A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 5 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 10 Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways With the green world they live in; and clear rills The iambic movement of the passage is only slightly more varied than in the passages from Pope. Keats is almost as strict as Pope in adhering to the ten syllable norm. The exceptions are that Keats uses more lines with light endings (feminine rimes) than Pope would tolerate, and also prints every, the inhuman, and the unhealthy, instead of indulging in the typographical fiction of ev'ry, th' inhuman, and th' unhealthy. Keats also admits more frequently lines of the type of, Trees old and young, | sprouting a | shady | boon, which are quite rare in Pope; and even introduces such a rhythmic change as, With the green | world they | live in; and | clear | rills, -an impossible effect to Pope. A considerably greater freedom of rhythm in the couplet is to be found in the passage quoted from Swinburne, below, on page 194; but even there the freedom comes from the frequency with which the changes so far mentioned are introduced, rather than from the introduction of new variations. As was mentioned in the last chapter, the history of the heroic couplet has not shown development to any extent in rhythmic changes, as has been the case with the tetrameter couplet, but this development has been almost wholly a question of phrasing. The verse paragraph from Endymion is phrased so that about half of the lines have no punctuation at the end, and the more important pauses in the sense, marked by periods, colons, or semicolons, occur oftener within the line than at its close. More than this, there is not a single couplet that makes complete sense in itself. In fact, even where the lines have marked pauses at the end (lines 5, 19, 21) the sense splits the couplet in half. Apparently the poet is studiously keeping the couplet structure from prominence. The rime, therefore, is added purely as an ornament, not used to make distinct the end of the line or to emphasize important words. An example of couplets in which the rime is even less conspicuous is Browning's My Last Duchess, quoted to illustrate this point in Chapter VII.12 12 Perhaps the most extreme case in English of enjambment in the couplet is William Chamberlayne's Pharonnida (1659): . . . had worn out the morning in Chase of a stately stag; which, having been That the rime in Keats's poem is purely an ornament, Professor Lewis13 makes quite evident by turning the passage quoted into very good blank verse by a few slight alterations: A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet brooding. A flowery band to bind us to this world, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways But it is not necessary for the writer of couplets to choose either of the extreme types-that of the Rape of the Lock, or of Endymion. Chaucer's Prologue and many of the Canterbury Tales, Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini and much of William Morris's Earthly Paradise use forms of the open couplet that keep the structure always evident to the ear, but without the rigidity of eighteenth century phrasing. The moderate freedom of this couplet makes it perhaps our finest medium for romantic story-telling. It has not been a favorite with modern poets since Morris and Swinburne, but if the present revival of interest in verse narrative continues, the couplet is sure to come back into favor. Here is an example of Morris's use: Their fear thus cured by information, he Those royal pastimes. . . . ... It is difficult to understand why a poet should take the trouble to rime several thousand lines and then try to conceal the fact by frequent passages like these! 13 Op. cit., p. 67. A nameless city in a distant sea, Thronged with much people clad in ancient guise There leave the clear green water and the quays, Until ye come unto the chiefest square; A bubbling conduit is set midmost there, On one side of the square a temple stands, (Earthly Paradise-Prologue.) That the rime is a very important element in the structure of these couplets, and more than a merely ornamental effect, is made clear by imitating Professor Lewis' experiment with the lines from Endymion. A nameless city in a distant clime, Thronged with much people clad in ancient garb I am now fain to set before your eyes; There, leave the clear green water and the piers, Until ye come unto the chiefest mart; A bubbling conduit is set midmost there, This makes monotonous blank verse, though, of course, not so bad as Pope's couplets would be, similarly ill-treated. The two forms of couplet, open and closed, have each their most effective use and their weak tendencies. The epigrams of Pope or the wit of Holmes couched in run-on couplets would be insipid; the exuberant imagination of the young Keats fettered in the tight couplet would seem like wild wood flowers in an Italian garden. The eighteenth century form, as we have seen, was in danger from a tiresome use of epithets; but tended, in general, to conciseness of thought. The open type, on the other hand,—particularly in its extremely run-on form-lures the poet into mazes of figure and prolixity of expression. Swinburne falls into this danger of over-embellishment frequently in his Tristram of Lyonesse-in the description of Iseult's eyes, for instance: The very veil of her bright flesh was made As of light woven and moonbeam-coloured shade And through their curled and coloured clouds of deep Shone as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's As the wave's subtler emerald is pierced through So glowed their awless amorous plenilune, Now as the sullen sapphire swells toward storm And now a-fire with ardour of fine gold. The reader is in danger of losing himself so completely in |