Milton's use, is much more varied than Milton's, but rarely abrupt as Spenser's. Coleridge uses all the changes in the beginning of lines pointed out in the passage from Milton, uses them more frequently throughout the poem, and supplements their effect by this change in rhythm for whole lines and passages. Probably the wide range in the rhythm of Christabel would not have pleased Milton's ear, but we may appreciate and imitate both as exquisite examples of two different types of couplets.

is perhaps best read as a tetrameter with two feet occupied by intervals of silence. Lines 5 and 14 may be read as trimeters, or as tetrameters with the last foot occupied by an interval of silence:

How drowsi-ly it crew! | 1

Is the night chilly and | dark? | |

Such musical equivalence had been used by the Elizabethans," but had not been in favor for nearly two centuries. Coleridge admits trochaic lines frequently and an occasional triplet, as at the end of the specimen quoted. He has also introduced two or three quatrains, several lines of dimeter, and once, a longer stanza rimed abcacbcbb.

Unusual couplets worth noting are,

A lady so richly clad as she

Beautiful exceedingly.

It is a wine of virtuous powers;

My mother made it of | wild | flowers.

She was most beautiful to see,

Like a lady of a | far coun- tree.

See above, p. 15.

Finally, the repetitions of words and rimes, and the varying tone-color are other extremely interesting embellishments.

Under the influence of Christabel, Scott varied the couplets of his long narratives, using the form with a stirring music of his own. Byron in his own way followed Scott's use of tetrameter. In the hands of these two skilful metrists the couplet bid fair to be again as popular as it was in the fourteenth century. This passage shows what Scott could make of it:

If thou wouldest view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;

For the gay beams of lightsome day,

Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in the night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;

When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruined central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,

Then go but go alone the while

Then view St. David's ruined pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair.

(Lay of the Last Minstrel, II, 1.)

There may be some danger of the student considering the two long passages quoted from Coleridge and Scott perfectly typical. They are intended to illustrate the most varied parts of poems of several hundred lines, most of which are in strict duple rhythm. Besides introducing duple-triple rhythm, Scott prevents monotony by frequently falling into stanza

• Scott published his narratives before Coleridge's poem appeared, but he had heard parts of it read in manuscript.

forms. He uses quatrains, five and six line stanzas, and, in Marmion, long stanzas with repeated rimes that give a cumulative effect to melodramatic scenes.

One other means of gaining variety in the couplet, that has not appeared in any of the poets discussed, occurs in Keats's fragment, the Eve of St. Mark:

Bertha was a maiden fair,

Dwelling in th' old minster square;
From her fire-side she could see,
Sidelong, its rich antiquity,
5 Far as the Bishop's garden-wall;
Where sycamores and elm-trees tall,
Full-leaved, the forest had outstript,
By no sharp north-wind ever nipt,
So sheltered by the mighty pile.
10 Bertha arose and read awhile,
With forehead 'gainst the window-pane.
Again she tried, and then again,
Until the dusk had left her dark
Upon the legend of St. Mark.

This trick of dividing the couplet by making a full stop or an important pause necessary after the first line of it (5-6, 9-10, 11-12), Keats learned from Chaucer, who was evidently his model in this early piece.

Another poet who learned this—as well as other delightful things from Chaucer, is William Morris. His handling of the strict octosyllabic couplet in many of his stories in the Earthly Paradise is one of the most pleasing and varied in the history of the form. Here are two specimens:

Grew Accontius wan

As the sea-cliffs, for the old man

Now pointed to the gate, where through

The company of maidens drew

Toward where they stood; Accontius

With trembling lips, and piteous

Drawn brow, turned toward them, and afar

Beheld her like the morning-star
Amid the weary stars of night.
Midmost the band went his delight,
Clad in a gown of blue, whereon

Were wrought fresh flowers, as newly won
From the May fields; with one hand she
Touched a fair fellow lovingly,

The other, hung adown, did hold
An ivory harp well strung with gold;
Gladly she went, nor seemed as though
One troublous thought her heart did know.
(Accontius and Cydippe.)

Sharper things grew beneath the light,
As with a false dawn; thin and bright
The horned poppies' blossoms shone
Upon a shingle bank, thrust on

By the high tide to choke the grass;
At night it the sea-holly was,

Whose cold gray leaves and stiff stark shade

On earth a double moonlight made.

(Ring Given to Venus.)

To the slightly archaic flavor of the occasional Chaucerian touches in the language of the first selection, Morris has added many of the skilful variations pointed out in other uses of this couplet. The conflict of the accents of the meaning with the stresses of the meter is nowhere better handled, producing such lines as,

and

Whose cold gray leaves and stiff stark shade,

A rose wreath round a pearl-wrought crown.
(Watching of the Falcon.)

Where they are in place, lines with a suggestively imitative rhythm occur:

Swift from her shoulders her long hair,

(Ibid.)

and,

and thence undid

The jewelled collar, that straight slid
Down her smooth bosom to the board.

(Writing on the Image.)

And then, Morris's phrasing has very great freedom. The eighteen lines of the passage from Accontius and Cydippe have but two sentences, the end of one and the beginning of the next dividing a couplet; the ends of grammatical clauses rarely come at the ends of lines. The slightly imperfect rimes, wan: man; whereon: won; shone: on; grass: was, are perhaps intended archaisms.

The student may feel that all the possible variations in the tetrameter couplet have been already made use of; that there is no room for further development. But doubtless, each generation in the past felt this. Some new narrative poet may appear, who will show us that there are still new possibilities in the oldest of our English meters.