[Chris Childers]

As per Andrew and Maryann's posts on the elegiac couplets thread, it's time we had a thread on English hendecasyllabics. Clarification of terms is first in order.

All "hendecasyllables" means is a line with 11 syllables (Greek 'hen' 1 + 'deka' 10 = 11). So technically a line of iambic pentameter with a feminine ending is a hendecasyllabic, as are the first three lines of a sapphic and the first two lines of an alcaic. However, when use the term "hendecasyllabic" in English, we are generally referring to the "phalaecian hendecasyllabic," a meter most particularly associated with Catullus; in fact, so much associated with Catullus that, though I'm sure other classical poets have used it (Statius?), I don't know and can't really think of other examples. As I said on the other thread, the phalaecian hendecasyllable is like the sapphic one, except that the dactyl comes earlier. Here is the pattern:

phalaecian hendecasyllable: ---~~-~-~-~ (that second syllable can be long or short)

sapphic hendecasyllable: -~---~~-~-~

alcaic hendecasyllable: --~---~~-~-

Two famous examples of phalaecian hendecasyllables in English jump to mind right away. The first is by Tennyson, and is actually an experiment in quantity; the second is Frost's well-known "For Once, Then, Something." I will post both. Afterwards, I will be very grateful for pointers to other examples of the measure, by masters, members, or both.

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Hendecasyllabics

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard it is, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty meter.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather -
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment -
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half-coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.

For Once, Then, Something
By Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

There you have the famous ones. If I had my books around me I could post Catullus translations in the meter as well, but what about other original poems? Who knows some?

C