The beauty of the morning: silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; (Wordsworth, Upon Westminster Bridge.) Scorn not the sonnet! Critic, you have frowned It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land You silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From its own depths, and rest within you, dear, As through the billowy voices yearning here Great nature strives to find a human speech. sonnet is wave of melody; From heaving waters of the impassioned soul Flows in the 'octave'; then returning free, Its ebbing surges in the 'sestet' roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea. (Theodore Watts-Dunton, The Sonnet's Voice.) § 250. French Stanzas. Some artificial forms of French and Provençal lyrics were imitated in English but were never widely spread. It is a characteristic of some of these poems that one or two verses are repeated in certain positions. The scheme of the triolet is A Ba Aab AB, of the roundel A B ba ab A Bab ba A B (the repeated verses are shown by capitals). In the rondeau only the initial words of the first verse (a) are repeated after the eighth and thirteenth verses: a abba aab (a) a a b b a (a), so too in the nine-line roundel of Swinburne after the third and ninth verses: a b a (a) bab aba (a) (A Century of Roundels, Poet. Works V, 115-193). The scheme of the vilanelle is Alb A2 ab A1 a b A2 ab A1 a b A2 ab A1 A2. The sestine, which comes from Provençal poetry, consists of six six-line stanzas and a three-line conclusion. The six riming words of the first stanza appear in the following stanzas in continually changing order. The scheme is I a bedef, U faebdc, III cfdabe, IV ecbfad, V dea cfb, VI bdfeca. Finally the riming words appear in their original order in the caesura and at the end of the three verses of the envoy; cp. Swinburne's Sestina (Poet. Works III, 34), but here the riming words have a different order in the envoy. Swinburne also wrote a Double Sestina (The Complaint of Lisa, Poet. Works III, 42), which consists of twelve twelve-line stanzas and a six-line conclusion with a similarly changing order of the riming words. For examples of these stanzas and for further details see Schipper EM II, 886-935, Alden, EV, 358-388, Parsons EV 115-130, Johnson, Forms of Engl. Verse, 301-324 and Russell, Sonnets on the Sonnet, 85-98. Indexes. Numbers refer to paragraphs. Index I Accent, hovering 190. 206, in- verted 206. Accented metre 2. Chaucer's 193, crossed 94, Assonance 141. 142. Ballade 195. 205. Bar 3. Bestiary 134. Blank Verse 201. 205. 216, Bob-verse 174-5. 184. Genesis and Exodus 125. Gliding endings 64. Glottal stop 97. Heroic verse 186-192 213. Hexameter 205. 224. Hoccleve 196. Iamb 217. Inversion 187. Josephslied 133. Latin hymns 119, metres 245, Lagamon 107. Lengthened lines 11. 86-90. Lydgate 197. Masc. endings 64. Members and bars 123, four 61, in Brut 114. Monopressures 209. More 37. 42. 55. Octave 248. On god ureisun 130. Opening 165. 166, 169. Orrm 129. Ottava rima 194. 205. 213. 226. 247. Parts of Speech in OE. verse Pindaric ode 213. 242. 243. Poema morale 128. Poulter's measure 167. 212. 228. Prefixes, laws of 51. Quantitative metre 2. Quantity 207. Quatrains 166. Refrain 164. Resolved stress 28. Rime, breaking 167. 183, 187. 191, broken 139. 146, Chau- Roundel 250. Schwellverse 11. 86-90. Scotch poets 198 Septenary 158. 199. 211, in NE. 211. Sestet 248, |