Stanza Forms in English Literature

A stanza may be defined as a group of lines of poetry, forming a unit in

themselves. Thus the stanza is the unit of organisation in poetry, just as the
paragraph is in prose. In many cases the stanzas composing a poem are quite
irregular alike in length and structure, as in Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations
of Immortality and Tennyson’s Maud. But as a rule, a poem is built up of units or
sections strictly identical in form. Regular stanzas are commonly defined by the
number of their lines and the arrangement of the rimes which bind these lines
together. The stanza-forms of English poetry are so numerous and varied that no
complete study of them can be attempted here; but the following may be mentioned as
some of the best known examples of stanza-forms in English.
1. The Chaucerian Stanza or Rhyme Royal
The Chaucerian stanza is so-called because it was first used in England by Chaucer,
“the father of English poetry.” Most probably he borrowed it from France. It is
also called Rhyme Royal because it was used by King James I of Scotland in the 15th
century for his well-known poem King’s Quair.
The Chaucerian Stanza is a stanza of seven Iambic Pentametre lines. In this stanza
the first line rhymes with the third, the second with the fourth and fifth, and the
last two lines rhyme together, thus forming a couplet. The rhyme-schme is a a b, a
b b, c c. The stanza is particularly suited for narrative verse, and Chaucer used
it for several stories in The Canterbury Tales. Shakespeare used it for his The
Rape of Lucrece, and in he Victorian Age it was used by William Morris for his The
EarthlyParadise. Here is an example of the Chaucerian Stanza:

Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating, die!

Respect and reason, wait on wrinkled age!
My heart shall never countermand mine eye;
Sad pause and deep regard beseem the stage;
My part is youth, and beats these from the stage;
Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize;
Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?

2. The Ottava Rhyma

This stanza-form was first used in England in the early 16th century by Sir Thomas
Wyatt. He frequently went to Italy on diplomatic missions, and it was from there
that he introduced this stanza – form into England. Like the Chaucerian Stanza it
is also well suited for narrative purpose. It has also been used for satiric
purposes. Shelley used it for his The Witch of Atlas, Keats for his The Pot of
Basil,and Byron for his Don Juan.
Ottava Rhyma is a stanza of eight Iambic Pentametre lines. The first line rhymes
with the third and fifth, the second with the fourth and sixth, and the last two
lines rhyme together, and thus form a couplet. In other words the stanza consists
of six lines rhyming alternately with a couplet at the end. The rhyme scheme of the
stanza is a b, a b, a b, c c.
Here is an example of Ottava Rhyma from Byron’s Don Juan:
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
‘Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
Men have, all these resources, we but one,
To love again, and be again undone.

3. Spensarian Stanza
The stanza is so-called because it was first used by the poet Spenser for his
romantic epic, “The Fairy Queen”. It is a stanza consisting of eight Iambic
Pentametre lines and an Alexandrine or a line of twelve syllables at the end. The
first line rhymes with the third; the second, fourth, fifth and seventh lines rhyme
together, and the sixth line rhymes with the eighth one and the nineth. The rhyme
scheme is a b a b, b c b c, c. It is a very difficult stanza to handle, for in it
one rhyme is repeated four times, and another three times. This naturally puts a
severe strain on the skill and resources of a poet. He must have full command over
language, to find so many words with similar end sounds. Even then the stanza is
admirably suited for long narrative and descriptive poems. Spenser used it with
great success for his Fairy Queen, and ever since poets have frequently used it
with more or less success. In the early 18th century, James Thomson used it for his
Castle of Indolence. It was used by Byron for his Child Harold, by Keats for The
Eve of St. Agnes, by Shelley for The Revolt of Islam and Adonais, and by Tennyson
for The Lotos-Eaters.
Here is an example of the Spensarian Stanza from Shelley’s Adonais:
Ah woe is me? Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
The arts and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows, reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season’s bier
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard and the golden snake,
Like un imprisoned flames, out of their trance awake,

4. The Terza Rhyma

The Terza Rhyma is an Italian verse-form, and it was first used with great success
by the Italian poet Dante for his monumental epic, The Divine Comedy. In England it
was used with considerable success by Shelley for his Ode to the West Wind. Byron’s
Prophecy of Dante, Browning’s The Statute and the Bust, and William Morris’ The
Defence of Guenevere are also written in this stanza.
The Terza Rhyma is simply a group of three lines forming a unit. In this stanza
first line rhymes with the third, and the second line rhymes with the first and
third of the following tercet (group of three lines). In this way each tercet is
linked up with the next, the first with the second, the second with the third, and
so on. A tercet may be run on or closed. In a run on tercet the sense overflows or
runs on from one tercet to another. On the other hand in the closed variety, each
tercet forms a complete sentence. Both these types have been used in England, but
the run on variety has been generally favoured.
The rhyme-scheme of any two tercets would be a b a, b c b, and so on for the
following tercets.
Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind provides typical examples of Terza Rhyma:
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presense the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
with living hues and odours plain and hill.

5. The Quatrain
A Quatrain is a stanza of four Iambic lines with alternate rhymes i.e. the first
line rhymes with the third, and the second with the fourth. However, variations of
this rhyme-scheme are frequent. Similarly, the length of the lines also varies. The
lines may be Pentametre, Tetrametre, or even shorter. Sometimes, the first and
third lines are longer than the second and fourth lines. Most of the ballads in the
English language have been written in Quatrains, so it is also referred to as
theBallad-stanza. Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner and Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans
Merci are the two poems in this form which readily come to one’s mind.
Here is an example of a Quatrain from The Ancient Mariner:
The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he !
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

6. The Heroic Couplet

The Heroic Couplet consists of two Iambic Pentametre lines rhyming together. It is
called ‘Heroic’ because Iambic Pentametre verse rhymed or unrhymed, was first used
for epic or heroic poetry. It is an important measure as far as English poetry is
concerned. Most of the poetry of the Augustan Age (the age of Dryden and Pope 1660
– 1750) is cast in this measure.
Each line of the heroic couplet consists of five feet or ten syllables, and the
second syllable of each foot is accented. The two lines of the couplet rhyme, and
the rhyme may be single or double, though Pope, the ablest practitioner of the
verse-form, generally uses single rhymes. In the middle there is a pause,
technically called the ‘Caesura’. This pause generally falls after the fourth and
before the sixth syllable. But variations in the placing of the pause may be
skillfully introduced in keeping with the requirements of thought and emotion.
Further, there may be variations not only in the placing of the Caesura but also in
its depth. Sometimes, this pause is so slight that it seems there is no pause at
all.
The chief characteristics of the heroic couplet are well-illustrated by the
following one:
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform, just reflects the other.
Each line of the couplet has five feet and the second syllable in each foot is
accented. The position of pause is indicated by the comma. The last syllable of
‘brother’ rhymes with the last syllable of ‘other’.
The heroic couplet may be of two kinds – closed or run on. In the closed couplet
the sense is competed with each couplet and each thus forms a complete sentence, a
unit in itself. The couplet cited above is of a closed variety. In the run-on
variety, the sense runs on from one couplet to another till it is completed. In
this case, the individual couplet does not form a unit, but the unit is formed by a
group of couplets which complete the sense, and this larger unit is called the
verse-paragraph.
The Heroic Couplet was first used in England by Chaucer who might have learned it
from French sources. He used this measure for many of the stories in theCanterbury
Tales. Spenser used it with great skill for his Mother Hubbard’s Tale,Marlowe too
used it with great success for his Hero and Leander.
However, it was in the Augustan age that the Heroic Couplet came to its own. At the
very beginning of the era poets Waller and Denham showed great skill in its use.
“The excellence and dignity of rhyme,” says Dryden, “were never fully known till
Mr. Waller taught it: he first made writing easily an art; first showed us to
conclude the sense, most commonly in a distich.” Pope pays a tribute to both:
And praise the vigor of a line,
Where Denham’s strength and Waller’s sweetness join;
However, it was with Pope and Dryden that the couplet entered on its most glorious
phase. Both of them used it as the instrument of their satire. It has been said
that each of their couplets stings and the sting is located in the tail. Dryden
used it for his Absalom and Achitophel and Macflecknoe, and Pope for his Rape of
the Lock and Dunciad. He also used it for such narrative and philosophical works
asEssay on Man and Essay on Criticism. Their use of the couplet is characterised by
ease, vigour, strength and sweetness. Dryden’s use of it is more flexible, and
variety is introduced in various ways. Often he uses run-on Couplets. Pope’s use of
it is rigid. His couplets are generally of the closed variety. In his hands, the
couplet reached perfection; no couplet of his can be improved upon.
Pope was widely imitated throughout the 18th century. But his followers did not
have his genius and his ability and in their hands the couplet degenerated into a
mere mechanical art and became monotonous. With the coming of the romantics there
was a re-action against it. The romantics turned away from the couplet to other
measures. However, the use of the couplet was not entirely discarded. Byron,
Shelley and Keats all used it along with other verse-forms. Moreover, they used the
run-on (or enjambed) variety of the couplet and not the closed one as was the case
with Dryden and Pope. Keats’ Lamia is written in run-on couplets. A generation
later, in the Victorian era, the couplet was used first by Browning and then by
William Morris and Swinburne. The couplet continues to be used, specially for
narrative poetry, but it is no longer the exclusive verse-form of English poetry,
as it was in the Augustan Age. It has been considerably loosened, and hardly
resembles the couplets of Pope and Dryden.

7. Octosyllabic Couplet
In the end, mention may also be made of the Octosyllabic Couplet. It differs from
the Heroic Couplet, in as much as each line in it consists of eight syllables or
four feet and not of ten syllables or five feet. It is a difficult measure to
handle, and its use in long narrative poems tends to grow mechanical and tiresome.
However, in the Restoration era (1660 – 1700) Samuel Butler used it with great
success for his satirical poem Sir Hudibras. In the romantic age, Coleridge used it
successfully for his Christabel.

8. Satire
The word satire is derived from the Latin “Satura Lanks”. Long defines it as, ‘a
literary work which searches out the faults of men or institutions in order to hold
them up to ridicule.” According to Dryden, “the true end of satire is the amendment
of vices by correction”. But the best definition seems to be that given by Richard
Garnett, who defines satire as,
“The expression in adequate terms of the sense of amusement or disgust excited by
the ridiculous or unseemly, provided that humour is a distinctly recognised
element, and that the utterance is invested with literary form. Without humour
satire is invective; without literary form, it is mere clownish jeering.”
Thus the main characteristics of satire are:
(a) Literary form of expression.
(b) Disgust at the ridiculous, the ugly, and the foolish.
(c) Humour.
(d) A sincere desire to correct or reform.
A good satirist is a critic whose aim is to reform or correct human weaknesses,
vices or follies, and the weapon which he uses for his purposes is that of
laughter. His aim is to laugh folly out of countenance, or to scorn it into shame.
He rarely attacks directly, but clothes his attack in allegory, fable, mock-heroic,
parody of burlesque. Concentration and brevity intensify the effect, so verse is a
better medium for satire than prose, though there have been good satirists in prose
also. The example of Swift readily comes to mind as one of the best English
satirists using the medium of prose.
Satire may be of two kinds (a) Personal, and (b) Impersonal. Personal satire is
aimed at some individual. It, too, can be effective in the hands of a master, but
generally it has a tendency to degenerate into vituperation and personal
invectives. It is also ephemeral and short-lived. In impersonal or genuine satire,
the satirist passes from the individual to the type, from the ephemeral to the
eternal and universal. Types are among the finest achievements of impersonal
satire. It has a wider sweep, individuals are used as examples of the vices and
follies that infect the age.
Satire is as old as literature itself; but the Romans were the first great
satirists. Perseus, Horace and Juvenal were the great Roman satirists who laid down
the lines for the future development of this channel of literature. The satire of
Horace laughs at mankind; that of Perseus indignantly lashes at mankind; while
Juvenal hates and despises mankind. The satire of Pope is generally Horatian in
tone, though occasionally it becomes bitter, caustic and venomous like that of
Juvenal. Church and woman were the usual targets of satire in the middle ages.
Langland lashes at the corrupt clergy of the times, and Chaucer, too, has his fling
at them and at women. In the Elizabethan era the Puritan, the affected traveller
and women were the common object of satire. The Age of Milton witnessed the rise of
political satire. Samuel Bulter satirises the false chivalry of the age in
Hudibras, which is the best piece in this genre before Dryden. In the late 17th and
early 18th centuries, we find Dryden, Swift and Pope satirising their personal and
political enemies, though when at their best, they rise from the personal to the
impersonal. Politics and literary rivalry are all transformed by them into genuine
satire and we get a general view of the follies and vices of the period.
Swift’s best satire is Gulliver’s Travels which is, on its face, a book of travels
to strange lands of pygmies, giants, and horses. Swift’s purpose was to expose the
vices and follies of mankind by ridiculing them. Man is reduced to the shortness of
the Lilliputians or magnified into the gross Brobdingnagians, or contrasted with
the equine virtues of the Houyhnhnms. The effectiveness of such a satire depends on
the invention with which the irony makes evident the likeness between the real
world and the imaginary. So successful was Swift’s invention that ever since the
book was published, children have read the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingang as
fairy stories, without worrying about the satire. So effective is the irony that
Gulliver’s Travels remains one of the most appealing exposures of human weakness.
Among the novelists, Fielding and Smolett rank very high as satirists. Fielding’s
novels present a picture of contemporary society, and its many follies, foibles,
weaknesses and vices are expressed and ridiculed. His aim was always reformative
and it was after his Amelia that many reforms in the administration of jails and
the administration of justice could be pulled through. Tobias Smollet satirises
mankind in general, and again and again in his novels man is reduced to the level
of insects.
Satire in the 19th century: In the 18th century, satire both in verse and prose
reached its zenith. But in the 19th century also we find a number of vigorous
satirists. Among the romantics, Lord Gordon Byron excelled in satire. He began as a
satirist and ended as a satirist. The major poetic production of his early period
was English bards and Scotch Reviewers and the last work Don Juan was an epic
satire on society. In these two satires Byron, to quote Oliver Elton, “is a young
tiger-cub lashing out with sharp and clumsy claws’ In 1822, Byron came out with
another vigour’s satire. The Vision of Judgment. The satire is directed against
George III and is a repudiation of the high praise lavished on him by Southey. The
king is represented as base and mean, for he creeps into heaven like a sneaking
coward.
Don Juan is an epic satire, and is undoubtedly Byron’s best work. Its panoramic
survey of human society of Europe, with all the foibles and weaknesses of social
institutions, is truly staggering in its satirical wit. Charges of insincerity and
hypocrisy are brought against Byron and his attack on virtue has called upon him
the wrath of the moralists. But Byron defended himself against these charges in the
following words:
“I was willing to plead guilty of having sometimes represented vice under alluring
colours but it was so generally in the world and, therefore, it was necessary to
point it so.”
Among the Victorians, Dickens and Thackeray are two vigorous satirists who survey
the society of their times and expose and ridicule its many weaknesses, its
hypocrisy, its materialism, its greed, social climbing, snobbery, etc. Dickens’
novels are novels of social reform and he uses the weapon of satire to bring about
reform in a number of social institutions – schools, prison administration, and
administration of justice, etc. His satire is mild and gentle, pure humour being
more characteristic of him. Carlyle and Ruskin were also fired with the Zeal of
social reform, and we find them attacking vigorously a number of social
institutions of the day. They were clear-headed thinkers fully alive to the
prevalent social evils, and they use the weapon of irony to effect their purpose.
However, they can also be fierce and direct in their denunciation of the existing
social system. Matthew Arnold, too, was a bitter critic of the society of his day,
and philistinism of the age, the vulgarisation of cultural values, comes frequently
within his lash.
Satire in the Modern Age: Satire continue unabatted in the 20th century. It is an
age of interrogation, and the cherished ideals and beliefs, and cherished social
institutions, are subjected to severe scrutiny. George Bernard Shaw is a vigorous
satirist who in his plays holds up to the test of reason the most valued ideals and
institutions. Nothing escapes his searching eye; every folly, weakness or vice
comes within the lash of his satire. Samuel Butler is another great satirist who in
his The Way of All Flash and Erewhon has satirically exposed and ridiculed the
shortcomings of the times. Estimating his greatness as a satirist of the later
nineteenth century; but not in the first rank of satirist Hugh Walker writes
“Butlerstands clearly at the head of the satire of the later nineteenth century;
but not in the first rank of satirists, and still less in the first rank of
literature. Swift, with whom his affinities are most obvious, is far superior in
breadth of range, in force of thought, and in keenness of wit. On the other hand,
Butler is much more humane: but this unfortunately is an advantage which diminished
with time. The Way of All Flesh is far less pleasant and humane than Erewhon.”
Mention may also be made of Aldous Huxley who, in his successive novels, has
ridiculed contemporary science and the tall claims that are made on its behalf.
Satire may change its form, it may be more vigorous in some ages than in others,
but it will continue as long as mankind continues to be imperfect.
Poetic Diction
What is Poetic Diction?
English neo-classical poets, like their French counterparts, were very particular
about the division of poetry into various kinds of genres-such as the elegy, the
heroic poem, the satire, the epic, and so on.
They upheld the principle of decorum which demands that for every kind a particular
style is needed and that there should not be any confusion of styles. Further, they
drove a wedge between the language of prose and the language of serious poetry. For
lower genres like satire they did not mind using the language and idiom of prose,
but for the elegy, the heroic poem, the epic, and such like genres, what they aimed
at employing was a language as far removed from the lowly prose as possible.
Obviously, in an epic such words as pot, broom, or even door could not be used, as
their presence would create a bathetic effect. Consequently, a special language of
poetry was devised, and later traditionalized, by the practice of poet after poet.
This special language, somewhat stilted and artificial, ruled the roost for decades
and was challenged only by Wordsworth at the end of the eighteenth century. In the
Preface to -the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) Wordsworth vehemently
protested against what he called “the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many
modern writers”. He further protested “There will also be found in these volumes
little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pain has been taken to
avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it.” Wordsworth was against the very
principle of the division of language into the language of prose and the language
of poetry. He went so far as to assert that “there neither Js, nor can be any
essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition-Poetry
sheds no tears ‘such as Angels weep’, but natural and human tears: she can boast of
no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the
same human blood circulates through the-veins of both.” Coleridge in Biographia
Literaria controverted Wordsworth’s point of view. He maintained that there ought
to be some difference between the language of poetry and that of prose, as there
should be some difference between the language of prose and that of actual
conversation. “I write,” said Coleridge, “in meter because I am about to use a
language different from that of prose.” It may be pointed out here that Wordsworth
did not only criticize the language (diction) used by many of his predecessors but
also their frequent indulgence in archaisms (both of grammar and vocabulary) and
various other “poetic licenses” pressed into service for poetizing their language
and consequently removing it as far from the language of prose as possible. Robert
Bridges in his essay “Poetic diction in English” in Collected Essays (1910)
observes: “The revolt against the old diction is a reaction which in its general
attitude is rational: and it is in line with the reaction of “The Lake School” of
poetry, familiar to all students in Wordsworth’s statement, and Coleridge’s
criticism and correction of that statement in his Biographia Literaria. Both
movements alike protest against all archaisms of vocabulary and grammar and what
are called literary forms and plead for the simple terms and direct forms of common
speech.”

Its History and Examples:

It is usual to blame Dryden and Pope—the protagonists of the neo-classical school
of poetry-as the poets who established the so-called poetic diction in England.
However, it is not Dryden and Pope but their imitators who ought to be blamed, for
it was they who thought that poetic diction could be a substitute for poetic
inspiration. But poetry is not diction alone. It is so many thing besides. “In all
fields of Art,” observes Robert Bridges in the essay mentioned above, “the
imitators are far more numerous than the artists and they will copy the externals
in poetry, the Versification and the Diction which in their hands become futile”.
Eighteenth-century poetic diction does not start with Pope. The vast fund of poetic
diction could not be created overnight. It was rather the cumulative result of the
efforts of a large number of poets spread over many years.
Nevertheless, broadly speaking, it is Joshua Sylvester who can be credited with the
use for the first time of that peculiar phraseology which goes under the label of
poetic diction. In his verse translation of the French poet Du Bartas’ epic La
Semaine we come across numberless ‘”poetic ornaments” and extravagances which are
rather unimaginatively flung here, there, and everywhere. Both Du Bartas in his
original French composition and Sylvester in his English translation employed a
very large number of expressions derived from Latin instead of their native
equivalents. Such expressions ultimately formed a fair’s lame proportion of poetic
diction. The tendency of ‘Du Bartas and Sylvester to use Latinisms was chiefly
dictated, apart from the consideration of ornamental value, by their search for
compression. Verbs and participle adjectives derived from Latin were evidently more
concise than their composite equivalents in French and English. For illustration
see the following lines by Sylvester:
A novice Thief (that in a Closet spies
A heap of Gold, that on the Table lies)
Pale, fearful, shivering twice or thrice extends,
And twice or thrice retires his fingers’ ends.
……………………
The unpurgedAire to Water would resolve,
And Water would the mountain tops involve.
Another method of compression employed by Sylvester and the later poets was of the
“pictorial” kind. For instance, for the loadstone, “iron mistress”; for the sea,
“watery camp”; for the fish, “scaly crew”; and so on. A very common procedure was
to frame a two-worded phrase with “round” as the second word and some epithet as
the first. All-these practices contributed towards the proliferation of eighteenth-
century poetic diction.
Many poets of the seventeenth century accepted the lead of Sylvester. Among them
may be mentioned Drayton, William Browne, Sandys, Benlowes, Milton, and Dryden.
Sandys, the translator of Ovid, did the most, before Dryden, to popularize poetic
diction through his own example. He had taken upon himself the task of translating
Ovid into an almost equal number of lines in English. Moreover, he was to employ
pentameters, not the hexameters of the original. This put him to the necessity of
compression, more particularly because Latin itself is a much more concise language
than English. Naturally enough, Sandy’s had to have a recourse to the methods of
Sylvester and also to devise a number of formulas of his own. The result was that
the language, of metrical composition moved farther and farther from the language
of prose or the language of actual conversation which was to be advocated by
Wordsworth for use in metrical composition.
The translations of Lucan rendered by Thomas May (1626-27) and Rowe (1718) show
much indebtedness to Sylvester and Sandys. So do Milton’s minor and some of his
major poems. In’ Lycidas, for instance, Milton uses various phrases which have the
ring of poetic diction and many more which are used for their poetic beauty and
even “unnaturalness”. Dr. Johnson expressed his keen dislike ofLycidasor the ground
that much in it was unnatural or away from common experience.’ After Milton it was
Dryden, the founder of the neo classical school of poetry, who really established
poetic diction so firmly that it continued reigning uninterrupted for about a
hundred years to follow. Specifically speaking, it was in his translation of Virgil
that, to maintain the dignity of the original, he employed high strung diction. In
his satires, however, his diction and idiom are nearer the language of prose.
Satire, as we have already pointed out, was considered by the neo-classicists a low
genre, and, as such, was not deemed to require any specially wrought diction and
idiom.

The Role of Pope:

In this respect Pope thought alike with Dryden. In his satires we have not much of
the so-called poetic diction. They are couched in a conversational language
unadorned with poetic gewgaws. Consider, for instance, the opening lines of
hisEpistle to Arbuthnot:
Shut, shut, the door, good John! fatigu’d I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead.
Pope was very much particular about the demands of decorum–the appropriateness of
the style to the subject or the genre. As he says in the Essay on Criticism,’
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable:
For different styles with different subjects sort,
As several garbs with country, town and court.
In practice he was very particular even about the style of his letters. Spence
reports these words of Pope: “It is idle to say that letters should be written in
an easy familiar style: that, like most other general rules, will not hold. The
style, in letters as in all other things, should be adapted to the subject”.
It is in his translation of Homer that Pope makes the maximum use of poetic
diction. Pope felt that the sublimity and grandeur of the original were incapable
of being conveyed in ordinary, familiar English phrases. So he had to coin new ones
and had to borrow numerous others from his predecessors. His Homer has been almost
universally and wholly held responsible for the creation of eighteenth-century
poetic diction. To quote some opinions. Consider first Coleridge’s who called it
“the main source of our pseudo poetic diction.” Southey asserted that it had “done
more than any or all other books, towards the corruption of our poetry.” Whatever
be the other faults of Pope’s Homer, it is evident that is was not the originator
of poetic diction. Pope was merely following a tradition and passing it on to his
successors. Geoffrey Tillotson observes in this connexion: “Pope’s Homer is
certainly the greatest work which used this diction.‘ But Pope did not invent the
diction. When he used it he was drawing from and adding to a fund which had been
growing for more than a hundred years, a fund which has been argumented and
improved by the ‘progressive’ poets of the seventeenth century that is, by those
who stand in the direct line of development.”
Pope used poetic diction in his Homer with a definitely utilitarian purpose in
view. The compression, sublimity, and archaic flavour of the original could be
captured, he felt, only by the use of a peculiar diction. He did not use it, as
many of his successors did, for the purpose of ornament or for camouflaging in
attractive trappings the spells of poetic sterlity. He would, as he tells us,
Show no mercy to an empty line.
Pope is one of the most concise of English poets, though, to quote Tillotson again,
he “makes no fuss about his conciseness as Browning does.” The only senselessly
prolix lines in his poetry are those in which he parodies the senseless prolixity
of others. This is how-.he satirises the emptiness of his rivals in pastoral
poetry:
Of gentle Philips will I ever sing,
With gentle Philips shall the valleys ring.
My number too for ever will I vary,
With gentle Budgell and with gentle Carey.
Or if in ranging of the names i judge ill,
wih gentle carey and with gentle Budgell.
Pope, in fact, condemns the needless, unthinking use of poetic diction. In Peri
bathous he lashes the foolish poets who, as he puts it, instead of writing the
plainshut the door (as he himself wrote in the first line of the Epistle to
Arbuthnotquoted above) write:
The wooden guardian of our privacy,
Quick on its axle turn.

After Pope:
After Pope poetic diction ruled supreme right till the end of the eighteenth
century. The names of almost all the poets of the century are associated with its
use. Dr. Johnson, Collins, Cowper-all made use of it and augmented and consolidated
its fund, words worth in the Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads
quotes verses from Dr. Johnson, Cowper, and Gray and points out how their diction
differs from the words used in speech and in written prose. He calls them bad
poetry for this reason. Those who really did the most mischief were not these
poets, however, but the numberless imitators of Pope who made the language of
Poetry altogether fantastic, and altogether lifeless and conventional. Hence
Wordsworth went to the opposite extreme. In the keen desire for fresh air a few
windows are likely to get broken. In condemning the poetic diction of the
eighteenth century, Wordsworth went to the extent of condemning all the poetry
which employed this diction. Hence Tillotson’s complaint: ” The poetic diction of
good eighteenth-century poetry has been much misunderstood, and denunciation of it
has sometimes been taken as the automatic denunciation of the poetry as a whole”.
We must allow eighteenth-century English poetry its due, in spite of our
disapproval of its poetic diction.
Subjective Poetry and its different forms

(A) THE LYRIC

The lyric: Its Nature; Its Kinds
The lyric is the commonest kind of the poetry of self-expression. Man has always
liked to pour out his intensely-felt feelings and emotion, and hence the lyric is
among the earliest forms of poetry to be written in the literary history of any
people. When moved by some intense emotion, love, hatred, joy, sorrow, wonder,
admiration, etc., man has always expressed himself in a poetic language, and this
accounts for the early appearance of the lyric among all peoples.
In the beginning, the word ‘lyric’ was used for any song meant to be sung with the
‘lyre’, a stringed musical instrument known to the Greeks. In course of time this
musical accompaniment of the lyric was dropped and the word came to signify any
short poem or song expressing the personal emotions and experiences of the poet. A
lyric may embody any kind of emotion. Says Hudson in this connection, “a lyric is
almost unlimited in range and variety, for it may touch nearly all aspects of
experience, from those which are most narrowly individual to those which involve
the broadest interests of our common humanity. Thus we have the convival or
bachanalian lyric; The lyric which skims the lighter things of life, as in the so–
called verse de societe; the lyric of love in all its phases, and with all its
attendant hopes and longings, joys and sorrows; the lyric of patriotism; the lyric
of religious emotion: and countless other kinds which it is unnecessary to attempt
to tabulate.” There is also the reflective lyric in which the element of thought
becomes prominent, and the poet philosophises on human life and human experiences.

Essentials of a Good Lyric

The chief qualities of a good lyric may be summarized as follows:
1. It is a short poem, characterised by simplicity in language and
treatment.
2. It deals with a single emotion which is generally stated in the first
few lines. Then the poet gives us the thoughts suggested by that particular
emotion. The last and concluding part is in the nature of a summary or it embodies
the conclusion reached by the poet. Such is the development of a lyric in general,
but often these three parts are not distinctly marked. In moments of intense
emotional excitement the poet may be carried away by his emotions and the lyric may
develop along entirely different lines. A lyric is more often than not, mood-
dictated.
3. It is musical. Verbal-music is an important element in its appeal and
charm. Various devices are used by poets to enhance the music of their lyrics.
4. A lyric is always an expression of the moods and emotions of a poet. The
best lyrics are emotional in tone. However, a poet may not express merely his
emotions, he may also analyse them intellectually. This gives to the lyric a hard
intellectual tone. Such intellectual analysis of emotion is an important
characteristic of the metaphysical lyrics of the early 17th century. Such lyrics
are also more elaborate than the ordinary lyric.
5. It is characterised by intensity and poignancy. The best lyrics are the
expressions of intensely felt emotions. Like fire, the intensity of the poet’s
emotion burns out the non-essentials, all attention is concentrated and the basic
emotion, and the gain in poignancy is enormous. It comes directly out of the heart
of the poet, and so goes directly to the heart of the readers. The lyric at its
best is poignant, pathetic and intense.
6. Spontaneity is another important quality of a lyric. The lyric poet
sings in strains of unpremeditated art. He sings effortlessly because he must,
because of the inner urge for self-expression. Any conscious effort on his part,
makes the lyric look unnatural and artificial.

The Elizabethan Lyric

The Elizabethan age was the glorious age of the English. In this age everyone sang,
down from the flowery courtier to the man in the street. It was also on the stage,
and lyrics are scattered all over the plays of dramatists like Shakespeare. The
Elizabethan lyric is sweet and musical, but it is characterised by artificiality as
the lyrics were composed because it was a fashion to write lyrics, and not because
the poets really had any urge for self-expression.
The Elizabethan lyric has some well-defined characteristics of its own: (a) In the
best of them there is a fine, “blending of the genius of the people and the
artistic sense awakened by humanism.” The song had always been there, but the song
of popular tradition was unrefined and coarse. In the most successful Elizabethan
lyric, “the rudeness and clumsiness of the popular muse has been penetrated by
graceful refinements of Vocabulary and a pliability of versification previously
unknown to her.” (b) While the best lyrics have a perfection which is never re-
captured, in lesser hands it degenerates into mere artifice and pedantry. Hence the
artificiality of much of Elizabethan lyricism. (c) Moreover, many compose lyrics
merely because it is the fashion to do so, and not because they have genuine
inspiration. They sing of love, without being lovers, and of nature without having
any real feeling for her charms. Hence the insincerity, conventionalism and
affectation of many an Elizabethan lyric. The poets have brilliant fancy but little
passion. (d) The Elizabethan lyric differs from the romantic lyric in as much as it
is not the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion. It is not the outpouring of
the poet’s soul, it lacks intensity and passion. It is impersonal in character
rather than subjective. The lover is commonly represented as a shepherd, a device
which separates the lover and the poet. The poet seems to be in love with love
itself, and not with any real woman (e) A vein of moralising runs through the
lyric. The poet frequently generalises on the folly of love or the pain or idolatry
of lovers. The happiness of lowly desire, the tranquillity of a virtuous mind, the
superiority of a shepherds’ life to that of a king, etc., are often pointed out by
the poet. (f) Thanks to the prevailing taste for music, the Elizabethan lyric is
very musical. Alliteration and other verbal devices are frequently used to make the
lyric musical. (g) The lyric lacks originality. The poets are afraid of breaking
new ground. They seek respectability for their efforts, “either by basing them upon
accepted classic or by chanting them to hymn-like airs,” (S.A. Brooke). “In the
Elizabethan lyric are blended the aroma of antiquity and the secret of modernity.”

Lyric in the 17th Century

With the exception of Milton’s epics, the poetry of the early 17th century
comprises of lyrics which may be divided into three categories: (a) the
metaphysical lyric, (b) the religious lyric, and (c) the Caroline or Cavalier
lyric. The metaphysical lyric is more elaborate than an ordinary lyric, and is
hard, intellectual in tone. John Donne, the founder of the metaphysical school of
poetry, intellectualised the English lyric. He also has the credit of writing some
of the finest love-lyrics in the English language. Some of the most poignant of the
religious lyrics in the language also belong to him.
Every one of the lyrics has its origin in some emotional situation, and as the
lyric proceeds the poet analyses intellectually that particular emotion. The
emotion is discussed and analysed almost threadbare and arguments, for and against,
are given in the manner of a clever lawyer pleading his case. Thus in Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning, the poet advances arguments after arguments in support of the
view that true lovers need not mourn at the time of parting. Similarly, in
theCanonisation a case is cleverly made out in favour of love-making and the lovers
are ingenuously shown to be saints of love. This intellectual analysis of emotion
is something new and original in the English lyric. It results in that fusion of
thought and emotion – that unification of sensibility – for which T.S. Eliot
commended the metaphysical lyric and regarded Donne as one of the greatest of the
English poets. But this argumentation also imparts to Donne’s lyrics a hard
intellectual tone, which is further heightened by his use of learned imagery drawn
from such recondite and out of the way sources as medieval scholastic philosophy
and older systems of astronomy and physics. However, as Ernest Rhys point out, “as
Donne’s lyrics do not lack emotional intensity and immediacy, despite all this
argumentation, analysis, and use of learning.”
The Caroline lyric is characterised by sweetness, music and melody. In its diction
it almost touches perfection. But it is artificial, the result of art rather than
of an inner urge for self-expression. Its worst fault is its extremely licentious
and immoral nature.
The chief qualities of Cavaleir or Caroline lyric are:
1. The Caroline lyrics, like the Elizabethan lyrics, were published in
miscellanies and anthologies, as Wits Recreation (1641), Wit Restored(1658),
Parnassus Biceps (1656) etc. The miscellanies have preserved for us the best songs
and lyrics of even the lesser known poets.
2. The Caroline lyric is the result of conscious effort. It is artificial.
It is a work of art characterised by finish, polish and elegance of language but
lacking that spontaneity and absence of effort which characterised the Elizabethan
lyric. It has formal finish and perfection but is wanting in natural ease and
warmth of emotion.
3. It mirrors the mood and temper of the age. It is often coarse,
licentious and indecent, thus reflecting the coarseness and indecency of the court
and the courtly circles to which most of the poets of this school belonged.
4. The poets of this school again and again find the various beauties of
nature united in the beauty of their respective beloveds.
5. The Cavalier poets are great lovers of nature. They observe nature
minutely and describe it with feeling. Concrete, visual images drawn from the
homelier objects and forces of nature abound in their lyrics.
6. The Caroline lyric is charming but there is something trivial and
unsubstantial about it. In this respect again, it reflects the triviality and
frivolity of the life of the times.
The Romantic Lyric
The Augustans used exclusively the heroic couplet and little lyric poetry was
written during this period of over one hundred years. It was with the rise of
romanticism that the lyric once again came to its own. Shelley is the supreme
lyricist of the romantic age. As a lyricist, Shelley remains unexcelled in the
history of English literature. His lyrics are marked with spontaneity and
effortlessness. “He exhales a lyric as a flower exhales fragrance.” Like his own
skylark, he sings in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. His lyrics are the
outpourings of his heart. Says J. A. Symonds: “In none of his greatest
contemporaries was the lyric faculty so paramount”, and further that, “he was the
loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of our age.” His lyrics are among the most
musical lyrics in the English language.
The excellence which the romantic poets achieved as lyric-writers seems to have
been due to two things. In the first place they perceived, in a higher degree,
perhaps, than even the Elizabethans had done, the music latent in words, and
succeeded in producing in their poetry, by means of happy combinations of words and
rhythms, effects similar to those produced by music itself. Keats and Tennyson,
more specially, were musical artists in words, and lines like,
Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very world is like a bell,
To toll me back from thee to my sole self:
Make their appeal to us as much by the lingering fascination of their music as by
the exquisiteness of their pictorial suggestion. It is in this respect that the
romantic lyric surpasses the Elizabethan; a loss of some of the sunny spontaneity
of the latter being balanced by a corresponding gain in power and more complex
quality of emotion.
“The success of the romantic lyric has, in the second place, been due to the fine
appreciation, by the lyric-writers, of the delicate balance subsisting between
subject and form. Never before had such a variety of subject found its way into
English lyrical verse and been so completely absorbed as to give a certain
intellectual value and tone to the poems without in any way detracting from their
lyrical worth, Therein has lain, in large measure, the skill of the great lyricists
from Wordsworth to Tennyson: they have been able to perceive with nicety the degree
of thought which the lyric could carry, and exactly how they could be introduced
without damage to the poem itself. It is, therefore, in their ability to perceive
both the musical possibilities of words and the subtle relationship of matter to
form that the Romantic and later lyricists are superior even to the Elizabethans.”

Lyric in the Victorian Era

Great lyric poetry continued to be written throughout the 19th century. In the
Victorian age, there are a number of lyric-poets of note, Tennyson and Browning
being the greatest of them. Tennyson is a great artist with words and so his lyrics
are characterised by verbal felicity of a high order. Moreover, he is matchless in
his gift of making music with words. But his artistry introduces an element of
artificiality in his lyrics. His artistic, philosophic and dramatic interests
inhibit and retard his lyrical impulse. Browning, on the other hand, is a great
writer of dramatic lyrics, lyrics in which he does not pour out his own soul, but
that of some imagined character. It is only in a few lyrics like Prospice that he
speaks in his own person of his love for his beloved wife, Elizabeth.

The Modern Lyric

Lyrics continue to be written in the modern age, and it is nearly impossible to
make a selection from the crowd of 20th century lyricists. Mention may only be made
of John Drinkwater, Walter Do La Mare, W.H. Davies, James Elory Flecker, John
Masefield, and W.B. Yeats. Lyrics of nature, lyrics of place, patriotic lyrics,
love-lyrics, soldier lyrics, lyrics for children, are some of the categories of the
modern lyric, and this in itself is sufficient to bring out the immensity, variety
and abundance of lyric poetry in the post-Victorian period.
(B) THE ELEGY
The Elegy: Its Nature
An elegy is a special kind of lyrics. A lyric expresses the emotions of the poet,
and the elegy is an expression of the emotion of sorrow, woe, or despair. In short,
the elegy is a lament, a lyric of mourning, or an utterance of personal bereavement
and sorrow and, therefore, it should be characterised by absolute sincerity of
emotion and expression. Says Hodgson, “In common use, it is often restricted to a
lament over the dead, but that is an improper narrowing of its meaning. There are
laments over places, over lost love, over the past (which is never “dead”), over an
individual’s misery or failure; there are laments over departed pet animals, and so
forth.”
The Elegy: Reflection and Philosophy
An elegy then is an expression of grief, and simplicity, brevity, and sincerity are
its distinguishing features. There are elegies which are confined to the expression
of grief as, for example, The Burial of Sir John Moore, and Tennyson’s Break,
Break, Break. But more often than not, from an expression of personal grief, the
poet passes on to reflections on human life – human suffering, the shortness of
human life, and the futility of human ambitions. Writes A. N. Eatwistle in this
connection, “Sometimes Death is the inspiration and sole theme; at other times it
is merely the common starting-point from which poets have launched various themes –
speculations on the nature of death and the hereafter, tributes to friends, the
poet’s own mood, even literary criticism.” Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard is one of the most popular elegies in English language. In this elegy,
the poet does not mourn the death of some particular friend or relative, but
expresses his grief at the sorry fate of the rude forefathers of the village, who
die in obscurity, unknown, unsung. It is a magnificent and complex work of art,
dignified and solemn in tone, and not an expression of personal grief.
On the other hand, Matthew Arnold’s Rugby Chapel is the poet’s direct expression of
grief on the death of his father, and the elegy is characterised by sincerity and
intensity of emotion. But from the expression of personal grief, the poet soon
passes on to reflect on the sorry fate of humanity, and on the triviality and
futility of human life. It thus becomes an embodiment not merely of the melancholy
of the poet, but also of the pessimism and despair of the age in which he lived.
Tennyson’s In Memoriam is a unique elegy in the English language. It is a
collection of over a hundred poignant lyrics, united into a single whole by the
poet’s lament at the death of his college friend, Arthur Hallam. But along with the
expression of personal grief, there also runs a theology and a philosophy, as the
poet constantly reflects on the problems of human life and human destiny. The elegy
is an epitome of the philosophical and religious thought of the age.

The Pastoral Elegy

The pastoral elegy is a special kind of elegy. The words ‘pastoral’ comes from the
Greek word “pastor”, which means “to graze”. Hence pastoral elegy is an elegy in
which the poet represents himself as a shepherd mourning the death of a fellow
shepherd. The form arose among the ancient Greeks, and Theocritus, Bions and
Moschus were its most noted practitioners. In ancient Rome it was used by the Latin
poet Virgil. In England, countless pastoral elegies have been written down from the
Renaissance (16th century) to the present day. Spenser’s Astrophel, Milton’s
Lycidas, Shelley’s Adonais and Arnold’s Thyrsis and Scholar Gipsy, are the most
notable examples of pastoral elegy in the English language.
The pastoral elegy is a work of art, following a particular convention, and using a
particular imagery drawn from rural life and rural scenery. Hence it is lacking in
that sincerity which should be a marked feature of a poem of personal lament. Hence
it was that Dr. Johnson condemned the form as artificial and unnatural and said,
“Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.”
Elegies continue to be written in the 20th century, elegies in which the poets pour
out their anxieties, frustrations and despairs. Their number is so large that even
their names cannot be mentioned in the short space at our disposal. But one thing
is to be noted. The modern poet is unconventional in his use of the elegiac form,
as in other matters. For example, W.H. Auden reverses the elegiac tradition in this
elegies, particularly in his well-known elegy on W.B. Yeats. Traditionally in an
elegy all nature is represented as mourning the death, here nature is represented
as going on its course, indifferent and unaffected by the death of Yeats. The great
poet’s death goes unnoticed both by man and nature; human life goes on as usual,
and so does nature. Secondly, in the traditional elegy the dead is glorified and
his death is said to be a great loss for mankind at large but Auden does not
glorify Yeats. He goes to the extent of calling him ‘Silly’ and further that his
poetry could make nothing happen. “Ireland has her madness and her weather still.”
Thus Auden reverses the traditional elegiac values and treats them ironically.
Dylan Thomas is another such unconventional writer of elegies.
(c) THE ODE
The Ode: Its Nature
The Ode is a special kind of lyric, more dignified, stately and elaborate than the
simple lyric. Like the lyric, it also originated in ancient Greece. The Greek poet
Pindar was the first to write Odes, and later on the form was practiced with
certain modification by the Roman poet, Horace.
The word ‘ode’ is simply the Greek word for ‘song’. It was used by the Greeks for
any kind of lyric verse, i.e. for any song sung with the lyre or to the
accompaniment of some dance. However, as far as English literature is concerned,
the term is now applied to only one particular kind of lyric verse. An English Ode
may be defined as ‘a lyric poem of elaborate metrical structure, solemn in tone,
and usually taking the form of address” very often to some abstraction or quality.
Edmund Gosse defines the ode as, “a strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyric,
verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with one dignified
theme.”

The Essentials of an Ode

From these definitions the essentials of a modern English Ode may be summed up as,
1. It is in the form of an address, often to some abstraction. It is not
written about but written to.
2. It has lyric enthusiasm and emotional intensity. It is a spontaneous
overflow of the poet’s emotions.
3. Its theme is dignified and exalted. It has ‘high seriousness’.
4. Its style is equally elevated; it is also sufficiently long to allow for
the full development of its dignified theme.
5. The development of thought is logical and clear.
6. Its metrical pattern may be regular or irregular, but it is always
elaborate and often complex and intricate.
Its Two Kinds:
There are two important forms of the ode
(1) The Pindaric Ode; and
(2) The Horation Ode.
(1) The Pindaric Ode
Pindar the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece (6th to 5th century B.C.) was the
father of the Pindaric or Choric’ Ode. Pindaric Odes were written generally in
honour of the gods or to sing the triumphs or victories of rulers or athletes.
Hence they are also known as “triumphal” odes. A Pindaric Ode has a fixed stanza-
structure or pattern. The number of stanzas may vary, but they are invariably
arranged in groups of three, each group being called a triad. The first stanza in
each triad is called a ‘strophe’ – it was chanted by the dancing chorus as it
proceeded in one direction. The second stanza in each triad is called an ante-
strophe’ – it was chanted by the chorus as it returned. The third stanza in each
triad is called an ‘epode’, and it was sung when the chorus was stationary. Just as
the total number of stanzas in a Pindaric ode may vary (Pindar’s odes range from
one triad to thirteen in length) so also there could be variations in the metrical
length of individual lines.Thus the Pindaric Ode has a fixed stanza-pattern but
enjoys great rhythmical and metrical freedom.
The Poet Cowley (1618-67) was the first poet of England to imitate consciously the
Pindaric odes. However, he did not understand the regular structure of the Pindaric
and introduced a verse form with long irregular stanzas without any fixed system of
metre or rhyme. The true Pindaric in triadic form was written with success by
Dryden (Ode to St. Cecilia and Alexander’s Feast) and then by Gray (The Bard and
the Progress of Poesy). After Gray, Pindaric of the triadic form fell out of use
till it was revived again by Arnold and Swinburne.
Though the true Pindaric did not take root in the English soil, the ode in long
irregular stanzas, first used by Cowley, has grown and flourished and has become
one of the recognised and popular verse-forms of England. The title Pindaric is no
longer used for it. But some of the greatest odes in the English language are of
this irregular kind. To name only a few: Tennyson’s Ode on the death of Duke
Wellington; Shelley’s Ode to Liberty; and Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality. In other words the term Ode is now loosely used for any lyric which is
sufficiently elaborate and dignified. No fixed pattern of stanza or metre is now
considered necessary.

(2) The Horatian Ode

The Horation Ode. This kind of Ode has been named after the Latin poet, Horace, who
imitated Pindar but with far reaching modifications. The Horation Ode consists of a
number of stanzas with a more or less regular metrical structure but without any
division into triads of the Pindaric. It may be rhymed or unrhymed. This kind of
Ode is light and personal (not choric) without the elaboration and complexity of
the Pindaric. Many of the Finest English Odes are of this lighter sort. Some
notable examples are: Collin’s Ode to Simplicity and Ode to Evening; Gray’s Eton
Ode and Ode to the West Wind Wordsworth’s Ode to Duty; Shelley’s Ode of the West
Wind; and Keats’ Ode to Nightingale.
It was in the hands of Keats that the Ode attained its highest possible perfection.
His odes are the finest fruits of his maturity. They represent Keats at his best.
All the characteristic qualities of his poetry find full and vivid expression in
them. As has been well said, Shelley’s genius finds perfect expression in the
lyrics, Keats’ genius in The Odes. The six great odes of Keats The Ode to Psyche,
to Melancholy, to Nightingale, to a Grecian, Urn to Indolence, and to Autumn, have
received the highest praises from all critics of Keats. These odes are a unique
phenomenon in English literature. Nothing like them existed before; and in them
Keats may be said to have created a new class of lyric poetry. They are Keats’
greatest claim to immortality.

The Victorian Ode:

Odes continued to be written all through the Victorian era, and they are being
written even to-day. In the Victorian era, Tennyson and Swinburne are the greatest
writers of odes. Tennyson wrote three odes, Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington, Ode for the Opening of the International Exhibition 1862, and Ode to
Memory. Of these three odes, the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, the
Victor of Waterloo, is the most moving and inspiring, and is marked with a note of
patriotism and national adoration of the great hero who won victory for England
against Napoleon. Tennyson pays a nation’s homage to the hero and outlines the
salient qualities of his character. Swinburne produced fine odes included in
Atlantain Calydon. The opening ode of his classical tragedy Hounds of Spring is a
glorious commemoration of the joys and triumphs of spring. The poet presents spring
close on the heels of winter, and sings of the glories of the vernal time.
Another great poet, Francis Thompson, composed the Hounds of Heaven, which presents
the pursuit of man engrossed in worldly pleasures by the hounds of heaven. Man
cannot escape divinity. His final salvation lies in following the path of morality
and spiritual life. The ode is unique in splendour of imagery and richness of
expression reminds us of the earlier attempts of Spenser in glorious expression.

Ode in the Modern Age:

During the twentieth century many poets have composed odes, but generally speaking
the modern age is not suited for the ode. Hopkin’s Ode on the Wreck of Deutschland
is an ecclesiastical ode presenting the loss of the German ship with five nuns on
board. The ode was in a new metrical form which Hopkins had been mediating for
sometime. “I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I
realised on paper,” Hopkins wrote to R.W.Dixon, his friend. Watsonwrote an Ode to
the Coronation of Edward VII. The language of Watson’s Ode is similar to that of
the Victorians. It comes from the study of Tennyson, Arnold and Milton, and shows
no contact with the speech that the Edwardians used in their streets, their public
houses or even in their drawing rooms and libraries. Watson’s ode does not have the
vitality of a living diction and has a kind of expensive vagueness not expected
from an Edwardian. Rose Macaulay’s New Year, 1968, is an unconventional ode, not
glorifying the birth of a new year, but just telling us that the new year does not
bring new gifts. Upon Eckington Bridge, River Avon, by Arthur Quiller-Couch is an
ode singing of the old glories of the past and the destruction wrought by time.
These poets make us feel that the hey-day of the ode in English are things of the
past. The ode may never regain its old glory and greatness. The term is being
loosely used for lyric poetry of every kind, and not much heed is being given to
the characteristic features of the ode.
(D) THE SONNET
The Petrarchan Sonnet
The sonnet also is a form of the lyric, and of all its forms it is most carefully
ordered and bound by definite, rigid rules.
The word “Sonnet” is derived from the Greek word “Sonneto”, meaning, “a sound”. It
is a short lyric of fourteen lines and the Italian poet Petrarch was the first to
use this form of the lyric to express his love for his beloved Laura, and its use
“became the mark of Petrarchan love-poetry all over Europe in the 16th century.”
Petrarch had divided his sonnets into two parts, the octave of eight lines and the
sested of six lines, with a pause or ceasura after the eighth line. Its rhyme-
scheme was a b, b a, a b , b a, c d e, c d e.
The Sonnet in England – Early Sonnetteers
Sir Thomas Wyatt was the first to write sonnets in England. It is the Petrarchan
form of the sonnet that Wyatt follows. His use of this measure is often rigid and
awkward, and he entirely fails to capture the warm, sensuous colour and delicate
music of the Italian poet.
His great contemporary Earl of Surrey also wrote sonnets in which he expressed his
entirely imaginative love for Geraldine or Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald. The elegiac
note is natural to him, but his lover’s plaints and sighs mingle with exquisite
nature-passages. His sonnets have great artistic merits. Though he follows the
Petrarchan convention of courtly love, he does not follow the Petrarchan model of
the sonnet. He divides his sonnets into three quatrains, with a couplet at the end,
and thus he is the first to use that form of the sonnet which came to be called
Shakespearean from the great dramatist’s use of it. The rhyme-scheme of this form
of the sonnet is a b a b, c d c d, e f e f, g g.
The Elizabethan Sonnet
However, the technical peculiarity of the sonnet was not realised in the earlier
years of Elizabeth’s reign. The word ‘sonnet’ was used indifferently for any short
lyric. The sonnet proper remained forgotten and neglected till the publication in
1591 of Sidney’s sonnet-sequence called Astrophel and Stella. They express Sidney’s
passion for Penelope, who was by that time the wife of Lord Rich. The Publication
of Astrophel and Stella at once caught the imagination of the people and gave rise
to the vogue of the sonnet. Everybody tried his hand at it, mostly to express his
love for some imagined mistress. This accounts for the artificiality of most of the
Elizabethan sonnets. Sonnets were written merely because it was the fashion to
write sonnets, and not because the poets had some really feit passion to express.
They merely echo the sighs and love-pangs of Petrarch and the Petrarchans.
However, sincerity is the key-note of Spenser’s Amoretti (An Italian name), a
collection of about 88 sonnets. They express Spenser’s love and courtship of
Elizabeth Boyle, the lady who became his wife shortly afterwards. It is in these
sonnets alone that Spenser expresses his genuine feeling without recourse to
allegory. “In the first ranks of the works of the English Renaissance, Spenser’s
sonnets come between those of Sidney and Shakespeare, from which they are different
in form as in sentiment.” – (Legouis)
Each of the quatrains in his sonnets is linked up by rhyme, but the couplet stands
alone as in the Shakespearean variety of the sonnet.
While the Sonnets of Sidney and Spenser form the very core of their poetic work,
Shakespeare’s Sonnets were written in moments snatched from work for the theatre.
His 154 sonnets were first published in 1609, and as Wordsworth has put it, it was
with this key that the poet unlocked his heart. It is in the sonnets alone that the
poet directly expresses his feeling. Besides their sincerity of tone, they have
literary qualities of the highest order. They touch perfection in their
phraseology, in their perfect blending of sense and sound, and in their
versification. Shakespeare’s sonnet-sequence is, “the casket which encloses the
most precious pearls of Elizabethan lyricism some of them unsurpassed by any
lyricist.” He divides his sonnets into three stanzas of four lines each followed by
a concluding couplet.
The Contribution of Milton
In the post-Elizabethan era there is no great writer of sonnets till we come
toMilton. As F.T. Prince points out, “the English passion for sonneteering died out
in the early 17th century”, and Milton’s sonneteering represents practically a
fresh start. His was an individual undertaking unique in the Mid-seventeenth
century. By his use of it Milton not only revived the sonnet form, but he also
considerably enlarged and widened its scope. It may also be added here that all
Milton’s sonnets are occasional and personal, on different topics, and so cannot be
arranged in sequences like the Elizabethan sonnets.
Milton’s English sonnets number twenty-three in all. Six of these belong to the
period of Milton’s youth and immaturity, though even in them the hand of the master
is visible. The rest were written during 1645-1658, the period in which Milton was
largely busy in prose-writing. “These later English sonnets are the most
immediately personal of all Milton’s utterances, representing emotional moments in
his later life, experiences which find no adequate expression in his prose-writing
in the publication of which he was during these years primarily engaged. We may
believe also that they were, like the Psalms, prompted in part by a conscious
desire in Milton to exercise himself in verse in preparation for the epic poem
which he still intended. – (Henford)
Milton’s formal model is not the English sonnet, with its tendency to close with a
couplet, but the Italian original which, on the whole, avoided such an ending. On
the whole, Milton’s sonnets strike a new note of lofty dignity, conformable to his
epic personality, and justifying Wordsworth’s description:
In his hands
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains – alas, too few!
Milton widened considerably the scope of the sonnet. Previously the sonnet sang
only of love and friendship, but Milton uses the form to express his deeply felt
emotions on contemporary politics, religion, public figures of importance,
womanhood, relationship of husband and wife, and such personal matters as his
blindness. Similarly, he introduces far reaching innovations in its technique.
Following the Petrarchan tradition he divides his sonnets into two parts – an
‘Octave’ of eight lines and a ‘Sestet’ of six lines. In the Petrarchan model,
Octave and Sestet each has its own set of rhymes, which hold it together; but each
is also sub-divided, the octave into two quatrains, the sestet into two tercets
(group of three lines). In the octave the usual arrangement of rhymes is aba, abba
(though abab abab and abab baba also occur). In the sestet two or three rhyme
sounds are allowed, and their arrangement varies more widely than in the octave.
The sentences fit into the division of the stanza, so that there is a pause at the
end of each quatrain and tercet, and a more marked pause between octave and sestet.
But Milton, while accepting Petrarch as the master of the form, introduced many
stylistic innovations. His sentence structure is more complex, and the rhythm is
slowed down, the syntax tends to overflow the two main and the two subsidiary
divisions of the poem. Milton’s use of this new style in the Sonnets foreshadows
the methods of his later blank verse, where we also find ‘the sense variously drawn
out from one verse into another’. The technical changes he takes over from the
Renaissance Italians, to make what is necessarily a short poem into one that seems
weighty and sustained; pauses within the lines are added to those suggested by the
rhymes, which are partly submerged by the flow of the sense. The sonnet thus
becomes a single verse-paragraph flowing through a sound-pattern made up of the
four division marked by the rhymes.

The Sonnet after Milton

In the Augustan age, the sonnet-form fell into disuse. Hardly any sonnet worth the
name was written during this period of over a hundred years. The sonnet was revived
by Wordsworth who was inspired to write sonnets by his study of Milton’s Sonnets.
Wordsworth further widened its scope by bringing in nature as one of its subjects.
Since then, Sonnets have been written on practically every conceivable subject
between heaven and earth. Keats, Browning and Rossetti are among other able
practitioners of the form. Very little attention is now paid to the rules of
sonnet-making, and wide liberty and flexibility in the use of the form is indulged
in.
The vogue of the sonnet continues unabated in the 20th century. We haveRobert
Bridge’s admirable sonnet sequence The Growth of Love. Rupert Brooke and John
Masefield have immortalised themselves as writers of sonnets. Commenting on the
English sonnet in the 20th century, J.A. Noble writes “Rich as the sonnet
literature of Enlgand is now, it is becoming every day richer and fuller, of
potential promise, and though the possibilities of the form may be susceptible to
exhaustion, there are no present signs of it, but only of new and bounteous
developments. Even were no additions made to the store which has accumulated
through the centuries, the sonnet – work of our English poets would remain for ever
one of the most precious of the intellectual possessions of the nation.”

Objective Poetry and its different forms

1. THE BALLAD
Ballad: Its Nature and Definition
The Ballad may be defined as a short-story in verse. The word Ballad is derived
from the word “Ballare” which means “to dance”. Originally a ballad was a song with
a strong narrative substance sung to the accompaniment of dancing. The minstrel or
the bard would sing the main parts, and the dancers would sing the refrain or
certain lines which were frequently repeated. Often it was in the form of a
dialogue.
Thus the popular ballad had a strong dramatic element; the audience were not merely
passive listeners, they danced and sang along with the bard. There was thus a
strong sense of participation and, consequently, the entertainment was much
greater. As the ballads generally narrated some local event, they were easily
understood by the audience even when they were most allusive. Loves, battles, or
heroic exploits, some supernatural incident or some local event are the chief
themes of the ballads.

Its Two Kinds

Gradually the dance accompaniment was dropped out and it became more and more
common for ballads to be recited to an audience sitting still. Its metrical form
also grew fixed, and the term ballad came to be loosely applied to any narrative
poem in the ballad metre i.e. in a quatrain or four-lined stanza with alternate
rhymes, the first and third lines being eight-syllabled, and the second and fourth
six-syllabled. In this way it is possible to divide ballads into two kinds or
categories: (a) The “Popular ballad” or the Ballad of growth with its simplicity,
its apparent ease and artlessness, and its primitive feeling, and (b) the “literary
ballad”, theconscious imitation of a later date of the original popular ballad.
A Brief Historical Survey
The ballad was originally oral literature. It was folk-lore. Ballads were passed on
orally from generation to generation and in the process they were much “altered,
modified or suppressed, and new circumstances suggested opportune additions.” Oral
tradition changed the form of the ballad. “Like money in circulation it lost,
little by little, its imprint; its salient curves were blunted; and long use gave
it a polish it did not have originally” – (Legouis). The popular ballad thus is not
the work of any single poet, but of a number of unknown poets or bards.
The ballads had been very popular since the earliest times but the impulse to make
them is strongest in the 15th century, and it is also to this century that the
earliest written specimens belong. Not only were numerous ballads of a very high
quality made and sung, but two of the very finest English ballads were also reduced
to writing for the first time in this period.
First of these remarkable ballads is the ballad of The Nut-Brown Maid. A lady, who
is also supposed to be the poet, plays the part of the nut-brown maid and the other
speaker takes up the part of her lover, who pretends to be an outlaw in order to
test her love. This dialogue imparts to this ballad a heightened dramatic interest
and animation and these qualities, along with its sincerity and primitive
simplicity, go a long way to explain its popularity and the fascination it has
exercised on all those who have read it. This piece shows that the essence of
poetry existed in the disinherited 15th century. “In this echo of some humble love-
ballad there is not even one false note.” Its purpose is to free womanhood from the
reproach of inconstancy but this didacticism does in no way lessen the aesthetic
charm of this little piece.
Chevy-Chase is the other remarkable ballad. Its subject is the war between Percy of
England and Douglas of Scotland. It extols the heroism of the two as well as the
generosity and chivalry of the victor, Percy, who weeps over the body of his enemy
and admires his heroism. The ballad is primitive in its simplicity and there is
minimum of ornament. As it is realistic, it betrays sincere emotion in every line,
and for this reason it moves the readers and wins their hearts. It is one of the
so-called “Homeric or epic ballads”, its theme being the heroic exploits of Percy,
and it deals with its subject with Homeric impartiality. The poet is an Englishman
and his English patriotism is visible in every line and yet the courage and war-
like qualities of Douglas have been impartially brought out.
This simple, moving ballad has fascinated not only the people but also the learned.
It charmed Sir Philip Sydney, and Addison in the 18th century, admired it, for its
just style and natural feeling. It was included by Bishop Percy in his Reliques
(1765). It is one of those medieval poems which did much to cause a revival of
romanticism.
There has also come down a large cluster of ballads centring round the exploits of
Robin Hood and his merry-men, who though outlaws, merely robbed the rich to
distribute their wealth among the poor and the needy. They were local heroes and
their exploits were sung by many a wandering bard.
While the ballads mentioned above are the finest examples of the ‘ballad of growth’
or the ‘Authentic ballad’, Keat’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Coleridge’sChristabel
and The Ancient Mariner are the finest examples of the literary ballad i.e. ballads
written in imitation of the popular ballad.
The literary ballads are conscious work of art in which the poet tries to capture
the simplicity, the freshness and charm, and the rapidity of movement and the music
and melody of the original. The English had never ceased to enjoy the ballads, but
the Augustans had no ear for any kind of music other than that of the heroic
couplet. But the medivealisation movement about the middle of the 19th century did
much to cause a revival of interest in the medieval ballads. In 1765, Bishop Percy
published his famous Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and this single work
aroused a widespread interest in the popular ballads of the past. Its influence
upon Scott, Coleridge and Wordsworth cannot be exaggerated. Literature owes a deep
debt to Percy as the first popularizer of English ballads, though he was a most
unreliable editor, and did not scruple to add and alter in order to confer, what he
considered to be, elegance on the ancient poems. However, it is quite possible that
if he had presented the public with a scientifically edited text, his work would
not have been popular. As it was, it awakened a keen and widespread interest in old
ballads and poetry, and it hastened the decay of poetry of the artificial school.
Next came Sir Walter Scott’s anthology of medieval ballads The Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border, with some original ballads of his own. The best of his own
contributions, such as the Eve of St. John, have a strong infusion of the ancient
force and fire, as well as a grimly supernatural element. In the Lay of the Last
Minstrel (1805) there is much more originality. The work is a poem of considerable
length written in the Christabel metre, and professing to be the lay of an aged
bard who seeks shelter in the castle of Newark. As a tale, the poem is confused and
difficult; as poetry it is mediocre; but the abounding vitality of the style, fresh
and intimate local knowledge and the healthy love of nature, made it a revelation
to a public anxious to welcome the new romantic methods. The chief characteristics
of Scott’s ballads are scenic background, historical and psychological interest,
and supernatural element.
These two great anthologies had far-reaching influence on succeeding poets. Mention
in this connection may be made of Coleridge’s Christabel and Ancient Mariner and
Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner is first of the great
literary ballads of the romantic era. Written in the traditional ballad stanza, it
makes full use of devices like repetition, refrain, question and answer method of
narration, invocation, etc., in the manner of the medieval ballad makers. He has
succeeded in capturing the freshness and simplicity of his great originals. “Thus”
says Compton Rickett “all the simple beauty of the old ballad is imparted without
any of its extravagance, while with the Medievalism he blends the modern spirit, so
as to convey a more moving magic to the reader of today.”
Keats’ ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci is one of the finest literary ballads in the
English language. This incomparable ballad can hardly be said to tell a story. “It
rather sets before us,” says Sidney Colvin “with imagery drawn from the medieval
world of enchantment and knight errantry, type of the wasting power of love, when
either adverse fate or deluded choice makes of love not a blessing but a bane.” The
poem does not so much seek to tell a story as to create an impression or express a
mood. The ballad is also autobiographical; it partly expresses the plight of the
poet himself in the thralldom of Fanny Browne. It is a rare union of simplicity and
art. It shows the poet’s mastery of the ballad stanza and the ballad manner. The
use of question and answer method of narration and frequent repetitions in the
ballad manner serve to heighten the medieval atmosphere. Its weird old world
atmosphere, its imagery, skilfully chosen to harmonise with its emotion, its
conciseness and purity of poetic form, its simplicity of diction, and the perfect
union of sound and sense, make, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ the master-piece of
Keats at least among his shorter pieces. “The ballad marks the highest point of
romantic imagination to which Keats could attain.”
In the Victorian Age, we find many ballad-like qualities in Tennyson’s Lady of
Shallot which is based on the Arthurian legends. Lady of Shallot, besieged in a
tower, is looking at a mirror and seeing the outside world reflected in the mirror.
She falls in love with Sir Lancelot whom she sees in the mirror. Use of archaic
language, repetition, alliteration and the use of refrain are some of the
characteristics of this poem, which give it a ballad flavour.
Browning also tried his hand at ballad-writing. In Herve Riel, we see him at work
in a medium whose method is by no means to dissect step by step individual
consciousness, but to describe an event graphically, swiftly, and dramatically, the
method of the ballad. Once before he had done it as a perpetual joy for children
inThe Pied Piper of Hamelin, a work written to amuse little Willy Macredy, the son
of famous actor. For his purpose he had borrowed from an old legend, but now he
went to history itself.
Nor were the Pre-Raphaelites without a love for this literary genre. Of Rossetti’s
ballad Sister Helen is the noblest, as Rose Mary is the richest: Sister Helen has
an original quality and has been variously appraised. Medieval in setting it tells
of a woman who in her castle, burns the waxen image of her lover who has betrayed
her. So fierce is her passion for revenge that she wants to damn him, body and
soul, by the power of magic. The lover’s brother, father, and finally his wedded
wife arrive to pray for mercy, but she is adamant. The poem is in the form of
conversation between Helen herself and her little brother, who is set in the window
to watch what may befall, while the slow agony is in progress. Each stanza has a
refrain, to capture the appropriate atmosphere of magic. Rose Mary is Rossetti’s
most characteristic poem. A.C. Benson writes, “In this ballad are blended all the
strains that were most potent in his mind. The setting is purely romantic, “there
is the passion of erring and slighted love and the whole poem is dominated by the
deepest and most mystical super-naturalism.” Swinburne has to his credit ballads
like May Fanet; The Witch Mother, and A Ballad of Dreamland. William Morris (1834-
96) also wrote ballads. His first book of poetry, The Defence of Guenevere and
Other Poems(1858), contained two ballads, Shameful Death; and the Haystack in the
Floods.These two ballads are the models of compression and simplicity in narrative.
Here mention may also be made of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome and Matthew
Arnold’s Forsaken Merman.
The Englishman’s love of the ballad continues unabated in the 20th century. Thus
love was accentuated by the publication of F.J. Child’s Anthology of Ballads
entitled English and Scotish Popular Ballads, and the recent researches in
Anthropology and Sociology. This monumental work inspired a host of writers to
write ballads, and some have done so with great success. John Masefield has a
number of fine ballad to his credit and the ballad-strain runs through his
masterpiece Reynard the Fox. Walter De La Mare has also tried his hand at the
genre. While T.S. Eliot’s genius was too heavy for primitive simplicity of this
form, W.B. Yeats was one of the greatest writers of ballads in the modern age. The
ballad strain runs through most of his poetry. This is so because he was profoundly
influenced by Irish folk-lore and folk-ballads, and this influence has left a
permanent mark on his poetry. The Ballad of Moll Magee is one of his more popular
ballads. Another great writer of ballads in the 20th century was W.H. Auden. His
The Ballad of Miss Gee and Victor rank very high as ballads. They are ballads of
the Comic-horofic kind; they arouse horror by narrating lightly deeds of incredible
cruelty.
The Mock-ballad: In the end mention may be made of Mock-ballad, a parody of the
ballad proper. In the mock-ballad a comic theme is treated with tragic earnestness
and so the serious is made ridiculous. William Cowper’s John Gilpin is one of the
finest examples of a mock-ballad in the English language.

Essentials of a Good Ballad

The chief characteristics of a good ballad may be summarised as follows:
1. It is a short story in verse, about the exploits of some popular hero,
or about an incident of common knowledge. The story is generally tragic.
2. The narration is dramatic, and the attention of the readers is captured
by an abrupt, startling opening.
3. It is characterised by extreme simplicity. Indeed, its primitive
simplicity is one of its peculiar charms. Complexity and difficulty of every kind
is avoided.
4. Question and answer method of narration is used.
5. Often the poet prays to Christ and Virgin Mary.
6. Obsolete and archaic words are used to create a medieval, old world
atmosphere.
7. It is extremely musical.
8. An element of the supernatural, magic and mystery is generally
introduced.
9. It is written in the ballad-stanza i.e. in quatrains with alternate
rhymes (first line rhyming with the third, and the second with the fourth).
However, this basic pattern is frequently varied.
10. Often there is repetition of particular lines, words, or phrases.

2. THE EPIC
The Epic of Growth
Just as a Ballad is a short story in verse, the epic is a long story in verse. Just
as there are ballads of growth and ballads of art, so also there are Epics of
growthand Epics of art. The epic of growth has its origin in popular song and
story. It is not the work of one man or the result of conscious artistic effort. A
number of stories and legends about some popular hero may circulate in an oral form
for generations. They may be given currency by wandering bards or minstrels. Later
on, some poet may collect them, organise them and impart to them form and
unity.Iliad is one such epic. It is supposed to have been composed by the Ancient
Greek poet Homer out of a number of fragmentary stories. The Anglo-Saxon Beuwolf is
another epic of growth. The name of the poet who brought together the floating
material of legend and folk-lore is not known.

The Epic of Art

An epic of art, on the other hand, is an artistic imitation of the manner and style
of the authentic epic or the epic of growth. It is the work of one man who tries to
imitate and excel the earlier poets. Aenied of the Roman poet Virgil and Paradise
Lost of the English poet Milton are the most prominent examples of the Epic of art.
Hudson, distinguishing between these two different kinds, writes: “The literary
epic naturally resembles the primitive epic, on which it is ultimately based, in
various fundamental characteristics. Its subject-matter is of the old heroic and
mythical kind; it makes free use of the supernatural; it follows the same
structural plan and reproduces many traditional details of composition; while,
greatly as it necessarily differs in style, it often adopts the formulas, fixed
epithets, and stereotyped phrases and locations, which are among the marked
features of the early type. But examination discloses, beneath all superficial
likenesses, a radical dissimilarity. The heroic and legendary material is no longer
living material; it is invented by the poet or by disinterested scholarly research;
and it is handled with laborious care in accordance with abstract rules and
principles which have become part of an accepted literary tradition. Where,
therefore, the epic of growth is fresh, spontaneous, racy, the epic of art is
learned, antiquarian, bookish, imitative. Its specifically ‘literary’ qualities –
its skilful reproduction, and adaptation of epic matter and methods, its erudition,
its echoes, reminiscences, and borrowings – are indeed, as the Aenied and Paradise
Lost will suffice to prove, among its most interesting characteristics for a
cultured reader.

Essentials of an Epic
The essentials of an epic are:
1. It is a long narrative poem, generally divided into twelve books.
Homer’s epics are divided into twelve books each, and Milton also divided
hisParadise Lost into twelve books.
2. It deals with the military exploits, deeds of valour, of some national
hero or of same person of national, even international importance. The epic hero is
a man of heroic bulk and dimensions. He is giant among men and has extra-ordinary
physical prowess. Because an epic is a story of heroic deeds it is also called a
heroic poem. Thus Homer’s Iliad narrates the heroic deeds of the Greeks during the
war of Troy, and Odyssey those of King Odysessus or Ulysses. Milton’s Paradise Lost
has a cosmic sweep and range and deals with events of interest to all mankind. In
this respect, it stands unique among the epics of the world.
3. A number of thrilling and sensational episodes and digressions are
introduced. There is much exaggeration, and the incredible adventures and deeds of
valour narrated by the poet excite wonder and admiration.
4. However, despite such digressions, the epic has a well-marked unity and
form. It is an organic whole. Thus unity is provided by the fact that all events
and adventures centre round the central figure, the epic-hero. Indeed, it is on
this basis that epic is divided into two classes (a) the classic epic, and (b) the
romantic epic. The classic epic is coherent and well-knit, while the romantic epic
is characterised by much incoherence and looseness of structure. A romantic epic is
rambling and incoherent and lacks concentration on any one central figure. There is
confusing diversity of character and action, and if there is any unity, it is hard
to discover. Spenser’s Fairy Queen is an instance of such a romantic epic. It lacks
in that organic unity which is an essential characteristic of a classic epic, like
the epics of Homer or Milton.
5. The supernatural plays an important part, and frequently intervenes in
the action. Thus in Homer’s Iliad, the Gods intervence in the war of Troy, and in
Spenser’s Fairy Queen also a number of supernatural agencies are seen at work.
6. An epic reflects the life of the times. It is the very embodiment of the
spirit of the age in which it is written. It is an important social document and
much may be known from it about the life of the times.
7. The purpose of the epic is moral. It may be to arouse patriotism and
national pride as in the case of Homer, or “to fashion a gentleman in virtuous and
gentle discipline” as in the case of Spenser, or to justify the ways of god to man,
as in the case of Milton.
8. The theme of an epic is lofty and sublime, and its diction is equally
elevated and grand. Grandeur both in theme and treatment characterises an epic.
Epic-similes, Personifications, Latinism, unusual and unfamiliar words, allusions
and references, Latin or inverted constructions, peripherises, etc., are the
various stylistic devices used with this end in view.
9. There are certain epic conventions which are followed as far as the
method of narration is concerned. First, poet does not begin his story from the
beginning, but plunges somewhere in the middle, and the earlier part of the story
is told in due course.
Secondly, the poet begins the epic with an invocation to the Muse to inspire him.
Milton invokes the Heavently Muse in the very beginning of his epic.
Thirdly, the invocation is followed by a statement of the theme of the epic and the
purpose of the poet in writing it. Thus Milton tells us that his theme is the fall
of man, and his purpose is to justify the ways of God to Men.
Fourthly, in all epics there is a journey to the underworld, undertaken to seek the
help of some supernatural agency. Similarly, accounts of tournaments, catalogues of
warriors, assemblies and conferences, are common features of an epic, and are a
part of the epic convention.
“The ambition to write an epic and thus to equal the literary exploits of the
ancients like, Virgil and Homer, and of the modern poets of Europe, like Ariosto,
was born with the Renaissance”. We find that there is a host of poets trying to
write an epic after the model of Homer and Virgil and there are many others trying
to translate the epics of antiquity. The best of such translations is George
Chapman’s rendering of Homer, a work which fired the imagination of Keats; and the
best of the long, narrative poems are those of Daniel, Drayton and Spenser, who
tried to write epics but succeeded only in producing long, narrative poems.
Epics continued to be written all through the 17th century – Abraham Cowley’s
Davidies and D’Avenant’s Gondibert being the outstanding examples – but it was
Milton alone who could write a successful epic in the classical style. Paradise
Lost is the only classical epic in the English language. This is the significance
of the remark that the “epic in England, begins and ends with Milton.”
‘Paradise Lost’ is a classical epic, having all the common features of the epics of
homer and Virgil. It is a long narrative poem in twelve books, its subject is
solemn and grand, and it finds an equally grand and solemn treatment. Indeed
grandeur and majesty are the key-notes of Milton’s epic. Like the classical epic,
it has unity of theme and treatment. There is nothing in it that is superfluous;
every episode and incident leads to the central theme – the fall of man and the
loss of paradise. Wars and heroic exploits are also not lacking. There is
supernatural intervention in plenty. Its characters are mostly superhuman – God and
His angels, and Satan and his followers. There are only two human characters, Adam
and Eve. Indeed this paucity of human actors and consequent lack of human interest
is the basic weakness of Milton’s epic. In keeping with the epic tradition, its
style and versification is lofty and sublime. Frequent and effective use has been
made of Homeric or epic similes.
Paradise Lost is a classical epic, but it also has a number of qualities all its
own. A classical epic deals with a subject of national importance, with the war-
like exploits of some hero of national status. The theme of Milton’s epic is vaster
and of a more universal human interest than any handled by the poet’s predecessors.
It concerns itself with the fortune, not of a city or an empire, but of the whole
human race, and with that particular event in the history of the race which has
moulded all its destinies. Around this event, the plucking of an apple are ranged,
according to the strictest rules of the ancient epic, the histories of Heaven and
Earth and Hell. The scene of action is Universal Space. The time represented is
Eternity. The characters are God and all his creatures. And all these are exhibited
in the clearest and most inevitable relation with the main event, so that there is
not an incident, hardly a line of the poem, but leads backwards or forwards to that
central theme.

The Romantic Era:

Wordsworth’s “Prelude”: The 18th century is an age of satire, of parody, of
burlesque, and of mock epic. The genius of the age was not suited to epic or heroic
poetry. In the romantic and the Victorian ages, many poets tried their hands at the
epic but with little success. The greatest of the epics of the romantic era is
doubtlessly Wordsworth’s The Prelude. The Prelude has all the essential features of
an epic. It is characterised by length. It runs into twelve books. It has a central
figure, the poet, and it tells the story of how his mind was educated and developed
under the influence of Nature. In an epic there are military adventures, but in The
Prelude the adventures are of the mind and the soul. There is conflict, but the
conflict is not physical and external: it is rather internal and spiritual. In
other words, The Prelude does have the war-like nature of an epic. However, in this
respect Milton had already enlarged the scope of the epic, and Wordsworth carries
this enlargement a step further. Milton had shown external conflict. In Wordsworth,
the spiritual, the adventures and conflicts of the spirit, are the very basis of
the epic.
The epic unity in Wordsworth’s poem, is provided throughout by the personality of
the poet, but there is also epic variety, sweep and range. This variety is provided
by the countless digressions and episodes that the poet has introduced. Thus we
have the digressions of the stolen-boat, bird-nesting, and the episodes of card
playing and the game of Naughts and Crosses. Nor does the poem lack epic
significance and universality. As Abercrombie rightly points out, “The Prelude is
not the story of the growth and education of a particular poetic, but of the poetic
temperament and as such has universal implications. It tells us not only of the
education of the poet Wordsworth but how the soul of a great poet is formed and
developed under various influences, specially the influence of Nature.” Thus The
Prelude is an epic but an epic of a different kind.

Keats and Byron:

Keats’ Hyperion is modelled on Milton’s Paradise Lost and Keats employed many of
the devices of the classical epic e.g. catalogue of assembled Titans in the second
book, description of the great council, and architecture of the classical epic.
Keats gave up the adventure in sheer disgust; for Milton’s flights and daring
conjurations were beyond his power. Byron’s Don Juan is another great work in the
epical style. It is Byron’s epic-satire reviewing satirically the social, political
and economic conditions of different countries of Europe.
English Epic in the Victorian Age: During the Victorian age Tennyson attempted the
fusion of classical epic and romance in The Idylls of the King. “We look in vain
here, however, for the technical features of either classical or romantic epic. The
unity is a unity of framework rather than an organic unity of all the parts. The
Idylls are really idylls, separate pictures or cantos of a single poem. Each has
its independent beginning and in no respect prepares for that which follows. There
is scarcely one of the traditional devices we have come to associate with the epic-
form – the formal theme, the plunge in the middle with a later narrative
exposition, the catalogue of forces, or the epic simile. There is blank verse, it
is true as in Paradise Lost, but it is not Miltonic blank verse. Classical ideals
are upheld in the artistry and precision with which the flowing verses are made
rich and beautiful, but the spirit is that of slightly ennobled and purified
romance.
Morris’ The Defence of Gunievera and Other Poems is an epic in which he approached
the Arthurian legend, in a very different manner. Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and
Rustam, based an Firdosi’s Shahnama, is an epic fragment describing with all the
richness of Homeric similes, the death of Sohrab at the hands of his father,
Rustam. This epic fragment embodies Arnold’s fatalistic attitude towards life and
the overpowering role of fate in human affairs.

The Modern Epic:

All these poems bear witness to the continued ambition to write an epic, but
considered as epics they fall far short of the epics of antiquity or of the epics
of Milton. It seems that the modern age is not suited to epic poetry. T.S. Eliot
may write The Waste Land which has been called the epic of the 20th century, and an
Alfred Noyes may write Drake dealing with the exploits of the well-known
Elizabethan sea-dog, but there can be no denying the fact that the modern ages has
neither the heroic temper nor the requisite leisure. The Horizons of life have
widened and no poet can include them all in his work, however, wide his vision, and
the range sweep of his imagination. Moreover there is the competition from the
novel which is a long narrative in prose, as the epic is a long narrative in verse.
3. THE MOCK-EPIC
Its Nature
A Mock-epic is a small narrative poem in which the machinery and conventions of
epic proper are employed in the treatment of trivial themes, and in this way it
becomes a parody or burlesque of the epic. A mocking, ridiculous effect is created
when the grandiloquent epic-style and epic-conventions are used for a theme which
is essentially trivial and insignificant. The ancient Mock-epic The Battle of the
Frog and Mice, a parody of Homer’s Iliad, Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Battle of the
Booksand Pope’s Dunciad and The Rape of the Lock are the finest examples of the
Mock-epic.

Its Essential Features

The essentials of a Mock-epic are best illustrated by a brief consideration of
Pope’s Rape of the Lock. The theme of the Mock-epic is the rape on the locks of a
butterfly of society, Belinda, committed by her lover, Lord Peter, a gallant. The
lady is displeased, the two families fall out, and Pope is requested to write
something to laugh away the displeasure of the young lady. Pope uses the machinery
and convention of the epic, as well as the grandiloquent epic-style for his
essentially trivial theme. The trivial is exaggerated and glorified and a mocking,
ridiculous effect is thus created. Instead of the mighty epic-hero, we have a tiny
slip of a girl as the central personage, digression and episodes deal not with the
military exploits of some gigantic epic hero, but with a game of cards, and the
fight of the lord and ladies for the severed lock of hair. The weapons used are not
swords and spears, but a bodkin and a pinch of snuff, and the killing eyes of
ladies. The supernatural agency is also there in the form of tiny sylphs who seated
on bodkins or candlesticks watch the fight between the parties. The various
stylistic devices of he epic-poet, exaggeration, Latinism, personifi- cation,
circumlocution, have been used throughout, and as the subject is trivial the result
is ridiculous in the extreme. In this way, the epic values are reversed, and we get
not the epic, but the mock-epic, a parody of the epic proper.
The Battle of the Books is one of the finest and the greatest of the prose mock-
epics in the language. The exalted epic manner and style have been used effectively
for a trivial subject i.e. a literary controversy regarding the comparative merits
and demerits of ancient and modern learning. ”The result is a delightful fantasia,
an inimitable parody of the epic.”
4. THE IDYLL
By the word “Idyll” is meant a description in prose or verse of some scene or event
which is striking, picturesque, and complete in itself. Such an idyll may stand
alone, or it may form a kind of interlude in a longer composition. In our
literature idyllic passages are commoner than isolated-idylls. Indeed, the actual
name is best known to us by Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Browning’s Dramatic
Idylls.
An Idyll is neither a lyric nor a narrative but partakes of the qualities of both.
It derives its name from the Greek word meaning, “a little picture”, and so two of
its essential characteristics are (a) its brevity, and (b) pictorial effect. An
Idyll keeps relatively close to the ordinary world of action and experience, though
it may give idealised pictures of that world. More often than not an Idyll gives us
idealised, poetic pictures of the life and doings of rural folk in rural setting.
It sheds a romantic poetic glow on what may otherwise be commonplace, dull, prosaic
and dreary. It deals with simple like, and so its language is also simple. It is
characterised by simplicity both in theme and treatment. We get such an idealised
picture of rural life in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale with Perdita distributing
flowers to her guests, and there are a number of such idylls scattered all up and
down the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Commenting on the characteristics of an Idyll, Hudson writes, “This kind of
narrative poetry often finds its themes and characters in the present; and even
when it goes back into the past for them, it seeks them still, as in Longfellow’s
Evageline,mind commonplace people and surroundings and not in heroic legend, or
romantic achievements, or among the great movements and figures of history.
Sometimes it may take the form of a humorous transcript from contemporary manners,
especially the manners of “low” life, as in several of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,
and in the delightful character-studies loosely set in the economic argument of
Goldesmith’sDeserted village. But the greatest interest belongs to two subdivisions
of it, both of comparatively recent growth, the first of these comprises such poems
as derive their material from “the short and simple annals of the poor,” or from
the lives of the humble and obscure, like Wordsworth’s Michael and Tennyson’s Enoch
Arden andDora. To the second we may assign all such poetic narratives as, Mrs.
Browning’sAurora Leigh, Coventry Patmore’s The Angel in the House, and Robert
Browning’sRed-Cotton Night-Cap Country, which are to all intent and purpose novels
in verse. The former class has a special historical significance as marking the
influx into narrative poetry of that ever-broadening sympathy with “all sorts and
conditions of men.” Which is one aspect of the modern democratic movement. The
latter is manifestly the result of that same complex of forces, social and
literary, which produced the modern novel.”
5. THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
The Dramatic Monologue is the most important kind of that sub-division of objective
poetry which we have called dramatic, which is dramatic not because it is to be
acted on the stage, but because it gives the thoughts and emotions not of the poet
but of some imagined character. The poet’s identity is merged with that of the
dramatic personage, and the poet speaks through his mouth, so to say. Robert
Browning is the most important writer of dramatic monologues in the English
language.
The dramatic monologues are dramatic because they do not express the thoughts and
feelings of the poet but of some imaginary character; they are monologues because
in them only one character speaks throughout (Mono means ‘one’).
The dramatic monologues may be used for the study of character, of particular
mental states and of moral crises in the soul of the characters concerned. In his
monologues, the poet Browning depicts an amazingly wide variety of characters,
taken from all walks of life, cowards, rogues, artists, scholars, Dukes, cheats,
beggars, murderers, and saints like Pippa, all crowd his picture-gallery. His
characters belong not to any one country and age, but to a number of countries and
ages.
In each monologue, one character is at the centre, and the substance of the
monologue consists of what passes within his soul. Cazamian calls them, “soul
reflectors”, or “studies in practical psychology”, for they provide us with a peep
into the inner working of the mind and soul of these characters. Beside these main
figures, in each monologue there are some minor figures who are briefly but
distinctly sketched with a few deft touches. They are the listeners for most of the
time, but they also perform the dramatic function of the interlocutor from time to
time, and thus provide the reason or the cause for the speaker’s mood or his self-
analysis. Thus in Andrea Del Sarto, Andrea is the speaker, Lucrezia is the
listener, and her lover and the three rival artists are also introduced indirectly.
Often the nature background is skilfully interwoven with the mood and temper of the
speaker, and in this way the total effect is heightened. In the poem mentioned-
above, the speaker’s references to the Autumnal grey nature-background are used to
heighten his own mood of depression and world weariness.
In each monologue, the speaker is placed in the most momentous or critical
situation of his life and the monologue embodies his reactions to his situation.
The monologues have an abrupt, but very arresting opening, and, at the same time,
what has gone before is suggested cleverly or brought out through retrospective
meditation and reflection. Thus My Last Duchess opens with a reference to the
picture of the dead Duchess, with clear indication that it is being shown to some
one. Similarly this abrupt beginning may be followed by self-introspection on the
part of the speaker, and his moods, emotions, reflections, and meditations may be
fully expressed. The speaker’s thoughts range freely over the past and the future,
and so there is no logical and chronological development. The past and the future
are focused in the present and the unity is emotional rather than logical.