Old English Poetry (essay) Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B CD E F B G HHIIJJKKLLGGMMGGGGNN O OPPNN G QQGGRRGGSSGGTPUUGGMM VVWWXXCCYY Z G G CC A2 Y| It should not be doubted that at least one third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to what is in itself a thing apart from poetry we mean to the simple love of the antique and that again a third of even the proper poetic sentiment inspired by their writings should be ascribed to a fact which while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract and with the old British poems themselves should not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems | A |
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| Almost every devout admirer of the old bards if demanded his opinion of their productions would mention vaguely yet with perfect sincerity a sense of dreamy wild indefinite and he would perhaps say indefinable delight on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling This quaintness is in fact a very powerful adjunct to ideality but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will and is altogether apart from his intention | B |
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| Words and their rhythm have varied Verses which affect us to day with a vivid delight and which delight in many instances may be traced to the one source quaintness must have worn in the days of their construction a very commonplace air This is of course no argument against the poems now we mean it only as against the poets thew There is a growing desire to overrate them The old | C |
| English muse was frank guileless sincere and although very learned still learned without art No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so With the two former ethics were the end with the two latter the means The poet of the Creation wished by highly artificial verse to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth the poet of the Ancient Mariner to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception the other by a path which could not possibly lead him astray arrived at a triumph which is not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the multitude But in this view even the metaphysical verse of Cowley is but evidence of the simplicity and single heartedness of the man And he was in this but a type of his school for we may as well designate in this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the volume before us and throughout all of whom there runs a very perceptible general character They used little art in composition Their writings sprang immediately from the soul and partook intensely of that soul's nature | D |
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| Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of this abandon to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind but again so to mingle the greatest possible fire force delicacy and all good things with the lowest possible bathos baldness and imbecility as to render it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind in such a school will be found inferior to those results in one ceteris paribus more artificial | E |
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| We can not bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the Book of Gems are such as will impart to a poetical reader the clearest possible idea of the beauty of the school but if the intention had been merely to show the school's character the attempt might have been considered successful in the highest degree There are long passages now before us of the most despicable trash with no merit whatever beyond that of their antiquity The criticisms of the editor do not particularly please us His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not to be false His opinion for example of Sir Henry Wotton's Verses on the Queen of Bohemia that there are few finer things in our language is untenable and absurd | F |
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| In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of Poesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all time Here every thing is art nakedly or but awkwardly concealed No prepossession for the mere antique and in this case we can imagine no other prepossession should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of poetry a series such as this of elaborate and threadbare compliments stitched apparently together without fancy without plausibility and without even an attempt at adaptation | B |
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| In common with all the world we have been much delighted with The Shepherd's Hunting by Withers a poem partaking in a remarkable degree of the peculiarities of Il Penseroso Speaking of Poesy the author says | G |
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| By the murmur of a spring | H |
| Or the least boughs rustleling | H |
| By a daisy whose leaves spread | I |
| Shut when Titan goes to bed | I |
| Or a shady bush or tree | J |
| She could more infuse in me | J |
| Than all Nature's beauties can | K |
| In some other wiser man | K |
| By her help I also now | L |
| Make this churlish place allow | L |
| Something that may sweeten gladness | G |
| In the very gall of sadness | G |
| The dull loneness the black shade | M |
| That these hanging vaults have made | M |
| The strange music of the waves | G |
| Beating on these hollow caves | G |
| This black den which rocks emboss | G |
| Overgrown with eldest moss | G |
| The rude portals that give light | N |
| More to terror than delight | N |
| This my chamber of neglect | O |
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| Walled about with disrespect | O |
| From all these and this dull air | P |
| A fit object for despair | P |
| She hath taught me by her might | N |
| To draw comfort and delight | N |
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| But these lines however good do not bear with them much of the general character of the English antique Something more of this will be found in Corbet's Farewell to the Fairies We copy a portion of Marvell's Maiden lamenting for her Fawn which we prefer not only as a specimen of the elder poets but in itself as a beautiful poem abounding in pathos exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness to anything of its species | G |
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| It is a wondrous thing how fleet | Q |
| 'Twas on those little silver feet | Q |
| With what a pretty skipping grace | G |
| It oft would challenge me the race | G |
| And when't had left me far away | R |
| 'Twould stay and run again and stay | R |
| For it was nimbler much than hinds | G |
| And trod as if on the four winds | G |
| I have a garden of my own | S |
| But so with roses overgrown | S |
| And lilies that you would it guess | G |
| To be a little wilderness | G |
| And all the spring time of the year | T |
| It only loved to be there | P |
| Among the beds of lilies I | U |
| Have sought it oft where it should lie | U |
| Yet could not till itself would rise | G |
| Find it although before mine eyes | G |
| For in the flaxen lilies' shade | M |
| It like a bank of lilies laid | M |
| Upon the roses it would feed | V |
| Until its lips even seemed to bleed | V |
| And then to me 'twould boldly trip | W |
| And print those roses on my lip | W |
| But all its chief delight was still | X |
| With roses thus itself to fill | X |
| And its pure virgin limbs to fold | C |
| In whitest sheets of lilies cold | C |
| Had it lived long it would have been | Y |
| Lilies without roses within | Y |
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| How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable It pervades all It comes over the sweet melody of the words over the gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself even over the half playful half petulant air with which she lingers on the beauties and good qualities of her favorite like the cool shadow of a summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets and all sweet flowers The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order Every line is an idea conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn or the artlessness of the maiden or her love or her admiration or her grief or the fragrance and warmth and appropriateness of the little nest like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay upon them and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on her face Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought in the few lines we have quotedthe wonder of the little maiden at the fleetness of her favorite the little silver feet the fawn challenging his mistress to a race with a pretty skipping grace running on before and then with head turned back awaiting her approach only to fly from it again can we not distinctly perceive all these things How exceedingly vigorous too is the line | Z |
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| And trod as if on the four winds | G |
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| A vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of the speaker and the four feet of the favorite one for each wind Then consider the garden of my own so overgrown entangled with roses and lilies as to be a little wilderness the fawn loving to be there and there only the maiden seeking it where it should lie and not being able to distinguish it from the flowers until itself would rise the lying among the lilies like a bank of lilies the loving to fill itself with roses | G |
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| And its pure virgin limbs to fold | C |
| In whitest sheets of lilies cold | C |
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| and these things being its chief delights and then the pre eminent beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines whose very hyperbole only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence the artlessness the enthusiasm the passionate girl and more passionate admiration of the bereaved child | A2 |
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| Had it lived long it would have been Lilies without roses within | Y |
Edgar Allan Poe
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