by F L Lucas
Whý did | the knées | prevént | me? || or whý | the breasts | that Ì | should súck? (fourteener)
For now I should have lain still and been quiet, [266]
I shoúld | have slépt: | thén had | I beèn | at rést, (blank verse)
(P) With kíngs | and coún|sellors òf | the eárth, (4-foot Christabel-metre)
(P) which buílt | désolate | pláces | for themsélves;
Or with prínc|es thàt | had góld, || who fílled | their hoú|ses with síl|ver: (Alexandrine)
ór as | an hídd|en untíme|ly bírth | I hàd | not béen; (Alexandrine)
as ín|fants which név|er saw líght. (iambic-anapaestic)
Thére the | wícked | ceáse from | troúbling; (4-foot trochaic)
and thére | the weár|y bè | at rést. (4-foot iambic)
Here, and in the extracts which follow, I have italicized passages that scan as they stand; and put a (P) (meaning ‘potential verse’) against others that would scan quite easily if they occurred in a stretch of verse, where the metrical pattern already runs in the reader’s head. [267] No doubt other arrangements and scansions are possible; but this seems enough to show what a large proportion of metric fragments can be imbedded in this kind of prose – a perhaps surprising amount to those who have been brought up to believe that it is for some reason wicked to include in a prose passage a single line of potential verse.
You may reply that such a passage from the Bible is no fair example of prose, being itself half poetry. Then look at this piece of Ruskin on Venice.
It lay | along | the face | of the wat|ers, no larg|er, (blank verse)
(P) as its cap|tains saw | it from | their masts | at even|ing, (blank verse)
than a bar | of sun|set that could | not pass | away; (blank verse)
but, for | its power, | it must | have seemed | to them (blank verse)
(P) as if | they were sail|ing in | the expanse | of heav|en, (blank verse)
and this | a great plan|et, whose or|ient edge (4-foot, Christabel-metre)
widened | through eth|er. A world | from which (4-foot, Christabel-metre)
all ignob|le care | and pett|y thoughts | were ban|ished, (blank verse)
(P) with all | the com|mon and poor | elements | of life. (blank verse)
(P) No foul|ness, nor tum|ult in | those trem|ulous streets, (blank verse)
that filled, | or fell, | beneath | the moon; (4-foot iambic)
(P) but rip|pled mus|ic of | majest|ic change, (blank verse)
or thril|ling sil|ence.
No weak | walls could | rise ab|ove them; (trochaics)
no low-|roofed cott|age, nor straw-|built shed. (Christabel-metre)
Only | the strength | as of rock, | and the fin|ished sett|ing of stones | most prec|ious. (fourteener)
And around | them, far | as the eye | could reach, (Christabel-metre)
still the | soft mov|ing of stain|less wat|ers, proud|ly pure; (Alexandrine)
as not | the flower, | so neith|er the thorn | nor the thist|le, (blank verse)
could grow | in the glanc|ing fields.
(P) Ether|eal strength | of Alps, | dreamlike, | vanishing (blank verse)
in high | process|ion beyond | the Torcell|an shore (blank verse)
blue is|lands of Pad|uan hills, || poised in | the gold|en west. (Alexandrine)
Some of this is not only metre, but fine metre. No writer of blank verse need be ashamed of ‘In high procession beyond the Torcellan shore’. Yet it does seem perilously metrical for prose. Indeed, many of Ruskin’s verbal landscapes are so full of poetic imagination and poetic rhythm, that one may wonder whether they would not have been better written as poetry, rather than in a hybrid form that divides the reader between admiration and a certain discomfort.
Let us look at Landor (whom George Moore put even above Shakespeare – though that seems going rather far). If this passage I quote has grown hackneyed, why has it grown hackneyed? Because of its power to please. And I refuse to be put off great passages just because a lot of people have liked them.
(P) AESOP. Lao|damei|a died; | Hel|en died:
Leda, | the beloved | of Jup|iter, went | before.
(P) It is bett|er to repose | in the earth | betimes | than to sit | up late; [268]
better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us,
(P) and to | protract | an inev|itab|le fall.
We may enjoy the present, while we are insensible of infirmity and decay; but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains
to what | is past | and what | is to come.
There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope,
that are not | soon mute, | howev|er tune | ful;
there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated,
of which | the ech|o is | not faint | at last.
RHODOPE. O Aes|op! let | me rest | my head | on yours;
it throbs | and pains | me.
AESOP. Whát are | thése id|eás to | thée?
RHODOPE. Sad, | sórrow|fùl. (trochaics)
AESOP. Harrows | that break | the soil, || prepar|ing it | for his wis|dom. (Alexandrine)
Many | flowers must | perish || ere a grain | of corn | be rip|ened. [269]
And now | remove | thy head: || the cheek | is cool | enough (Alexandrine)
after | its litt|le shower | of tears.
Here, too, is a good deal of metre; but also passages which resist scansion, mainly by their high proportion of unstressed syllables; often occurring in long, Latin-derived words like ‘pertinaciously’, ‘insensible of infirmity’, ‘emphasis of passionate love’.
Let us go further back – to Gibbon.
While Julian struggled with the almost insuperable difficulties of his situation,
the sil|ent hours | of the night | were still | devot|ed to stud|y and con|templat|ion.
Whenev|er he closed | his eyes || in short | and in int|errupt|ed slumb|ers, his mind was agitated with painful anxiety; nor can it be thought surprising that the Genius of the Empire should once more appear before him, covering with a funereal veil his head and his horn of abundance,
(P) and slow|ly retir|ing from | the Imper|ial tent.
The monarch started from his couch, and stepping forth to refresh his spirits with the coolness of the midnight air, he beheld a fiery meteor,
which shot | athwart | the sky | and sud|denly van|ished.
Julian was convinced that he had seen the menacing countenance of the god of war; the council which he summoned, of Tuscan Haruspices, unanimously pronounced that he should abstain from action; but on this occasion necessity and reason were more prevalent than superstition;
(P) and the trump|ets sound|ed at | the break | of day.
Naturally, here as in other passages, different readers will read differently. They will disagree as to what is metrical and what not, and how what is metrical should be scanned. But the passage illustrates, I think, a tendency not uncommon in prose to become more metrical as a sentence ends. ‘And slowly retiring from the Imperial tent’ – ‘which shot athwart the sky and suddenly vanished’ – ‘and the trumpets sounded at the break of day’.
The next specimen is not only prose, but prose deliberately used to contrast with verse; yet Hamlet’s prose has metrical patches.
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery and your secricie to the King and Queene moult no feather.
I have | of late, | but where|fore I know | not,
lost all | my mirth,
forgone | all cust|ome of ex|ercise;
and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the Earth, seemes to me a sterrill Promontory; this most excellent Canopy the Ayre, look you,
this brave | ore-hang|ing Firm|amemt,
this Majest|icall Roofe, | fretted | with gold|en fire:
why, it | appeares | no oth|er th
ing | to mee,
then a foule | and pesti|lent con|gregat|ion of vap|ours.
What a piece | of worke | is a man! | how Nob|le in Reas|on!
how in|finite | in fac|ulty!
in forme | and mov|ing how | expresse | and adm|irable!
in Ac|tion, how like | an Ang|el! || in
ap|prehens|ion how like | a God!
the beauty of the world, the Parragon of Animals;
and yet, | to me, | what is | this Quintess|ence of Dust?
(P) Man delights | not me; | no, nor Wom|an neith|er;
though by | your smil|ing you seeme | to say | so.
But at this rate, you may say, there is no English prose from which you cannot torture whole series of metrical fragments. But I do not think that is true. Consider this, from Meredith:
Now men | whose in|comes have been | restricted | to the extent that they must live on their capital, soon grow relieved of the forethoughtful anguish wasting them by the hilarious comforts of the lap on which they have sunk back, insomuch that they are apt to solace themselves for their intolerable anticipations of famine in the household by giving loose to one fit or more of reckless lavishness. Lovers in like manner live on their capital from failure of income: they, too | for the sake | of stifl|ing ap|prehension | [270] and pip|ing to | the pres|ent hour, | are lav|ish of | their stock, | so as rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits of intoxication in view of coming famine: they force memory into play, love retrospectively, enter the old house of the past and ravage the larder, and would gladly, even resolutely, continue in illusion if it were possible for the broadest honey-store of reminiscences to hold out for a length of time against a mortal appetite: which in good sooth stands on the alternative of a consumption of the hive or of the creature it is for nourishing. Hére do | lóvers | shów that | thèy are | pérish|able. [271]
I have marked some just conceivable scansions, in order to play fair. But, amid a passage whose general run is so prosaic, the reader’s ear seems most unlikely to note them; besides, he is probably too preoccupied with making out the meaning. But I must add that, personally, I find both style and rhythm repellent, with a sort of bustling, boisterous pretentiousness. [272]
But that is not the point. Meredith’s prose had, indeed, another, poetic manner, which may even be thought, on the contrary, too metrical: ‘Golden | lie the |meadows; || golden | run the | streams. … ’ [273] But his more ordinary style, with its long, helter-skelter clauses and its jostling, jolting polysyllables, is usually at a very safe distance from verse. No one is likely to accuse you of misplaced fondness for metre, if you write such sentences as: ‘Yet, if you looked on Clara as a délicȧtelẏ inímitȧblė pórcėlain [274] beauty, the suspicion of a délicȧtelẏ inímitȧblė ripple over her features touched a thought of innocent roguery, wild-wood roguery’. Though some may be dubious whether this remedy is better than the disease. [275]
But such doses of polysyllables are not the only antidote; metrical patches are less likely to occur in a style that is near in tone to conversation – like much prose of the earlier eighteenth century, before the return to sonority with Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke. The more prosaic and unemotional a writer’s general manner, the less likely is the reader to beat it unconsciously into regular rhythm.
He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, | he has tak|en in|to the com|pass || of his Cant|erbur|y Tales | the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons.
– Dryden
As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole Congregation, he keeps them in very good Order, and will suffer no Body to sleep in it besides himself; for if by Chance he has been surprized into a short Nap at Sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees any Body else nodding, either wakes | them himself, | or sends | his Serv|ants to | them. Several other of the old Knight’s Particularities break out upon these Occasions: Sometimes he will be lengthening out a Verse in the Singing-Psalms, half a Minute after the rest of the Congregation have done with it; sometimes, when he | is pleased | with the matt|er of his | Devo|tion, he pronounces Amen three or four times to the same Prayer; and sometimes stands up when every Body else is upon their Knees, to count the Congregation, or see if any of his Tenants are missing.
– Addison
And as his lordship, for want of principle, often sacrificed his character to his interest, so by these means he as often, for want of prudence, sacrificed his interest to his vanity. With a person as disagreeable as it was possible for a human figure to be without being deformed, he affected following many women of the first beauty and the most in fashion, and, if you would have taken his word for it, not without success; whilst in fact and in truth he never gained anyone above the venal rank of those whom an Adonis or a Vulcan might be equally well with, for an equal sum of money. He was very short, disproportioned, thick and clumsily made; had a broad, rough-featured, ugly face, with black teeth and a head big enough for Polyphemus. Ben Ashurst, who said few good things, told Lord Chesterfield once that he was like a stunted giant, which was a humorous idea and really apposite.
– John, Lord Hervey, on Chesterfield
Mr. Allworthy had been absent a full Quarter of Year in London, | on some ver|y partic|ular Bus|iness, || though I know | not what | it was; | but judge of its Importance, by its having detained him so long from home, whence he had not been absent a Month at a Time during the Space of many Years. He came | to his House | very late | in the Even|ing, and after a short Supper with his Sister, retired much fatigued to his Chamber. Here, having spent some Minutes on his Knees, a Custom which he never broke through on any Account, he was preparing to step into Bed, when, upon opening the Cloaths, to his great Surprize, he beheld an Infant, wrapt up in some coarse Linnen, in a sweet and profound Sleep, beneath his Sheets.
– Fielding
So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy and inventive genius, academies may be said to be obstructive to energy and inventive genius, and, to this extent, to the human spirit’s general advance. But then this evil is so much compensated by the propagation, on a large scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which an open mind and a flexible intelligence naturally engender, genius itself, in the long run, so greatly finds its account in this propagation, and bodies like the French Academy have such power for promoting it, that the general advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole, rather furthered than impeded by their existence.
– Matthew Arnold
This is the academic, schoolmasterly Arnold, preaching with conscientious iterations to the Philistines of England, though without, one feels, any high hopes of them. It is not a style I much like. But what a change of rhythm, when he turns to Oxford, and begins once more to feel!
Ador|able dream|er, whose heart | has been | so romant|ic!
(P) who hast giv|en thyself | so prod|igally,
given | thyself | to sides | and to her|oes not mine,
only never to the Philistines!
(P) home of | lost caus|es, and | forsak|en beliefs,
and unpop|ular names, | and imposs|ible loy|alties!
I find it hard to believe that such contrasts are merely chance. No doubt chance plays its part. Even in Greek prose, iambic trimeters can occur, apparently by pure accident; the Annals of Tacitus open with a bad hexameter – ūrbēm | Rōmam ā | prīncĭpĭ|ō rēg|ēs hăbŭ|ērĕ – and his Germania contains a better one – aūgŭrĭ|īs pātrum | ēt prīsc|ā fōrm|īdĭnĕ | sācrām; and though the hexameter is not a natural form for English speech, the Bible offers examples like, ‘Hów art thou | fállen from | heáven, || O | Lúcifer, | són of the | mórning!’ [276] Further, in English, chance fragments of iambic
, trochaic, or anapaestic metre are likelier than in classical languages because our prosody is so much simpler and looser. In particular, while Greek and Latin have comparatively few syllables that can be long or short at will, whichever suits the metre (e.g. tĕnebrāe, English simply teems with syllables that can be stressed or unstressed, according to position, at the poet’s convenience. None the less the extraordinary abundance of metrical passages in some English writers as compared with others cannot be explained by accident alone. But neither can I believe it to be, as a rule, conscious and deliberate. Sometimes it may be a mere bad habit. But in general, as at a certain temperature a kettle begins to sing, so, when prose becomes passionate, it has a spontaneous tendency to begin to chant. And, within limits, why not?
In conclusion and confirmation, since there is no space to quote further long passages, here are a few briefer specimens of prose sentences that seem to me all the finer for a touch of metre.
And thou were the godelyest persone that ever cam emonge prees of knyghtes, and thou was the mekest man and the jentyllest that ever ete in halle emonge ladyes, | and thou | were the stern|est knyght | to thy mort|al foo | that ev|er put spere | in the reeste.
– Malory
O el|oquent, just, | and might|y Death!
whom none | could advise, | thou hast | persuad|ed;
what none | hath dared, |thou | hast done;
and whom | all the world | has flatt|ered,
thou on|ly has cast | out of | the world | and despised.
Thou hast drawn | togeth|er all | the far-|stretched great|ness,
(P) all the | pride, cru|elty, and | ambit|ion of man,
and cov|ered it | all ov|er || with these | two narr|ow words,
Hic jacet.
– Raleigh
Life is | a journ|ey in a dust|y way,
the furth|est rest | is death;
in this | some go | more heav|ily burth|ened than oth|ers;
swift and | active | pilgrims || come to | the end | of it
in the morn|ing or | at noon, |which tort|oise-paced wretch|es,
clogged with | the fragmentary rubb|ish of | this world,
