&B 10.1248)
Whence, then, this quite new quick cold thrill,-cloudlike,
While-see how this mere chance-sown, cleft-nursed seed,
(R&B 10.1036)
Who breaks law, breaks pact therefore, helps himself
(R&B 11.523)
There may be ten stresses: i.e. five not required by
the metre:
Fare ill, lie hard, lack clothes, lack fire, lack food? (R&B 4.645)
It is clear, then, and will be clearer still, that Brown-
ing was not greatly burdened with rules about the
number of syllables a line may have, or about elisions,
"substitutions," stresses, etc. He does none of these
things according to any fixed rule. A line may have
all the syllables it can carry; there may or may not be
elision in lines of more than ten syllables; any meas-
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
45
ure may be monosyllabic; any syllable may carry the
prose or the metrical accent. He had a notion that
a blank-verse line should satisfy the ear's anticipation
of five measures; he also knew or unconsciously proved
that ears are unscientific and accept approximations
to the pattern of anticipation which the metre sets up.
Browning was pleased with a continuous variation
from this expected pattern. His ear accepted some
fourscore combinations which differ in some way from
the pattern of iambic pentameter. That is close to the
mathematical limit of possible variations, and it is not
surprising that Tennyson refused to read them because
he could not "put up with obsolete horrors and un-
rhythmical composition" through a "volume of
spasms." But of course Tennyson is merely confess-
ing that his own margin of expectancy was much more
limited than that of Browning, who allowed himself
the latitude of nearly every type of blank verse line
since Surrey.
99 4
The number of different types of variations, how-
ever, taken as a fact by itself, is less significant than
the frequency with which these occur. Tennyson has
a variety of lines which seriously strain the metrical
pattern of blank verse, but little attention is paid to
them because they are rare. It is the frequency of
their occurrence and the proximity of a variety of
types to each other, as well as the excessive number
of them in Browning's verse, that make them bulk so
large in the reader's mind. Poets are usually careful
to preserve the normal pattern before and after a line
of doubtful conformity. But Browning was careless
of this. Sometimes he writes line after line of blank
verse which varies from the pattern, and temporarily
* Tennyson to Mrs. Brotherton.
1912.
Tennyson And His Friends.
Macmillan,
46
Versification of Robert Browning
destroys it so that the reader does not know what to
expect. Thus:
"Thus it happed not, since thus he did the deed,
And proved himself thereby portentousest
Of cutthroats and a prodigy of crime,
As the woman that he slaughtered was a saint,
Martyr and miracle!" quoth the other to match:
Again, more witness, and the case postponed.
(R&B 1.201-6)
Or to illustrate with a different type of variation:
Sooner? What's soon or late i' the case?-ask we,
A wound i' the flesh no doubt wants prompt redress;
It smarts a little today, well in a week,
Forgotten in a month; or never, or now, revenge!
But a wound to the soul? That rankles worse and worse.
(R&B 4.1520-24)
Leaving the shows of things to the Lord of Show
And Prince o' the Power of the Air. Our very flight,
Even to its most ambiguous circumstance,
Irrefragably proved how futile, false.
Why, men-men and not boys-boys and not babes—
Babes and not beasts-beasts and not stocks and stones!-
(R&B 6.1793-1798)
The variations have a strong tendency to occur in
clusters, as if the swing established itself in the poet's
mind so strongly that it formed for the nonce the ac-
cepted pattern. Now a double anacrusis or a direct
attack is a variation so trivial as to be all but un-
noticed. But let these occur in line after line and there
is a new norm established. These repetitions are fre-
quent in Browning's verse. Here are two illustrations
which could be indefinitely extended.
The gratitude, forsooth, of a prostitute
To the greenhorn and the bully-friends of hers,
From the wag that wants the queer jokes for his club,
To the snuff-box-decorator, honest man,
(Sludge 783-86)
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
47
Doctor Bottini,-to no matter who,
Writes on the Monday two days afterward.
Now shall the honest championship of right,
Crowned with success, enjoy at last, unblamed,
Moderate triumph!
(R&B 12.390-394)
In the early poems even the feminine ending may
occur frequently enough to affect the pattern, as,
They will not let me even die. Spare, spare me,
Sinning or no, forget that, only spare me
The horrible scorn! You thought I could support it.
But now you see what silly fragile creature
Cowers thus.
(Paracelsus 5.315-19)
That truth is just as far from me as ever;
That I have thrown my life away; that sorrow
On that account is idle, and further effort
To mend and patch what's marred beyond repairing,
And useless:
(Paracelsus 3.502-6)
One
It is no different with the triple measures.
triple in a line is not remarkable; even two of them
may not be startling. But if these recur every few
lines, as they do in Browning, they begin to strain the
pattern; and if several successive lines have one or
more triples, a new duple-triple movement is estab-
lished. There are many such passages in Browning's
blank verse.
And if they recognized in a critical flash
From the zenith, each the other, her need of him,
His need of. . say, a woman to perish for,
The regular way o' the world yet break no vow,
Do no harm save to himself,-if this were thus?
(R&B 3.1041-45)
Here he has Cardinal This to vouch for the past,
Cardinal That to trust for the future,—match
And marriage were a Cardinal's making,—in short,
What if a tragedy be acted here
Impossible for malice to improve,
And innocent Guido with his innocent four
(R&B 4.1599-1604)
48
Versification of Robert Browning
The actual time of these measures is, approximately at
least, the same; they might be written:
And if they recognized in a critical | flash
2
3 3
3 3
|
3 1½ 1½ 2 2 2
4
But the introduction of one or more triples into any
line temporarily breaks the iambic movement. That
is, of course, the metrical reason for them-they pre-
serve the time length of the measure which the ear
demands, and at the same time give, as Poe said, "the
agreeable variation of three syllables instead of the
uniform two." If they occur too often (and they do
sometimes in Browning's verse) they become the "uni-
form three," and a new movement is set up-a duple-
triple, something like that of Up In a Villa.
Again, the failing stress on the sixth syllable is
common to all blank verse, or any iambic pentameter
line. It is more conspicuous on this syllable because
it tends to shorten the line into four measures by
hurrying over the third one, as,
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
(Caliban 20)
(Caliban 2)
where the weak stress is preceded by an easily elided
syllable. Such lines are acceptable in tetrameter verse.
But if these lines occur too often, as in Caliban, they
become a characteristic feature of the verse, and if
they begin to appear in succession the sense of the
iambic pattern is dulled, or even lost. It is here that
Browning's practice becomes important; he writes
them in a series in a new pattern in the midst of iambic
pentameter lines.
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.
Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match.
(Caliban 24-26)
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
49
As we stood listening on a sunny mound
To the wind murmuring in the damp copse,
Like heavy breathings of some hidden thing (Pau. 65-7)
That bloated bubble, with her soul inside,
Back to Arezzo and a palace there—
Or say, a fissure in the honest earth ... (R&B 1.551-3)
Browning's work is full of lines made up of many
weak stresses. A single line of this kind is not un-
usual in blank verse; the ear is often relieved by the
frailty of such lines as,
Civilization is imperative.
or by the dipodic flight of a line like
(R&B 10.2012)
At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the bridge; (R&B 1.110)
But if a whole series of these lines gains no strength,
the metre succumbs from the want of a backbone.
Such passages are unaccountably frequent and long in
Browning, especially in the later work. Open the
blank-verse poems at random and find examples. Thus:
For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.
The other portion, as he shaped it thus
For argumentatory purposes,
He felt his foe was foolish to dispute. (Blougram 980-3)
Name me, a primitive religionist-
As should the aboriginary be
I boast myself, Etruscan, Aretine,
With, for a visible divinity,—
The portent of a Jove Aegiochus
Descried 'mid clouds, lightning and thunder, couched
On topmost crag of your Capitoline:
(R&B 11.1913-5, 1918-21)
For, curiosity-how natural!
Importunateness-what a privilege
In the ardent sex!
(R&B 9.745-7)
50
Versification of Robert Browning
So did his cruelty burn life about,
And lay the ruin bare in dreadfulness,
Try the persistency of torment so
Upon the wife, that, at extremity,
(R&B 10.629-32)
Thus the man,-
So timid when the business was to touch
The uncertain order of humanity,
Imperil, for a problematic cure
Of grievance on the surface, any good
I' the deep of things, dim yet discernible—
This same man, so irresolute before,
•
(Prince H-S 1513-19)
If petulant remonstrance made appeal,
Unseasonable, o'erprotracted, if
Importunate challenge taxed the public ear
When silence more decorously had served
For protestation,
(R&B 9.260-4)
Browning had early in his career given up the use
of the feminine ending, but in its stead is a growing
percentage of lines ending on a weak syllable, as,
I hold a heavier fault imputable
Didst ever touch such ampollosity
And morning church is obligatory:
Pursuing chemistry or botany
Your secret of superiority.
Of feminine desirability,
At the very purest, so compensating
The superfluity of naughtiness,
And, reinaugurated, miracle
(R&B 10.267)
(R&B 12.644)
(Inn A. 1.181)
(Ibid 1.297)
(Ibid 1.436)
(Ibid 2.205)
(Prince H-S. 1327)
(R&B 4.653)
(Red C. N. C. C. 2.181)
For every one of Browning's heavy lines, gorman-
dized with extra syllables and accents, and rebelling
against the metrical pattern, there is one of these puny
lines perishing from famine. In some of the poems
there are so many of them that their effect is open to
serious objection.
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
51
Strange as it may at first sound, lines made up wholly
of monosyllables are a feature of Browning's verse.
If it is true, as Gascoigne said, that "the more mono-
syllables you use, the truer Englishman shall you
seem," Browning is the most English of the poets.
Even Wordsworth is not a serious rival except when
he actually attempts to reproduce the speech of the
rustics as in Michael (11.385-90). A single line of
monosyllabic words might escape notice. But if two
or three lines in succession are wholly monosyllabic
and are followed immediately by still more, they be-
come a stylistic trait which reacts sharply upon the
versification.
For polysyllabic words are usually divided be
tween two measures so that the metre slips on easily
from one measure to the next, or, as is usually the case
in Browning's verse, they give a trochaic trip to the
metre.
Rejecting past example, practice, precept,
And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
(Par. 1.415)
(Bish. Or. T. 98)
For riches, honor, pleasure, work, repose,
(Blougram 280)
The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,
(Blougram 521)
Some benediction anciently thy smile.
(R&B 1.1401)
O' the youthful, earnest, passionate-genius, beauty,
(Sludge 1424)
But monosyllables often do not flow smoothly into
each other; they maintain stubbornly their independ-
ence. The result is frequently rough, jerky, deterrent
verse. The smooth vowels are lost in the rough em-
52
Versification of Robert Browning
brace of bristly consonants which sharply divide each
word from its neighbor, as
The hoarse shrill throat, see shut eyes, neck shot-forth,
(R&B 8.234)
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over-yes,
(R&B 11.9)
It is difficult to preserve unharmed the metrical pat-
tern amid such strife. These examples are extreme,
of course, but one has only to turn to the poems for
overwhelming evidence of the frequency and the effect
of monosyllables in Browning's verse. In Bishop
Blougram's Apology there is a passage of eighteen
lines (834-852) which has an average of nine words.
to a line. All through the poem, as in Cleon, An Epis-
tle, The Inn Album, etc., etc., are swarms of them.
See the world
Such as it is,—you made it not, nor I;
I mean to take it as it is,—and you,
Not so you'll take it,-though you get naught else.
More
(Blougram 230-233)
I think about and less I like the thing—
No, you must let me! Now, be good for once!
We played for love, not hate: yet, hate! I hate.
I had the cash
To lose you knew that!-lose and none the less
Whistle tomorrow:
•
(Inn Album 2.22-24, 26, 29-31)
Or to take an example in which a dissyllable occurs in
some lines:
Since show me where's the woman won without
The help of this one lie which she believes-
That never mind how things have come to pass,
And let who loves have loved a thousand times—
All the same he now loves her only, loves
Her ever! if you "won" you just mean "sold,"
That's quite another compact.
(Inn Album 2.498-504)
Blank Verse: General Characteristics
53
In many cases where Browning's verse is rough,
feeble, or prosaic the cause is either the conflict be-
tween the prose rhythm and the metrical pattern or
the hesitant, scabrous nature of a series of monosyl-
labic words.
We have seen how the most modest of variations
which are common to all iambic pentameter verse and
used by all the poets become conspicuous in Brown-
ing's poetry because of their frequent and sometimes
excessive repetition. We will next look at the differ-
ent types of lines which he admits into verse whose
metrical pattern is iambic pentameter.
CHAPTER V
VARIATIONS IN BLANK VERSE
IN A POEM of blank verse the ear expects to find a
metrical pattern made up of ten syllables, divided into
five measures by the accent falling on the even ones.
This pattern is brought out in some lines with mathe-
matical correctness, as,
|
He could not think he saw his wife a | gain:
(Balaustion 2336)
The ear becomes patterned to this movement and
reaches forward to it with the expectation of finding
confirmation in each measure and each line. If a given
combination of syllables does not conform exactly to
this pattern of anticipation, there is within it an ele-
ment of surprise, of disappointment or delight. If
the natural or prose arrangement of the syllables al-
ways coincided with this metrical pattern, there would
be intolerable monotony-like little Mary saying her
piece. The poets have always prevented this monotony
by introducing into the verse some variant element.
As a result of long precedent, therefore, certain de-
partures from the "normal" arrangement of syllables
have come to be recognized as a part of the rules of
verse. They are so common, so universally a part of
blank verse, that they hardly need to be mentioned.
1-There may be more than ten syllables. (Usually
but one more, though in Browning there may be five
more). The extra syllable may be at either end,¹ or
within the line.
1 It is unusual to find them at both ends of the same line:
I the crucible of life, where to the powers (Prince H. 1322).
55
56
Versification of Robert Browning
(1) At the beginning, or double anacrusis:
Like a | mountain | berry: | doubtless | it is | sweet (Pauline 197)
(2) Within the line, or a triple measure:
Scarce worth a moth's | flitting, which long | grasses | cross,
(Pauline 173)
Like the | bright | side of a | sorrow, | and the | banks (Ibid 60)
(3) At the end, or a feminine ending:
|
All I have clearly gained; for | once ex- cluding (Ibid 16)
I | cannot | keep on the | stretch: 'tis | no back- | shrinking—
(Ibid 58)
2-The metrical stress may fall on a syllable which
would not be stressed in a "prose" reading. This light
or failing stress is one of the commonest variations in
poetry, and may occur in any measure:
1st-As | in a | Northern | night one looks al | way
(Pau. 48)
2nd-Yet, | suntread | er, all | hail! From my heart's |
heart
(Pau. 201)
3rd-As | we stood | listening | on a sunny | mound
(Ibid 65)
4th-Wast thou to me, and art thou | to the world!
(Ibid 190)
5th-The | grin with | which I viewed his | perish |ing:
There may also be two in the line, as:
(Ibid 119)
Or with them | as an | earnest | of their | truth: (Ibid 31)
At the | Strozzi, | at the | Pillar, | at the | Bridge;
There may occasionally be three:
Of | feminine de | sira | bili | ty
(R&B 1.110)
(Inn A. 2.205)
Historical and | philo | sophi | cal (Red C. N. C. C. 3.762)
3—The line may begin with direct attack, or a triple
first measure without an anacrusis:
| Nothing but | sky appears, so close the roots
(Pau. 783)
Variations in Blank Verse
57
4-Any measure may be monosyllabic; it is usually
followed by a trisyllabic:
1st-And | I, | silent and | scared, got down again
(R&B 7.448)
2nd-That | tries for | truth | truer than truth itself,
(R&B 11.22)
3rd-"Then, swallowed up in | rage, | Stephen ex | claimed
(R&B 10.71)
4th-At ease, both gay and | grim, like a | Swiss | guard
(R&B 11.206)
The same effect is made by the fifth measure (espe-
cially when it is enjambed) when it is followed by a
direct-attack line:
5th-As if-forgive now-should you let me | sit | Here by
the window with your hand in mine (Andrea D. S. 13-14)
5-The prose phrasing may not coincide with the
metrical pattern, resulting in "extra stresses" to bring
out the meaning of the line.2
Had slammed, jerked, shot, slid,—I shall soon find which!—
(R&B 11.222)
Praise, blame, sit, stand, lie or go!-all of it,
(R&B 11.616)
Whence, then, this quite new quick cold thrill,—cloudlike,
(R&B 10.1248)
Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes,
(R&B 1.484)
6—A cesura may occur after any syllable in the line
to disturb the even movement:
1st-Now,- | never wait the slow envelopment
(Inn A. 7.82)
2nd-Would you? | no reason's wanted in the case
(Ibid 124)
3rd-So with you! | In they burnt on me, his tales,
(Ibid 125)
2 In such cases, the metrical pattern is preserved by aggressive timers by
a change in pitch from syllable to syllable.
58
Versification of Robert Browning
4th-A life of shame-
| I can't distinguish more—
(Ibid 133)
5th-Any one told me my own mother died
|
(Ibid 119)
6th-He chose to somehow write mistakenly
(Ibid 109)
7th-Say I have justly judged you! | then farewell
(Ibid 102)
8th-Then take love's last and best return! I think.
9th-All sorts of stories of their keeper— | he's
(Ibid 76)
(Ibid 76)
And there may be any combination of two or more
cesuras in the same line.
When you have listed the foregoing variations, you
have all but described the versification of conservative
poets, like Milton for instance. But there is nothing
very exciting about Milton's prosody; his rules of
verse could be written on a card, and after you have
listed all his striking variations you have found noth-
ing that is not normal in Robert Browning. In fact,
all the things noted in the above list are so mild when
set in the perspective of Browning's verse that they
are inconspicuous. One almost forgets to note them
as a feature of his prosody.
His blank verse is always straining restlessly at the
leash of the pattern, nearly always stretching it to the
limit, ofttimes actually breaking away from the re-
straint. He treats the variations just noted as if they
too were a part of the "normal," and adds still other
unexpected elements to them; he plays variations on
the variations. An ear trained to the cadence of Mil-
tonic or Tennysonian blank verse must be readjusted
to find pleasure in the lively movement of Browning's
shifting patterns.
Shifting, because his phrases do not always rest com-
fortably when laid over the metrical pattern. They
Variations in Blank Verse
59
seem to be prompted and arranged more by the com-
pulsion of the thought to be expressed than by the
swing of the metre. One can seldom get far away
from his own statement that versification is only "a
mere outward crust." Any group of phrases that ex-
presses the thought can be inserted in a line of blank
verse. The result is that the phrasing, instead of con-
forming to and reinforcing the pattern, is often in
open conflict with it; striving with success to override
the expected movement with a new pattern of its own
in prevailingly triple rhythm. In many poems-nota-
bly Half Rome, Tertium Quid, and the Guido mono-
logues of The Ring and the Book-the phrasing
throws so many measures in successive lines into triple
movement that it is a question whether they should not
be called duple-triple five-measure lines instead of
iambic pentameter.
This fondness of Browning's for hypercatalectic
lines gives to his blank verse one of its most distinctive
features. If these were occasional, if there were but
one extra syllable in a line, if they were liquids or
smooth-flowing vowels, if they were "er's," or "ow's,"
or "le's," etc., one would formulate rules of elision,
and the extra syllables would not be any more con-
spicuous in Browning than in any other poet. But
they are not occasional.
Browning takes no pains to make the syllables elide.
He must have been quite unconscious, most of the
time, of any formula of elision to justify extra sylla-
bles. The majority of them are frankly extra sylla-
bles, highly race conscious and stubbornly individual.
They make therefore the most important variation
from the normal in his blank verse.
Single trisyllabic measures are so commonplace that
we may take them for granted and pass on. It will be
60
Versification of Robert Browning
our purpose to show, in the following chapters, the
different types of variations which Browning admits
into verse whose expected form is iambic pentameter;
and how he freely adds other elements, many of them
unusual in themselves, to the variations just listed
which have released most poets from any sense of
monotony.
CHAPTER VI
VARIATION WITH TWO OR MORE TRI-
SYLLABIC MEASURES
[There are twenty-nine types of lines with two or
more trisyllabic measures. We will, for convenience,
arrange them in the following order: (1) those with
triples in the first and second measures, with direct
attack, an anacrusis, a double anacrusis; then those
with triples in the first and third, first and fourth, etc.,
through the possible combinations (1-15); (2) lines.
beginning with a double anacrusis and followed by a
triple in each of the measures (16-19); (3) lines with
three triple measures in the various combinations
(20-28); (4) lines with four triple measures (28).]
As we have already noticed, a single triple measure
is not unusual in blank verse, unless it recurs in suc-
cessive lines as it often does in Browning. Any poet
might write,
| Boldest of hearts that | ever | braved the | sun,
(R&B 1.1385)
But it is a rare occasion indeed in Wordsworth, Byron,
Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, when this line does not re-
turn immediately to duple rhythm after the first meas-
ure. Browning's ear, however, did not demand such
a return; instead, he allows the triple movement of the
first measure to sweep on into the second, establishing
a triple-duple movement which conflicts with the ex-
pected iambic norm. It is one of the most frequent
variations in his blank verse.¹
1 We are leaving out of account the variations which are universally
recognized in all blankverse, as noted above.
61
62
Versification of Robert Browning
།
| x⁰⁰ | x00 | x0 xº │x
| Let's to the | Prado and make the most of time.
xolove is the sky,
Peerless above i' the sky, the
Seeing, there properly was no
xo (How it St. 115)
pinnaclê,-
(Prince H-S. 956)
judgment-bar,
(R&B 1.152)
What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare
(Blougram 455)
Lies to the end of the list,-"He picked it up,
(Sludge 109)
Whether 't were better have made you man or brute,
(Sludge 1388)
In the earlier poems, there may be an extra syllable
at the end of this line:
the
X.. 1 x
X ·
X D D
Smiling humility, praising much, yet waiving (Para. 1.259)
Spoke of the unfinished Duomo, you remember;
(Luria 1.123)
I, of a sudden must be; my faults, my follies,
(King V. 1.45)
2-There may be an anacrusis at the beginning of
the line which subdues slightly the abruptness of the
first triple:
X
| x⁰⁰ | x00 | x0
x° x
Y
}
pictures | glow:
X
о
As she in the gallery | where the
b
Y 00 Y
D
(Balcony 152)
I said to myself—“I have caught it, I conceive
b
X
1 ㅅ ​t 010
४
And Prince o' the Power of the Air,
X
X
X • X
(B&B 6.1162)
Our very flight,
.X
(R&B 6.1794)
X
The last o' the red o' the rose away, while yet
(R&B 3.871)
And life o' the fat o' the land while life should last.
(R&B 2.420)
Was whisked i' the way of a certain man, who snapped.
(R&B 2.275)
As far i' the way o' the Church as safety seemed,
(R&B 4.400)
Variation With Trisyllabic Measures
63
"Too deep i' the thick of the struggle, struggle through!
(R&B 6.1371)
As yet to the land o' the Bistones." "Then, look
(Balau. 1097)
Sometimes, in the earlier poems, the line has a fem-
inine ending:
Precision and emphasis-you, beside, are clearly
(Para. 3.167)
3-It is rare for this line to have a double anacrusis.
For most poets the extra syllable at the beginning
would in itself be enough variation for one line; for in
continuous verse it has the same value as a triple in
any measure, since it is then actually the completion
of the fifth measure of the preceding line. The double
anacrusis followed by two triples amounts, therefore,
to three triples in a row when the verse is considered
in paragraphs instead of separate lines.
00 | X00 | X00 x0 x0
Like
the skipping of | rabbits
slim | shapes,
x
by moonlight,- | three
(Fra L. 59)
If he ruffle a feather, it's "Gently, patiently!
(Sludge 161)
From the terrible patience of God? "All which just means,
(R&B 11.1376)
From the first o' the natural fury, not flung loose
(R&B 5.799)
4-Frequently the dactylic movement of the first.
measure is halted by an iambic second measure, re-
covers itself in the third and is again halted in the
fourth. There results an acute struggle for supremacy
between the dactylic and iambic movement.
|x00 x 0 xºº | xº | x
| Foxes have | holes, and | fowls o' the | air their | nests;
(R&B 8.1293)
64
Versification of Robert Browning
Guido and Pietro, Pietro and Guido, din
Something-or-other jostled Lex this-and-that.
(R&B 8.261)
(R&B 1.225)
Slow from the innermost o' the palace, stopped (Balau. 665)
Tush! I have said it, did I not say it all? (Balcony 850)
"I've got a V-note!"-what do you say to him?
Out of the lying, softly and surely spun
Bold in my own, defying the imbeciles—
Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!
(Sludge 103)
(Sludge 405)
(Sludge 594)
(Fra Lippo 227)
Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
(Blougram 264)
Cleave to the husband, be it for weal or woe:
(R&B 5.580)
(R&B 5.605)
Such was the pact: Pompilia from the first
Such was the starting; now of the further step.
Half below-ground already indeed. Goodbye!
(R&B 5.752)
(R&B 5.1455)
5 This line may begin less abruptly with an ana-
crusis. It is pleasingly balanced between duple and
triple movement, pulling now one way, now the other.
0 | x⁰⁰ | xº | x00 x0 x
The rest o' the | scheme would | care for it | self: es | cape
(R&B 11.1613)
Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:
(Death in D. 167) & (332)
As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad
(Blougram 965)
(Sludge 373)
Accomplices in rascality: this we hear
Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and Life,—
(R&B 1.80}
Amends for the past, release for the future! Such
(R&B 4.1267)
And best o' the stock! Pompilia, thine the palm!
(R&B 9.1302)
No more, and the Camp as little, the ingrates,-come,
(R&B 5.404)
Variation With Trisyllabic Measures
65
And robbing a man, but . . . Excellency, by your leave,
(R&B 4.257)
And this you admire, you men o' the world, my lords?
(R&B 5.554)
6-There may also be a double anacrusis. When this
occurs, the line is pulled still farther away from the
iambic pattern, because the sensation of a triple meas-
ure is carried into the line from the preceding one.
00x00 | xo | x00 x0 x
1
Is the cunning and impu | dence o' the | pair of cheats,
(R&B 5.1493)
-
At the broidery-frame alone i' the chamber,-loud
(R&B 7.479)
O' the head of Pietro and Violante-(still
(R&B 9.805)
And the luck o' the first discovery fell, beside,
(R&B 4.551)
(R&B 5.121)
I' the name of the indivisible Trinity!
7-Again, the triple movement of the first measure,
halted by duples in the second and third, may reappear
in the fourth. The line limps along between the two
movements, with a jump at the beginning and a hop
at the end.
|x00|x0 |x |x0|x
| Stopped by a conch a top from fluttering | forth
-Sowing the Square with works of one and the same
Even the blind can see a providence here.
Anxious to learn, of any way i' the world,
Down to that choice example Aelian gives
(R&B 1.66-67)
(R&B 2.86)
(R&B 5.430)
(R&B 1.229)
In the earlier poems, there may be a feminine ending.
You were the last to keep the ford i' the valley
(Luria 2.137)
8-The line may begin with an anacrusis:
0x00 xoxo x00 x
As | rogues at a fair some | fool they | strip i̇ the | midst,
(R&B 5.1489)
66
Versification of Robert Browning
(R&B 2.100)
(R&B 3.291)
A little at this Lorenzo. Body o' me!
And usual faces,-fain would settle himself
Pompilia penned him letters, passionate prayers,
A conjurer? Choose me any craft i' the world
Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,
(R&B 3.897)
(Sludge 437)
(Inn A. 2.317)
(R&B 4.1189)
Another consideration: have it your way!
Since means to the end are lawful! What i' the way
(R&B 9.673)
(R&B 4.1523)
Forgotten in a month; or never, or now, revenge!
9-A double anacrusis is rare.
00x00 x0 x0 x00x
O'the | Power o' the | Air, in | to a | Heaven: there|is
Violante, triumphing in a flourish of fire
(Inn A. 4.455)
(R&B 4.193)
In the eye o' the world? They brandish law 'gainst law;
(R&B 4.632)
10-Again, the first and fourth measures may be
duple, the second and third triple. The line then be-
gins and ends in the expected movement, but the mid-
dle pulls it apart. It usually has an anacrusis.
0x0 xºº | xºº | xº | x
A simple | friar o' the city; con | fessed to | him,
(R&B 3.1013)
Which else would heavily fall. On the other hand,
(R&B 3.1383)
(Sludge 198)
'Tis but a foot in the water and out again;
Behaved unpleasantly, till he was fain confess,
(Sludge 551)
And wealth to you for a rise i' the world thereby."
(R&B 4.516)
I do say, full i' the face o' the crucifix
Amid the general brown o' the species, lurks
Would not you prophesy-"She on whose brow is stamped
(R&B 11.605)
(R&B 4.342)
(R&B 5.882)
Variation With Trisyllabic Measures
67
11-A double anacrusis is a very great rarity.
00 x0 x⁰⁰ | x00 x0 x
1
To escape the | questioning | guard at the | proper | gate,
(R&B 1.197)
12-There may be a triple in the second and fourth
measures. The alteration emphasizes the conflict be-
tween the two movements for supremacy. It always
has an anacrusis.
O |x0 |x00 | x |x0|x
De duction to it," We struggle, | fain to enlarge
To spy a providence in the fire's going out,
Then, since a trial ensued, a touch o' the same
(Cleon 245)
(Sludge 962)
(R&B 1.1097)
Be cautious, though: at the Ave! "You of the court!
(R&B 6.649)
My house, to hustle and edge me out o' the same,
To go with the dowry, and be followed in time
(R&B 4.595)
(R&B 4.334)
And so Pompilia,-as the move o' the maw, (R&B 9.451)
Each playing prodigal son of heavenly sire, (R&B 11.757)
Its rules are idiot's-rambling. Honor of birth,-
(R&B 5.437)
13-A double anacrusis with this line is very rare.
00 x0x00 | xo | x00 | x
Is a threat,-whose | remedy | of Pom | pilia's | wrong,
(R&B 10.974)
I' the matrimonial thrust and parry, at least (R&B 4.547)
14-The first and second may be duple, the third and
fourth triple. The last half of the line runs away with
the expected pattern,
oxoxo | x00 x0 x
And carried by the Prince o' the | Power of the | Air
(R&B 1.561)
68
Versification of Robert Browning
Nor prejudice the Prince o' the Power of the air,
(R&B 1.591)
The worship of that prince o' the power o' the air
(Prince H. 2120)
Bravado with submissiveness, prettily fool (R&B 2.76)
But use your sense first, see if the miscreant proved,
(R&B 3.1350)
"The fellow lurking there i' the black o' the box
15-A double anacrusis rarely occurs.
(R&B 6.410)
0º | xº | xº | x00 | x00 | x
By a witness | to his | feat i' the | following | age,—
(R&B 5.1496)
There are no more combinations possible to two tri-
syllabic measures; but the limit is set by mathematics
and not by any rules of prosody.
The double anacrusis is, as we have noted, a mild
variation from the normal pattern. Shelley, for ex-
ample, is fond of it; but in his verse it seldom adds an
extra syllable to the line, since it is usually followed
by a monosyllabic measure, as,
And the wild | ante | lope, that | starts when | e'er
|
(Alastor 103)
Browning more often adds an extra syllable to the line,
making it a true double anacrusis followed by normal
duple measures, as,
Do you see the plan de licious | ly com | plete? (R&B 3.1230)
In addition to this, he allows a triple in any measure
of the line. In continuous verse this combination has
the same effect as two triples, which, in fact, it is.
Note, for example the following paragraph:
Pompilia, I supposed their daughter, drew
Breath first 'mid Rome's worst rankness, through the | deed
Of a drab and a rogue, was by-blow bastard-babe
Of a nameless strumpet, passed off, palmed on me
As the daughter with the dowry. Daughter? Dirt
O' the kennel!
(R&B 5.766-771)
Variation With Trisyllabic Measures
69
16—The first may be trisyllabic. It is very frequent.
00 | X00 | xoxo xo | x
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge
In a | hole o' the | rock and | calls him | Cali | ban;
(Caliban 165-6)
That man would choose to see the whole world roll
I' the slime o' the slough, so he might touch the tip
(Sludge 768-9)
See, here's my elbow's mark
I' the dust o' the sill. Oh, shut the lattice, pray!
(Pippa 1.35-6)
Tickling men's ears-the sect for a quarter of an hour
I' the teeth of the world which, clown-like, loves to chew
(R&B 1.305-6)
In the earlier poems a feminine ending may be
added:
And again where the cloak hangs, yonder in the shadow.
(Luria 1.126)
17-The second may be trisyllabic.
00|x0 | X00|x0 |x |x
I' the blind old | palace, a | pitfall at each | step,
(R&B 4.1069)
For the part he played: they have summoned him indeed:
(R&B 4.1459)
To his mind like San Giovanni-"There's the fold,
(R&B 7.260)
With the unblamed Aethiop,-Hercules spun wool
(R&B 9.980)
At the Mouth-of-Truth o' the river-side, you know:
(R&B 11.186)
With a raven feather, and next week found myself
Of the outworn umbre and bistre! Yet I think
O' the commonality-whom, unless you prick
(Sludge 268)
(Sludge 772)
(Aris. A. 3098)
I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so transmutes
18-The third may be trisyllabic.
00 | x0 | x | x00 | x | x
(Balau. 2421)
To the ❘ new pro | fession: | sin o' the | sly, hence | forth!
(R&B 11.1992)
70
Versification of Robert Browning
(R&B 8.1382)
To anticipate a little the tardy pack,
Than the very wounds that follow. Beside the tale
With the other tale, superlative purity
(R&B 4.636)
(R&B 4.1035)
(Sludge 865)
I' the secret,-his particular ghost, in fine?
From the zenith, each the other, her need of him,
(R&B 3.1042)
O' the youthful, earnest, passionate-genius, beauty,
(Sludge 1424)
O' the kennel! Dowry? Dust o' the street! Naught more,
(R&B 5.771)
19-The fourth may be trisyllabic.
00 xoxoxox00x
Of the outside | air, the | inside | weight o' the | world
(R&B 6.935)
Even Paul's astuteness sniffed no harm i' the world.
(R&B 3.1511)
(R&B 4,168)
By another vile one: her ostensible work
To the least adroit and self-possessed o' the pair.
(R&B 4.552)
O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you say
I have told you this whole story over again.
(R&B 11.996)
(R&B 6.1596)
We have already seen how the fifth becomes tri-
syllabic when carried on into a line beginning with a
double anacrusis; and again we have reached the
mathematical limit of possible combinations.
20-If two triples in a line make war on the duple
movement, three of them annihilate it and set up a
new movement in its stead. But Browning, caught in
the swing of the triple movement, carries it (or it
carries him) breathlessly on through three measures.
| x00 | xºº | xºº | xº │x
| Lily-like | out o' the | cleft the sun-smit | rock.
(R&B 4.322)
Variation With Trisyllabic Measures
71
He was at Via Vittoria in three skips:
What is it all to the facts o' the couple's case,
What an elaborate theory have we here,
Mater-how well the Ovidian distich suits!-
Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop's self!
(Ibid 474)
(Ibid 642)
(Ibid 854)
(R&B 9.1354)
(R&B 10.1476)
(Straf. 1. 1.90)
Haman! Ahithophel! Gentlemen of the North,
Signing himself with the other because of Christ
Vaulted too loftily over what barred him late,
Dragon and devil. His brother Girolamo
Justify that in its place; I am now to say,
21-There may be an anacrusis.
0x00 | xºº | x00 | x0 x
(Fra L. 155)
(R&B 2.1521)
(R&B 2.487)
(R&B 5.781)
Or | what do you | say to a | touch of the | devil's | worst?
(R&B 3.944)
But in the idea, the spiritual display, (R&B 8.384)
And favoritism unfashionable: the Pope (R&B 3.1470)
As only a "medium," only the kind of thing
(Sludge 612)
Pompilia tires o' the tattle, and shall to bed:
(R&B 7.242)
To brother Abate, who bustled, did his best,
(R&B 4.1296)
This being a fatherly pat o' the cheek, no more.
(R&B 4.1254)
Francesca Vittoria Pompilia and the rest (R&B 4.213)
22-The double anacrusis is very unusual, since it
then makes a fourteen-syllable line and that is rare
even in Browning's verse. There is at least one, and
being a run-on line it actually makes four trisyllabic
measures in a row. The iambic pattern is, of course,
slaughtered.
00 | x00 | x00|x00|x0 |x
Why not have taken the butcher's son, the boy
O' the baker or candlestick- | maker? In all the rest,
(R&B 4.589-90)
72
Versification of Robert Browning
23-The second measure may be duple, the first,
third, and fourth triple. The lone duple barely halts
the rush for an instant before it is overpowered by the
strong trisyllabic swing of the "o' the's" and "i' the's"
or equally effective phrases which press the pattern
out of shape.
| x⁰⁰ | xº | x00 | x00 | x
|
| Fain would be down with | them i' the | thick o' the | filth,
(Sludge 397)
Tickling men's ears-the sect for a quarter of an hour
(R&B 1.305)
Satan jaunts forth with, shabby and serviceable,
(R&B 4.1016)
Follows as he best can, overtakes i' the end.
(Ibid 1171)
And, to the tree, said. . . either the spirit o' the fig,
(R&B 7.818)
Tasting some richness caked i' the core o' the tree,—
(Balaus. 1876)
Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world,
(D in D 466)
Leave him to me. Count Guido and brother of mine,
(R&B 5.398)
Coiled with a leer at foot of it. There was the end!
24-It rarely has an anacrusis.
0x00 xº | xºº | x00 | x
(R&B 5.1652)
No! | Burying | nose deep | down the
briery | bush,
(R&B 8.300)
I, being of will and power to help, i' the main,
(Prince H 1058)
You dreaded the crown, succumbed to the popular cry,
(R&B 5.1844)
The double anacrusis, fourteen-syllable line, does
not, I think, occur in this combination.
25 The third may be duple, the first, second, and
fourth triple, reversing the line by putting the rush at
the beginning with the temporary halt toward the end.
Variation With Trisyllabic Measures
73'
| x00 | x00 | xº | x⁰⁰ | x
| Martyr and | miracle!" | quoth the | other to match:
|
(R&B 1.205)
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
(R&B 4.12)
Aim on my part i' the marriage,-money to-wit. (Ibid 611)
Wager-by-battle-of-cheating! What do you say, (Ibid 628)
Throw in abuse o' the man, his body and soul, (Ibid 726)
Guido rejoins-"Did the other end o' the tale (Ibid 1054)
Turns on the pettier, makes a general prey. (Ibid 1565)
Here he has Cardinal This to vouch for the past,
26-The anacrusis is rare.
0 | x00 | x00 |x0 |x0|x
(Ibid 1599)
Poor | glorious | spirit-con | cerns him | even to stay
(Parac. 5.15)
My profit or loss i' the matter: married am I:
(R&B 5.566)
The double anacrusis, to my knowledge, does not occur.
27-The first measure may be duple, the second,
third and fourth triple. It sets up for the nonce a new
triple pattern.
0 | xº | xºº | x00 | x00 | x
In keeping | out o' the | way o' the | wheels o' the | world,
(R&B 2.664)
Through that irregular breach o' the boundary,—see
(R&B 10.1201)
That raised the spirit and succubus,-letters, to-wit,
(R&B 5.1132)
28-This line has a double anacrusis, with a fem-
inine ending, and is the most elephantine line in
Browning's poetry. It must be considered in its own
habitat to be appreciated properly. Incidentally it is
a remarkable study in triple rythm in blank verse.
00 x0 x⁰⁰ | x00 | xºº | xº
I
How does it suit the dread traditional test
O' the “Great and | Terrible | Name"? Shall the | Heaven
of Heavens
74
Versification of Robert Browning
Stoop to such child's play?
(Sludge 1073-5)
Once again we have reached the limit of possible
combinations.
29-Four triples in a line are extremely rare. Since
the few examples that occur contain vowels which are
considered under the fiction of elision, it is quite pos-
sible that Browning intended them to be run together.
Explain them any way you please, the sensation of the
extrá syllables is still with you; but they do not stand
out hard and obstreperous as many of his extra sylla-
bles do.
0x00x00 | x00 | x00 | x
By | comers and goers in | Via Vittoria: | eh?
(R&B 3.74)
(R&B 4.684)
The aim o' the cruelty being so crueller still,
CHAPTER VII
BLANK VERSE LINES WITH ONLY FOUR
MEASURES
ANOTHER LARGE group of lines raises the question:
Does Browning admit four-measure lines into a so-
ciety of pentameters?
One type of four-measure line has long been a part
of pentameter verse-the so-called "heroic tetram-
eter." It is largely a matter of reading rather than
the deliberate design of the poet; and it is, in theory
at least, a five-measure line. Its peculiarity consists
in the fact that although it contains ten syllables and
may be read as a pentameter, it is, as a matter of fact,
normally read as a tetrameter without disturbing the
ear. It falls naturally into four measures in the read-
ing because the third stress, finding the sixth syllable
too weak to bear its burden, is moved on to the eighth
and the four syllables between are huddled together
into a quadruple measure of approximately the same
time value as the other measures. If this weak sixth
syllable is flanked by two easily elided ones, as ... er
of the," the tetrameter reading is all but inevitable.
Let the reader observe carefully his own reading of
these lines:
1.0 X
Threatening the torpor of the inside nose
Holding the candle to the Sacrament,
Stung by the splendor of sudden thought,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,
(Blougram 671)
(Fra L. 118)
(Death D. 59)
(Caliban 2)
(Fra L. 149)
1 The peculiarity of this line was recognized and set forth by C. W. Cobb
in "A Type of Four-Stress Verse in Shakespeare," New Shakespeareana
10:1; "A Scientific Basis for Metrics", Modern Language Notes, May, 1913;
"A Further Study of the Heroic Tetrameter," Modern Philology, 1916; it is
interestingly set forth also in C. E. Andrews, The Writing and Reading of
Verse, pp. 177-182.
75
76
Versification of Robert Browning
Lines of this type have been in pentameter verse for
so long that they are a recognized member of the fam-
ily; but in theory they are, one may insist, five-meas-
ure lines, since the reader may not improperly accent
the sixth syllable strongly enough to mark off a fifth
time division.
2
Browning has used this heroic tetrameter with great
frequency. And if we may take his practice of writ-
ing "o' the" and "i' the" to indicate his own reading
of his lines, we can find unmistakable evidence that
he actually read some of them at least as tetrameter.
For he has sometimes inserted an apostrophe in the
sixth syllable, making it impossible to read the line in
five measures. The indication is that he himself
huddled the third measure with the second and tried
to indicate his reading by using the apostrophe instead
of the consonant. One cannot very well read these
lines as pentameter:
the cold o
ט
X
"Thinketh, He dwelleth i'the cold o' the moon.
(Caliban 25)
Followed her parents i' the face o' the world,
(R&B 3.720)
Show them, when done with, i' the shape of a child.
(R&B 3.152)
Goes o'er the gamut o' the creditor's cry (R&B 4.137)
But flirting flag-like i' the face o' the world
(R&B 3.888)
As the other herd quenched, i' the wash o' the wave,
(R&B 10.846)
Snug-cornered somewhere i' the Basilicate, (Cenci. 97)
One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, (Tomb St. P. 21)
An appariation i' the midst? The rout (Sord. 5.127)
These lines are pretty clear instances of "heroic
tetrameter" read, if not deliberately designed, in four
2 See Chapter IV.
Four-Measure Blank-Verse Lines
77
measures. And the margin of difference is hardly pal-
pable between them and a multitude of lines of this
type:
Having put poison in the posset-cup,
By this defection of the foolish pair,
Where the repayment of the servitude
(R&B 2.706)
(R&B 2.524)
(R&B 4.420)
Sprung from the bowels of the generous steer,
(R&B 9.1340)
I' the school, i' the cloister, in the diocese
(R&B 10.385)
or the balanced phrases so familiar in Pope:
I hold to the letter and obey the bond (Prince H. S. 1470)
Back to the husband and the house she fled: (R&B 2.874)
The easy husband and the shrewder wife (R&B 4.453)
To miss the advantage of the golden mean, (R&B 4.1270)
Although this type of four-measure line pleases the
ear as a rhythmic variation without seeming to affect
the expected pentameter pattern, any other four-meas-
ure type is unusual, startling, and often disturbing.
For these reasons if for no other they are rare or non-
existent. But there are few exclusion bills in Brown-
ing's blank verse, and he has admitted some lines which
even the melting pot of aggressive timing leaves un-
assimilated. It does not seem likely that Browning
consciously and deliberately intended them to be in
four measures; by a "super-aggressive" timing while
composing them, he may have forced them into the-
oretical conformity to his pattern. What has hap-
pened is that the natural order of the prose phrases
has a rhythm quite unlike the expected pattern and
in mortal conflict with it. This rhythm is so strong,
and so inherent in the structure of the phrases as
speech units, that it overrides the metrical pattern of
the verse and sets up a new one of its own. It is al-
ways difficult and sometimes impossible to impose the
78
Versification of Robert Browning
metrical pattern upon such conflicting prose phrases.
In every case, the result is unsatisfactory and the lines
are even worse as pentameter than as tetrameter.
Any reader, therefore, who comes upon them with an
ear not primarily interested in metrics will let the
prose rhythm override the pattern and read them in
four measures.
Thus, the following line might best be read:
| Did condemn | Stephen, a | nathema | tize
(R&B 10.134)
The only possibilities of making five measures of the
line are either to violate the pronunciation of "anathe-
matize" by reading:
| Did condemn | Stephen, | ana | thema | tize
or introduce a monosyllabic measure:
Did condemn | Stephen, a | nathema | tize
both of which seem unnatural and forced. So with the
lines:
Waiting to see what Delilah dares do!
(R&B 11.2195)
Old sores scratch kindly, the ass makes a push
(R&B 9.1278)
Flung herself thrice at the Archbishop's feet,
Count Guido once more between heaven and me,
(R&B 4.795)
(R&B 3.1149)
Ungenerous thrift of each marital debt
(R&B 9.1304)
(R&B 6.1706)
The intrigue, the elopement, the disguise,-well charged!
And years make men restless-they needs must spy
Unrecognized yet, but perceptible?
(R&B 3.285)
(R&B 10.1866)
And conquered, the world never heard the like!
(R&B 11.1280)
The space circumjacent, for fit demesne, (R&B 11.2151)
Four-Measure Blank-Verse Lines
79
And, in a commendable charity
(R&B 2.1092)
Was marching in marital rectitude!
And so forth, the poor inexperienced bride,
(R&B 5.857)
(R&B 2.519)
And only unused to the brotherly look. (R&B 1.1095)
The acknowledgment of, and the penitence for,
By the look o' the lady, to dare disobey
(R&B 4.1474)
(R&B 6.997)
These lines are more at home in anapestic tetrameter
than in blank verse; they fit into the pattern of Byron's
Farewell to the Muse without the slightest disturb-
ance:
Can they speak of the friends that I lived but to love? (6.1)
By the look o' the lady,-to dare disobey.
And only unused to the brotherly look.
There is also a group of perplexing lines which seem
to have no kinship with their brethren. Any decent
pentameter reading is, we think, impossible. But they
are pleasing tetrameters, and may perhaps be best
read thus:
'Gainst the blind bull- | front of a brute-force- world?
(Luria 1.94)
With the first stone- | slab of the staircase | cold,
(R&B 1.114)
While an inch out side where those | blood-bright |
eyes,
(R&B 1.610)
From the old cold | shade and unhappy soil
(R&B 2.1181)
And the flesh fails, | now, and the time is | come,-
(Straf. 1.2.103)
where the importance of "bull," "force," "stone," etc.,
is brought out and the pattern preserved by changes
in pitch.
[
CHAPTER VIII
DIRECT ATTACK WITH DUPLE FIRST
MEASURE
(An Unusual Variation)
LINES WITH direct attack in which the first measure
is not trisyllabic have not been in favor with the poets
since the Elizabethan period. They have always pre-
ferred lines of this type:
| Sleeping above her robe as | buoyed by | clouds,
(Cleon 136)
where the anacrusis is, as it were, compensated for by
the extra syllable in the first measure.
In Browning's verse the natural prose rhythm of
the phrases is sometimes in conflict with the theory
of this line, and frequently it is strong enough to over-
come the expected movement, when the first phrase is
composed of three words, of which the first and third
are very emphatic, and is followed by a cesura or an
unemphatic syllable. Thus, in the line
| Doomed to death, such a double | death as waits
(R&B 3.207)
the first and third syllables are emphatic and must be
accented, while the fourth is unemphatic and unac-
cented. The phrasing, therefore, overrides the ex-
pected pattern for direct-attack lines by making the
first measure duple and the second triple.
The resultant line only lacks a feminine ending to
be a perfect example of the classical hendecasyllabic,
whose pattern was
| x0 | x00 | x° | x0 | x©
In the early poems where Browning made full use of
81
82
Versification of Robert Browning
the feminine ending, the final syllable is often supplied
and the lines are good hendecasyllables.
| Light for me in the | darkness | tempering | sorrow
(Para. 5.72)
This, lest you even more than needs, embitter
(Soul's Tr. 1.22)
Men take pains to preserve a tree stump, even,
(Ibid. 1.202)
It may be merely an accident of phrasing, or it may
well be the direct influence of the classical hendeca-
syllabic which throws so many of Browning's pentam-
eter lines into this or related patterns. Several
recognizable types keep recurring through the blank
verse.
1-Beginning with direct attack, the first may be
duple, the second triple, the rest duple. It is every-
where in Browning, being only a little less frequent
than direct-attack lines with two trisyllabic measures.
xo | x⁰⁰ | xoxo
x
| Bid the few, better | favored in the brain,
(Prince H-S 1493)
Root and branch, with much roaring, and some blood,
(Ibid 1563)
(Death in D. 9)
Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name.
-So to speak-in a certain sort-his wife.
(R&B 1.198)
Doomed to death, such a double death as waits
(R&B 3.207)
That's the way to write Latin, friend my Fisc!
I am he that aspired to know: and thou?
(R&B 8.196)
(Paracelsus 2.384)
Not so large as this noisy Rome, no doubt, (R&B 7.562)
He's at home, only acts by proxy here: (R&B 4.651)
Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,
(R&B 11.1047)
Duple Direct Attack
83
2-The first type is not absent from other poets; it
seems to be an accident of phrasing which upsets the
regular movement. Sometimes the phrasing is strong
enough to defy the iambic movement until the third
measure, where a triple may halt the strong trochaic
movement.
| x | x© | x00|x0 |x
| Free as unborn | babe from connivance | at
(R&B 8.893)
Since the whole need not the physician! Brief,
(R&B 9.1211)
Let me look at thee in the flesh as erst, (R&B 10.1004)
"All which work takes time: till to-morrow, then,
(Ibid 2108)
One makes fools look foolisher fifty-fold (R&B 11.850)
John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about?
(Transc. 38)
Men are men: why then need I say one word
(R&B 3.877)
There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long,
(R&B 7.1670)
Other lines may or may not fall into the pattern ac-
cording to the reading; they may be forced into a nor-
mal pattern.
None of this vile way by the barren words
Then, if I got safe to my place again,
(R&B 10.348)
(R&B 11.1816)
"Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short,
(Fra L. 221)
Here, though all else changed in the changing world!
(R&B 7.1402)
3-There are a few lines in which the phrasing is
so hostile to the normal pattern that they seem to be
trochaic up to the fourth measure. Other readings are
possible, but, I think, even less satisfactory.
xoxo xº | xºº | x
| What care | I,-by | God's gloved | hand or the | bare?
(R&B 10.1402)
84
Versification of Robert Browning
Five years long, now, rounds faith into my ears,
(R&B 10.1584)
Means were found, plan laid, time fixed, she avers
(R&B 3.915)
Is your charge to stay with me till I die? (R&B 11.136)
4-Two triples are rare in this already unusual line,
but they may occur in the second and third in an evenly
balanced line:
| xº | xºº | x00 | xº │x
| Tried, all five, and found guilty and
put to death
(R&B 1.123)
Should quite starve while Authority sat at meat;
(R&B 9.1104)
Sweet and clean, dining daintily, dizened smart,
(Sludge 269)
How it rained!-through our street and the Lion's-
mouth
(R&B 7.423)
'Sir,' said she, and so following. "Why more words?
(R&B 9.934)
5-Or there may be a triple in the second and fourth,
causing the line to gallop between two movements.
| x0 | x00 | x0 |x00|x
| Thou, not | Pope but the | mere old | man o' the world,
(R&B 10.392)
Hence a plan for so plaguing, body and soul,
(R&B 10.601)
Paul steps back the due distance, clear o' the trap
(R&B 10.889)
6-The phrasing is never quite strongly trochaic
enough to pull the line into the other possible combina-
tion of two trochees and two dactyls, which such lines
as the following tend to do:
| Holds
a germ-sand-grain | weight too much i̇’
the scale-
(R&B 3.140)
CHAPTER IX
THE MONOSYLLABIC MEASURES
ALL POETS have used, as variations from the ex-
pected verse pattern, monosyllabic measures, usually
followed by a trisyllabic measure as a theoretical
"compensation" for the catalexis. This variation has
become so familiar to English readers through the
constant use of the poets that, like direct attack or a
triple measure, it delights the ear without very greatly
surprising it. But the poets have, in general, been so
uniform in their practice that this variation has come
to have a fixed form of its own, or a relief pattern in
the larger figure of the verse. Usage has fixed a cer-
tain form for each measure in the line, and our ears
have learned to expect that if the poet chooses to vary
the normal pattern by introducing a monosyllabic
measure, he will follow the custom and write:
|
A
(1) And I, silent and scared, got | down a | gain
(R&B 7.448)
(2) Make both ends | meet-^ nothing the vulgar
| |
(R&B 2.513)
(3) With leave to clench the past^, | chain the to- |
(Balcony 64)
loves
come,
(4) To weep de | caying wits ere the | frail | body
(Paul. 553)
A line with a monosyllabic measure has already de-
parted considerably from the normal pattern and has
satisfied most poets' desire for variation and relief.
If then there be added to this already varied line still
other variations, our expectancy is teased still further
and we experience surprise (agreeable or offensive ac-
cording to the reader) as we try to assimilate the
{
85
86
Versification of Robert Browning
unusual elements into the normal pattern. It is pre-
cisely these unexpected elements added to an already
unusual line, that makes Browning's lines so striking
and metrically interesting.
A monosyllable is most conspicuous in the first and
in the fourth measure; prominent and more frequent
but less conspicuous in the second and third. In the
first measure its usual form among all poets is
And | I,^ | silent and scared, got down again
A double anacrusis or a feminine ending add but little:
Λ
In the new ^ | order of things,―he | plays the | priest;
(R&B 10.1905)
Themselves ^ | fair and forgotten; | yes, for | gotten
(Para. 4.208)
A
But if the triple measure is delayed, as,
Λ
A priest what else | should the consoler | be?
(R&B 2.776)
O' the | red ^ | thread through|that insig | nifi | cance!
(R&B 11.2068)
A
Λ
When the wide ^ | town's his | hen-roost! | Fie o' the | fool!"
(R&B 2.832)
or absent, as,
"And the | fire^ | shuts out | me and | shuts in | you!
(R&B 4.840)
Getting dry,^ | sweet and proper for next | week,-
(R&B 11.208)
And the house,^ | late distracted by their | peals,
(R&B 2.686)
we get a typical Browning line full of unexpected
elements.
The unexpected element may also be an extra triple
in the line,
My wife fled in the company of a priest, (R&B 3.824)
There | lie,^ | sullen memorial | and no more (Para. 2.7)
The tract,^ | doomed to perpetual | barren | ness,
(Para. 2.116)
Monosyllabic Measures
87
At the town's^ | edge by a gate the | Pauline | Way,
Λ
(R&B 5.1330)
Oh, the | wife ^| knew the appropriate | warfare | well,
(R&B 2.859)
Or it may be the absence of an anacrusis, a rare but
striking form occurring in the dramas.
| Pym? | Pym and the | People. Oh, the | Faction!
(Straf. 1.2.62)
| Great? | let it be great; but the joys it | brought,
And I drew
(Pippa 1.162)
| Back;^ | put far | back your face with | both my hands
(Pippa 1.172)
The phrasing of many other lines pulls them to-
wards this same type without ever entirely overcoming
the normal pattern, as,
Found, furnishing a last and best regale,—
(R&B 2.1062)
Paul,-finding it moreover past his strength
—Paul, finally, in such a state of things,
(R&B 5.1346)
(R&B 5.1360)
A monosyllabic fourth measure is also very frequent
and equally conspicuous in Browning's verse, as it is
in Shelley's. In most instances, though not in all, it
is due to the fact that an important adjective, when it
follows a light or failing stress, usually attracts the
metrical stress to itself, giving lines of this type:
At | ease, both | gay and grim, like a | Swiss^ | guard
(R&B 11.206)
And said, "The old man sleeps with a young wife."
(Pippa 1.26)
As the Pope's pantoufle does on the Pope's foot.
(R&B 4.459)
A
And Saviles! Make your mind up, o' God's love,
(Straf. 1.2.147)
I mean to meet you on your own^ premise:
(Bloug. 171)
88
Versification of Robert Browning
"Ripe fig, burst skin, regale the fig^-pecker-
(R&B 7.825)
Reigns paramount i' the world, for the large good
(Prince H 1481)
Made the avowal easy, the shame slight?
(R&B 2.587)
Lines in which the second measure is monosyllabic
occur more frequently, with less surprise, and with
more variations than any other. The reason for its
unusual frequency is, without doubt, Browning's pref-
erence for the cesura after the fourth or fifth syllable,¹
and an "inverted" measure following immediately after
the pause. The expected form, common among all
poets, is:
Make | both ends | meet,^- | nothing the | vulgar | loves
(R&B 2.513)
"For such a prank,^ death is the penalty!"
(R&B 11.120)
I' the mouth of man,^ woman and child-to-wit
(R&B 5.618)
1
But Browning introduces into the line other elements
which pull against this expected pattern and surprise
the reader.
It is common to find the triple measure preceding
the monosyllable in an unpleasantly jerky line:
By one and the same^ | pitchy | furnace | stirred
(R&B 10.874)
"Or rather," laugh foes,^ "then did there befall
(R&B 4.1337)
The worth of what's lost,^ sum of damage done.
(R&B 2.1501)
Foam, fling myself flat,^ rend my clothes to shreds;
Soft, innocent, warm,^ moist, impassable,
(Sludge 306)
(Sludge 541)
1 The table compiled by Morton shows this distribution:
1
2
7.48
8.85
3
10.35
4
5
6
7
8
9
17.42
16.39
13.10
13.67
8.94
3.61
Monosyllabic Measures
89
Quoth Paolo once more,^ "Mothers, wives and maids,
Is it settled so far? Settled or disturbed,
(R&B 4.501)
(R&B 4.1272)
Or the triple measure may be supplanted by a double
anacrusis:
Can she feel no | love?^ | Let her show the | more,
A
(R&B 11.1403)
Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ
(R&B 7.1812)
"What the whole man meant,^ whom you wish you knew,"
(Prince H 60)
A single triple measure following the monosyllable
is always expected; but Browning likes to add one or
more triples to the line as a further variation. If they
both precede and follow the monosyllable, the line is
pleasingly balanced:
And | flower o' the | field,^ | all in a | common | pact
(R&B 10.1074)
The birth o' the boy warrant the bolder crime,
(R&B 4.1099)
In a case o' the kind?^ None, as she all but says.
(R&B 2.1509)
I' the regular way,^ each at its proper court,
(R&B 4.1325)
And the rest o' the tale? Yet the tale's true, you know:
(Sludge 983)
But what if the whole prove a prank o' the pen,
(R&B 5.1199)
The curd o' the cream,^ flower o' the wheat, as it were,
(R&B 1.910)
But if both triples follow, the last measures rush away
from the first in triple movement:
On what came | first,^ | clothes and a trinket or two,
(R&B 3.1069)
And here I sprawl:^ where is the company? Gone!
(R&B 11.112)
90
Versification of Robert Browning
And still declare-life, without absolute use
(R&B 11.1482)
Or the 'Stars and Stripes" set to consecutive fourths.”
(Sludge 346)
The practice of the poets has also led us to expect
this line to begin with direct attack. Ever since
Surrey, readers have been made familiar with this
pleasing variant from the normal pattern:
| Babes and not | beasts^— | beasts and not | stocks and
| stones! |
(R&B 6.1798)
Just as they are,^ | careless what comes of it?
(Fra. L. 294)
But Browning treats this line as though it were in
itself the normal pattern and adds to it some further
variations of his own. He may delay the triple to the
fourth measure:
| Master of men^- touch one | hair of the | five
or he may add a third triple:
(R&B 2.1461)
| Mine shall have | been,^— | seeing there's | ill in the|end
(R&B 11.1442)
Fools to the depth,^ | fools to the level between,
(R&B 11.1754)
or both triples may follow the monosyllable in an unu-
sual line:
This good God,^— | what he could do, if he would,
(Blougram 192)
Hands and feet,^ | scrambling some | how, and so dropped,
(Fra L. 65)
A
Sham the worse, damn herself praiseworthi | ly!
(R&B 11.1404)
In another type of interesting variation, the phrasing
is able to make a quadruple of one measure:
Jealous that the | good^ | trick which | served the | turn
(Prince H 12)
Rachel of the blue eye and golden hair,
(R&B 5.1305)
Monosyllabic Measures
91
Clear my head^ dizzy with the hubbub-say
(Imperante 26)
"Play the man,^ pity the oppressed!"-no pause,
(R&B 10.1553)
Yield its like,^ propagate a bliss in turn (R&B 3.149)
Shine and shade,^ happiness and misery
Weaves no web,^ watches on the ledge of tombs,
(Bean- S. 5)
(Epistle 46)
Such lines have but little in common with iambic
pentameter verse; except to an aggressive timer, they
are prose.
There is one other type of line whose phrasing is so
opposed to a five-measure iambic line that only by the
most vigorous aggressive timing can it be prevented
from becoming a six-measure line with a monosyllabic
second measure.
It is like those just noted, except
that the phrasing prevents the syllables from huddling
into a quadruple measure. It is one of the most numer-
ous of Browning's variations.
| Fret or sulk,^ | grin or | whimper, any | mood
A
(Sludge 602)
Eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to help,
(Sludge 829)
-Terni's fall,^ Naples' bay and Gothard's top-
(Blougram 533)
Inn that's out^-out of sight and out of mind
(Inn A. 1.191)
Aunt and niece,^ you and me. At night arrive;
(Inn A. 1.193)
Right for me,^—right for you the fine and fair!
(Red C. 44)
Prayers move God;^ threats, and nothing else, move men!
(R&B 7.1608)
A very slight shift in the phrasing makes the fourth
measure (if the reader agrees that these are best read
as six-measure lines), also monosyllabic.
| Filched my name,^ | hemmed me | round,^ | hustled me
| hard
(R&B 5.1488)
92
Versification of Robert Browning
Lies to God, lies to man,^ every way lies (R&B 4.216)
Were loud or mute,^ wept or laughed,^ cursed or jeered,
(R&B 10.97)
There is very little difference between lines with
monosyllabic second measures and those with mono-
syllabic third measures; the latter is only a little less
frequent than the former and has always been in
favor among the poets. The usual and expected form
of the line is:
With leave to clench the past,^ | chain the to- | come,
(Balcony 64)
where the cesura is followed by a choriambic phrase.
The unexpected elements which Browning adds to this
line are, in general, the same as those just noted for
lines with the second measure monosyllabic; and they
occur in the same general combinations. Thus, the
triple often precedes the monosyllable:
|
Man | pure of | evil in | thought,^ | word and | deed—
(Mihrab S. 17)
He-"No, thy Guido is rough,^ heady, strong,
(R&B 10.1456)
A cannon full-blown so far;^ priest, and priest
(R&B 2.781)
Or the double anacrusis may supplant the triple:
Hunted forth to go hide | head,^ | starve and | die,
(R&B 10.561)
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.
Or there may be two or more triples:
(Pippa 2.92)
The | hoard i̇ the | heart o' the | toad,^ | hell's quin | tessence.
A
(R&B 2.1368)
Yet | leave ithe | lurch at the | first | spit of | rain,
(R&B 11.740)
1 Money for money,-and | they,^ | bride for groom,
(R&B 4.522)
Gain a conception of | what, how and why, (Sun 44)
It | smarts a | little to | day,^ | well in a | week. (R&B 4.1522)
Monosyllabic Measures
93
Who played the regular | game,^— | priest and A | bate,
(R&B 4.392)
The new epistle from | Rome.^ | "All to no use!
(R&B 5.1431)
|Left to walk | warily | now.^| how does she | walk?
(R&B 2.758)
| Full to the depth o' the | wick,^- | money's so | much;
(R&B 4.76...
What shall be | mistily | seen,^ | murmuringly | heard,
(R&B 1.751)
Though but the | chink o' the | bell,^ | turn o' the | hinge
(R&B 3.38)
In the early poems and plays, however, where the
feminine ending is common, this line takes on a dis-
tinctive form. The distincton is due to the fact that
the extra syllable changes the usual choriambic phrase
at the end of the line into a pleasing adonic. It sounds
like an echo of the short lines in A Grammarian's
Funeral.
1
My | portion, | my re | ward,^ | even my | failure,
The giant shades of fate,^ silently flitting,
(Para. 2.75)
(Paul. 570)
His hold; and from the East,^ fuller and fuller,
(Para. 3.1036)
(Para. 3.920)
The ultimate effect:^ sooner or later
From my proud eminence.^ Fortune is fickle
(Para. 3.595)
To get him from the fire. Nothing but saying
(Pippa 1.75)
It is quite unusual, even in Browning, to find
two monosyllabic measures in a single line. One type,
in which the first and third are monosyllabic, occurs
comparatively frequently. It may take this form:
Of you,^ me and him | self, knowing he | lies,
(R&B 10.367)
Why, men^—men and not boys^-boys and not babes—
(R&B 6.1797)
94
Versification of Robert Browning
As I supped,^ ate the coarse bread,^ drank the wine
(R&B 5.1381)
or the "adjective" form familiar in Tennyson's Idylls:
On a stone bench in a | close | fetid | cell, (R&B 1.1278)
To the green^ woods in the gay summer time.
(Paul. 369)
By the dark rock and the white^ wave just breaking
(Paul. 664)
Till the red fire on its glazed windows spread
(Pippa 1.178)
Other types are less common, but they do occur with
the first and fourth monosyllabic:
To the wind | murmuring | in the damp^ | copse,
A
(Paul 66)
Some vase shaped to the curl of the God's lip,
(Balcony 710)
Ah, the Court!^ yes, I come to the Court's^ self;
And the second and fourth:
|
(R&B 5.1158)
What mattered the | fierce^ | beard or the grim^ | face?
(R&B 7.417)
Close under the stone wall by the south entry.
(Pippa 1.61)
A few lines are pulled strongly, if not irresistibly, into
six measures:
The | red^ | hand is | sworn^ | foe of the | black^ | jaw.
(R&B 11.434)
The deep groves and white^ temples and wet caves:
A sad thought, a sad^ fate! how very full
(Paul. 332)
(Par. 5.286)
The cheek^ burns, the blood^ tingles, when you speak
(Straf. 4.2.171)
Filched my name,^ hemmed me round,^ hustled me hard
(R&B 5.1488)
Lies to God,^ lies to man,^ every way lies
(R&B 4.216)
CHAPTER X
ELISION
IT IS POSSIBLE that some poets believed that the
pentameter line should not exceed ten syllables, and
that redundant syllables could be "elided" and reduced
to this ideal number according to certain rules.
Spenser, with a syllable theory on his mind, printed
elisions thus:
'Gainst all the gods, and th' empire sought from them
(F. Q. 7.6.1.9)
to beare."
But even the poets who have held to the theory of
elision have not always indicated them in this manner.
The rules are, in general, the same as those which Mr.
Bridges worked out to explain Milton's redundant
lines:
(1) Open vowels may be elided.
(2) Vowels separated by 1, n, or r.
(3) E before final n, as in "given," "even," "heaven."
(4) The 2nd person singular of verbs.
(5) Normal speech contractions such as "e'en," "twxt," etc.
It is quite true that many lines can be reduced to a
theoretical standard by applying these rules. It is also
true that one must elide his imagination to bring some
lines from as regular a poet as Milton into harmony
with rules of elision. Such a line as
Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus
will triple in spite of any rule.
(P. L. 7.446)
But the question is, did Browning hold to the theory
of ten syllables? and did he have any rules of elision?
The answer to both questions is "No."
95
96
Versification of Robert Browning
!
Browning had no theory of syllable counting; that
is the most obvious truth about his blank verse. As we
have already seen, he knew that the number of sylla-
bles did not matter so long as the ear was satisfied
that the time parts were approximately even. So he
wrote pentameters varying in length from nine to
fifteen syllables, without violating the temporal equal-
ity of the measures. His ear was pleased by triple
measures in his duple patterns, and required no fiction
of elision to rationalize them. Coleridge had already
in Christabel justified them on a perfectly sound basis.
It is then not only unnecessary but also futile to try
to reduce these extra syllables to rules of elision, for
two simple reasons. One is that elision is in most
cases really nothing but a metrical fiction because the
triple effect of the extra syllable cannot be obscured,
and because the extra syllable does not affect the tem-
poral equality of the measure in which it occurs. The
other is that, for every line in Browning which can
be compressed through elision to ten syllables, there
are perhaps five or more which will compress under no
rules whatever. It is impossible therefore to tell with
certainty whether or not he intended elision even in
those lines where it is theoretically possible. If all the
lines were of this type:
And found the old adversary athwart the path-
(R&B 7.1602)
From glory of pain to glory of joy; and so,
(R&B 10.1796)
they could be elided according to rule, and one could
suspect Browning of a ten-syllable theory. But he also
writes lines of this type:
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,-three slim
shapes,
where no elision is possible.
(Fra L. 59)
Elision
97
And even the elision may still leave in the line a
redundant syllable:
She unlatched door, let all the devils o' the dark
(R&B 5.1505)
I' the soul, do you see—its tense or tremulous part—
(R&B 5.30)
The printing does not indicate such easy elisions as
this:
Show cause for what he has done, the irregular deed,
(R&B 5.99)
The only unmistakable elisions in Browning therefore
are those normal contractions which he has printed
with an omitted letter or syllable, as: o'er, e'en, 't is,
't was, 't were, is't, know'st, and a few others such as
'mid, 'mongst, 'scape, 'gainst, 'ware. But these may
also appear in triple measures in uncontracted form.
This liberty is never extended to the printing of such
words as "different" which Pope would contract to
"diff'rent."
Browning did do some curious things, however, in
eliding the consonants of the prepositions, "i' the" and
"o' the," after the Elizabethan manner.¹ It was not
a mannerism with him, but a serious attempt to indi-
cate his own reading. Nevertheless he had no settled
practice in the matter, and he would change the proof-
sheets from "on" to "o"" and "o"" to "on" according
to the emphasis he placed upon the words at the time.2
The only principle one can deduce from his prac-
tice (and there are two or three exceptions to it) is
that if a measure contains four syllables the final con-
sonant will be elided or slurred. This happens most
frequently in the first measure after direct attack.
1 "O' the" appears first in Strafford. "I' the" occurs once in Paracelsus.
The consistent use of these forms develops in the later poems.
2 Living Age, 244:407.
98
Versification of Robert Browning
Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapour, glanced
(Sord. 2.25)
-Jewels i' the locks that love no crownet like
(Sord. 3.699)
Even i' the telling! Adverse Powers above,
Master o' the mint and keeper of the keys
Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate;
(Balau. 738)
(Red C. 2.812)
(Pr. H. S. 1016)
Merry i' the household! Death takes up the tune!
(Herakles 806)
Rubbish o' the rock, some diamond, much-worms prize,
(R&B 9.511)
But it is true of other measures as well:
Aim at still higher honour,-gabble o' the goose!
(R&B 5.445)
Quenched lay their cauldron, cowered i' the dust the crew,
(R&B 1.578)
She unlatched door, let all the devils o' the dark
(R&B 5.1505)
Beyond this, there are no fixed rules, and the apos-
trophes seem to be temperamental.
line:
O' the color of a crime, inform us first!
and in another:
We find in one
(R&B 1.182)
Of the elephant who, brute beast though he were,
In one:
(R&B 1.231)
In the urn, or white or black, does drop a black,
and in another:
(R&B 1.1223)
I' the air, and catch again, and twirl about (R&B 1.33)
In one:
And carried by the Prince o' the Power of the Air
(R&B 1.561)
and in another:
The worship of that prince o' the power o' the air
(Prince H. S. 2120)
Elision
99
In one he will print:
I' the face of the world, you found her; she could speak
and in another:
(R&B 2.862)
Followed her parents i' the face o' the world.
(R&B 3.720)
where, if read as indicated, the line is reduced to four
measures.
In fact there are several lines reduced to four meas-
ures by this process, if they be read as indicated. They
appear to be mistakes; for normally the preposition
would carry a light metrical stress to mark the time
division. The apostrophe makes this impossible.
One sees the pulpit o' the epistle side, (Tomb St. P. 21)
But flirting flag-like i' the face o' the world
(R&B 3.888)
Thinketh He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.
(Caliban 25)
Flinging the breast-blade i' the face o' the Fisc,
(R&B 8.1565)
Archbishop, who art under, i' the Church, (R&B 10.983)
In a few cases, where the metrical accent would natur-
ally fall on the preposition, the printed elision causes
confusion by forcing the accent back upon a normally
unstressed syllable:
O' the | quali | ty o' the | Court and | what it | likes
(R&B 8.1727)
| Treatment and | discipline o' the harsher | sort?”
(R&B 4.1582)
Was | ignorant | of the | immi | nence o' the | point
(R&B 9.757)
Without the elision, one would undoubtedly read:
O' the | quality | of the court and | what it | likes
| Treatment and | discipline | of the harsher | sort?
And there are also a few cases where, although the
"o' the" would be most natural, it is omitted in favor
100
Versification of Robert Browning
In
of an ellipsis in the true Browningesque manner.
the light of his usual practice, there is no real reason
why he should avoid a natural triple by writing
I looking out of window on a tree
or
(Inn A. 3.79)
(R&B 11.709)
I' neck of him as I,-whom, soul and sense,
instead of
or
I looking out o' the window on a tree
I' the neck of him.
CHAPTER XI
ENJAMBMENT
ALTHOUGH many run-on lines occur in Browning,¹
they do not often represent sublime flights of poetic
imagination soaring through many successive lines as
they do, for instance, in Milton. Browning's blank
verse is nearly all in the form of dramatic monologue,
where, as we have seen, the texture of the verse is
modified and its range strictly limited by the situation
exploited and the character of the speaker. Enjamb-
ment becomes, for the most part, a choppy phrase or
sentence divided between two lines after this manner:
"Because you've daubed enough
(Inn Album 4.316-7)
Bistre for backround.
'T is all
Forgotten, all this ignobility,
"Goose
You truly are!
I warn
Back, in God's name!
Both of us
(Ibid 320-21)
(Ibid 2.86-7)
(Ibid 7.89-90)
Blameworthy, I first meet my punishment-
(Ibid 7.69-70)
I hope
That was a master-stroke!
(Ibid 7.179-80)
Not for me
The chapman's chance!
(Ibid 7.45-6)
Take it now
(Ibid 7.49-50)
Its power to pain is past!
These examples are all taken from The Inn Album
which has the highest percentage of enjambment
1 They range from Caliban upon Setebos and Andrea del Sarto with 18%,
through Sludge and Blougram with 26%, The Ring and the Book with 30%,
Prince H. S. with 36%, to Pauline with 46%, and Paracelsus with 48%.
101
102
Versification of Robert Browning
(43%) of any of the long poems after Paracelsus.
Many of its sentences are exactly five measures long,
and would make good end-stopped lines if they were
placed differently on the pattern.
Our troublesomest dreams die off || In daylight: (4.572)
I plump my purse || With other people's pounds. (4.52)
God has some end to serve || Ere he suppress you! (4.671)
"T is God || Must bear such secrets and disclose them.
(5.215)
(5.255)
I profess myself || One fertile in resource.
Lines of this type swell the percentage tables some
metrists like to compile, but they do not show the
characteristic traditionally associated with enjamb-
ment in blank verse: i.e. the sense "variously drawn
out from one verse into another." They do, however,
obscure the formal division into metrical lines even if
they do not bind a series of lines into a verse-para-
graph. This is true also of the many lines in which
two words closely associated in thought and gram-
matical structure are divided between two lines, as:
There's a thick
•
•
(R&B 7.178-9)
Dusk undeveloped spirit (I've observed) (Sludge 30-31)
When I was a mere child, my mother. that's
Violante,
With bag and baggage thus did Dido once
Decamp,-for more authority, a queen! (R&B 9.652-3)
The author lacks
Discretion, and his zeal exceeds:
(R&B 9.1027-8)
Poor Rome perversely lingered round, despite
Instruction, for the sake of purblind love,—
(R&B 10.1114-5)
I find it easy to believe: and if
At any fateful moment of the strange
Adventure,
(R&B 10.1166-8)
"Friends,
I absolutely and preemptorily
Believe!"
(Blougram 243-5)
Enjambment
103
These examples could be continued endlessly. It is
obvious that tables of percentages are in themselves
quite inadequate for differentiating the metrical effect
of poems. Fra Lippo Lippi has 24% of its lines en-
jambed, Blair's The Grave has 25%; but one is full of
short nervous sentences over-lapping the metrical lines,
and the other is in solemn paragraphs. Ferishtah's
Fancies and Samson Agonistes each has 41% of its
lines enjambed; but one soars and the other talks.
The whole story of enjambment in Browning's verse
can be summed up by saying that the phrases and sen-
tences often overlap the metrical line but they almost
never rise from broken, colloquial speech to melodious
passages of song. This rather obvious point may be
interestingly and finally illustrated by setting side by
side a passage from The Inn Album and one from
Paradise Lost in which the number of run-on lines is
the same (50%); but the Milton passage contains two
sentences and the Browning one contains nine.
You out of hand and sight and care of me
These four years, whom I felt, knew, all the while.
Oh, it's no superstition! It's a gift
O' the gamester that he snuffs the unseen powers
Which help or harm him. Well I knew what lurked,
Lay perdue paralyzing me,-drugged, drowsed
And damnified my soul and body both!
•
Down and down, see where you have dragged me to,
You and your malice! I was, four years since,
-Well, a poor creature! I became a knave.
I squandered my own pence: I plump my purse
With other people's pounds. I practiced play
Because I liked it: play turns labor now
Because there's profit also in the sport.
(Inn Album 4.42-55)
This said unanimous, and other rites
Observing none, but adoration pure,
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
104
Versification of Robert Browning
Handed they went; and, eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity, and place, and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
But our destroyer, foe to God and Man?
(Paradise Lost 4.736-48)
RHYMED VERSE
PART THREE
105
CHAPTER XII
RHYMES
QUARRELS over Browning's rhymes, like so many
other Browning quarrels, belong to a by-gone age.
That age was profoundly disturbed over Browning's
double and triple rhymes on such arresting sounds as
grunt is 't:contrapuntist; or ins and outs: thin sand
doubts. Oscar Wilde, speaking for many intelligent
readers of the day, could say in 1890, .rhyme, the
(6
one chord we have added to the Greek lyre, became in
Robert Browning's hands a grotesque, misshapen
thing, which made him at times masquerade in poetry
as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his
tongue in his cheek." 1
But this statement is true only in the most limited
way. It entirely forgets that Browning could also
strike the new chord with as much genius and art-
istry as any other English poet, and that the mem-
orable poems like Evelyn Hope, "How They Brought
the Good News," Prospice, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and Love
Among the Ruins, are perfect in the beauty and
harmony of their rhymes. But there is nothing
of importance to be said about these, because they are
in common usage and do not distract the attention.
Unfortunately the good and perfect things have been
dwarfed by the ingenious, jocose, and sometimes ab-
surd rhymes which irritated Wilde. It is these ob-
jectionable rhymes which call attention to themselves
that have caused all the discussion; but, like the fly in
the ointment, they are more striking than numerous.
1 Richardson, A Study of English Rhyme, p. 185 (Quoted from the
Nineteenth Century for July, 1890.)
107
108
Versification of Robert Browning
The questions they raise in a study of Browning's
versification are not recondite and perhaps not even
very important.
2
If one wishes to be quite scientific after the German
manner, he may dispose of the question in this way:
There are 34,746 rhymes in Browning's poetry. This
represents two-fifths of his total output. Of this grand
total there are but 322 which might be called either
imperfect rhymes (angered:vanguard; office:trophies),
or forced rhymes (equals: weak walls; shall see:palsy;
from mice:promise; rims on:crimson). That is, less
than one in a hundred is unusual, and the judgments
against Browning's use of rhyme are based on this
small percentage.
These 322 rhymes are, moreover, confined to a dozen
and a half poems which are frankly humorous, or in
which the character assumed to speak or the situation
exploited naturally permit license in rhyme. Rhymes
like, Giotto:was it not O, wish you:issue, in Old Pic-
tures in Florence; Holy Scriptures:see equipt yours,
Manchester:haunches stir, in Christmas Eve; good hu-
mor:to do more, that's all:begat Saul, news of her:
Lucifer, in The Flight of the Duchess; Italy:Spit ally,
Gressoney:lesson eh, in Prologue to Ferishtah's
Fancies; or anything you wish from that wilderness of
Pacchiarotto-such rhymes are indispensable to the
effect of poems of this type, and they do not "profane
the mysteries" or break the illusion. When, in The
Flight of the Duchess, the mood changes or the char-
acters shift, the rhymes change also. But the perfec-
tion of the speech of the Gipsy (lines 567 ff.) with its
melodious rhymes is forgotten in the vagaries of the
old hunter with his "jerkin: work in" rhymes.
2 E. M. Clark, Poet Lore 2:480 ff. has done the counting and we take her
word for it. Her excellent paper says nearly all there is to be said on this
subject and we have leaned heavily upon it.
Rhymes
109
Such an analysis at least puts forward the facts, and
the conclusions are not abstruse. One side of Brown-
ing shows a boyish humorist who loved to amuse his
friends by finding rhymes for supposedly rhymeless
words. He was inordinately proud of his ability, and
according to all report, loved to display it on every
occasion; as when, on being challenged to rhyme both
parties to Lord Roseberry's marriage he proudly of-
fered
Venus, sea-froth's child,
Playing old gooseberry
Married Lord Roseberry
To Hannah de Rothschild.
(Living Age, 261;658)
This was the Browning who loved the quaint, the odd,
the jocose; who loved to "hitch into verse” these hu-
mors, shocks, and surprises. But the surprises are
almost without exception reserved for the moments of
indulgence. In its own way, Pachiorotto is as perfect
as Love Among the Ruins. He is making use of the
principle Coleridge set down in the Biographia Lit- \
eraria, that "double and trisyllable rhymes, indeed,
form a lower species of wit, and, attended to exclusively
for their own sake, may become a source of momentary
amusement; as in poor Smart's distich to the Welsh
Squire who had promised him a hare:
“Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader!
Hast sent the hare? or hast thou swallow'd her?"
If one agrees that a poet may be permitted an in-
dulgence of this sort (and one in a hundred is propor-
tionately few), one must admit that these are touched
with the magic of genius, and have become instead of
a "source of momentary amusement," a creation of art
which no lover of Browning would willingly lose.
Two-Line Stanzas
CHAPTER XIII
STANZA FORMS
THE TWO-LINE stanza is as rare in Browning as else-
where in English poetry, The Boy and the Angel being
the only poem in this form.
Morning, evening, noon and night,
"Praise God!" sang Theocrite.
Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.
Had he labored, long and well;
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.
The difference between this form and the regular
tetrameter couplets is, in Browning, structural as well
as typographical.¹ For his couplets run on and on until
half of them are enjambed, while in The Boy and the
Angel all but ten of the lines are end-stopped, and each
couplet is "closed." This sets it quite apart from the
other couplets and justifies the short stanza form.
Three-Line Stanzas
The tercet, rhymed aaa, has never been long without
admirers among the poets. Browning favored it, with
varying movements and line lengths, in eight poems.
Although each stanza is often complete in itself, the
thought very frequently overflows into the next stanza,
linking two into one except for the printing. This is,
however, much more usual in the strict terza rima
where the overflow is a recognized part of the tech-
nique.
1 See Chapter XIV.
111
112
Versification of Robert Browning
It occurs in duple-triple tetrameters in Rephan:
Can your world's phrase, your sense of things
Forth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,
No winters throughout its space. Time brings
No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
Tomorrow; advance or retreat need we
At our stand-still through eternity?
(37-43)
It is used again in the rapidly moving four-measure
dipodic line of A Toccata of Galuppi's:
Oh Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf
and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 't is with such a
heavy mind!
It occurs once in iambic pentameter:
Witless alike of will and way divine,
How heaven's high with earth's low should intertwine!
Friends, I have seen through your eyes: now use mine!
(Epilogue to Dramatis Personae, 3rd speaker)
The six-measure line in duple-triple movement oc-
curs in Echetlos, and with variations in Up at a Villa
-Down in the City; i.e. the first two stanzas are ter-
cets, the third adds a fourth line on the same rhyme,
the fourth combines two tercets, etc. The line is,
almost without exception, divided sharply by the
cesura into two trimeters.
Here is a story shall stir you! Stand up, Greeks dead
and gone,
Who breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling
on,
Did the deed and saved the world, for the day was
(Echetlos)
Marathon!
The seven-measure line occurs in White Witchcraft
and in The Pope and the Net.2 It fails to give the feel-
2 The Epilogues to The Melon-Seller and Shah Abbas are in this form.
Stanza Forms
113
ing of a tercet, however, because it falls naturally into
tetrameter and trimeter, or ballad measure:
If you and I could change to beasts, what beasts should
either be?
Shall you and I play Jove for once? Turn fox then,
I decree!
Shy wild sweet stealer of the grapes! Now do your
(White Witchcraft)
worst on me!
In like manner, the eight-measure trochaic lines of
the epilogue to The Family fall into tetrameter with
intermittent rhyme:
Man I am and man would be, Love-merest man and
nothing more.
Bid me seem no other! Eagles boast of pinions—let
them soar!
I may put forth angel's plumage, once unmanned, but
not before.
Terza rima had been favored by Shelley, with slight
modifications, in the Ode to the West Wind, Prince
Athanase, The Triumph of Life, The Woodman
and the Nightingale, etc. It is represented in Brown-
ing by Doctor and Jochanan Hakkadosh; and in
duple-triple tetrameters in The Statue and the Bust.
Each stanza is linked to the preceding one by the rhyme
scheme aba bcb cdc, etc. The division into stanzas is
arbitrary, since the sense flows on continuously. In
Doctor-, fifty-five of the eighty-five stanzas run on.
"What is the fault now?" "This I find to blame:
Many and various are the tongues below,
Yet all agree in one speech, all proclaim
"Hell has no might to match what earth can show:
Death is the strongest-born of Hell, and yet
Stronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know.'
(Doctor-4-9)
The duple-triple tetrameter speeds up the verse of
The Statue and the Bust, giving it a lighter touch than
114
Versification of Robert Browning
the true pentameter terza rima. The stanzas do not
run on into each other in this poem as they do in the
others.
There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both the townsmen tell.
Ages ago, a lady there,
At the farthest window facing the East
Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?”
The Four-Line Stanza
The quatrain has always been one of the staple verse
forms of English poetry. It is capable of many varia-
tions in rhyme scheme, line length, and verse move-
ment, and is therefore adapted to the individuality of
widely different poets. It is, as one would expect, one
of Browning's most favored stanza forms; but it does
not preponderate over all other forms as it does in
many poets-Wordsworth for example.
On the couplet rhyme aabb it occurs in anapestic
tetrameter in The Laboratory:3
Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it-next moment I dance at the King's!
The six-measure lines have a strong tendency to
break in the middle; it is difficult, therefore, to pre-
serve the feeling of a quatrain in them. This is es-
pecially noteworthy in the trochaic movement of Be-
fore, and the epilogue to The Eagle, where the cesura
after the sixth syllable pulls many of the lines into
seven measures, with the fourth monosyllabic:
Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far.
God must judge the couple: leave them as they are
Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory,
And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story! (Before)
It is characteristic of Browning that the first verse should not set the
norm for the movement of the poem.
Stanza Forms
115
In the duple-triple movement of Solomon and Balkis,
and Halbert and Hob, the break in the line is only a
little less conspicuous. The stanza form is the same.
Solomon King of the Jews and the Queen of Sheba,
Balkis,
Talk on the ivory throne, and we well may conjecture
their talk is
Solely of things sublime: why else has she sought
Mount Zion,
Climbed the six golden steps, and sat betwixt lion and
lion?
The seven-measure lines with couplet rhymes fall
easily into "common" measure:
My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a
youngster long ago,
On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a
beard as white as snow,
Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument
of woe,
And striking his bare bald head the while, || sob out
the reason-so!
(Martin Relph)
The quatrain occurs more often in alternate rhyme
than in any other form. It is the stanzaic basis of
twenty-five of his poems. It appears in iambic move-
ment with trimeter lines alternating with tetrameter
(abзab), as in The Lost Mistress: *
All's over, then: doth truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, 't is the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
and in anapestic movement with double rhymes in
Muckle-Mouth Meg:
4 "You'll love me yet!-and I can tarry" (Pippa Passes III) is in this
form. Confessions, and Pambo are the same except for a few triples and
the double rhymes of Pambo.
116
Versification of Robert Browning
Frowned the Laird on the Lord:
catch thee?
"So, red-handed I
Death-doomed by our Law of the Border!
We've a gallows outside and a chiel to dispatch thee:
Who trespasses-hangs: all's in order."
Frequently all four lines are tetrameter. This form
occurs in iambic movement in Bad Dreams I.
Last night I saw you in my sleep:
And how your charm of face was changed!
I asked, "Some love, some faith you keep?"
You answered, "Faith gone, love estranged."
In all the other examples (Prologue to Pacchiarotto,
House, Dubiety, Epilogue to Mihrab Shah), the move-
ment is duple-triple.
Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
Do I live in a house you would like to see?
Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
"Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?"
(House)
The trimeter lines are equally popular with the tet-
rameter. They are either in the short and choppy
iambic movement of The Twins, Ben Karshook's Wis-
dom, and the Prologue to Fifine at the Fair; or the
duple-triple movement of Youth and Art, and the epi-
logue to A Camel-Driver.
Grand rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables-flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?
(The Twins)
It once might have been, once only:
We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
I, a lone she-bird of his feather.
(Youth and Art)
In two happy experiments-Prologue to The Two
Poets of Croisic, and A Woman's Last Word-Brown-
Stanza Forms
117
ing combined trimeter and dimeter into a quatrain
with alternate rhyme.5
World-how it walled about
Life with disgrace
Till God's own smile came out:
That was thy face!
Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
(Prologue)
(Woman's Last Word)
The stanzas of Memorabilia and A Light Woman are
made up of three tetrameter lines and a trimeter, the
former in iambic, the latter in duple-triple movement.
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!
So far as our story approaches the end,
(Memorabilia)
Which do you pity the most of us three?—
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me? (A Light Woman)
The pentameter quatrain is used but once in the
trochaic movement of Fears and Scruples.
Here's my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,—
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.
The Epilogue to Ferishtah's Fancies, Poetics, and
Magical Nature, experiment with a combination of
5 Some of the trimeters, because of the movement and the cesura, tend to
lengthen into tetrameter:
Let's contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
-Only sleep!
• Pictor Ignotus, the second speaker in the Epilogue to Dramatis Personae,
and Bifurcation, are printed as continuous verse.
118
Versification of Robert Browning
i
six- and seven-measure lines in trochaic movement
(a6b7a6b7) which suggests Poulter's measure:
Then the cloud-rift broadens, spanning earth that's under,
Wide our world displays its worth, man's strife and
strife's success;
All the good and beauty, wonder crowning wonder,
Till my heart and soul applaud perfection, nothing less.
(Epilogue)
The quatrain with enclosed rhyme occurs once, in
Parting at Morning: 7
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
A Pretty Woman, with its dimeters and its double and
triple rhymes, does not give the effect of a quatrain.º
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!
So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
Be its beauty
Its sole duty!
Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!
(Stanzas 1 and 7)
The quatrain with intermittent rhyme (xaya) oc-
curs with irregular line length in prevailingly anapes-
tic movement in Donald:
The first two stanzas of Helen's Tower have this form, but the last is
arranged abc abcs.
8 Thomson thinks he finds the basis of this metre in the lesser ionic.
There are difficulties, however, not the least being that it violates the integ-
rity of the short lines. The metrical problems raised by the combinations
of short lines in many of Browning's poems are not startling. He liked the
effect of short refrain lines and used them. They are, almost without ex-
ception, complete end stopped lines. The Rhythm of Speech, 345-6.
Stanza Forms
119
1
Yet he was not dead when they picked next day
From the gully's depth the wreck of him;
His fall had been stayed by the stag beneath
Who cushioned and saved the neck of him.
(Stanza 49)
and in iambic tetrameter in May and Death:
I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of spring's delightful things;
Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.
Quintains.
The quintain stanza has never been widely used by
the poets. In the nineteenth century Wordsworth
had used it for The Blind Highland Boy, with the
rhyme aabba; and for The Idiot Boy and Peter Bell,
with the unconnected rhyme abccb. In this form the
first line never seems to be an integral part of the
stanza.
9
Thought Peter, what can mean all this?
Some ugly witchcraft must be here!
Once more the Ass, with motion dull,
Upon the pivot of his skull
Turned round his long left ear. (Peter Bell 416-20)
Byron satirically adopted the Peter Bell scheme, but
Shelley tied the stanza together in his Peter Bell the
Third with the rhyme abaab (with exceptions).
Browning is the only English poet who has given
preference to the quintain stanza. Twenty-nine poems,
in all moods and movements, from Two in the Com-
pagna to Fust and His Friends, have this stanza form.
With a single exception,10 the fifth line always con-
tinues one of the quatrain rhymes, making a pleasing
and closely concatenated stanza. This form must have
This form is used but once by Browning, in the translation The Blind
Man to the Maiden. (a₁bsc¸c bз)
10 Dis Aliter Visum, abcca.
120
Versification of Robert Browning
appealed to Browning because of its enlarged scope
and its infinite capacity for variation.
It occurs in iambic movement with four tetrameters
and a trimeter on the rhymes ababa, in Two in the
Campagna and in Popularity.
I wonder do you feel today
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?
(Two in the Compagna)
More frequently the movement is duple-triple, either
with the fifth line trimeter, as in By The Fireside and
Gold Hair; or with all five trimeter, as in The Patriot
and James Lee's Wife IX.
Too white, for the flower of life is red:
Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen
Of a soul that is meant (her parents said)
To just see earth, and hardly be seen,
And blossom in heaven instead.
(Gold Hair)
There is nothing to remember in me,
Nothing I ever said with a grace,
Nothing I did that you care to see,
Nothing I was that deserves a place
In your mind, now I leave you, set you free.
(James Lee's Wife IX)
It occurs once in trochaic movement, in A Serenade
at the Villa.
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.
The same rhyme scheme, ababa, occurs with duple-
triple trimeter in Reverie:
Stanza Forms
121
I know there shall dawn a day
-Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes full in play?
in dactylic movement with combined trimeter and tet-
rameter, in Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha:
Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,—
and in the still more elaborate combination of pentam-
eters with tetrameter and trimeter, in James Lee's
Wife VI:
"Still ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no?
Which needs the other's office, thou or I?
Dost want to be disburdened of a woe,
And can, in truth, my voice untie
Its links, and let it go?
In The Worst of It there is an interesting variation
from this form. Browning has inserted an extra line
with an internal rhyme different from the rhyme of
the stanza.
Would it were I had been false, not you!
I that am nothing, not you that are all:
I, never the worse for a touch or two
On my speckled hide; not you, the pride
Of the day, my swan, that a first fleck's fall
On her wonder of white must unswan, undo!
The form ababb is equally in favor with Browning.
It occurs in iambic tetrameter in Shop, Bad Dreams
IV, and Speculative.
That strong stern man my lover came
-Was he my lover? Call him, pray,
My life's cold critic bent on blame
Of all poor I could do or say
To make me worth his love one day-
(Bad Dreams IV)
122
Versification of Robert Browning
Porphyria's Lover and Johannes Agricola in Medita-
tion are in this same form, but with the twelve stanzas
of each printed together as continuous lines. In the
Prologue to Asolando the fifth line is trimeter.
It occurs in anapestic movement in Apollo and the
Fates and Fust and his Friends:
Thy tongue slides to "comfort" already?
Not mine!
Behoove us deal roundly: the wretch is distraught
-Too well I guess wherefore! Behooves a Divine
-Such as I, by grace, boast me-to threaten one caught
In the enemy's toils,-setting "comfort" at naught.
(Fust and His Friends)
and in duple-triple trimeter in Bad Dreams II and the
Epilogue to Dramatis Personae (First Speaker).
You in the flesh and here-
Your very self! Now, wait!
One word! May I hope or fear?
Must I speak in love or hate?
Stay while I ruminate!
(Bad Dreams II)
The form abaab occurs in duple-triple movement
with a combination of tetrameter and trimeter lines,
in James Lee's Wife IV:
I will be quiet and talk with you,
And reason why you are wrong.
You wanted my love-is that much true?
And so I did love, so I do:
What has come of it all along?
and in trochaic tetrameter in the epilogue to A Pillar
at Sebzevar: 11
Ask not one least word of praise!
Words declare your eyes are bright?
What then meant that summer day's
Silence spent in one long gaze?
11 The Epilogue
verses added to it:
also rhymed ababb.
Was my silence wrong or right?
to the second Series of Dramatic Idyls, and the album
"Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke:" are
The movement is trochaic hexameter.
t
Stanza Forms
123
Other forms are: iambic tetrameter rhymed aabba:
abcca:
"Bystanders reason, think of wives
And children ere they risk their lives.
Over the balustrade has bounced
A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!
(Tray)
Stop, let me have the truth of that!
Is that all true? I say, the day
Ten years ago when both of us
Met on a morning, friends-as thus
We meet this evening, friends or what?—
(Dis Aliter Visum)
abbaa with combined trimeter and dimeter:
All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?
(Mesmerism)
and aabab, with two short refrain lines, in Rosny:
Woe, he went galloping into the war,
Clara, Clara
Let us two dream: shall he 'scape with a scar?
Scarcely disfigurement, rather a grace
Making for manhood which nowise we mar:
See, while I kiss it, the flush on his face-
Rosny, Rosny!
The Six-Line Stanza
The poets have, as a rule, always preferred the six-
line stanza to the quintain; but Browning uses it less
often. Twenty-two of his poems are in this form.
They may take any one of a dozen different arrange-
ments, though the most favored forms are the tetram-
eter lines rhymed ababcc (as in Song, Count Gis-
mond, Appearances, parts of Nationality in Drinks,
124
Versification of Robert Browning
and, except for the second line in trimeter, the Epi-
logue to the Two Poets of Croisic); and the tetrameter
couplets¹2 (as in "How They Brought The Good News
from Ghent to Aix," Confessional, Holy-Cross Day,
Humility, and One Way of Love.13)
Nay but you, who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught—speak truth-above her?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall?
(Song)
Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
Stinking and savory, smug and gruff,
Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
Gives us the summons-'t is sermon-time!
(Holy-Cross Day)
A combination of tetrameter and trimeter occurs
with couplet rhyme (aşaзb4b4C4C3) in Adam, Lilith, and
Eve; and in the form aşbзaзb4c4c4 in Which? 14 James
Lee's Wife V is a pleasing combination of dimeter with
tetrameter and trimeter in the form a2b2a2b4C4C3.
The other forms are largely individual, as if shaped
by the mood of the poet.15 The form abcabc in iambic
pentameter occurs in James Lee's Wife VII. The
rhymes are too widely separated to be a very important
element in the stanza structure.
Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To back i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
12 In lines 104-115 of In a Gondola the arrangement is aaaabbs.
18 In this poem, the fifth line has an internal rhyme.
14 Some of the stanzas begin with lines which read easily as trochaic
tetrameter.
15 Two stanzas of In a Gondola (37-48) have the arrangement ababa₁a2.
Stanza Forms
125
This rhyme scheme (abcabc) is used with hex-
ameter lines in Muléykeh, and the epilogue to Two
Camels; and with five tetrameters and a trimeter
(abcab4cs) in Ponte Dell' Angelo, Venice. It also oc-
curs, with a happy combination of trimeter, tetram-
eter, and dimeter, in St. Martin's Summer
(a3b3c4a4b4c2.).
No protesting, dearest!
Hardly kisses even!
Don't we both know how it ends?
How the greenest leaf turns seerest,
Bluest outbreak-blankest heaven,
Lovers-friends?
The rhyme rolls down and up like a wave on the
scheme abccba in Meeting at Night 16
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
There is nothing very distinctive about the form
aabccb of "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."
Rabbi Ben Ezra, however, uses the Any Wife to
Any Husband stanza with distinction by skillfully
varying the line-lengths: aзaзbсзcзb.
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made;
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
The Seven-Line Stanzas
Browning's eight poems in seven-line stanzas are all
in some way individual.1 Even in the epilogue to
17
16 Two stanzas of In a Gondola (1.203-214) are in this form.
17 Two stanzas of In a Gondola (49-62) are arranged a,b,bзacca.
126
Versification of Robert Browning
The Bean Feast, where he uses the rhyme scheme and
the iambic movement of the recognized rhyme royal
(ababbccs), he varies the form by making the last line
trimeter.
The only form used in a poem of sufficient length
and body to give individuality to any one arrangement
of the seven-line stanza is the iambic pentameter
rhymed ababcca of The Guardian Angel.
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending,
Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.
The arrangement ababccc4, which is a combination
of a quatrain and a tercet, is used in the two short
poems, Arcades Ambo, and The Lady and the Painter.
Misconceptions experiments in its two stanzas with a
combination of trimeter and tetrameter with double
rhymes (ababb3a4a4). The two stanzes of A Pearl, a
Girl are really sestains ababcc plus a refrain line x.18
The frail dimeters on the rhyme ababcbc in James
Lee's Wife I are perfect in their way; and the com-
bination of trimeter and dimeter with the intricate
rhyme aabbaaa in A Lovers' Quarrel achieves some
personality and distinction through the twenty-two
stanzas:
Ah, Love, but a day
And the world has changed!
The sun's away,
And the bird estranged;
The wind has dropped,
And the sky's deranged:
Summer has stopped.
(James Lee's Wife I)
18 The Epitaph on Levi Lincoln Thaxter has the form abaabbas.
Stanza Forms
127
Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorne-spray.
Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were gray.
The Eight-Line Stanzas
(A Lovers' Quarrel)
The eight line stanza is used in twenty-seven poems.
It is usually nothing more than a double quatrain on
the familiar rhymes. Thus, eight of the poems (Gar-
den Fancies, Evelyn Hope, Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloister, Old Pictures in Florence, The Heretic's Trag-
edy, At the “Mermaid," Filippo Baldinucci on the Priv-
ilege of Burial, and the Epilogue to Fifine at the Fair) 19
are in double tetrameter quatrains abab cdcd; The
Incident of the French Camp is composed of two quat-
rains in common measure (a4b3a4b3 etc.); Fame has
two pentameter quatrains with alternate rhyme, and
Abt Vogler has two hexameter quatrains. The same
form is tried with success in double rhymed dimeter
in Pisgah-Sights:
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.
The two quatrains have intermittent rhyme (xaya
etc.) in Cristina, and enclosed rhyme (abbacddc) in
Respectability.20 One of those happy uses of the dim-
19 The Founder of the Feast has one eight- and one seven-line stanza
abbaabbas, abcabca..
20 Two stanzas have an internal rhyme on d in the sixth line.
128
Versification of Robert Browning
eter line occurs with this rhyme scheme in the pro-
logue to La Saisiaz:
Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
Fretless and free,
Soul, clap thy pinion!
Earth have dominion,
Body, o'er thee!
The ottava rima stanza (iambic pentameter ababa-
bcc) is used with no special distinction in The Two
Poets of Croisic, and in Pan and Luna.
The other poems in the eight-line stanza are in some
way unusual.21 The complex structure: aзb2c4a2dзb₂-
c4d2, with the rhyme jumping over two or three lines
each time, has a beautiful effect in In a Year:
Never any more,
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive:
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
Three dimeters and five tetrameters are combined on
the rhyme abcddabc to form the stanza of Love in a
Life:
Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—
Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew:
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.
21 Deaf and Dumb (aaabccb5); Eurydice to Orpheus (aabccbdd5); and
Summum Bonum (ababьbсзaс2) have but a single stanza each. The Epi-
logue to Plot Culture has two stanzas: ababccd5d2. Through the Metidja to
Abd-el-Kadr, in eight-line stanzas, is treated in Chapter XIX.
Stanza Forms
129
The form is varied in James Lee's Wife II, to a4b2a4c2-
c2d4d4b2; the delayed b rhyme tying the stanza to-
gether.
The combination of trimeter and tetrameter,
abcccba4a, forms the stanza of the Epilogue to Pac-
chiarotto. The six-, seven- and eight-measure lines
(ª¸b¸ª¸c7d6b8d6c7) of Pietro of Abano are constantly
breaking up into two shorter lengths, so that the stanza
has little unity. But the tetrameters of Cristina and
Monaldeschi, with the closely linked rhyme abbbaccc,
have some individuality:
Since they witness to incessant
Love like ours: King Francis, he―
Diane the adored one, she-
Prototypes of you and me.
Everywhere is carved her Crescent
With his Salamander-sign—
Flame-fed creature: flame benign
To itself or, if malign,
The descending and ascending rhymes abcddcab in
the classical movement of duple-triple hexameters are
used in Pheidippides. It makes a stately and digni-
fied stanza.
First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock!
Gods of my birthplace, dæmons and heroes, honor to all!
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal in
praise
—Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the ægis and
spear!
Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your peer,
Now, henceforth and forever,-O latest to whom I upraise
Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and
flock!
Present to help, potent to save, Pan-patron I call!
Nine-Line Stanzas
The Spenserian is the only nine-line stanza which
has had a recognized place in English poetry; the other
130
Versification of Robert Browning
forms have been shaped to meet the requirements of
the individual poet without, however, establishing any
one arrangement as an accepted type.22 Browning did
not use the Spenserian stanza, nor did he invent any
striking form of nine-line stanza in his three attempts
at its use. Apparent Failure consists of two quatrains
with an extra line on the d rhyme: ababcdcdd4.
Natural Magic is a little more complex with its two
opening lines of trimeter, but it is really two quatrains
with enclosed rhyme with the extra line at the be-
ginning rhyming with the sixth and ninth: abccbadda4.
Oh Love! Love is more intricate with its combina-
tions of pentameter and trimeter with a closing alex-
andrine: aabcb5cзddзcь.
Oh Love! Love, thou that from the eyes diffusest
Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace inducest―
Souls against whom thy hostile march is made—
Never to me be manifest in ire,
Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade!
Since neither from the fire-
No, nor from the stars-is launched a bolt more mighty
Than that of Aphrodite
Hurled from the hands of Love, the boy with Zeus for sire.
Stanzas of more than nine lines have no one estab-
lished form. Browning used a ten-line stanza in Mary
Wollstonecraft and Fuseli.23 It is composed of a quat-
rain on alternate rhyme and three couplets:
ababccdde4e3.
In
An eleven-line stanza appears in two poems.
The Last Ride Together it is made up of four tetra-
meter couplets and a tercet, the third couplet being
split to tie the stanza together: aabbcddeec. In An-
other Way of Love it is composed of eight dimeters
22 Tennyson's Lady of Shalott; Swinburne's Tale of Balen, and Olive;
Rossetti's The Portrait, are nineteenth century examples.
28 Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, and Keat's Ode to a
Nightingale, were excellent precedents.
Stanza Forms
131
rhymed abcddabc and a tercet eee. There is no struc-
tural unity to the stanza.
June was not over
Though past the full,
And the best of her roses
Had yet to blow,
When a man I know
(But shall not discover,
Since ears are dull,
And time discloses)
Turned him and said with a man's true air,
Half sighing a smile in a yawn, as 't were,—
"If I tire of your June, will she greatly care?"24
The twelve-line stanzas of Bad Dreams III are com-
posed of three tetrameter quatrains, the first and third
on alternate rhymes, the second in couplets: ababcc-
ddefef. Flute Music is made up of three quatrains
on alternate rhymes, with a nice combination of trim-
eter and tetrameter lines: aзbзa4bзcзdзc4dзeзfзе4fз.
Ah, the bird-like fluting
Through the ash-tops yonder-
Bullfinch-bubblings, soft sounds suiting
What sweet thoughts, I wonder?
Fine-pearled notes that surely
Gather, dewdrop-fashion,
Deep-down in some heart which purely
Secretes globuled passion-
Passion insuppressive—
Such is piped, for certain;
Love, no doubt, nay, love excessive
'Tis, your ash-tops curtain.
In Too Late, the other poem in this stanza form, the
rhyme scheme of the last two quatrains is made a little
more intricate by splitting the second: ababcdefefcd.
Here was I with my arm and heart
And brain, all yours for a word, a want
Put into a look-just a look, your part,—
While mine, to repay it. vainest vaunt,
•
24 The rhymes in this first stanza are often imperfect.
132
Versification of Robert Browning
Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear,
Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show!
But I cannot show it; you cannot speak
From the churchyard neither, miles removed,
Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,
Which stabs and stops, that the woman I loved
Needs help in her grave and finds none near,
Wants warmth from the heart which sends it-so!
The Sonnets
Browning wrote nine sonnets.25 Three of these ap-
pear in humorous sequence as an epilogue to Jochanan
Hakkadosh; the other six he himself did not reprint,
and his literary judgment was unimpeachable. But
pious though misguided enthusiasts must have all the
saint's relics; Browningana is therefore enriched by
these fugitive pieces. Browning's genius was not at
home in the rigid limits of such a fixed form as the
sonnet. Since he did not consider them worth reprint-
ing, we may dismiss them with a word or two.
The first of these pieces, Eyes, calm beside thee
(Lady, couldst thou know!), is eccentric in form. The
rhymes are not perfect, but they follow the scheme
abab ccab efa efa. In all the others the octave is alike:
two quatrains with enclosed rhyme abba abba. The
sestet is varied in four ways:
1-abba abba cde cde:
Helen's Tower, Jochanan III,
Founder of the Feast25
Rawdon Brown.
Jochanan I, II, Goldoni, Why I am
2-
cde ced:
3-
cdc dcd:
4-
cdc ddc:
The Names.
a Liberal.
25 See Karl Lentzner's Robert Browning's Sonettdichtung Anglia XI, 500-17.
Lentzner omits Eyes Calm Beside Thee but includes The Founder of the
Feast. In the collected editions of Browning this poem has fifteen lines;
Lentzner prints it as a sonnet by omitting one line:
"Bach like Beethoven. Are we thankless, pray,
To him whose every guest not idly vaunts, etc."
Stanza Forms
133
The most interesting thing about these pieces is that
they illustrate in brief form the evolution of Brown-
ing's style. One needs only to set two of them side by
side and they write the chapter. These two are just
a half-century apart:
1834 (Aetat. 22)
Eyes, calm beside thee (Lady, couldst thou know!)
May turn away thick with fast gathering tears:
I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low
Their passionate praises reach thee-my cheek wears
Alone no wonder when thou passest by;
Thy tremulous lids, bent and suffused, reply
To the irrepressible homage which doth glow
On every lip but mine: if in thine ears
Their accents linger-and thou dost recall
Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale,
Beside each votarist whose lighted brow
Wore worship like an aureole, "O'er them all
My beauty," thou wilt murmur, "did prevail
Save that one only"; Lady, couldst thou know!
1884 (Aetat. 72)
Sighed Rawdon Brown: "Yes, I'm departing, Toni!
I needs must, just this once before I die,
Revisit England: Anglus Brown am I,
Although my heart's Venetian. Yes, old crony-
Venice and London-London's 'Death the Bony'
Venice! What a sky,
Good-by,
Compared with Life-that's Venice!
A sea, this morning! One last look!
Cà Pesaro! No, lion-I'm a coney
To weep! I'm dazzled; 't is that sun I view
Rippling the-the-Cospetto, Toni! Down
With carpet-bag, and off with valise-straps!
'Bella Venezia, non ti lascio più!'
""
Nor did Brown ever leave her: well, perhaps
Browning, next week, may find himself quite Brown!
Other Verse Forms
Besides these stanzas of definite line length, there
are other poems, whose forms are entirely unique and
134
Versification of Robert Browning
individual, which must be mentioned separately. The
Cavalier Tunes have such distinction.
I. Marching Along has six lines rhymed in couplets,
with an added internal rhyme in the first, third, and
fifth lines. The last two lines become the chorus for
the other stanzas which have really only four lines.
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
Strangely enough, in one section of In a Gondola
(11.63-78), "He" sings to this same tune. There is a
slight variation in the form of the "chorus"; 26 the
internal rhyme is lacking in one line and one measure
is missing in the other. Otherwise the form is the
same:
What are we two?
I am a Jew,
And carry thee, farther than friends can pursue,
To a feast of our tribe;
Where they need thee to bribe
The devil that blasts them unless he imbibe
Thy... Scatter the vision forever! And now,
As of old, I am I, thou art thou!
II. Give a Rouse is in quatrains with alternate dou-
ble rhymes, and with the inspired chorus:
King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's in hell's despite now,
King Charles!
III. Boot and Saddle is really in tercets, the first
line of the first stanza being repeated as a chorus:
26 The last two lines are repeated at the end of the second stanza.
Stanza Forms
135
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my castle before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray.
Cho.-Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
All four of the stanzas are rhymed on the same sound.
The Lost Leader is composed of two stanzas which
combine four quatrains to make a sixteen-line stanza.
The first quatrain has alternate rhyme abab; the last
three have intermittent rhyme xaya.
"De Gustibus-" has two sections of uneven length.
The first is printed in thirteen lines (the dimeters are
split tetrameters with internal rhyme) thus:
a4b2b2c4c4a4d2d2e4e4e2e2e2.
The second part is made up of tetrameter lines com-
bining couplets, alternate and enclosed rhymes.
Home-Thoughts, From Abroad has an eight- and a
twelve-line stanza, composed in the complex and in-
dividual form:
aзb¸à¸c4cc4d4dз and aаb¸с¸b¿c¿d¿d¸е¿e¿f¿f¿
Life in a Love is distinctive because of its rhymes.
The first three monopodies rhyme with the last three,
though separated by sixteen tetrameter lines:
Escape me?
Never-
Beloved!
(Four unseparated quatrains abba cddc efef ghgh)
I shape me--
Ever
Removed!
In Three Days is also highly individual. It is com-
posed of four stanzas of uneven length (7, 7, 9, 15,
lines). The first two lines:
So I shall see her in three days
And just one night, but nights are short,
136
Versification of Robert Browning
are echoed down through the poem in the second and
fourth stanzas with slight variation; and the first
three lines become the closing ones, adding
Then just two hours, and that is morn.
Women and Roses alternates a tercet (aaa) with
an eight-line stanza rhymed in couplets (aabbccdd4),
plus a refrain line x.
I
I dream of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?
II
Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages.
Then follow women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved today,
Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties yet unborn. And all, to one cadence,
They circle their rose on my rose tree.
This combination is repeated four times.
After and Instans Tyrannus alternate an anapes-
tic trimeter with a dimeter on the same rhyme in
stanzas of unequal length.
I
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
(Instans Tyrannus)
The lovely lyrics in that anthology entitled In a Gon-
dola have been mentioned separately in their appropri-
ate places.
Waring has no definite stanza structure; it skillfully
combines trimeters and tetrameters in couplet and
Stanza Forms
137
quatrain rhymes. The few pentameters and dimeters
are somewhat accidental:
Ay, most likely 't is in Spain
That we and Waring meet again
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall
From some black coffin lid.
Or best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint; (Waring 135-144)
Hervé Riel is a "ballad" in stanzas of uneven length,
no two of which are just alike. They have no unusual
distinction.
Wanting Is-What? is composed of a six line stanza
in dactylic tetrameter enclosed by two dimeter quat-
rains. A refrain echo "Grows love!" closes the poem.
Wanting is-what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
-Where is the blot?
Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same,
-Framework which waits for a picture to frame:
What of the leafage, what of the flower?
Roses embowering with naught they embower!
Come then, complete incompletion, O comer,
Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer!
Breathe but one breath
Rose-beauty above,
And all that was death
Grows life, grows love,
Grows love!
Browning had a great fondness for short echo lines
following longer ones. Love Among the Ruins is the
most musical as it is the most beautiful poem in this
arrangement. It is divided into stanzas composed of
six long and six short lines, each short one rhyming
138
Versification of Robert Browning
with the preceding long one. The length of the first
line, and the couplet rhyme, emphasize the echo effect
of the second.
Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
As the crop-
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.
The Englishman in Italy is less ethereal in its music.
It is, as a matter of fact, the Saul line broken into a
trimeter and a dimeter; 27 but the conflict between the
metre and the phrases is more nearly mortal.
But to-day not a boat reached Salerno,
So back, to a man,
Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards
Grape-harvest began.
How good is man's life, the mere living!
how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
forever in joy!
(ll. 69-72)
(Saul 78-79)
Prospice combines tetrameter and dimeter lines on
alternate rhymes. This combination, in duple-triple
movement, suggests the effect of classic hexameters: 28
Fear death? to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
27 After, and Instans Tyrannus, are in the same form except for rhyme.
The first two lines of each stanza of James Lee's Wife III, are in the same
form.
28 See Chapter XVIII, p. 179.
Stanza Forms
139
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
(Prospice 1-8)
In the Prologue to Ferishtah's Fancies, and in A
Grammarian's Funeral, the short line, instead of con-
tinuing the same movement and echoing the effect of
the long one, introduces a new movement which is
likely to disturb the even flow of the expected metre.
These two poems show how completely different may
be the effect of what is theoretically the same verse
form.29
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together,
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
(Grammarian's Funeral)
Pray, Reader, have you eaten ortolans
Ever in Italy?
Recall how cooks there cook them: for my plan's
To-Lyre with Spit ally.
They pluck the birds,—some dozen luscious lumps,
Or more or fewer,-
Then roast them, heads by heads and rumps by rumps,
Stuck on a skewer.
(Prologue to Ferishtah)
The freedom and irregularity of My Star are more
apparent than real. The first eight lines are duple-
triple diameter with alternate rhymes (ababcdcd).
The ninth line lengthens into a tetrameter, though it is
bound to the dimeter quatrain by rhyme. The final
9 The effect of the adonic has been discussed in Chapter III.
140
Versification of Robert Browning
tetrameter quatrain (which is not merely two dime-
ters printed as one line) sweeps the poem to a rich,
melodious ending, as though the aspiration of the early
dimeters had attained metrical fulfillment.
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COUPLETS
The Pentameter Couplet
There are two types of pentameter couplets in Eng-
lish poetry: the open form of Endymion, and the
closed form of The Essay On Man. The open form
could be accurately described, if the paradox might be
indulged, as blank verse with rhyme; for the stream
of thought overflows the confines of the lines and runs
on into the next and the next until, like good blank
verse, it is felt in paragraphs rather than in lines or
couplets. The closed couplet, on the other hand, is
compressed, epigrammatic, snappy, antithetical, com-
posed and felt in units of two lines coupled by rhyme.
Even when the thought is developed through several
lines, it is built up of separate couplet units like so
many chiseled stones in an archway. The "All nature
is but art unknown to thee" passage is a good and
classic example.
Of these two types, Browning, as the reader might
suppose, chose the open couplet. Approximately ten
per cent of his work is in this form. Sordello is the
only poem of great length; the Parleyings which, taken
together, are not quite half as long as Sordello, are
really seven separate poems of about four hundred
lines each. The other nine poems in pentameter coup-
lets are comparatively short, ranging from the eight
lines of Fame, to the three hundred ninety-six of A
Forgiveness. Only one of this group is in strict heroic
couplets-the eight lines of Fame:
141
142
Versification of Robert Browning
See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute gray lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!
All the rest are more or less open.
Browning's pentameter couplets have two note-
worthy characteristics: their openness and their
comparative regularity. They are in no sense heroic
couplets; they are distinguished from regular blank
verse in nothing but rhyme, and the observations on
blank verse apply as well to them. The couplets are
wide open. The thought lengthens out from one line
into another until sixty per cent of the lines are en-
jambed. The rhymes are not only unobtrusive, but
they frequently leave the reader quite unaware of their
presence. Unfamiliar readers are likely to read My
Last Duchess with the impression of blank verse.
quotation at this point would invalidate the experi-
ment; the reader should, if possible, get interested in
a passage from Sordello, and after finishing it, ask
himself whether or not he was aware of rhyme. But
we may for convenience give here an illustration of the
open structure of the couplet.
The sire led in
A son as cruel; and this Ecelin
Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tall
And curling and compliant; but for all
Romano (so they styled him) throve, that neck
Of his so pinched and white, that hungry cheek
Proved 'twas some fiend, not him, the man's-
flesh went
To feed: whereas Romano's instrument,
A
Couplets
143
Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole
I' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt
the bole
Successively, why should not he shed blood
To further a design?
(Sordello 1.275-286)
In this representative passage the cesuras are so
skillfully shifted about, and the phrase units are so
carefully distributed through the line and across the
lines that only three (277, 282, 285) are in any sense
complete on the rhyme word. The rhyme has become
purely ornamental in contrast to the organic quality
of the rhyme in the heroic couplet.
As if the rhymes were not already reticent enough,
Browning often obscures them still further by hiding
them away in alternate and enclosed schemes as vari-
ants from the continuous couplet form. Could rhymed
pentameters be more nearly like blank verse and still
be rhymed pentameters than, say, such a passage as
this from Christopher Smart?
with me first glance
Was but full recognition that in trance
Or merely thought's adventure some old day
Of dim and done-with boyishness, or-well,
Why might it not have been, the miracle
Broke on me as I took my sober way
Through veritable regions of our earth
And made discovery, many a wondrous one?
II
Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth:
I was exploring some huge house, had gone
Through room and room complacently,
The rhyme scheme would be aa bccb de de etc., and
even this unobtrusive scheme is subordinated by such
imperfect rhymes as well:miracle; one:gone.
The other singularity of the pentameter couplets is
the extreme regularity of the versification, especially
144
Versification of Robert Browning
when compared with the irregularities of the blank
verse. In these poems Browning relies almost wholly
upon the traditional and the universally accepted varia-
tions from the normal iambic pattern as enumerated
and illustrated in Chapter V. It would be repeating
the obvious to multiply further illustration. Even Sor-
dello, which is less regular than the rest, seldom has a
triple except in the first measure after a direct attack
or before or after a monosyllabic measure. In marked
contrast to his freedom from rigid rules in his blank
verse, he seems to have felt himself bound to them
when he wrote the couplet. Except for the rare use
of "o' the" and "i' the" the triples are not insistent;
and examples of two triples in one line are few and far
between. Book One yields these:
Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye (1.371)
Over the woods to Mantua: there he strolled. (1.621)
Summers, and winters quietly came and went. (1.697)
O'the instant, more with earlier loves to wrench (1.933)
The vein-streaks swollen a richer violet where (1.956)
and Book Two these:
Brightened, "as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods (2.4)
The sorriest bat which cowers throughout noontide (2.228)
Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone!
(2.422)
Sunning himself o' the slime where whirrs the breeze—”
(2.773)
Not one of these lines is very striking; and only one
would be out of place in a Popean couplet. The others
are usually direct attack, making the first measure
triple, and easily elided syllables which distinctly tone
down the triple effect.
A single triple measure is also comparatively rare,
and usually of the type:
Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound
All out except a floating power, a name
1 These occur in 54 lines in Sordello; one line contains both.
(1.949)
(4.972)
Couplets
145
In the Parleyings there are whole poems in which the
only triple measures are such easy elisions as "heaven
and," "the instructor," "flower and," etc. In the blank
verse pentameters these were so common that they
became a part of the basic pattern.
The Tetrameter Couplet
Browning made but little use of the tetrameter
couplet; his genius preferred the wider freedom of the
mightier pentameter to the close restriction of the
tetrameter with its almost unavoidable sing-song
metre and its obtrusive rhymes. The shorter poems
in four-measure lines, such as The Confessional, and
One Way of Love, are not strictly tetrameter couplets,
inasmuch as they are cast into definite stanza forms.²
The Last Ride Together falls outside of this group
because the fifth line of each stanza rhymes with the
eleventh, and the eighth, ninth, and tenth have the
same rhyme. In A Gondola is only partly in tetrame-
ter couplets. This leaves Christmas Eve and Easter
Day, and The Italian in England as the true repre-
sentatives of the form.³
And even Christmas Eve cannot be admitted without
some important qualifications. It is not octosyllabic
like Easter Day; and it is iambic only in certain pas-
sages of its 1359 lines. It is more like Coleridge's
Christabel, for the accents remain constant in number
while the syllables range from eight to thirteen. It
is therefore more accurately described as duple-triple
rhythm. The rhymes are prevailingly double and
often strikingly eccentric:
4
Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.
My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, (209, 211)
2 One Way of Love is further differentiated by the internal rhyme in the
fifth line of each stanza:
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.
3 A few lyrics in Pippa Passes are strict octosyllabic couplets.
4 For discussion of Duple-triple rhythm see Chapter XVII.
146
Versification of Robert Browning
With so unfeigned a gust-who knows if
They did not prefer our friend to Joseph ? (237-8)
And not seldom they are triple:
Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
And, in patchwork of chapters and texts in severence,
(155,7)
They sometimes make good pentameters because the
final word in the triple rhyme is too heavy to become
subordinate:
But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!
These people have really felt, no doubt,
A something, the motion they style the Call of them;
(239-41)
The other qualification that must be made is that
Christmas Eve is not really in couplets, but is con-
stantly varied by alternating and enclosing rhyme
schemes. This is a typical passage: (aabbcdceedfg-
gfhh)
She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
Already from my own clothes' dropping,
Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
She bore defiantly, in each hand one,
Planted together before her breast
And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
Close on her heels, the dingy satins
Of a female something, past me flitted,
With lips as much too white, as a streak
Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
All that was left of a woman once,
Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
(65-80)
The rhymes are not only widely separated but they are
also imperfect: stand on: hand one; flitted:pitied;
Couplets
147
once:nonce. These sections of the poem (and they
predominate) do not produce the effect, certainly, of
the regular octosyllabic couplets of Easter Day, and
The Italian in England.
In contrast with the rhymes of the pentameter coup-
lets, where they are so unobtrusive that the reader
is not always conscious of them, the rhymes of the
tetrameter couplets stand as conspicuous landmarks
at the end of each line. They ring with regularity like
the warning bell of a typewriter, and they will not be
subordinated. They occur so often in the short lines
that not even the high percentage of enjambment
(47%) can subdue them as it can in the pentameters.
On the contrary, the constant enjambment makes the
short choppy octosyllables seem even shorter and
choppier without effectively distracting attention away
from the couplet rhymes. When the thought tries to
soar out of its metrical restraint, it seems to be held
back by a clipped wing. Lines frankly end-stopped are,
to my ear, more pleasing than the jerky overflow of
such passages as:
and
-The skylark, taken by surprise
As we ourselves, shall recognize
Sudden the end. For suddenly
It comes; the dreadfulness must be
In that; all warrants the belief-
'At night it cometh like a thief.'
(Easter Day 471-6)
Death so nigh,
When time must end, eternity
Begin, and cannot I compute,
Weigh loss and gain together, suit
My actions to the balance drawn,
And give my body to be sawn
Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied
To horses, stoned, burned, crucified,
Like any martyr of the list?
(Ibid. 37-45)
148
Versification of Robert Browning
Except for Christmas Eve, which is iambic-anapes-
tic, Browning does not make any striking variations
from the regular iambic of the traditional couplet.
The most frequent, as the most to be expected, is the
direct attack instead of the expected anacrusis:
(Easter Day 544)
Leaving exposed the utmost walls
But, allowing for variations in readings, there are still
less than 10 per cent of these beginnings.
Very rarely are the first two measures triple, and
then the syllables flow into each other:
"Such is man's usual gratitude,
(Easter Day 204)
(355)
Love survives in me, albeit those
(935)
Find a live actual listener,
Still more rarely is the third measure trisyllabic after
the direct attack:
Shuddered at,—all, the heavens grew black
(235)
The single triples are nearly all subject to the usual
rules of elision, but they are none the less definite and
pleasing variations from the expected rhythm.
A fierce vindictive scribble of red
How senses hornier than his hand
(511)
(446)
Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn
(945)
Then (sickening even while I spoke)
(890)
Weak or failing stresses are very common:
And unevadable, the fact.
(555)
Mere theories for blame or praise,
(392)
Amid your veritable muck,
(307)
With a mere probability,
(127)
Extra accents are rare, because the phrases more
often support than conflict with the verse pattern:
Briers, thistles, from our private plot,
But there be certain words, broad, plain,
(225)
(257)
'Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure
Of that dry green old aqueduct
(500)
(It. in Eng. 7)
Couplets
149
Monosyllabic measures seldom occur; when they do
it is usually in the first measure:
And the | gay | heart be taught to ache,
At first turn of the rusty key,
but occasionally in others:
And judge if a mere | foppery
In the same | place, with the same | eyes:
(215)
(544)
(It. in Eng. 89)
All of these variations are comparatively rare, how-
ever, and the prevailing tone of the couplets is one of
regularity and conformity.
As I declare our Poet, him
Whose insight makes all others dim:
A thousand poets pried at life,
And only one amid the strife
Rose to be Shakespeare: (Christmas Eve 980-4)
Alexandrine Couplets
After the deadly experiment of Drayton's Polyolbion,
with its monotonous, gouty-footed couplets, the alex-
andrine was long out of favor and had to wait for
Browning for patronage of high order. It was used
as a variant line for other meters, but it was not con-
sidered a good medium for long poems. Browning,
with characteristic perversity, chose this traditionally
slow, lumbering couplet for Fifine at the Fair with all
its 2,355 lines. And with characteristic energy he made
the alexandrine beat its sleepy wings with some fervor
instead of allowing it to "drag its slow length along."
In part the animation of Fifine is due, of course, to
its lively subject matter and its sprightly monologue,
whereas the dullness of Polyolbion is as much in subject
matter as in metrical form; a dialogue between Wat-
ling Street and the Ver on the ruins of Verulam might
conceivably be dull even in trochaic tetrameter! But
150
Versification of Robert Browning
Browning has been at some pains to avoid the snares
which the alexandrine lays for the unwary, and this
has made Fifine metrically interesting.
In the first place, it avoids the dignified slowness of
the usual alexandrine. In the very first lines it skips
away with great energy of spirit:
O trip and skip, Elvire! Link arm in arm with me!
Like husband and like wife, together let us see
The tumbling-troop arrayed, the strollers on their stage,
Drawn up and under arms, and ready to engage.
This vivacity, which fluctuates but never subsides, is
in itself one worthy distinction of this poem.
It also avoids with considerable success the tendency
of the six-measure line to fall exactly into two trim-
eters with a cesura after each, by a generous per-
centage of run on lines (34%), and by a skillful varia-
tion of the position of the cesura. Short passages like
the one just quoted, where the lines are end-stopped
and bisected by the cesura, are relieved by passages
like the following where the lines are enjambed and
the cesura varied:
LXXXVI
That's the first o' the truth found: all things, slow
Or quick i' the passage, come at last to that, you know!
Each has a false outside, whereby a truth is forced
To issue from within: truth, falsehood, are divorced
By the excepted eye, at the rare season, for
The happy moment. Life means-learning to abhor
The false, and love the true, truth treasured snatch by snatch,
Waifs counted at their worth. And when with strays they match
I' the parti-colored world,-when, under foul, shines fair,
And truth, displayed i' the point, flashes forth everywhere
I' the circle, manifest to soul, though hid from sense,
And no obstruction more affects this confidence,-
When faith is ripe for sight,-why, reasonably, then
Comes the great clearing-up. Wait threescore years and ten!
Even though nine of these fourteen lines have a medial
cesura, the effect of two trimeters is avoided by the
Couplets
151
enjambment and the varying position of the other
cesuras. Thus, while 53 per cent of the lines of Fifine
have cesuras after the sixth syllable, 15 per cent have
cesuras after the fourth, 9 after the second, etc. To
put it in the form of a table:
Percentage of lines with the cesura after syllables:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
7% 9% 8% 15% 5% 53% 7% 7% 7% 5% 4%
Although the rhymes are always separated by
enough syllables in such a long line to prevent clang,
in these passages where enjambment is so frequent
they are as silent as the rhymes of the pentameter
couplets; and unless the reader was looking for them,
I doubt if he was conscious of them when and if he
read the foregoing passage.
Ivan Ivanovitch adds to these features of the six-
measure couplet a great many triple measures; some
passages are in fact duple-triple.
"Tis the regular pad of the wolves in pursuit of the
life in the sledge!
An army they are: close-packed they press like the
thrust of a wedge:
They increase as they hunt: for I see, through the
pine-trunks ranged each side,
Slip forth new fiend and fiend, make wider and still
more wide
The four-footed steady advance. The foremost—none
may pass:
They are elders and lead the line, eye and eye-
green-glowing brass!
(125-130)
By the sheer energy of his composition, and with the
aid of these simple metrical devices, Browning was
able to write nearly three thousand alexandrines with-
out seriously offending good ears.
1
CHAPTER XV
TROCHAIC VERSE
Exactly what constitutes the difference, if any, be-
tween iambic and trochaic verse is warmly contro-
versial. The question is complicated by the fact that
the poets have always found it unobjectionable to shift
from one to the other at will in the same poem. Half
the lines of L'Allegro are iambic, and there are only
nine trochaic lines in the last fifty. Milton writes:
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
and Dyer:
And Laughter holding both his sides. (29-32)
See on the Mountain's southern side,
Where the Prospect opens wide,
Where the Ev'ning gilds the Tide;
How close and small the Hedges lie!
(Grongar Hill)
So with all the eighteenth century octosyllables.
In practice, trochaic verse has been used in short
lyrics in happy moods, and as a result there has grown
up the metrical fiction that trochaic verse is lighter,
gayer, more tripping than iambic because it is trochaic.
But there is no difference in this respect between
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
and the following iambic line
And laughter holding both his sides.
In Browning's Song, one line reads:
Holds earth aught-speak truth-above her?
and seven lines farther on it reappears as:
If earth holds aught-speak truth-above her?
153
154
Versification of Robert Browning
Metrically the only difference is the preposition at the
beginning. Moreover, One Word More is trochaic
and thoughtful, while Memorabilia is iambic and gay.
Theoretically, then, there is no difference, after the
first accent marks off the beginning of the measure,
whether we write:
or
Pledged my soul to endless duty (St. Martin's S. 34)
I pledged my soul to endless duty
But it is quite likely that the reader hears them in
distinct patterns.
The real difference between the two exists chiefly
in the mind of the reader. For he attunes his ear
differently for lines beginning with direct attack than
for those having an anacrusis; and his anticipation
seizes the words and throws them over a different
pattern. The ear tries to hear "dum-te, dum-te, dum-
te," and it is this subjective anticipation which con-
stitutes the chief difference between iambic and
trochaic. The expected pattern may be established so
firmly that the ear is distinctly annoyed when it is
compelled to readjust itself. This happens in St. Mar-
tin's Summer where, after seven stanzas of regular
trochaic lines, the pattern suddenly and without ap-
parent reason shifts to iambic in the last ten. But
where the mixture of the two is a regular thing, as in
L'Allegro and Grongar Hill, the ear quickly adjusts
itself to the constant shift, as to a double anacrusis or
direct attack in blank verse, and keeps its pattern
flexible until it has tested the beginning of the line.
The poets followed this principle when they constructed
such poems. Only when a prominent syllable stands
at the beginning, as an anacrusis instead of an accent,
will the ear be likely to err in attacking it; but if it
does misjudge, it must make a new beginning. It is
Trochaic Verse
155
i
always interesting to observe the reading of one not
too familiar with a given poem in mixed metre.
The reader may or may not preserve his sense of
trochaic movement as distinct from iambic through
long lines of five, six, seven, or eight measures, depend-
ing upon the phrasing-whether it supports the pat-
tern with such words as "happy," and "twinkle,” or
with strong direct attack and end-stopped lines with
feminine ending-and upon the aggressiveness with
which he anticipates and hears a given pattern.
Browning had an unusually strong sense for pat-
tern, and it is plainly evident that he was aware of a
distinct difference between an iambic and a trochaic
pattern. Out of the twenty-two poems which may be
called trochaic, in only five short ones are iambic and
trochaic lines mixed. The Boy and the Angel begins
trochaic, but the third line is iambic, and after the
sixth line trochees are the exception (only sixteen in
seventy-eight lines). In the Song, the first stanza is
trochaic, the second iambic. Before has three iambic
lines in forty. Waring mixes them at will. St. Mar-
tin's Summer has seven trochaic and ten iambic
stanzas. The first line of Humility and of Poetics is
iambic; all the rest are trochaic.
But the other seventeen poems, amounting to 2,325
lines, are trochaic without a single anacrusis to dis-
turb the pattern; and four of these are long: One
Word More, 201; Clive, 240; Pietro of Abano, 445; La
Saisiaz, 618. Trochaic rhythm cannot be continuously
sustained in this manner unless the poet himself keeps
vividly in mind the trochaic pattern as he fashions
his lines. The normal swing of English verse seems
to be iambic, and trochaic verse is always threatening
to shift over into that movement. When Browning,
or any poet, preserves through several hundred lines
an unbroken trochaic pattern, there is nothing more
་
156
Versification of Robert Browning
certain than that he has consciously taken pains to
preserve a pattern which he feels to be different from
iambic.
4
Some of Browning's most distinctive effects are
achieved by combining short trochaic lines of two,
three, and four measures. One of the most unusual
of these is In a Year, with the combination 3242.1
The arrangement 334442 occurs in St. Martin's Sum-
mer;2 3232 in A Woman's Last Word;³ 3343 with
feminine endings in Flute Music. Humility, A Sere-
nade at the Villa, At the "Mermaid," Soliloquy of the
Spanish Cloister, are Browning's examples of the fa-
miliar tetrameter lines. The last one is unique in its
colloquial phrase conflicts and monkish oaths which
strain the pattern; the others carefully preserve it by
avoiding conflict, weak stresses, and enjambment.
Cristina and Monaldeschi is also tetrameter but it has
the peculiar rhyme scheme abbbaccc. The other
trochaic poems are in lines of more than four meas-
ures. These have attracted considerable attention
because, previous to Tennyson and Browning, trochaic
verse was generally confined to short lines. Browning
experimented with lines of five, six, seven, and eight
measures.
5
One Word More is the most remarkable of this
group. The lines, as in all Browning's trochaic verse,
are extremely regular with very little variation. Only
two lines in the entire poem break the pattern; line 30
1 Quoted page 128. It is desperately futile to identify this metre with a
meaningless arrangement of the Quadrupedante line of the Aeneid, as Thom-
son does in The Rhythm of Speech, p. 329, or to make an abstruse metrical
problem of this simple but exquisite combination of short lines which Brown-
ing loved.
2 Quoted page 125.
3 Quoted page 117.
4 Quoted page 131.
5 Dr. Andrews has discussed this poem quite fully and admirably in The
Writing and Reading of Verse, pp. 270-271.
Trochaic Verse
157
Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!"
where the phrasing makes the first measure triple, and
line 37
When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked.
where his fondness for apostrophes betrays him into
a bad line. Each line begins with an accent, and ends
with a light ending to preserve the trochaic effect to
the end. Light stresses are rare and continuously
varied, and each line ends with a completed phrase
or sentence.
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
Here are trochaic lines with the dignified seriousness
of iambic pentameter. The metrical art lies pretty
largely in the strong, unfailing direct attack at the
beginning of each line and the absence of enjambment;
without these buttresses the rhythm would probably
lose its individuality when read in paragraphs.
In Fears and Scruples (the other poem in pentame-
ter) every other line has a feminine ending, each line
begins with a heavy stress, the phrases support the
movement even though they are short and are uttered
in monologue. The stanzas are quatrains with alter-
nate rhyme.
"Letters?" (hear them!) "You a judge of writing?
Ask the experts! How they shake the head
O'er these characters, your friend's inditing—
Call them forgery from A to Z!
Trochaic hexameters are brittle and break regularly
into two trimeters. In Before the cesura usually oc-
curs after the unstressed sixth syllable, the new be-
ginning in the middle of the line reinforcing the
trochaic movement.
158
Versification of Robert Browning
God must judge the couple: || leave them as they are (2)
Strike no arm out further, || stick and stink as now,
(6)
Let him pace at pleasure, || past the walls of rose, (17)
So much for the culprit. | Who's the martyred man? (25)
If the sixth syllable is an important monosyllable, the
line tends to lengthen into seven measures:
Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far. (1)
Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough,
Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes;
(5)
(13)
This almost inevitable tendency of the hexameter
to break in the middle is also shown in the poems
where it alternates with a seven-measure line. But
the septenary shows an equally natural tendency to
fall into four-four time, and the combination can be
very pleasing. It occurs in Poetics, Epilogue to Ferish-
tah's Fancies, and Magical Nature.
You, forsooth, a flower? || Nay, my love, a jewel-
Jewel at no | mercy of a moment in your | prime!
| Time may fray the | flower-face: | kind be time or | cruel,
Jewel, from each facet, || flash your laugh at time!
(Magical Nature)
In Pietro of Abano, Browning tells a long story in
trochaic verse using the combination 686768867. The
eight-measure lines of La Saisaiz and Clive cannot
stand erect; their excessive length always causes them
to break at one of the joints, or the light stresses trip
them into four-four time. But what can be done in
way of phrasing and varying the cesura to preserve
the integrity of the line, Browning has done." 6
• For discussion and examples see pages 26-27.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TRIPLE RHYTHMS
Anapestic Movement
The number of poems in purely anapestic move-
ment is comparatively small in Browning,¹ although
the combined iambic-anapestic or duple-triple move-
ment is, as we shall see, very common. This is due,
at least in no small degree, to the fact that the lan-
guage is prevailingly duple in the natural rhythm of
its phrases; and if the anapestic pattern is strictly to be
preserved, the phrases must often be forced into con-
formity. The result is likely to produce monotony.
The triple rhythms, whether dactylic or anapestic,
have more go and more energy than duple rhythms
because the proportion of unstressed syllables is larger,
and the time value of each is correspondingly shorter.
These two lines will be read in approximately, if not
exactly the same time (three-four):
How soon a smile of God can change the world!
(Balcony 597)
All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
(Summum Bonum 1)
but the first is calm and deliberate, and the second is
hurried and breathless.
Because of the speed which it develops, the anapestic
movement has always been found suitable for verse
1 Triple movement shifts easily from anapestic to dactylic, and either in
its purity is not very common. The Laboratory wavers between the two;
Apollo and the Fates and Fust and His Friends have many dactylic lines;
while The Glove begins and continues for eighteen lines as dactylic; not until
line 26 is there a double anacrusis; all the endings are feminine except lines
123-156.
159
160
Versification of Robert Browning
:
full of action and motion, where thought is less im-
portant than the sensation of speed. It is therefore
especially appropriate for rapid narrative verse like
The Glove, "How They Brought the Good News from
Ghent to Aix," Muckle-Mouth Meg, and some parts of
The Flight of the Duchess.
Browning has also used this movement for verse
whose mood is one of calm reflection. But it is diffi-
cult to prevent this galloping anapestic steed from
running away with the thought. Even in Saul, where
the thought is more important than the metre, the
rush of the anapests is often so breathless and con-
suming that the metre attracts the attention away
from the meaning. After the swing of the metre has
exhausted itself at the end of the line, the reader must
often go back to see what has become of the meaning
he has left behind.
whether anapestic
poems.
It is therefore an open question
rhythm is suited for reflective
"How
But there is no open question about The Glove, or
Muckle-Mouth Meg, or "How They Brought the Good
News." Here we want all the speed and go possible,
for the mind is centered on the rush of events.
They Brought the Good News" is the fastest of the
group, due in part to the heated action which spurs
it on, and in part to the clipped amphibrach phrases of:
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Browning's anapestic lines vary in length from dim-
eter to pentameter, but most of them are either trim-
eter or tetrameter. The trimeter is a heavier line
Triple Rhythms
161
in triple rhythm than in duple, of course, since it has
eight or nine syllables which give enough volume for
stability and enough length to carry the narrative with
The Glove is a good example of the adequacy
of anapestic trimeter:
ease.
The sentence no sooner was uttered,
Than over the rails a glove fluttered,
Fell close to the lion, and rested:
The dame 'twas, who flung it and jested
With life so, De Lorge has been wooing
For months past; he sat there pursuing
His suit, weighing out with nonchalance
Fine speeches like gold from a balance. (83-90)
The tetrameter line, with its twelve or thirteen syl-
lables, is bound and held together by the anapestic
movement. The strong tendency of tetrameters to
break in the middle is not nearly so noticeable here.
The reader is hardly conscious of the fact that ex-
actly half of the lines in "How They Brought the Good
News" are broken in the middle by a cesura, or that the
other half have slight, unpunctuated cesuras near the
middle of the line:
Not a word to each other; || we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, || never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, || and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, || chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
(Stanza II)
None of Browning's anapestic poems has more than
five measures, and Saul is in fact the only poem that is
pentameter.2 Lines of greater length, like the hexa-
meters of Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine, and the
septenaries of his Hesperia, are usually broken in spite
of the impetuous rhythm. Even the pentameters are
constantly subject to this bisection into two short
2 A few lines in Summum Bonum are pentameter.
162
Versification of Robert Browning
It is a
lines, the cesura after the eighth syllable breaking the
five measures into a trimeter and a dimeter.
regular occurrence in Saul.
III
|| Then I, as was meet,
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet,
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. || The tent was unlooped;
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, || and under I stooped;
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, || all withered
and gone,
3
That extends to the second enclosure, || I groped my way on
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. . . . etc., etc.
Browning must have recognized this tendency, for The
Englishman in Italy, which in metre is exactly like
Saul, is printed as two lines-a trimeter and a dime-
ter broken as those just quoted from Saul. Several
other poems recognize this cleavage and use it as the
basis for new effects. After, for example, breaks up
into a trimeter and a dimeter with couplet rhymes, as
if Saul had an internal rhyme; but in the break-up a
new form has evolved: 4
Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
Instans Tyrannus uses the same scheme, but varies
it slightly by omitting a syllable from the anacrusis of
the dimeter:
I
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
In the later lines, however, the dimeter has a double
anacrusis. Still another variation occurs in James
3 See pages 137-8.
4 The couplet rhyme gives the dimeter a distinct individuality, and the
pair of lines does not exactly equal one line of Saul, as Hodgson contended
it did in Outcast Essays and Verse Translations, p. 287.
Triple Rhythms
163
Lee's Wife III, where the fifth measure is made into a
separate line on alternate rhymes:
The swallow has set her six young on the rail,
And looks seaward:
And water's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale
To the leeward,—
All these poems, it will be noted, have a delicate in-
terplay between the natural prose rhythm of the
phrases and the anapestic verse pattern; they are
neither monotonous nor disturbing. In After, only one
line is at all doubtful:
I stand here now, he lies in his place:
Cover the face!
(17-18)
The pattern is often further aided by alliterative
phrases which reinforce the anapestic rhythm. They
recall Swinburne:
All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
(Summum Bonum)
Sound flesh and sane soul in coherence, born wealthy,
Nay, wise-how he wasted endowment designed
For the glory of God and the good of mankind!
(Fust and His Friends 143-5)
Bids pause at no part but press on, reach the whole.
For petty and poor is the part ye envisage
(Apollo and the Fates 190-1)
Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bringing,
These fruits of your bearing-nay, birds of your winging!
(Natural Magic 16-17)
Saul stands, in line length, mood, and phrase con-
flict, as a unique experiment among Browning's ana-
pests. The long lines of fourteen or fifteen syllables
tend to break, as we have seen, after the third stress;
although the impetuosity of the movement does
help to hold them together. But the entire poem is
164
Versification of Robert Browning
1
full of struggle: the metre strives with the thought
for the reader's attention, and the prose rhythm of
the phrases struggles against the rigid confines of the
verse pattern. Sometimes the metre dominates and
runs away with the thought, as in some of the pas-
sages of close reasoning in section XVII:
The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make
sure;
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in
this.
Sometimes the two blend into each other, as in section
IX, where the anapests beat in tune with the passion-
ate joy of life:
“Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste,
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver
shock
Of the plunge in the pool's living water,
•
(68-72)
But sometimes the thought so completely dominates
the rhythm, and the prose phrases are so unhappy in
the verse pattern, that the whole structure all but falls
to pieces on the unwary reader who has not arbitrarily
marked off the temporal pattern beforehand. This is
so obvious that it is almost an impertinence to cite
examples; for every reader of the poem has experi-
enced the difficulty of such lines as,
And lo, with the leap of my spirit,-heart, hand, harp and voice.
Then I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies we twine round its
chords
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope
and despair,
Death was past, life not come: so he waited.
These good things being given, to go on, and give one more,
the best?
!
Triple Rhythms
165
Dactylic Movement
Dactyls, like trochees, are most successful in short
lines. Although other poets (notably Longfellow)
have lengthened them into hexameter and even octa-
meter, Browning limits them to lines of from two to
four measures. But even in short lines it is difficult
to preserve the integrity of the movement. Another
Way of Love, for example, begins favorably in dac-
tylic movement, but it weakens in the second line, cap-
itulates in the third, makes a feeble counter-attack in
the ninth, and succumbs again in the tenth and
eleventh.
June was not over
Though past the full,
And the best of her roses
Had yet to blow,
When a man I know
(But shall not discover,
Since ears are dull,
And time discloses)
Turned him and said with a man's true air,
Half sighing a smile in a yawn, as 't were,-
"If I tire of your June, will she greatly care?"
The phrasing of the second stanza, however, with its
direct attack and its double and triple rhymes, braces
the movement so rigidly that only a single line of the
dimeters surrenders.
Well, dear, in-doors with you!
True! serene deadness
Tries a man's temper.
What's in the blossom
June wears on her bosom?
Can it clear scores with you?
Sweetness and redness,
Eadem semper!
These ingenious triple rhymes, although they bolster
up the dactylic movement, are impossible for a whole
166
Versification of Robert Browning
poem; and when used too often, as in Pacchiarotto,
they are like to become ludicrous. Browning uses
them occasionally in his serious dactylic verse, as:
doors with you: scores with you; ball of it: all of it;
rearranging it : changing it; but for the most part he
frankly uses masculine and feminine endings. The
two-measure lines of Pisgah-Sights and Love, with
their feminine endings, become therefore a series of
adonics.
So, the year's done with!
(Love me forever!)
All March begun with,
April's endeavor;
May-wreaths that bound me
June needs must sever;
Now snows fall round me,
Quenching June's fever-
(Love me forever!)
(Love)
No better examples of the effect of phrasing upon.
movement could be brought together than the dactylic
trimeters and tetrameters of Misconceptions and Mas-
ter Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. For in Misconceptions the
phrases and the metrical pattern support each other
like David and Jonathan; while in Master Hugues of
Saxe-Gotha they are as antagonistic as Samuel and
Saul. In Misconceptions the movement is easy, nat-
ural, and unmistakable:
This is the spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
Oh, what a hope beyond measure
Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to,—
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!
But if the reader does not get the rhythm of Master
Hugues beating strongly in his ear before he gives at-
Triple Rhythms
167
tention to the words, he is likely to have a fall before
he gets far. The metrical pattern is superimposed
upon the resisting phrases:
One dissertates, he is candid;
•
Two must discept, has distinguished;
Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did;
Four protests; Five makes a dart at the thing wished:
Back to One, goes the case bandied. (Stanza 14)
If these two poems represent the extremes in phras-
ing, The Lost Leader and Holy-Cross Day 5 show the
possible extremes in mood, and the effect of the cesura
in four-measure dactylic lines. In the jocular Holy-
Cross Day the cesura occurs in the middle, breaking
the line regularly into two dimeters:
Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie,
Rats in a hamper, swine in a sty,
Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,
Worms in a carcass, fleas in a sleeve.
Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs
And buzz for the bishop-here he comes.
In The Lost Leader, also in tetrameter, the internal
pause is more skillfully varied. Lines which move
spiritedly without interruption are intermixed with
those broken by a cesura:
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat-
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, || doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple, |! his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, || followed him, honored him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Many of the lines in the last half of this poem are anapestic.
168
Versification of Robert Browning
Learned his great language, || caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, || Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their
graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
-He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
The medial cesura falls after the sixth syllable in the
fifth line; after the fifth in the eighth line; after the
sixth in the ninth; after the fifth in the eleventh and
thirteenth lines, where a rest displaces a syllable; and
after the sixth in the fourteenth line, the only one
beginning with an anacrusis.
6
The Cavalier Tunes show the movement in its dash-
ing, high-spirited mood, full of gay energy. The rapid
movement which the large proportion of unaccented
syllables can give it, makes it preeminently suited for
these brave songs. The few lines with anacrusis re-
lieve rather than upset the prevailingly dactylic move-
ment:
Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell.
Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,
Chorus.-Marching along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?
6 See also Chapter XIII, p. 134.
CHAPTER XVII
DUPLE-TRIPLE MOVEMENT
DUPLE-TRIPLE movement is a free combination of
iambic-anapestic or trochaic-dactylic measures in the
same line, but is neither duple nor triple in its effect
over a group of lines. It is not exactly "trisyllabic
substitution," as it has been called, because there is no
duple norm from which the triples are felt to vary, as
there is, for example, in blank verse. When, in a pat-
tern of iambic pentameter, the reader comes full upon
the line
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,-three slim shapes,
(Fra Lippo 59)
he is astonished because his ear has been accustomed
to expect duple rhythm. But when he comes upon this
from Evelyn Hope
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, (51)
he is not even mildly surprised because the first few
lines led him to expect triple measures as a part of the
verse pattern. The triples are as much a part of the
movement as the duples, and they are so inseparable
that they must be regarded as forming a distinct move-
ment.
Duple-triple movement was first brought to critical
attention by Coleridge's Christabel with its preface on
the "new principle" of its metre. In comparison with
the more highly developed form in Browning's fifty
poems, however, Christabel is not in the strictest sense
duple-triple. For the triples in Christabel are inserted
by design as an "occasional variation in number of syl-
lables. . . in correspondence with some transition,
169
170
Versification of Robert Browning
1
in the nature of the imagery or passion." The reader
never forgets that the norm is duple; after each de-
parture the duple reasserts itself. Lines 30-48, for
example, are regularly duple; lines 49-58 are varied
with triples; but lines 58 ff. again become duple. In
Browning there are no such passages where one type
excludes the other; ¹ practically every line has at least
one measure of each, and the reader never considers
either the duple or the triple as the normal from which
the other is an “occasional variation." But Christabel
did call attention back to the fact that the two could
be mixed in the same line without violating the tem-
poral equality of the measures; that the four accents
of the lines mark off the same time without regard to
the number of syllables.
She kneels beneath the
huge oak tree
On the topmost | twig that looks up at the | sky.
The free combination of duples and triples creates
a variety of rhythms of great beauty. Some of Brown-
ing's best remembered poems are in this movement:
Evelyn Hope; Home Thoughts, from Abroad; Life in
a Love; My Star; Old Pictures in Florence; The Statue
and the Bust; Up at a Villa-Down in the City, etc.,
etc. Its highest virtue is perhaps that it escapes the
monotony of a rigid pattern without becoming lawless
or unmusical; and it utilizes the natural rhythm of the
prose phrases without excessive conflict or tedious
regularity. The movement of Up at a Villa-Down in
the City is remarkably like talk, considering its hexa-
meters and its tercet stanza form:
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
1 Excepting Christmas Eve, the characteristics of which we have already
noted.
Duple-Triple Movement
171
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a
beast.
The short lines of Confessions approach even more
nearly the rhythm of speech:
What is he buzzing in my ears?
"Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
Of course Browning does not entirely avoid conflict
between the phrases and the verse pattern, even when
it is as natural in its rhythm and as elastic in its pat-
tern as duple-triple. But the difficulty of parts of Saul
or of Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is not felt even
amid the apparent roughness of:
For —see your cellerage!
There are four big butts of Milton's brew.
How comes it you make old drips and drops
Do duty, and there devotion stops?
Leave such an abyss of malt and hops
Embellied in butts which bungs still glue?
You hate your bard! A fig for your rage!
Free him from cellerage!
(Epilogue to Pacchiarotto Stanza XII)
The range of the poems in duple-triple rhythm in
stanza form and line length is extremely wide. There
are the short dimeters of James Lee's Wife I, which
are as much duple-triple in their effect as longer lines:2
Thou art a man,
But I am thy love,
For the lake, its swan;
For the dell its dove;
And for thee-(oh, haste!)
Me, to bend above,
Me, to hold embraced.
2 The first eight lines of My Star are in the same metre.
172
Versification of Robert Browning
There are many trimeters, like these from Reverie:
Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
She climbs from the calm and clear,
Through turbity all between,
From the known to the unknown here,
Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?
(Stanza 40)
There are many tetrameters like these of Parting at
Morning:
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
There are combined trimeters and tetrameters:
"That psalm," the Professor smiled, "shall be
Untroubled by doubt which dirtieth
Pellucid streams when an ass like thee
Would drink there-the Nine-and-thirtieth.
(Pambo 13-16)
There are combined tetrameters, trimeters, and dime-
ters of James Lee's Wife V:
On the turf, sprang gay
With his films of blue,
No cricket, I'll say,
But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too,
The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight,
Real fairy, with wings all right.
There are the hexameters of Up at a Villa-Down in
the City. And there are the septenaries of Martin
Relph:
If I last as long as Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:
But-God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,
As coward, coward I call him-him, yes, him! Away from me!
Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!
The distribution of the duples and triples is gov-
erned by no fixed law. The Flower's Name, for exam-
Duple-Triple Movement
173
ple, which is prevailingly trochaic-dactylic, has
thirty-two lines with direct attack, thirteen with an
anacrusis, and three with double anacrusis. But the
second stanza has but two direct-attack lines, while
the last one has eight. Each line of the poem has at
least one triple, but twenty-two have only one, and
two lines are entirely triple. The following notation
will show at a glance the difference in the structure
of stanzas two and six.
(2)
(6)
XX
XXX XX
X
XXX XX
XX
XX
X
XXX
X XX
X XXX
XX
XXX
XX
X
XXX XXX XX
X
XX
X
XXX XXX XXX XX
XXX XX
X
XX
XX
XXX
XX
X
XX
XXX XXX X
XXX XXX XX
XX
XX
X XX
X XX
XXX
XX
XXX
XX
X
XXX
XXX
X
XX
XXX XX
XX
X
XXX XXX
XXX X
XXX XX
XXX X
CHAPTER XVIII
IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES
BROWNING'S imitations of classical hexameters in
Pheidippides and Ixion, following the laws of English
rather than Greek or Latin verse, are evidently in-
tended to be accentual and not quantitative. But, as
Thompson well says,¹ "We can see . . . how danger-
ous is the ground and how elusive the subject matter,
when we generalize and talk of one national verse as
quantitative, of another as accentual, and yet another
as syllabic." Pheidippides is an imitation of the Greek
dactylic hexameter; or in English terms, six-measure
lines in falling duple-triple rhythm, since the spondee.
of the classics is a duple in English. Unlike the
Homeric hexameter, Pheidippides never ends with a
spondee or a feminine ending; except for this the
Homeric hexameters which Coleridge translated from
Schiller would fit into it:
| Strongly it | bears us a long in | swelling and |
limitless | billows,
(Coleridge)
| That sent a blaze through my blood; off off and a |
way was I back,
(Phei. 42)
| Nothing before and nothing behind but the |
sky and the ocean.
(Coleridge)
| Have ye kept | faith, proved | mindful of | honors we |
paid you ere | while?
(Phei. 46)
Through the first five measures, Pheidippides holds
to the classical scheme in which the first four may be
either dactyls or spondees but the fifth must normally
be a dactyl. The sixth measure omits a final syllable.
1 William Thomson, The Rhythm of Speech, p. 314.
175
176
Versification of Robert Browning
This poem is further distinguished by its short
adonic and choriambic phrases,2 regularly marked off
by commas. In some lines the adonics predominate:
First I salute this | soil of the blessed, | river and rock!
Gods of my birthplace, | daemons and heroes, | honor to all!
(1-2)
Archons of Athens, | topped by the tettix, | see, I return!
(9)
Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, | Athens
and you,
(11)
In other lines the choriambic phrasing prevails, with
a rest taking the place of the final syllable in the
adonic. The last line of nearly every stanza has these
measures.
Present to help, || potent to save, | Pan-patron I call! (8)
Over the hills, || under the dales, | down pits and up
peaks.
(16)
"Persia has come, || Athens asks aid, | and still they
debate?
(30)
Athens must wait, || patient as we- | who judgment
suspend."
(40)
“Athens, she only, | rears me no fane, || makes me no
feast!
(73)
The time is clearly three-four in all these lines; and
occasionally the entire line swings smoothly to its end
in triple rhythm:
Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for ex-
cuses. I stood
Quivering,—the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an
inch from dry wood:
(28-29)
One group of lines has a full extra measure making
them septenaries:
—but Athens, shall Athens sink,
Drop into dust and die—the flower of Hellas utterly die,
2 This has led Omond to call it "choriambic" metre. (T. S. Omond: A
Study of Metre, p. 149.) As a matter of fact, the adonic phrases are as
numerous as the choriambic.
Imitations of Classical Metres
177
Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid,
the stander-by?
ander-by?
Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch o'er
destruction's brink?
(19-22)
There is in fact such constant variation throughout
the entire poem that few successive lines are exactly
alike. The whole arrangement, with the dominant
adonic and choriambic phrases, gives it the effect of
breathlessness and makes it as well suited to the
broken speech of the exhausted runner as the arrange-
ment of "How They Brought the Good News From
Ghent to Aix” is to the gallop of horses.
Ixion is modeled on the elegiac metre of the ancients,
usually defined as a dactylic hexameter alternating
with a dactylic pentameter. But in English prosody,
certainly, this so-called "pentameter" has six time
parts, the third being normally a monosyllable and a
rest, as in Coleridge's oft-quoted English example of
this metre:
In the hexameter | rises the | fountains | silvery | column;
In the pentameter | ay ^ | falling in | melody | back.
Ixion follows the scheme of these lines. It has no
rhymes and no stanzas. Every other line beginning
with the first has a feminine ending; and every other
one beginning with the second has (with a few ex-
ceptions) a monosyllabic third measure. The first few
lines establish the pattern from which there are no
striking variations:
High in the dome, suspended, of Hell, sad triumph, behold us!
Here the revenge of a God, there the amends of a Man.
Whirling forever in torment, flesh once mortal, immortal
Made for a purpose of hate-able to die and revive,
178
Versification of Robert Browning
Pays to the uttermost pang, then, newly for payment replen-
ished,
Doles out-old yet young-agonies ever afresh;
Whence the result above me: torment is bridged by a rainbow,—
Tears, sweat, blood,-each spasm, ghastly once, glorified
now.
Abt Vogler begins as if it too were following the
elegiac scheme with its alternating hexameter and
"pentameter" lines. Except for the truncation of the
final syllable in the hexameter, and the division into
stanzas with rhyme, the first lines of Abt Vogler are
like those of Ixion:
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon
willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
But this elegiac form is not continued with any strict-
ness; the fifth line has the monosyllabic measure
instead of the sixth, while the seventh and eighth each
has an anacrusis:
| Man, brute, | reptile, | fly,-
| Adverse, each from the
removed,―
alien of | end and of aim,
other heaven- | high, hell— | deep
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable!
Name,
And pile him a | palace | straight, to pleasure the princess
he loved!
Browning seems to forget the classical model as the
poem proceeds; the second stanza recovers the tune
for a few lines but loses it again. From this point on
it becomes increasingly apparent that the poem is ac-
tually in duple-triple rhythm with either rising or
falling movement with only an occasional echo of the
elegiac model. The total effect of the poem is more
native than classical.
Imitations of Classical Metres
179
Prospice is also haunted by the ghost of classical
hexameters or anapests (since the hexameter has no
up-beat). This line
Fear death?-to feel the fog in my throat, the mist in my
face,
is exactly like some of the lines in Pheidippides,
When | Persia—so much as strews not the soil-is | cast in
the sea,
(78)
But it is not classical; it makes a new pattern by break-
ing up the duple-triple hexameter into a tetrameter
and a dimeter with alternate rhyme and rising move-
ment:
Fear death?-to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
4
The interesting attempt which Thomson has made
to identify the metre of In a Year with the "Quad-
rupedante" line of the Aeneid,3 Through the Metidja
to Abd-el-Kadr with the greater ionic, and A Pretty
Woman with the lesser ionic,5 leaves us quite unmoved
except for a certain sympathy for the desperateness
of the attempt. It ignores Browning's love of short
lines and thereby makes a mountain of a very small
mole-hill. In A Year is a typical Browning combina-
tion of dimeter, trimeter, and tetrameter on a complex
rhyme scheme. To break the eight-line stanza in the
middle, put the separate lines into one, then add two
syllables to the Quadrupedante line which destroy its
meaning, lop off the final syllable, "add a little trip-
letic decoration," allow for a little roughness in the
reading, and behold they are alike! is to end in the
mare's nest which Thomson suspects.
3 The Rhythm of Speech, pp. 328-331. Aeneid VIII. 596.
4 Ibid. pp. 343-345.
Ibid. pp. 345-346.
180
Versification of Robert Browning
But the analogy between Give a Rouse and Tyrtaeus'
fragment of a war song seems less violent. Read side
by side it is true that
this unmatched-shall we
say matchless?-cavalier tune of Browning's is an
almost exact replica of the movement of the oldest
war-song extant, as interpreted in his day. If the
Greek lyric did not rap out the last two syllables with
the soldierly vigor of the English one, it possessed a
feature that may have been in its favor as a marching
song, but certainly it missed the chance of 'giving a
rouse,' which a lucky error enabled Browning to seize.
Browning seizes precisely that abruptness and
those consonantal rudenesses which are scrupulously
avoided in the Greek." «
This is the fragment:
Ibid. pp. 332-333.
ἄγετ᾽ ὦ Σπάρτας εὐάνδρου
κοῦροι πατέρων πολιτῶν
λαιᾷ μὲν ἴτων προβάλεσθε
δόρυ δ᾽ εὐτόλμως
μὴ φειδόμενοι τῆς ζωᾶς
οὐ γὰρ πάτριον τῷ Σπάρτα.
CHAPTER XIX
VERSE IN FOUR-FOUR TIME
(Quadruple or Dipodic Measures)
VERSE IN FOUR-FOUR time or quadruple rhythm has as
a norm a measure of four syllables. It differs from
ordinary iambic or trochaic rhythm in that it is felt
in time units of four syllables instead of two because
the third syllable of each measure carries a stress dis-
tinctly lighter than the first. The heavy stresses fall-
ing upon the first, fifth, ninth (etc.) syllables estab-
lish the four syllable time grouping.
| Savage I was sitting in my house, late | lone
(Epilogue to Fifine 1)
Once the movement is established, it moves with an
irresistible swing; and the expectancy it incites in
aggressive ears is strong enough to subordinate any
conflicting prose rhythm of the phrases.
Obviously, verse in four-four time demands a wider
sweep than verse in three-four time, or duple and
triple rhythms; it usually requires at least three meas-
ures, more often four, making lines of twelve or more
syllables.
Browning was fond enough of this rhythm to use it
(with variations) in ten poems. One might, indeed,
include La Saisiaz and say eleven, because its long
lines (like those in Locksley Hall), fall continuously
and easily into quadruple measures.
Petty feat and yet prodigious: every side my glance was bent
O'er the grandeur and the beauty lavished through the whole
ascent.
181
182
Versification of Robert Browning
Ledge by ledge, out broke new marvels, now minute and now
immense:
Earth's most exquisite disclosure, heaven's own God in evidence!
(3-6)
The rhythm may be either rising or falling, in vari-
ous line-lengths and with many variations from the
anticipated normal measure. In A Toccata of Galup-
pi's the rhythm is established in the first verse and
continues quite regularly save for a few phrase con-
flicts.
Oh Galuppi, Baldas | sare, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and
blind;
But although I take your | meaning, 't is with | such a heavy|
mind!
(Stanza I.)
The insistence of this rhythm soon becomes strong
enough to reduce all the lines to its pattern, rather
joyfully sweeping through such stanzas as,
"Were you happy?" "Yes."-"And | are you still as happy?"
"Yes, and you?"
—“Then, more | kisses!"-"Did I stop them when a million
seemed so few?"
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be
answered to!
Home Thoughts, From the Sea, and Mertoun's Song
in A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Act I, have the same
rhythm and line-length as A Toccata of Galuppi's:
There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than
the purest;
And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure
!
faith's the surest:
And her eyes are dark and | humid, like the | depth on
depth of lustre
Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than
the wild-grape | cluster,
(Mertoun's Song)
ני
Verse in Four-Four Time
183
!
Cristina also belongs here. It merely prints the long
eight-measure couplets as though they were tetram-
eters with intermittent rhyme. This emphasizes the
medial pause by following it with a new line; but the
light stresses trip it into four-four time exactly as in
Home Thoughts, From the Sea, or in Mertoun's Song.
She should never have looked at me
If she meant I should not | love her!
men, you call such,
she may dis | cover
There are plenty
I suppose
All her soul to, if she pleases,
|
And yet leave much as she found them
But I'm not so, and she knew it
When she fixed me, glancing | round them.
(Cristina)
Love Among the Ruins is likely to be felt in time
units of four rather than two syllables. This metre
has usually been considered trochaic; but the first
syllable in each long line is never emphatic and seldom
suggests direct attack, while the fifth syllable rarely
demands emphasis. When there is a marked difference
in the strength of the stress on every other syllable, the
trochaic rhythm cannot maintain itself; for the heavy
stresses falling upon the third, seventh, and eleventh
syllables establish the time as four-four, and the meas-
ures as dipodic.
Where the quiet-colored | end of evening | smiles Miles and |
miles
Half-asleep
On the solitary | pastures where our | sheep
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop As
they crop-
Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its | prince Ages since
Held his court in, gathered | councils, wielding | far
war.
Peace or
This holds equally true for the Epilogue to Asolando.
184
Versification of Robert Browning
The varying line length and the intermittent rhyme,
however, give a different effect.
At the midnight in the silence of the | sleep-time,
When you set your fancies | free,
Will they pass to where-by | death, fools think, imprisoned-
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you | loved so,
—Pity | me?
The ballad, Hervé Riel, is in four-four time; it dif-
fers from the other poems in its diversity of line
length and stanza form, and in the frequent use of a
rest instead of the fourth syllable in the measure. The
rhythm is excellently suited to the rapid movement
and stirring nature of the ballad.
I
On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen | hundred ninety- | two,
Did the English fight the | French,-woe to | France!
And, the thirty-first of | May, helter-skelter through the | blue,
Like a crowd of frightened | porpoises a shoal of sharks
pur | sue,
Came crowding ship on | ship to Saint | Malo on the | Rance,
With the English fleet in | view.
A Woman's Last Word is always approaching four-
four time, sometimes actually falling into it, but al-
ways checked immediately by the short lines of the
stanza; it is, for most readers, I imagine, in duple
rhythm.
But the Epilogue to Fifine at the Fair permits of no
doubt; it reads itself and will hardly be forced into
any other rhythm. In contrast to those poems we have
already observed, the first syllable of each line of the
Epilogue demands emphasis and begins with direct
attack. The four-four time is very quickly established,
and carries on in spite of the many variations in the
composition of the measures. These variations are
usually in the form of rests in the third measure, often
taking the place of two syllables.
Verse in Four-Four Time
185
.
| Savage I was sitting in my | house, late, | lone:
| Dreary, | weary with the long day's | work:
| Head of me, heart of me, | stupid as a stone:
Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a | Turk;
| When, in a moment, just a | knock, call, | cry,
| Half a pang and all a rapture, | there again were we!-
|“What, and is it | really you again?” quoth |I:
"I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.
Through The Metidja to Abd-El-Kadr is also in
four-four time. It is easy to believe Domett's state-
ment that Browning composed this poem on horseback
while riding for his health. The quadruple rhythm
perfectly suggests the easy lope of the horse, and the
pleasantly monotonous rise and fall of the rider to
the time of the hoof-beats.¹ This sensation is con-
veyed partly by the dipodic swing of the movement
(any other movement throws the steed out of gait),
and partly by the constant insistence of the monorhyme
occurring thirteen times in each eight lines. In five
of the lines, a rest fills the time up of an absent syl-
lable after the emphatic internal rhyme; it further
emphasizes the sensation of riding.
As I ride, as I ride,
With a full heart for my | guide,
So its tide rocks my side,
As I ride, as I ride,
That, as I were double- | eyed,
double-eyed,
He, in whom our Tribes con | fide,
Is des cried, ways un | tried,
As I ride, as I ride,
|
Triple movement, in which the unstressed syllables
are felt to be nearer to the preceding accent than to
1 Thomson's attempt to identify this metre with the ionic a majore is in-
teresting, but, like the attempt to find the lesser ionic in A Pretty Woman,
is forced and unconvincing, and also, we think, unnecessary. His own doubts
of his theory persuade him to anticipate those of the reader by claiming for
himself at least the bravery of attacking the problem. (The Rhythm of
Speech, p. 345.)
186
Versification of Robert Browning
the following, is a fast galloping measure, fit for Bring-
ing the Good News from Ghent to Aix. But in the
dipodic measures of Through the Metidja the un-
stressed syllables are associated more closely with the
following than with the preceding stressed syllable; it
lopes where the other gallops.
The final proof that Browning never regarded versi-
fications as a mere "outward crust" of his thought
when he was at his lyric best is the perfection of his
metrical art in this poem. The case could be rested on
the three lines of each stanza which break the monot-
onous beat of the rhyme and omit the strong cesura
after the rhyme in the first measure. Without this
relief, the poem is artistically inconceivable, as the
following revision will quickly show:
As I ride, as I ride,
With my pride for my guide,
So its tide rocks my side,
As I ride, as I ride,
The homocide, double-eyed,
In whose tribe, we confide,
Is described, ways untried,
As I ride, as I ride.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, C. E. The Writing and Reading of Verse, 1920.
Alden, R. M. English Verse, 1903; An Introduction to Poetry,
1909.
Bayfield, M. A. The Measures of the Poets, 1919.
Beatty, A. Browning's Verse-form, Its Organic Character,
1897. (Diss.)
Bleier, Karl. Die technik Robert Brownings in seinen drama-
tischen Monologen, 1901. (Diss.)
Bulkeley, H. J. The Reasonable Rhythm of Some of Brown-
ing's Poems, London Browning Society Papers, Vol. II.
Corson, Hiram. A Primer of English Verse, 1893.
Curry, S. S. Browning and the Dramatic Monologue, 1908.
(Not Metrical.)
Dabney, Julia P. The Musical Basis of Verse, 1901.
Drinkwater, John. Victorian Poetry, 1924.
Fogerty, E. Speaking of English Verse, 1923.
Goodell, T. D. Quantity in English Verse, American Philolog-
ical Association's Transactions, Vol. XVI. 78-103.
Hodgson, Shadworth. Outcast Essays and Verse Translations,
1881.
Klug, Adam. Untersuchungen über Robert Brownings vers-
kunst, 1908. (Diss.)
Lewis, C. M. The Principles of English Verse, 1906.
Liddell, M. H. An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Eng-
lish Poetry, 1902.
Matthews, Brander. A Study of Versification, 1911.
Mayor, J. B. Chapters on English Metre, 2nd ed., 1901.
Morton, E. P. The Technique of English non-dramatic Blank
Verse, 1910. (Diss.)
Omond, T. S. A Study of Metre, 1903.
(Diss.)
Parrott, Thos. M. Examination of Non-dramatic Poems in
Robert Browning's First and Second Periods, 1893.
Richardson, C. P. A Study of English Rhyme, 1909.
Saintsbury, G. E. B. History of English Prosody, Vol III, 1910.
Schipper, Jakob. Englische Metrik (Vol. 3) 1882; History of
English Versification, 1910.
Smith, Egerton. The Principles of English Metre, 1923.
Thomson, William. The Rhythm of Speech, 1923.
Verrier, P. Essai sur les Principes de la Metrique Anglaise
Vols. I-III, 1909.
187
INDEX
INDEX
Adonic, 28, 93, 139, 176, 177
Aggressive timing, 23, 24
Alexandrines, 149-151
Alliteration, 163
Anapestic movement, 159-164
Blank verse
Browning's rules, 41-5
Browning's variations:
duple direct attack, 81-4
"heroic tetrameter," 75-9
monosyllabic measures,
85-94
trisyllabic measures, 61-74
dramas, 37-38
- dramatic monologues, 38-41
frequency of variation,
45-53
range, 33-5
usual variations, 55-60
Shelley's influence, 35-36
Browning, Mrs. E. B.,
17-20, 29
Browning, Robert
aggressive timer, 23-5
habits of composition and
revision, 9-22
method of reading, 25-6
theory of verse, 3
Dactylic movement, 165-8
Dactylic hexameter, 175-6
Dipodic verse, 181-6
Dramatic monologue, 38-41
Duple-triple movement,
169-173
Elegiac, 177-8
Elision, 42, 44, 95-100
Enjambment, 101-4, 142, 147
Gascoigne, 51
Hendecasyllabics, 81, 82
"Heroic tetrameter," 48-9, 75-9
Horace, 28
Milsand, Joseph, 20-1
Milton, John, 10-11, 22, 58, 95,
103, 153
Musical analogy, 5-7
"Polyolbion," 149
Pope, Alexander, 77, 97, 141
"Poulter's measure," 118
Quadruple rhythm, 26 ff.,
181-6
Rhyme, 107-9, 143, 145-7, 165-6
Cesura, 57, 58, 150-1, 161, 162, Shelley, 35-6, 61, 113, 119
167-8
Choriambic, 93, 176, 177
Classical metres, 175-180
Coleridge, 12, 13, 96, 109, 145,
169, 170, 175
Couplets, Alexandrine, 149-151
Couplets, pentameter, 141-5
Couplets, tetrameter, 145-9
Stanza forms, 111-140
two-line, 111
three-line, 111-4
four-line, 114-9
five-line, 119-123.
six-line, 123-5
seven-line, 125-7
eight-line, 127-9
191
192
Index
nine-line, 129-130
longer forms, 130-2
sonnets, 132-3
individual forms, 133-140
Swinburne, A. C., 161, 163
Thomson, William, 118 n.,
156 n., 175, 179-180
Triple movement, 26 ff.,
159-168
Tennyson, Alfred, 13, 25, 27,
45, 94
Trochaic verse, 153-8
Tyrtaeus' fragment, 180
Terza rima, 111, 113-114
Wilde, Oscar, 107
Index to Poems
Cavalier Tunes, 134, 168
Abt Vogler, 127, 178
Adam, Lilith, and Eve, 124
After, 136, 138, 162, 163
Andrea del Sarto, 33
Another Way of Love,
130-131, 165
Any Wife to Any Husband,
125
Apollo and the Fates,
122, 159, 163
Apparent Failure, 130
Appearances, 123
Arcades Ambo, 126
Aristophanes' Apology, 34
At the "Mermaid,” 127, 156
Bad Dreams, 116, 121, 122, 131
Bean-Feast, The, 126
Before, 114, 155, 157-158
Ben Karshook's Wisdom, 116
Bishop Blougram's Apology,
40, 49, 52
Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A,
11, 182
Boot and Saddle, 134-135
Boy and the Angel, The,
111, 155
By the Fireside, 120
Caliban upon Setebos, 33, 34,
48
"Childe Roland to the Dark
Tower Come," 125
Christmas Eve, 108, 145, 146,
148, 149
Cleon, 33, 40, 52
Clive, 27, 40, 155, 158
Confessional, The, 124, 145
Confessions, 115 n., 171
Count Gismond, 123
Cristina, 127, 183–—
Cristina and Monaldeschi,
129, 156
Deaf and Dumb, 128 n.
"De Gustibus-" 135
Dîs Aliter Visum, 123
Doctor-, 113
Donald, 118-119
Eagle, The, 114
Easter Day, 145, 147, 148, 149
Echetlos, 26, 29-30, 112
Englishman in Italy, The,
138, 162
Epilogue to
Asolando, 183-184
Dramatis Personae, 112, 122
Ferishtah's Fancies,
117-118, 158
Index
193
Fifine at the Fair, 127, 181,
184-185
170
Pacchiarotto, 129, 171
Eurydice to Orpheus, 128 n.
Evelyn Hope, 107, 127, 169,
"Eyes Calm Beside Thee,"
132, 133
Fame, 127, 141-142
Family, The, 113
Fears and Scruples, 117, 157
Fifine at the Fair, 149-151
Filippo Baldinucci, 127
Flight of the Duchess, The,
15, 18, 19-20, 108, 160
Flower's Name, The, 172-173
Flute-Music, 131, 156
Founder of the Feast, The,
127 n., 132
Fra Lippo Lippi, 38, 103, 169
Fust and His Friends,
119, 122, 159, 163
Garden Fancies, 127
Give a Rouse, 134, 180
Glove, The, 159, 160, 161
Gold Hair, 120
Goldoni, 132
Grammarian's Funeral A,
23, 28, 139
Guardian-Angel, The, 126
Halbert and Hob, 115
Helen's Tower, 132
Heretic's Tragedy, The, 127
Hervé Riel, 137, 184
Holy-Cross Day, 124, 167
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad,
135, 170
"How They Brought the Good
News," 107, 124, 160,
161, 177
Humility, 124, 155, 156
"Imperante Augusto Natus
Est—” 40
In a Balcony, 159
In a Gondola, 124 n., 125 n.,
134, 136, 145
In a Year, 128, 156, 179
Incident of the French Camp,
127
Inn Album, 3, 11, 24, 33-34,
40-41, 52, 101, 103
Instans Tyrannus, 136, 138, 162
In Three Days, 135-136
Italian in England, The, 147
Ivàn Ivànovitch, 151
Ixion, 175, 177-178
James Lee's Wife, 120, 121,
122, 124, 126, 129, 138,
163, 171, 172
Jochanan Hakkadosh, 113, 132
Johannes Agricola, 122
King Victor and King Charles,
37
Laboratory, The, 29, 114, 159
Lady and the Painter, The, 126
La Saisaiz, 27-28, 128, 155,
158, 181-182
Last Ride Together, The,
130, 145
Life in a Love, 135, 170
Light Woman, A, 117
Lost Leader, The, 135, 167-168
Lost Mistress, The, 115
Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, Love, 166
182, 183
House, 116
Love among the Ruins,
107, 109, 137-138, 183
194
Index
Lovers' Quarrel, A, 126-127
Luria, 11, 38
Magical Nature, 117, 158
Marching Along, 134
Martin Relph, 115, 172
Mary Wollstonecraft and
Fuseli, 130
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,
23, 28-29, 121, 166-
167, 171
May and Death, 119
Meeting at Night, 125
Memorabilia, 112 n., 117, 154
Mesmerism, 123
Misconceptions, 126, 166
Mihrab Shah, 116
Mr. Sludge, "the Medium,"
40, 46
Muckle-Mouth Meg, 115, 160
Muléykeh, 125
My Last Duchess, 142
My Star, 139-140, 170
Names, The, 132
Nationality in Drinks, 123
Natural Magic, 130, 163
Oh Love! Love, 130
Old Pictures in Florence,
108, 127, 170
One Way of Love, 124, 145
One Word More, 154, 155,
156-157
Pacchiarotto, 108, 109, 166
Pambo, 115 n., 172
Pan and Luna, 128
Paracelsus, 11, 12, 15-16, 33,
36-37, 38, 41, 47
Parleyings with Certain Peo-
ple of Importance,
141, 143, 144
Parting at Morning, 118, 172
Patriot, The, 120
Pauline, 14, 16, 35-36, 38, 49
Pearl, a Girl, A, 126
Pheidippides, 129, 175-177, 179
Pietro of Abano, 129, 155, 158
Pillar at Sebzevar, A, 122
Pippa Passes, 115 n., 145 n.
Pisgah-Sights, 127, 166
Plot-Culture, 128 n.
Poetics, 117, 155, 158
Ponte Dell' Angelo, Venice,
125
Pope and the Net, The, 112
Popularity, 120
Porphyria's Lover, 122
Pretty Woman, A, 118, 179
Prologue to
Asolando, 122
Ferishtah's Fancies, 108, 139
Fifine at the Fair, 116
Pacchiarotto, 116
Prospice, 107, 138-139, 179
Rabbi Ben Ezra, 107, 125
Rawdon Brown, 132, 133
Rephan, 112
Respectability, 127
Reverie, 120-121, 172
Ring and the Book, The, 10,
11, 12, 33, 34, 46-47,
49, 59
Rosny, 123
St. Martin's Summer, 125, 154,
155, 156
Saul, 15, 18, 23, 26-27, 138,
160, 161, 162, 163-164,
171
Serenade at the Villa, 120, 156
Shah Abbas, 112 n.
Index
195
Shop, 121
Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloist、r, 127, 156
Solomon and Balkis, 115
Song, 123, 124, 153, 154
Sordello, 11, 16-17, 28, 141,
142-143, 144
Speculative, 121
Statue and the Bust, The,
113-114, 170
Summum Bonum, 128 n., 159,
161, 163
Through the Metidja to Abd-
el-Kadr, 128 n., 179,
185-186
Toccata of Galuppi's, A,
112, 182
oo Late, 131-132
ranscendentalism, 40
Tray, 123
Twins, The, 116
Two Camels, 125
Two in the Campagna, 119-120
Two Poets of Croisic, The,
116-117, 124, 128
Up at a Villa-Down in the
City, 112, 170-171, 172
Wanting Is-What?, 127
Waring, 136-137, 155
Which?, 124
White Witchcraft, 112, 113
Woman's Last Word, A,
116-117, 156, 184
Women and Roses, 136
Worst of It, The, 121
Youth and Art, 116
T
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I. Harlan Henthorne Hatcher, was born at Ironton,
hio, September 9, 1898. I was educated in the public
schools of Ashland, Kentucky, and at the Morehead
mal School (now the State Normal School), More-
ad, Kentucky. I entered the Ohio State University
June, 1919, and received the degree of Bachelor of
it in June, 1922; Master of Arts in June, 1923; and
tor of Philosophy in June, 1927. The winter of
i was spent in the graduate school of the University
hicago. I taught one year in the Morehead Normal
ol. Since 1922 I have been an instructor in the
rtment of English in the Ohio State University.
197

T
To renew the charge, book must be brought to the desk.
TWO WEEK BOOK
DO NOT RETURN BOOKS ON SUNDAY
DATE DUE
NOY &
JAN 21 1958
905
APR 29 1958
MAY 18 1958
APR 28 1058
MAY 12 1956
JUN
6 1956
640 JANS
Form 7079 3-50 30M S
I
!
ļ

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY
Form 9584
DATE DUE
MAR 1
1978
21980
MAR 16 1980
5 1998
SEP 2 6 1997

ROUND
DEC 13
UND. DE MICH.
LIBRARY
?
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 03121 3260

ལ 31:ཀE"ཀེ, -ནྡཏས་AY

....