Clad in garments cloud-wrought covered light above her,
Calm in cooling slumbers cradled, Earth hath laid her;
So to rest in silence, safe from heats that chafe her,
Till her troubled pulses truer beat and fewer.

Every throb is over, all to stillness fallen!

Flowers upon her forehead fling not yet, oh springtime!
Still yet stay awhile too, summertime, thy coming!
Linger yet still longer, lest we break her resting.

The Welsh are the ones for metres of this description, which they carry out much more comprehensively, sometimes every consonant in a verse being, without exception, responded to in the next; but it is a question whether the necessary formality of all melody by rule is not too prominent a feature to be altogether agreeable.

In Lord Lytton's 'Harold' we have a modern imitation of an old alliterative Saxon lay, entitled 'The Phoenix.' Its author presents it in the short form, divided where the midcapitals indicate-oddly occasionally :—

Shineth far hence, so Sing the wise elders,

Far to the fire-cast The fairest of lands.
Daintily dight is that Dearest of joy-fields;

Breezes all balm y-filled Glide through its groves.
There to the blest, ope The high doors of heaven,
Sweetly sweep earthward Their wavelets of song;
Frost robes the sward not, Rushes no hailsteel;

Wind-cloud ne'er wanders, Ne'er falleth the rain.

Here it may be observed that the odd syllable over,' met with if the verse be read in the forward run, need by no means be of the slight unsubstantial nature spoken as proper to it in blank verse, and elsewhere.

In modern English verse alliteration only plays the subordinate part of a modulant, not to be unduly decried where not overdone.

Where gently flows the waveless tide

By one small garden only,

Where the heron waves his wing so wide,

And the linnet sings so lonely.-GILLE MACREE.

6

As used by Gray in his ode of The Bard,' quoted elsewhere, it strikingly imparts vigour and melody.

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king

Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail

From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears-
To highborn Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay.

In the following, although perhaps not ill-applied, we view it coldly. The explanation, if we are not mistaken, is that blank verse has not sufficient swing and emphasis about it to give the alliteration due effect, making it seem to fall flat accordingly:

Then a piteous cry,

And from the purple baldachin down sprang
The princess gleaming like a ghost, and slid
Among the swords, and standing in the midst
Swept a wild arm of prohibition forth.
And in the hush her voice heavy with scorn:
Or shall I call you men or beasts? who seem
No nobler than the bloodhound and the wolf,
Which scorn to prey upon
their proper
kind!
Christians I will not call you who defraud
That much-misapprehended holy name,
Of reverence due by such a deed as done,
Will clash against the charities of Christ
And make a marred thing and a mockery
Of the fair face of mercy.

It is the custom, now-a-days, to sneer at every form of alliteration, and yet accept rhyme; but obviously this is absurd, for if alliteration differs in anything from the other constituents of melody, it is in being too decided, forcing itself upon the notice, and so becoming vulgar, which as said is in fully as great degree the fault of its rival.

XVII.

JUNCTIONS.

It has been remarked that many verses may be written in half or whole lengths at pleasure. When, however, either member has adopted the latitude allowable at the beginning and end of verses in ordinary, it is obvious the two members in junction will wear a very different metrical aspect, either to the single portions or to the line conjoined without variations.

In the following tripping metre, the first member lacking a syllable, the measure is broken, and two accents come together :

Broad the forests stood, I read, on the hills of Linteged.

And three hundred years had stood mute adown each hoary wood,

Like a full heart having prayed.

And the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
And but little thought was theirs of the silent antique years,
In the building of their nest.

Down the sun dropt large and red on the towers of Linteged-
Lance and spear upon the height, bristling strange in fiery light,
While the castle stood in shade.-MRS. BROWNING.

So, again, with the exception of the first line:

Hollow is the oak beside the sunny waters drooping;
Thither came, when I was young, happy children trooping;
Dream I now, or hear I now-far, their mellow whooping?
Gay below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances;
There I lay beguiling time, when I lived romances,
Dropping pebbles in the wave, fancies into fancies.

BULWER LYTTON.

Curtness of the first member, indeed, necessitates irregular junction, for if the loss be attempted to be made up afterwards-that is, the second member begin with an unaccented syllable-instead of the tripping measure being kept up unbroken, it simply lapses into the forward run. Of this the first line above is an example.

In the irregular junction of verse in the forward run, instead of a syllable omitted the question is of one added.

He is gone on the mountain, he is lost to the forest,

Like a summer-dried fountain, when our need was the sorest;
The fount reappearing from the raindrops shall borrow,

But to us comes no cheering, to Duncan no morrow.-SCOTT.

And the ships that came from England, when the winter months were gone,

Brought no tidings of this vessel, nor of Master Lamberton;

This put the people to praying that the Lord would let them hear,
What in his greater wisdom he had done with friends so dear,
And at last their prayers were answered-it was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset of a windy afternoon.-LONGFELLOW.

It is seen the verse thus arranged takes a sort of leap at the cesural position, unlike anything we have observed before.

In the next, which is somewhat peculiar, every line is divided by a central cesura of free junction:

Rests my cheek upon my hand, rests my elbow on the table,
Like a man who would in earnest compel himself to muse;
But my thoughts are in revolt from a will become unable
To consolidate in order the freedom they abuse.

Still I seek, I yearn, I pray, to fasten firm decision,

To the choice that must determine the lot of waning life;
What is best for me seems clear through all shadow to my vision,
The Sabbath day of quiet, after working days of strife.

Ah! to watch on lawns remote, in the deep of Sabine valleys,
How the sunset gilds the cypress growing high beside my home,
While the ringdove's latest coo lulls the fading forest alleys,
Were sweeter for life's evening than the roar and smoke of Rome.
BULWER LYTTON.

Here, immediately preceding the cesura, are in every case two march feet, the former of the two frequently a hover. Preceding this again a quantum of either two or three syllables, generally the latter, which follow the attraction of the other feet in inclining to the forward run. Some lines wear the aspect of trip throughout; but as they can incline the other way, they do.

Simple change from march into trip is feasible enough, though quite ignored in modern poetry.

The king was in his counting-house Counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour Eating bread and honey,
The maid was in the garden Hanging out the clothes,
Along came a blackbird and Snapped off her nose.
Sweet came the hallow chiming Of the Sabbath bell,
Borne on the morning breezes Down the woody dell.
On a bed of pain and anguish Lay dear Annie Lisle ;
Changed were the lovely features, Gone the happy smile.

Writing the two lines in one after this fashion, it would be positively open to consider the last member forward or backward, the determination resting on the degree of force given to the cesura.

Though not junctions of the cesural kind, it may be as well to include in this section all changes from one run to the other. The following begin in tripping measure, and then change to march, so that there are two unaccented syllables between accents at a certain point, imparting a lively effect. The arrangement is, indeed, no other than that characterised as the strong beginning carried more into the body of the verse :

To and fro on the waters swaying

Over the pitiless ocean grave,
Just as lissomly lightly playing

With the still as the stormy wave.

Serious worth in its airy gladness,

Sports the Buoy to its anchor true:

Faithless heart, wilt thou sink in sadness?

Rise to tell of an anchor too.-BULWER LYTTON.

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,

Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,

Look, I come to the touch a tiny poem,
All composed in a metre of Catullus;
All in quantity careful of my motion,
Like a 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.-TENNYSON.