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    Extract From Bill Phillips, Guide To Poetry

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    As he FPU, £9958. poses and Verse itis difficult to define what poetry is: “Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what itis not” wrote |Lawrence Steme in Tristram Shandy, there is a certain way of putting words together, whether it be [on the page or orally, that most people recognise as being different to prose. ‘The terms ‘verse’ and ‘poetry’ are near synonyms, and may be used interchangeably, except |that the former is often considered a more inclusive term than the latter. Anyone can write verse, ‘especially if rhyme and rhythm are used, but only a poet can write poetry; there is the suggestion that poetry should have some kind of aesthetic merit, while verse need not. Rudyard Kipling, for | example, saw himself primarily as a prose writer, and although also prolific in poetry, refered | disparagingly to the latter as his ‘verses’. ‘When referring to individual poems in writing it is usual to indicate the title with inverted commas: ‘To His Coy Mistress’, ‘Windsor Forest’, ‘The Heart and Service’. As with all titles in English, in both prose and verse, it is usual to write the first letter of all words, except articles, conjunctions or prepositions, as capitals. If the first word of the title is an article, preposition or conjunction it is also capitalised. Poems which are long enough to warrant a book all to themselves | are referred to in italics: Paradise Lost, Astrophil and Stella. As: Pear Bill. AS rt rhe _Rerry, in Englitth” Rare [ntroduction Verses and Stanzas These two terms are also often interchangeable, Both are units of two ot more lines which follow a set patter of rhyme and rhythm. This pattern is repeated in subsequent verses or stanzas of the same length, Traditionally, verses are associated with songs and hymns, while stanzas are associated with poetry that is not sung, Nevertheless, ballads are usually described as having stanzas. Poems such as ‘To His Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell, which are divided into longer, unequal parts, are described as having verse paragraphs or sections, rather than stanzas or verses. Lines Poems, stanzas and verses are al) made up of lines. A line of poetry can be extremely long, or extremely short, but itis the basic building block of the poem. A line of poetry is not usually referred to.as a verse in English. The Poet in the Poem Many poems, particularly lyrical poems, often appear to be autobiographical, that is, the poet seems to be talking about him or herself. In novels, such as Jane Eyre, which is narrated in the first person, it is obvious that the narrator is not Charlotte Bronté -it is Jane Eyre- and though we might be tempted to trace parallels with Charlotte Bronté’s own life, or even attempt a psychoanalytic assessment of the author through her work, we stil! accept that the J in Jane Eyre is Jane Eyre. Poetry is the same. There is no justification for assuming that the J in a poems the poet. Of course, there are many times when the poem could hardly be about anyone else but the poet, as seems to be the case with the poetry of Elizabeth I, but even so, the / is still a literary creation or representation, Again, as with novels, it may be interesting to discuss the poet, or why the poet wrote in a particular Way in a particular poem; I suggest, for example, in the answers to the exercises at the back of the book that John Donne’s Elegies reveal the attitudes and opinions of an inexperienced young man, ‘but this does not imply that the / in the poems is John Donne. Consequently, I have used the rather chumsy term /-persona throughout the book when Teferring to the J in a poem. Rhythm Poets have always been concemed with rhythm. itis perhaps rhythm which, more than anything else, distinguishes poetry from prose, and for hundreds of years poets have consciously employed certain rhythmic patterns in the construction of their poems. Rhythm in speech is usually achieved by ordering stress in words and sentences in a particular ‘way. English is a stress timed language; some syllables are stressed more strongly than others. In thé sentence: “There aren't any apples in my bag” the words ‘apples’ and ‘bag’ are relatively strongly stressed because they are the information words. Also, ‘aren't’ receives a certain amount of stress to indicate that it is in the negative. The words ‘there’, ‘in’ and ‘my’ are not stressed; they are weak syllables, reflecting the fact that they contain little or no information of any importance. Depending on the emphasis placed by the speaker, the ‘word ‘any’ may be stressed or unstressed, reflecting the importance the speaker gives to there being no apples at all, or one or two. It is important to note that English cannot be simply divided into weak and strong syllables, rather, that stress operates on a continuum. None of the syllables in the sentence “There aren't any apples in my bag’ is equally weak or equally strong; some are relatively ‘weaker, and some are relatively stronger than others. By deliberately placing weak and strong syllables in a certain order, a rhythmic pattern can be achieved: To My Dear and Loving Husband Ifever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, (Or all the riches that the east doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. Thy fove is such T can no way repay: ‘The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let's so persevere That, when we live no more, we may live ever. Anne Bradstreet 1612-72 In this poem of twelve fines the syllables have been very carefilly selected to altemate weak with strong syllables. Here isthe frst line with the strongly stressed syllables in bold: If ever two were one, then surely we. Notice that there are ten syllables in this line with stresses on the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth syllables. The syllables in bold are not ali equally stressed but they are more strongly stressed than the syllables before and after them, Thus ‘ev-’ is more stongly stressed than ‘If’ which precedes it, and ‘-er’, which follows it, but it is not necessarily as strong as the next stressed syllable, ‘two’; its stress is relative to the syllables on either side of it 6 Metre Jambic Pentameters ‘The line.“If ev/ er two / were one / then sure / ly we’ is made up of ten syllables which follow the pattem: weak/strong, weak/strong, weak/strong, weak/strong, weak/strong. This pattern ‘can be broken down into five units, or feet, of two syllables, each foot comprising one weak followed by one strong syllable. Such a foot is traditionally described as an iambus, the adjective of iambus ‘being iambic, A line of five iambic feet, is known as an iambic pentameter. Obviously the poet has had to arrange the line so that the words and syllables containing information, and therefore the stress, alternate with those that do not, or the rhythm would become irregular, if not totally unrecognisable. Depending on your point of view, such an arrangement highlights either the poet’s technical skill, or her execrable artificiality. Execrable.or not, most English poetry since the age of Chaucer has been written in iambic pentameters, and continues to be, though perhaps to a lesser extent, in the twentieth century. W.B. Yeats, T.S, Eliot, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Fleur Adcock, Eavan Boland, Wendy Cope and Carol Rumens have all written poetry in iambic feet; indeed it would be difficult to find a poet writing in English who has not. Its ubiquity has various possible explanations. Firstly metre, or rhythm in general, aids the memorability of poetry. Along with other features such as thyme and alliteration, metre can be traced back to the oral tradition of poetry when few people could read or write, and verse was memorised and recited aloud. Later, as the ideas of the Renaissance began to make themselves felt, English poets sought to imitate classical and continental masters such as Homer, Virgil and Petrarch whose poetry was organised into regular rhythmic patterns. Presumably they believed. that. imitation would confer some of the authority of greatness on theirown work. Alternatively, the iambic. pentameter, despite its alleged artificiality, may well be just the kind of regular rhythmic pattern that most resembles normal speech in English. When it is noted how many English sentences begin with a pronoun or an article, the likelihood of an iambus being produced is ‘manifest..Consider the following: ‘We hold these ¢ruths to be self-evident... ‘It. was the best of imes, it was the worst of times..., “A pint of bitter, please’, “The cat has got my steak again’ Similarly, Chaucer's iambic pentameters in The Canterbury Tales have been explained to generations of schoolchildren as the trotting sound of the pilgrim’s horses, adding to the suggestion that a simple, binary weak/strong shythm is particularly natural and omnipresent not only in speech, but in almost every part and function of i itself Rather more mundanely, the iambic pentameter,as.a simple ten syllable line is of just the length to digest in a single glance; we barely have to move our eyes from left to right as we read; it is a verse soundbite, yet it is long enough to handle complete clauses without frequent line breaks, and avoids the jerky syncopation of shorter lines. ‘The analysis of rhythm in poetry is traditionally called ‘scansion’, To ‘scan’ a poem is to decide what kind of rhythmic pattern, or metre, is being employed. Rather than write the stressed syllables in bold, an acute accent is normally placed over them and a slash is used to seperate the feet: “If év / er tw6 / were 6ne, / then sir /ely wé.” Here is the whole of “To My Dear and Loving Husband’ with accents placed over the stressed syllables. 1, If éver tw6 were ne, then sirely wé. 2. If ver mén were lived by wife, then thée; 3. Iféver wife was happy in a mén, Compére with mé, ye women, if you cén, I prize thy l6ve mére than whole mines of g6ld, (Or All the riches that the éast doth héld. My love is stich that rivers cénnot quénch, Nor dught but Kive from thée give récompénse. Thy love is stich I cén no way repay: 10, The héavens reward thee ménifold, I pray. 11. Then while we live, in love let's s6 persevére 12. That, whén we live no mére, we may live éver. een as However, it would be a pity to fill poetry books swith obscure marks and scratches, especially as the rhythm should be obvious when the poem is read aloud, Scansion is a too! for understanding how poets write poetry, not for learning tow to read it. “To My Dear and Loving Husband’ is quite uncommon in the regularity of its rhythm. Few ‘poets manufacture such perfect iambic pentameters as tenaciously as Anne Bradstreet, but even here, it should be noted, there are irregularities in lines 11 and 12, both of which contain an extra syllable, and in fine S where the third foot is inverted. Far from being a mistake, this imegularity provides a welcome relief to the monotony of the remaining lines; good poetry is rarely completely regular. In this poem it is tempting to wonder whether the dully conventional metric monotony of most lines reflects the dully conventional monotony of an apparently perfect marriage, and that the cracks in this perfection are not limited to the strained rhythm of the final coupiet. Exercise 1 ‘Scan the following poem. Where are the irregularities? The Soldier’s Death your pikes, dispirit every drum, in a slow procession from afar, ¢ silent, ye dejected men of war! ‘Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumbf Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner. For see! where on the bier before ye lies ‘The pale, the fall'n, th'untimely sacrifice To your mistaken shrine, ta your fatse ido! Honour. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea 1661-1720 is bréth / ren write / as wéll / a = Caesura CCaesura isa rhythmic break, often about the middle of a metric line, usually indicated by a comma, a semi-colon, 2 colon, a full-stop or a dash, In most cases a caesura will disrupt the regularity of a line, thus avoiding monotony and perhaps foregrounding certain words or phrases. The following sonnet uses caesura inthe frst and last two lines in deliberate counterpoint to the repetitive catalogue of complaint in between, thus foregrounding the /-persona’s weariness in two complementary yet contrasting ways Sonnet LXVI Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, ‘And needy nothing trimm’d in jollty, ‘And purest faith unhappily forsworn, ‘And guilded honour shamefully misplaced, ‘And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, ‘And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, ‘And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly doctor-like controlling skill, And simple truth miscall’d simp! And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. William Shakespeare 1564-1616 Caesura can also, iconically, create rhythms of a specific kind, Anne Finch uses caesura to represent the slow, halting step of a funeral march: The Soldier’s Death Trail al your pikes, dispirit every drum, March in a slow procession from afar, Ye silent, ye dejected men of war! Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb! Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner. For see! where on the bier before ye lies The pale, the fall'n, th’ untimely sacrifice To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea 1661-1720 Winifred Nowottny in The Language Poets Use analyses Alexander Pope’s use of caesura in The Rape of the Lock. She describes how Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Romantic poet and editor, attacked Pope for “monotony in the placing of the caesura”(Nowottny, 7) in The Rape of the Lock, canto Il, lines 1-18: Not with more glories, in th’ etherial plain, 1 ‘The sun first rises o’er the purpled main, Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams Launch’d op the bosom of the silver Thames. Fair nymphs, and well-dress’d youths around her shone, But ev'ry eye was fix’d on her alone. On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those: Fayours to none, to all she smiles extends; Off she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget ‘em all. Alexander Pope 1688-1744 There are, Hunt complains, thirteen successive lines with caesuras, producing a monotonous sing- song effect. Nowottny persuasively points out that “the monotonies of this passage (in diction so animated) are contrived, and are intended to be a metrical equivalent to Belinda’s indifference” (Nowottny, 8). This suggestion is strengthened by the “banal” simile of lines 13 and 14, which furthers the argument that Belinda is being deliberately depicted as a shallow, indifferent and bored (as well as boring) young woman, 8 5 10 15 Enjambment Enjambment comes from the French jambe or leg, and means to step over from one line to another. Inits strictest sense, enjambment is the continuation of a sentence beyond the end of a couplet into the first line of the next: from An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St Paul’s, Dr. John Donne ‘The Muses’ garden, with pedantic weeds O’erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay ‘The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage... ‘Thomas Carew 1595-1639 In this extract the second and fourth lines do not end with any kind of punctuation, nor is there any sense that the lines could, syntactically, pause there. The reader is forced to move on sharply into the next line, temporarily confused by the discrepancy between metrical and grammatical boundaries. ‘The effect is to speed up the gap between lines where enjambment occurs, contributing to a sometimes disorientating, sometimes exhilarating, change of rhythm and pace which helps to avoid the notorious monotony often associated with lengthy sequences of rhyming couplets, ‘Moder use of the term is looser and may be applied to any line which continues syntactically into the next, regardless of whether it forms part of a couplet. Such lines are sometimes known as run on lines, and are the opposite of end-stopped lines, which, as the name suggests, are lines in which the syntactic sense unit ends with the line itself. Paradise Lost by John Milton (1608-74) makes frequent use of run on lines. I struck the board, and cried, ‘No more! # (assonance) I will abroad. (internal rhyme with board, assonance with more) ‘What! shall / ever sigh and pig (internat rhyme and assonance, also with cried and / above) My lines and life are fig/free as the road —{assonance intemmally and with the previous line. Road is an eye-rhyme/half rhyme woth abroad.) ly interesting about the complex musicality of this poem is the proliferation of the appears in cried, sigh, pine, life, lines, and three times as the first person singular that the point of the poem is to describe how the Christian finally surrenders his/her Alliteration Alliteration is sometimes known as inirial rhyme, and is the repetition of initial consonants in contiguous words. Alteration, like rhyme, is a cohesive device and can be used to make poetry easier to remember; which is mainly why it was so important in oral Anglo-Saxon poetry. The following sonnet uses alliteration for cohesive purposes: Sonnet XII ‘When I do count the clock that tells the time, ‘And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable cutis all silver'd o'er with white; ‘When lofty trees I see barren of leaves ‘Which erst ftom heat did canopy the herd, ‘And summer's green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, ‘Then of ty beauty do I question make, ‘That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence, William Shakespeare 1564-1616 In the first line ‘count the clock’ and ‘tell the time’, repetitions designed to evoke the implacable march of time, are emphasised by alliteration, In the eighth and ninth lines the repetition of ‘b’ emphasises one of Shakespeare's favourite warnings: the transience of beauty, and its association with death: ‘Bore on the bier with white and bristly beard/Then of thy beauty do I question make’ Alliteration can also have the iconic effect of representing what is being described, rather like ‘onomatopoeia. This use of alliteration is fairly rare until the Romantic poets, but there is, arguably, the sound of water in the following fines. Perhaps it is no coincidence that of all seventeenth ceatury poets, Henry Vaughan is seen as an early precursor to Wordsworth; 24 PF The Water-Fall With what deep murmurs through time’s silent stealth Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat’ry wealth Here flowing fall, ‘And chide and call, As if this fiquid, loose retinue stay'd Ling'ring, and were of this steep place afraid ‘Henry Vaughan 1621-95 Exercise 4 Find examples of masculine rhyme, feminine rhyme, end rhyme, true rhyme, half rhyme, eye rhyme, internal (half) rhyme, (internal) assonance and alteration in the following poem: A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme Rhyme, the rack of finest wits, That expresseth but by fits True conceit, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Cozening judgment with a measure, But false weight; Wresting words from their true calling, Propping verse for fear of falling To the ground; Jointing syllabes, drowning letters, Fast'ning vowels as with fetters ‘They were bound! Soon as lazy thou wert known, All good poetry hence was flown, ‘And art banish’d, For a thousand years together All Pamassus' green did wither, And wit vanish‘. Pegasus did fly away, At the wells no Muse did stay, But bewai'd So to see the fountain dry, And Apollo's music die, All light failed! Starveling rhymes did fill the stage; Not a poet in an age Worth crowning; Not a work deserving bays, Not a line deserving praise, Pallas frowning; Greek was free from rhyme's infection, 2 Happy Greek by this protection ‘Was not spoiled. Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, Is not yet free from rhyme's wrongs, But rests foiled. Scarce the hill again doth flourish, Scarce the world a wit doth nourish To restore Phoebus to his crown again, ‘And the Muses to their brain, AS before. Vulgar languages that want Words and sweetness, and be scant Of true measure, ‘Tyrant rhyme hath so abused, ‘That they long since have refused Other caesure. He that first invented thee, May his joints tormented be, ‘Cramp'd forever. Still may syllabes jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never. May his sense when it would meet ‘The cold tumor in his feet, Grow unsounder; ‘And his title be long fool, That in rearing such a school Was the founder. Ben Jonson 1572-1637 “Rhyme Schemes Many poems are made up of stanzas with uniform rhyme schemes in which the pattem of end rhyme can be expressed alphabetically. Normally each stanza is analysed independently. The first rhyme is given the letter a, the second b, the third c, and so on until the end of the stanza, as the following Poem demonstrates. Note that several of the rhymes are half rhymes: The Soldier's Death Trail all your pikes, dispirit every drum, a March in a slow procession from afer, b Ye silent, ye dejected men of war! > Be stil the hautboys, and the lute be dumb! a Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner. a For see! where on the bier before ye fies ’ The pale, the fal!'n, th'untimely sacrifice b To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour. a Aune Finch, Countess of Winchilsea 1661-1720 Exercise 5 Alphabetically, mark the rhyme scheme of the following poem: ‘Weep You No More, Sad Fountains Weep you no more, sad fountains; ‘What need you flow so fast? Look how the snowy mountains Heaven's sun doth gently waste. But my sun’s heavenly eyes View not your weeping, That now lies sleeping Softly, now softly lies Sleeping. Sleep is a reconciling, A rest that peace begets: Doth not the sun rise smiling When fair at even be sets? Rest you then, rest, sad eyes, Mett not in weeping, While she lies sleeping Softly, now softly lies Sleeping. John Dowiand 1563-1626 Poetry and Song Ballad Ballads are traditionally light, simple songs of several verses, each sung to the same tune, and narrating a single episode of a story, especially the conclusion or climax of events. The narrative often employs progressive incrementation, that is, it advances slowly, with regular repetitions. The ballad stanza typically consists of quatrains rhyming abcb, the ac lines being iambic tetrameters, and the b lines iambic trimeters, and with a refrain at the end of each stanza. The earliest recorded ballads come from the late 13the, and in most cases their authorship is unknown. During the Civil War in the seventeenth century there appeared numerous Cavalier ballads; the following is an attack ont Scottish Presbyterianism: from The Cameronian Cat ‘There was a Cameronian cat Was hunting for a prey, ‘And in the house she catch'd a mouse Upon the Sabbath-day. vege ‘The Whig, being offended ‘At such an act profane, Laid by his book, the cat he took, ‘And bound her in a chain, goge These two verses follow the traditional ballad form except that they do not use a refrain, nor, typically of political ballads, do they make use of progressive incremention. The following ballad, which does have a reffain, is non-traditional in stanza-iength, its use of irony, and the fact that it does not follow 2 narrative line. from The Clean Contrary Way Fight on, brave soldiers, for the cause, Fear not the Cavaliers; ‘Their threat'nings are as senseless as Our jealousies and fears. Tis you must perfect this great work, And all malignants slay; ‘You must bring back the King again ‘The clean contrary way. "Tis for religion that you fight, And for the kingdom's good; By robbing churches, plundering them, And shedding guiltless blood. Down with the orthodoxal train, All loyal subjects slay; ‘When these are gone, we shall be blest ‘The clean contrary way. 2 e,,,WO— | Ballade The ballade is an old French form of poem of three seven- or eight-lined stanzas each ending with the same refrain and with a final quadruplet containing an envoy, Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) ‘wrote ballades in the fourteenth century, while Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) revived the tradition in the sixteenth century, though, as his ballade ‘Lament my loss, my labour and my pain’ shows, often without strictly following the traditional form. Elegy ‘An elegy is a mournful or plaintive poem or funeral song; a lament for the death of somebody. Traditionally, in classical verse it consisted of couplets, sometimes known as elegaics, alternating hhexameters with pentameters. Thomas Gray's ‘Elegy written in a Country Churchyard’ written in the eighteenth century, is an elegy for humanity as 2 whole. He also wrote ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat’ which may be considered a mock-elegy. Epic Epics, or more rarely, epopees, are long narrative poems, usually based on traditional myths, legends or historical events, and are written in a noble style. In England, by the late seventeenth century, such a style usually meant iambic pentameters, sometimes in rhyming couplets. With John Milton, rightly or wrongly, a noble style also came to be associated with Latinate words and syntax. Epics require a hero or heroes who represent certain national or cultural characteristics, usually of a martial nature, Epics generally employ a ‘machinery’ or supernatural framework, often in the shape of gods, who instigate, guide, and resolve the action, Other characteristics of epics are the invocation of the Muses, the cataloguing of heroes and villains, the preparation of the hero for conflict -frequently his arming- and the delivery of rhetorical speeches. The archetypes of epic in Western literature are Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, followed by Virgil’s Aeneid, Beowulf, based on Germanic legends, is the great Anglo-Saxon epic, while The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, which uses the Arthurian legends as its inspiration, is the first great epic in modem English. The best known epic in English is Paradise Zost by John Milton, based on the Creation Story in The Bible. ‘The mock epic, which follows the conventions of the traditional epic, though for purposes of satire, was the form chosen by Alexander Pope for The Rape of the Lock (1712). Epigram ‘An epigram is a short, usually satirical poem (see Couplets). In the seventeenth century they were ‘frequently bawdy: To Pertinax Cob Cob, thou nor soldier, thief, nor fencer art, Yet by thy weapon liv’st! Th’hast one good part, Ben Jonson 1572-1637 Epistle In poetry, an epistle is a letter written in verse, Whether the addressee of the poem ever received the epistle, or indeed, was intended to receive it, or whether the epistle is actually an open letter, written for public perusal, is unciear, Presumably most published epistles never suffered the splash of sealing ‘wax, or the squeeze of the signet ring. Love may often be the reason for writing an epistle, ‘A Letter to Daphnis’ by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720) is for her husband; others may be 3 to patrons or other rich and influential people, Jolin Domne wrote several verse letters of this kind, usually of a flattering nature, but such epistles may also be satirical, Epitaph an coh {is an inscription on a tomb or monument in honour or memory of the dead, Examples are “Epitaph for Sir Lawrence Tantield’ by Blizabeth, Lady Tanfield (565-1628) and ‘Epitaph: On her Son HP. at St Syth’s Church, Where Her Body also Lies Interred’ by Katherine Philips (1631-1664). Epitaphs as poems are often written in short lines, which appears on the page as a long, thin shape recalling either the appearance of the grave, or of the headstone. The shortness of the lines reminds us of the shortness of life, Not all epitaphs are to be taken seriously: Epitaph Intended for Dryden’s Wife Here fies my wife: here fet her lie! ‘Now she's ate rest, and so am I. John Dryden 1631-1700 Epithalamium From the Greek for bride-chamber, or marriage, an epithalamium is a nuptial song, or poem sung, or written to be sung after the marriage ceremony. Despite its ttle the following might be better described as a prothalamium, or mock-prothalamium (written about, or before a marriage): Epithalamium. Since you, Mr. H**d, will marry black Kate, Accept of good wishes for that blessed state May you fight all the day like a dog and a cat, And yet ev'ry year produce a.new brat. Falla! May she never be honest--you never be sound; May her tongue like a clapper be heard a mile round; Till abandon’d by joy, and deserted by grace, ‘You hang yourselves both in the very same place. Fal lal Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 1689-1762 Essays ‘An essay is a literary composition intended to prove some particular point or illustrate a particular subject. Alexander Pope, who wrote An Essay on ian, is one of English poetry's most celebrated cessayists. Georgie From the Greek ge the earth, and ergon work. A rural poem on the subject of farming, originating with Virgil's four books (Georgics) on the life of the farmer. ‘Windsor Forest” by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is an example of a neo-classical georgic. Lyrie ‘The lyric is a short poem expressing feelings or ideas and usually written with strongly stressed 34 TTT rhythm in stanzas. Originally lyrics were songs sung to the music of the lyre in ancient Greece; ‘Sappho (7th c. BC) is perhaps the most famous of the Greek lyricists, while Rome can boast Catullus (€.84-54 BC), Horace (65-8 BC) and Ovid (43 BC-18 AD). Geofirey Chaucer (1343-1400) is one of the first identifiable lyricists in English, and by the sixteenth century the term had become sufficiently generalised to include most short poetry, including somets. Lyrical poetry does not usually develop a narrative; epics, for example, are not Jyrical, but ballads, which can be sung, may ‘be considered lyrics, and sonnets, which are undoubtedly lyrical, may form a narrative when compiled in sequences such as the sonnet sequences of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Lady Mary Wroth (1586-1652). Ode In ancient Greece the ode was originally sung by a chorus or a single singer, and was a lyric poem in praise of a person or great event such as the Olympic Games. Horace is the most famous of the Roman poets to write odes, which were not to be sung, and \hich are characterised by their meditative, rather than grandiose, themes, a tendency followed by English odes written from the Renaissance onwards. Classical Greek odes were traditionally divided into three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe and the epode, which presented two alternative points of view and a summary respectively, a pattem also often followed by Horace. One of the most celebrated of English odes, ‘An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's return from Ireland” by Andrew Marvell (1621-78), has puzzled some critics precisely because of its traditionally balanced odic form. Pastoral A poem describing rural life, particularly of the innocence of shepherd life. Zhe Idvlls by Theocritus rd ¢, BC) is considered the first pastoral. The tradition is continued with Virgil's Bucolics or Eclogues (37 BC) in which the shepherds sing, converse, and draw attention through the innocence of their behaviour to the contrasting corruption of city life. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s ‘Town Eclogues’, published in 1715, may be considered a mock-pastoral. Pastorals can be of varying length; The Shepheardes Calendar by Edmund Spenser (1552-99) consisting of 12 pastoral eclogues influenced many later poets, Also influential, though of a totally different kind, was Christopher Marlowe's (1564-1593) “The Shepherd’s Plea’, published in 1599, which led to numerous replies and imitations including ‘The Nymph’s reply by Sir Walter Ralegh (1554-1618), published in 1600 and “The Bait’ by John Donne (1572-1631). Satire A satire is an attack by ridicule, usually of a political nature. Among other themes, folly, vice, corruption, individuals or manners may be the objects of satire. Horace and Juvenal provide the Latin | origins of this form. “A Satyr on Charles II’ by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-80) | demonstrates the dangers of writing satire; he was forced to flee from court after accidentally fhanding the poem to the king. The lampoon, once a drinking song, is now a term more usually applied to a satire on an individual or individuals. The Sonnet The Petrarchan Sonnet ‘The sonnet is, perhaps, the most famous, widely used and best-loved of all poetic forms. It is believed to have originated at the court of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in the early 13the. with the scuola oetica siciliana, but it is most often associated with Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch in English). Born | in Tuscany, the son of a notary who had been banished from Florence, along with Dante, in.1302, 35 Petrarch's family moved around, finally settling in Provence in 1311. His life and work was, ” reputedly, dominated by his love for Laura, first seen in a church in Avignon on 6 April 1327 and ‘who died of plague 21 years later to the day, on 6 April 1348. Since Laura was faithfully married to another man, the pain of wnrequited ove became the major theme of the sonnets. Petrarch’s Canzoniere contains 366 poems written to Laura, 317 of which are sonnets, 29 ‘odes, 9 sestine (a poem of six stanzas of six lines), 7 ballate and 4 madrigals. The first 263 poems are written ‘in vita di Madonna Laura’, and the remaining 103 ‘in morte di Madonna Laura’. Apart fom the theme of unrequited love, the poetry is a largely conventional celebration of Laura's beauty: blonde hair, white skin, rose-red lips, pearly teeth, a graceful neck, an angelic bosom, agile arms, slender white hands, musical voice; and of her virtues and purity, much in the style of Dante's Beatrice and the damsels of Courtly Love. This kind of sonnet, also called Classical oF Italian, was used not only by Petrarch, but Dante and Michelangelo amongst others. The main characteristics of the Petrarchan sonnet is the 14-line rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde, although the sestet may vary. ‘The following sonnet by Petrarch uses an abba abba cdc cdc rhyme scheme: Rime 140 1.Amor, che nel penser mio vive et regna 2. € ‘I suo seggio maggior nel mio cor tene, 3. talor armato ne la fronte vene: 4. ivi si loca, et ivi pon sua insegna. Boos 5. Quella ch’amare et sofferir ne ‘nsegna 6. vol che ‘I gran desio, Paccesa spene, 7. ragion, vergogna et reverenza affrene, 8. di nostro ardir fra se stessa si sdegna. soos 9. Onde Amor paventoso fgge al core, {0, lasciando ogni sua impresa, et piange, et trema; 11. ivi s'asconde, et non appar pid fore. c ao 12. Che poss'io far, temendo il mio signore, 13, se non star seco infin a ora extrema? 14, Ché bel fin fa chi ben amando more. © Francesco Petrarca 1304-74 ae ‘The Petrarchan sonnet was introduced into English poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42), courtier employed by Henry VIE on various diplomatic missions. He visited France and Italy where ‘he not only borrowed the ottava rima (8-line stanzas), terza rima (3-line stanzas), and the Petrarchan . sonnet, but also the conventional themes. of unrequited love and forsaken love. He translated many of Petrarch's, and other Italian poets’ sonnets into Engiish. Frequently the translations are not exact, but are Joose translations, variations or developments of the original Italian sonnets. In 1557 the printer Richard Tottel published a collection of courtiers’ poems now known as Tottel’s Miscellany. This collection included numerous sonnets by Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47)_and. became the most influential work on English poetry in the Renaissance, revolutionising the way postry was written. The following sonnet, which is a free imitation of Petrarch's Rime 140, has atypically Petrarchan thyme scheme, although typicaily of Wyatt there are, ‘or appear to be, many half rhymes, some of which may be attributed to shifting spelling conventions 36 and changing pronunciation in the frst half of the sixteenth century: 1. The long love that in my thought doth harbour, 2. And in mine heart doth keep his residence, quatrain 1 3. Into my face presseth with bold pretence, 4, And therein campeth, spreading his banner, soos 5. She that me leameth to love and suffer, quatrain2 6, And wills that my trust and lustes negligence 7. Be reign'd by reason, shame, and reverence, 8. With his hardiness taketh displeasure. volta 9. Wherewithall unto the heart's forest he fleeth, tercet 1 10, Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry, 11. And there him hideth and not appeareth. c e

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