[Chris Childers]

I'm going to move on to the Tennyson, which, as Jody says, is in pure quantity, like the elegiacs of Propertius. If you already understand Classical meters, ignore the following; but I think the idea of quantity, & consequently the scansion of those lines, may be obscure to some people, so I'll try to explain a little, at the risk of being dull & pedantic.

Tennyson's lines scan as follows:

THESE LAME / HEXame / TERS THE / STRONG-WING'D / MUSic of / HOMer!
NO—but a / MOST BUR / LESQUE // BARbarous EXperiMENT.
WHEN was a / HARSHER / SOUND ever / HEARD, YE / MUSes, in / ENGLAND?
WHEN did a / FROG COAR / SER // CROAK upon OUR Helicon?
HEXame / TERS NO / WORSE THAN / DARING / GERmany / GAVE us,
BARbarous / EXperi / MENT, // BARbarous HEXameTERS.

Before people shriek that this is not a natural English scansion, that the beat in a word like "hexameters" or "experiment" is on the second syllable, not the first and the last, I would like to point out that that is exactly what Tennyson is saying, that this sort of meter is not at all suited for our barbarian English. Still, to explain.

The metrical principle at work here is quantitative; that is, it's measured by how long it takes to say the syllables; syllables are long either by nature, as in "these", in which the long vowel demands to be drawn out; or by position, as the first & last syllable of "hexameters" in the first line. "Hex" is a long syllable because the consonant which follows the short vowel is compound, really a combination of two consonants; & "ters," being followed by "the", presents a battery of three different consonant sounds, "rsth", that the mouth has to break through to say the syllable. That "the" is long for the same reason, being followed by "str". At any rate, that's quantity. It's not in conflict with stress accent--this poem can be read in a way that honors both the quantity & quality of the syllables--but the fundamental principle is quantitative.

To speak briefly of quality, both Latin & Greek have it, just as English words have quantity; in Latin as in English, there is stress accent; in Greek, there is pitch, which I think is another reason for that language's comparative lightness. Anyway, as speech rhythm often interacts & conflicts with the meter in English (quantity being a not insignificant factor in speech rhythm), so stress & pitch in Latin & Greek respectively interact with the quantitative meters, creating an interesting music.

Having said all of that, I agree 100%, Janet, that a purely quantitative meter has no business in English; in fact, I'm not sure it had any business in Latin either, though it was adopted early & quickly became conventional. Yet that has not happened in English, & Poe is right that it won't; we're too fond of our accentual meters ever to allow some pedantic classicist to decree that henceforth All Poesy Written Shall Be Quantitative In Strict Imitation Of The Greek. But attempts to reproduce quantitative meters accentually I have no problem with. The difficulty is that the mental template of the Sapphic or the Alcaic is not one that many English readers have readily available, while everybody knows what to expect from an iambic pentameter. The problem, therefore, is that in metrically ambiguous passages, if you're writing in Alcaics, say, you have no assurance that your reader will know the meter & thus be able to hear the lines as you intend them. There is therefore very little room for ambiguity in the translation of quantitative meter to accentual, and hence no leeway to fool around with "substitutions" beyond those that Horace & Sappho & Alcaeus allowed themselves.

Well, let's say Enough! or Too Much. I'll be counting down the minutes until Prof. Mezey skewers me & tells me everything I've said is completely wrong. Hope this is of mild interest to someone.

Chris

[Janet Kenny]

Chris
You know I was singer and we live stress and meter every second of our lives. We live it in many languages. To me the approach of scholarly poets is a little desiccated and inartistic. The only merit in any of it is the living word and phrase.
This was written tongue in cheek a while ago for a fun contest.
Janet

Wail in Lost Muddle Earth Dialect


I waked up an’ t’ world were al smashed’n broken
Sea wus high an’ fushes ariz a-spewin’
Men gone mad wus kullin’ n’slashin, pratin’
Of the end comin’

Skoy wus fulled with fushes an’ birds gone sully
Jesters casting rods in the bilin’ ocean
Headless fush-men stumblin’ al blind’n clumsy
Narry a wumin

Cold and seethin’ ocean coughs oop ald monsters
Satan sends his armies of fushy taunters
Nowt to do but die before the torment
Blackens the vullage

Granny Sorgum warned us that bad wud follow
When we foired the vullage across the watter
She wus bornt and al the folks made t’ watch it
God uv our fathers

World has turned against us an’ we wull perish
We hev sunned’n now we will pay the divil
Lothar howls in kennel beside his chulder
All’v them taken

Priest is gone and nabody kens the prayin’
Feard’n bloind we turn al our een t’heav’n
Intercede for us pore fushermen someone
God uv our fathers




[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 06, 2004).]

[Joseph Bottum]

Here's a purely accentual sapphic from the 18th century: Isaac Watts’s "The Day of Judgment"

When the fierce North-wind with his airy forces
Rears up the Baltic to a foaming fury;
And the red lightning with a storm of hail comes
Rushing amain down;

How the poor sailors stand amazed and tremble,
While the hoarse thunder, like a bloody trumpet,
Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters
Quick to devour them.

Such shall the noise be, and the wild disorder
(If things eternal may be like these earthly),
Such the dire terror when the great Archangel
Shakes the creation;

Tears up the strong pillars of the vault of Heaven,
Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes,
Sees the graves open, and the bones arising,
Flames all around them.

Hark, the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches!
Lively bright horror and amazing anguish
Stare thro' their eyelids, while the living worm lies
Gnawing within them.

Thoughts, like old vultures, prey upon their heart-strings,
And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the
Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance
Rolling afore him.

Hopeless immortals! how they scream and shiver,
While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning
Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong
Down to the centre!

Stop here, my fancy: (all away, he horrid
Doleful ideas!) come, arise to Jesus,
How He sits God-like! and the saints around Him
Throned, yet adoring!

O may I sit there when He comes triumphant,
Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory,
While our Hosannas all along the passage
Shout the Redeemer!

[Joseph Bottum]

Here's another purely accentual sapphic from the 18th century, this one used curiously to do political comedy:

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder
by George Canning (1770-1827) and J. H. Frere (1769-1846)

Friend of Humanity:

Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going?
Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order --
Bleak blows the blast; -- your hat has got a hole in't,
So have your breeches!

"Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
road, what hard work 'tis crying all day "knives and
scissors to grind O!"

"Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyranically use you?
Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?
Or the attorney?

"Was it the squire, for the killing of his game? or
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit?

"(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?)
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story."

Knife-grinder:

"Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,
Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,
This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.

"Constables came up for to take me into
Custody; they took me before the justice;
Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-
Stocks for a vagrant.

"I should be glad to drink your Honour's health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir."

Friend of Humanity:

"I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn'd first --
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance --
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!"

[Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exits in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.]

[Susan McLean]

For me, the classical meters do not tend to work in English. They generally sound monotonous after a while. Clever, interesting poems have been written in some of them, but I do not think that I will be tempted to write one, because the music of accentual-syllabic verse is my native language, the one I have an ear for. There are so many options within that tradition that I do not feel that I have to borrow from another tradition to have material for a lifetime of writing. Others are free to do so, but I wonder if there is an audience that can appreciate the result.

Susan

[Janet Kenny]

Jody
Those last two poems knock spots off the others I think. They were using the form instead of letting the form use them.

Susan,
Well said.

Janet

[Joseph Bottum]

Here are two late-Victorian sapphics from Canadian authors. The second is pretty dreadful, but interesting in its attempt to add rhyme to the form. The first is much better poetry, however, and it aims toward the lining-up of accent and quantity that I think an English sapphic demands.


Archibald Lampman

SAPPHICS

Clothed in splendour, beautifully sad and silent,
Comes the autumn over the woods and highlands,
Golden, rose-red, full of divine remembrance,
Full of foreboding.

Soon the maples, soon will the glowing birches,
Stripped of all that summer and love had dowered them,
Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasure
Ruthlessly scattered:

Yet they quail not: Winter with wind and iron
Comes and finds them silent and uncomplaining,
Finds them tameless, beautiful still and gracious,
Gravely enduring.

Me too: changes, bitter and full of evil,
Dream by dream have plundered and left me naked,
Grey with sorrow. Even the days before me
Fade into twilight,

Mute and barren. Yet will I keep my spirit
Clear and valiant, brother to these my noble
Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless,
Grandly ungrieving.

Brief the span is, counting the years of mortals,
Strange and sad; it passes, and then the bright earth,
Careless mother, gleaming with gold and azure,
Lovely with blossoms—

Shining white anemones, mixed with roses,
Daisies mild-eyed, grasses and honeyed clover—
You, and me, and all of us, met and equal,
Softly shall cover.

-------------------------------------------

Charles G.D. Roberts

MIRIAM.—I: SAPPHICS

Miriam, loved one, were thy goings weary?
Journeyed not with thee one to brighten thy way?
Lighted with love-light how could it be dreary?
Was it not my way?

Why wert thou weary? All the golden glories
Streaming from love’s lamp thy enraptured sight won;
Sweetly we whispered old self-heroed stories,
Miriam, bright one!

Crimson lipp’d love-flowers sprang about us going,
Clustering closely, rosy shadows weaving;
Straight from our footsteps glowing ways were flowing,
Vistas far-cleaving.

Silvery lute-notes thrilled athrough the noonlight,
Flutings of bird-throats light as flight of swallow;
Scents rose around us thick as in the moonlight
Leaves fall and follow.

How could I dream that thou wert growing weary?
Never I guessed it till I saw thee fading;
Saw thee slip from me,—and my way fell dreary.
Cease thine upbraiding!

Cease thine upbraiding, ah, my widowed spirit!
Trace on thy path by rays from backward sight won.
More than I gave thee the bliss thou dost inherit,
Miriam, bright one!



[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited July 07, 2004).]

[peterjb]

I find it hard to agree that there’s necessarily something artificial about an English accentual meter derived by analogy from a Greek or Latin quantitative meter. What you are working with in English is an accentual template. Every accentual-syllabic poem in English, whether the meter parallels a classical model or not, is written on some sort of template, usually but not always with a few variations. Equally, there’s nothing to stop a writer of Sapphics in English from introducing variations, as I see the Steele and some others posted here do liberally, especially in the longer lines.

The expected pattern there, with English accents directly replacing the long syllables of the Greek Sapphic 11-syllable line, is:

.........../-/-/--/-/-

(The last syllable in the Greek might optionally be long.)

Swinburne follows the template, but in the Steele we have instances like this:

May I imagine being in the Inferno, /--/-/-/--/-
(Extra dactyl, in the first foot)

A madman. What Atilla did to Europe, -/-/-/-/-/-
(No dactyl)

My own feeling is that these meters are more pleasing if the stress pattern is consistent and variation achieved in other ways. That was what I tried to do with my effort. This way the rhythm is more certain but there is more risk of monotony. You have to fall back on other factors and resources to achieve variety. One factor is that stress in relative anyway: syntactical and rhetorical demands will naturally make some stressed syllables more stressed than others. One resource is the poet’s freedom to manipulate such structures, and caesurae and enjambment, for the sake of modulation.

I think quantitative effects added to English verse might enhance mood (for example, a preponderance of long open vowel sounds might make an elegy more emotionally effective) but probably make little difference to the meter for most readers. To some degree, stress already factors in duration. Here’s a snippet from a useful site in these matters:

Those who remain sceptical about the possibility of accentual templates to represent quantitative stanza forms should remember that the English stress accent is not unitary. It consists, in order of importance, of (1) tone, (2) duration and (3) force. In some research, duration or length of articulation appears even more important than tone. The component we traditionally take to be most prominent, force of articulation, is in fact the least prominent element. It is, therefore, quite feasible for English templates to approximate, if not equal, the aesthetic effects of the Latin meters.

The context on that page is Horatian meters, but the point is probably valid generally.

The page: http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/horawillmet.shtml

I think it’s nice to use English accentual renderings of classical meters in poems that reference classical themes. I once posted a piece in TDE here that referred to Horace and comprised four Third Asclepiad stanzas, as used for Odes C1.5, 14, 21, 23, and others.





[This message has been edited by peterjb (edited July 07, 2004).]

[Janet Kenny]

Peter
What you are working with in English is an accentual template. Every accentual-syllabic poem in English, whether the meter parallels a classical model or not, is written on some sort of template, usually but not always with a few variations.

If language were coloured pebbles of syllable for a mosaic that would be fine. But language has its own music and to my ear the poetic form must come from the music of the language in question.

Just to be contrary
Janet

[peterjb]

Janet, you mean when you write a sonnet you don’t write with the iambic pentameter template in mind, or "in ear" but rather let the words fall as they may and then decide on the form afterwards?

That might be a method with free verse, but surely is a counsel of perfection where form is concerned.

You seem to be implying that form, once chosen, dictates content, which necessarily suffers. Surely your experience tells you, as mine tells me, that form and content interact. The starting point for many poems might be a phrase or a string of words that suggest a meter, but then once you're writing in the chosen meter (and perhaps larger form) it can exert an often unforeseen influence on the composition, sometimes with beneficial results for the content, sometimes not. "Music" may emerge from constraint as it may emerge from freedom.

I just don't believe that an accentual template which happens to parallel a Greek or Latin original is necessarily any more injurious to the music of language than is the template for a ballad, a sonnet, a rondeau, or an ovillego. Why is /-/-/--/-/- any more of a threat to music than /-/-/-/- or -/-/-/-/-/?

Edited to add this:
In fact, a rhymed sonnet or ballade is surely more restrictive than a form that prescribes a metrical and stanza pattern only and does not insist on rhyme or a specific length.


Peter



[This message has been edited by peterjb (edited July 07, 2004).]