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A thing of beauty is a joy forever;

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

5 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

10 Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
15 For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest break,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
20 And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

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
Forced from the forest's safe protection to
Discovering plain, his clamorous foes had drew
Up to a steep cliff's lofty top; where he,
As if grown proud so sacrificed to be
To man's delight,

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:
Its loveliness increases; it will ne'er
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a slumber

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet brooding.
Therefore, on every morrow, do we wreathe

A flowery band to bind us to this world,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy years,

Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching.

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
That his appearance in the court might be
More glorious made by such attendants, to
Incite in them a strong desire to view

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,
White as the changing walls of faerie,

Thronged with much people clad in ancient guise
I am now fain to set before your eyes;

There leave the clear green water and the quays,
And pass betwixt its marble palaces,

Until ye come unto the chiefest square;

A bubbling conduit is set midmost there,
And round about it now the maidens throng,
With jest and laughter, and sweet broken song,
Making but light of labor new begun
While in their vessels gleams the morning sun.

On one side of the square a temple stands,
Wherein the gods worshipped in ancient lands,
Still have their altars; a great market place
Upon two other sides fills all the space,
And thence the busy hum of men comes forth;
But on the cold side looking toward the north
A pillared council-house may you behold,
Within whose porch are images of gold,
Gods of the nations who dwelt anciently
About the borders of the Grecian Sea.

(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,
White as the changing walls of faerie,

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,
And pass betwixt its marble palaces,

Until ye come unto the chiefest mart;

A bubbling conduit is set midmost there,
And round about it now the maidens throng.

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
More fine than moonbeams; white her eyelids shone
As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun,

And through their curled and coloured clouds of deep
Luminous lashes thick as dreams in sleep

Shone as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's
The springs of unimaginable eyes.

As the wave's subtler emerald is pierced through
With the utmost heaven's inextricable blue,
And both are woven and molten in one sleight
Of amorous colour and implicated light
Under the golden guard and gaze of noon,

So glowed their awless amorous plenilune,
Azure and gold and ardent grey, made strange
With fiery difference and deep interchange
Inexplicable of glories multiform;

Now as the sullen sapphire swells toward storm
Foamless, their bitter beauty grew a-cold,

And now a-fire with ardour of fine gold.

The reader is in danger of losing himself so completely in

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