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world upon

       Breathed darkness forth (dark night is Cupid’s day).

      The first ten lines, conveying moral saws or maxims, furnish almost a complete example of the closed couplet system, and not only of that, but of the division of single lines by a pause or caesura after the second or third stress. When the narrative begins, the verse moves still mainly in detached couplets (partly because a line of moral reflection is now and again paired with a line of narrative), but with a growing inclination to prolong the sentence and vary the rhythm, and with an abundant use, in the rimes, of the double or feminine ending, for which Chaucer affords precedent enough.

      Drayton, a poet in whom Keats was well read, is commonly quoted as one who yielded habitually to the attraction of the closed couplet; and indeed he will often run on through page on page of twinned verses, or ‘gemells’ as he calls them, like these from the imaginary Epistle from Eleanor Cobham to Duke Humphrey: —

      Why, if thou wilt, I will myself deny,

       Nay, I’ll affirm and swear, I am not I:

       Or if in that thy shame thou dost perceive,

       Lo, for thy dear sake, I my name will leave.

       And yet, methinks, amaz’d thou shouldst not stand,

       Nor seem so much appallèd at my hand;

       For my misfortunes have inur’d thine eye

       (Long before this) to sights of misery.

       No, no, read on, ’tis I, the very same,

       All thou canst read, is but to read my shame.

       Be not dismay’d, nor let my name affright;

       The worst it can, is but t’ offend thy sight;

       It cannot wound, nor do thee deadly harm,

       It is no dreadful spell, no magic charm.

       But Drayton is also very capable of the full-flowing period and the loose overrun of couplet into couplet, as witness the following from one of his epistles: —

       O God, though Virtue mightily do grieve

       For all this world, yet will I not believe

       But that she’s fair and lovely and that she

       So to the period of the world will be;

       Else had she been forsaken (sure) of all,

       For that so many sundry mischiefs fall

       Upon her daily, and so many take

       Up arms against her, as it well might make

       Her to forsake her nature, and behind

       To leave no step for future time behind,

       As she had never been, for he that now

       Can do her most disgrace, him they allow

       The time’s chief Champion — .

      Turning to Keats’ next favourite among the old poets, William Browne of Tavistock, here is a passage from Britannia’s Pastorals which we know to have stuck in his memory, and which illustrates the prevailing tendency of the metre in Browne’s hands to run in a succession of closed, but not too tightly closed, couplets, and to abound in double or feminine rime-endings which make a variation in the beat: —

      And as a lovely maiden, pure and chaste,

       With naked iv’ry neck, and gown unlaced,

       Within her chamber, when the day is fled,

       Makes poor her garments to enrich her bed:

       First, put she off her lily-silken gown,

       That shrieks for sorrow as she lays it down;

       And with her arms graceth a waistcoat fine,

       Embracing her as it would ne’er untwine.

       Her flaxen hair, ensnaring all beholders,

       She next permits to wave about her shoulders,

       And though she cast it back, the silken slips

       Still forward steal and hang upon her lips:

       Whereat she sweetly angry, with her laces

       Binds up the wanton locks in curious traces,

       Whilst (twisting with her joints) each hair long lingers,

       As loth to be enchain’d but with her fingers.

       Then on her head a dressing like a crown;

       Her breasts all bare, her kirtle slipping down,

       And all things off (which rightly ever be

       Call’d the foul-fair marks of our misery)

       Except her last, which enviously doth seize her,

       Lest any eye partake with it in pleasure,

       Prepares for sweetest rest, while sylvans greet her,

       And longingly the down bed swells to meet her.

      Chapman, a poet naturally rugged of mind and speech and moreover hampered by having to translate, takes much greater liberties, constantly breaking up single lines with a full stop in the middle and riming on syllables too light or too grammatically dependent on the word next following to allow naturally any stress of after-pause, however slight; as thus in the sixth Odyssey: —

      These, here arriv’d, the mules uncoach’d, and drave

       Up to the gulfy river’s shore, that gave

       Sweet grass to them. The maids from coach then took

       Their clothes, and steep’d them in the sable brook;

       Then put them into springs, and trod them clean

       With cleanly feet; adventuring wagers then,

       Who should have soonest and most cleanly done.

       When having throughly cleans’d, they spread them on

       The flood’s shore, all in order. And then, where

       The waves the pebbles wash’d, and ground was clear,

       They bath’d themselves, and all with glittering oil

       Smooth’d their white skins; refreshing then their toil

       With pleasant dinner, by the river’s side;

       Yet still watch’d when the sun their clothes had dried.

       Till which time, having dined, Nausicaa

       With other virgins did at stool-ball play,

       Their shoulder-reaching head-tires laying by.

      The other classical translation of the time with which Keats was most familiar was that of the Metamorphoses of Ovid by the traveller and colonial administrator George Sandys. As a rule Sandys prefers the regular beat of the self-contained couplet, but now and again he too breaks it uncompromisingly: for instance, —

      Forbear yourselves, O Mortals, to pollute

       With wicked food: fields smile with corn, ripe fruit

       Weighs down their boughs; plump grapes their vines attire;

       There are sweet herbs, and savory roots, which fire

       May mollify, milk, honey redolent

       With flowers of thyme, thy palate to content.

       The prodigal earth abounds with gentle food;

       Affording banquets without death or blood.

       Brute beasts with flesh their ravenous hunger cloy:

       And yet not all; in pastures horses joy:

       So flocks and herds. But those whom Nature hath

       Endued with cruelty, and savage wrath

       (Wolves, bears, Armenian tigers, Lions) in

       Hot blood delight. How horrible a sin,

       That entrails bleeding entrails should entomb!

      

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