Читать книгу English Verse - Raymond Macdonald Alden - Страница 81

By this the Northerne wagoner had set

His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre

That was in Ocean waves yet never wet,

But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre

To all that in the wide deepe wandring arre;

And chearefull Chaunticlere with his note shrill

Had warned once, that Phœbus fiery carre

In hast was climbing up the Easterne hill,

Full envious that night so long his roome did fill.

(Spenser: The Faerie Queene, bk. i. canto 2, st. 1. 1590.)

And more to lulle him in his slumber soft,

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,

And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne

Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne.

No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,

As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,

Might there be heard; but carelesse Quiet lyes

Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes.

(Spenser: ib. bk. i. canto 1, st. 41.)

This stanza, which Spenser invented for his own use and to which his name is always given, was apparently formed by adding an alexandrine to the ababbcbc stanza of Chaucer. In it Spenser wrote the greater part of his poetry, and its use marks the Spenserian influence wherever found, especially among the poets of the eighteenth century—Thomson, Shenstone, Beattie, and the like.

James Russell Lowell, in his Essay on Spenser, comments as follows: "He found the ottava rima … not roomy enough, so first ran it over into another line, and then ran that added line over into an alexandrine, in which the melody of one stanza seems forever longing and feeling forward after that which is to follow. … Wave follows wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward by the next. In all this there is soothingness, indeed, but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses—now at the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth—he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous." (Works, vol. iv. pp. 328, 329.)

See also the chapters on the Spenserian stanza in Corson's Primer of English Verse, where its use for pictorial effects is interestingly discussed.

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,

And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

Forever flushing round a summer sky:

There eke the soft delights, that witchingly

Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,

And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;

But whate'er smacked of noyaunce, or unrest,

Was far far off expelled from this delicious nest.

(Thomson: The Castle of Indolence, canto i. 1748.)

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,

Emblem right meet of decency does yield:

Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trowe,

As is the hare-bell that adorns the field:

And in her hand, for sceptre, she does wield

Tway birchen sprays, with anxious fear entwined,

With dark distrust and sad repentance filled,

And stedfast hate, and sharp affliction joined,

And fury uncontrolled and chastisement unkind.

(Shenstone: The Schoolmistress. 1742.)

Thomson's Castle of Indolence, although not published till 1748, seems to have been written and circulated before Shenstone's Schoolmistress. Thomson caught the spirit of Spenser and his stanza better than any other imitator until the days of Keats. On the revival of the stanza at this period, see Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, chap. iii., on "the Spenserians." Earliest of the group, according to Mr. Gosse, was Akenside's Virtuoso (1737. See Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 311).

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

And oh, may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved Isle.

(Burns: The Cotter's Saturday Night. 1785.)