Blank Verse Blank verse came into English poetry from Italian literature.

The Italians called blank verse verse sciolti da rima verse free from rhyme. There was intense interest at the time in finding an unrhymed line that would match the heft and weight of the classical epic. This was, after all, the Renaissance when imitation of the classical epic, its scope and purpose, was still a priority for poets. Italian poets were already using blank verse for plays in the early part of the 16th century. But their blank verse was composed with eleven or ten or nine syllables. There was still a need to naturalize the whole project of blank verse in the English language. The inventor of blank verse in England was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey one of those raffish and unfortunate minor figures in history who end up having a powerful influence on the poetry they do not completely master. He was born in 1517, the son of a man who would become the Duke of Norfolk. He would die at the age of 30, executed for no real reason by Henry VIII, except that he advised his sister to become the kings mistress and for some other minor offenses. In a short life he accomplished two major innovations in English poetry. He helped Thomas Wyatt bring the sonnet to England. And he translated the Aeneid into this straunge meter of blank verse. His intention was to produce a strict ten-syllable line and this is what he endeavored to do. The establishment of blank verse as a convention that could be used in English poetry had an immediate effect. Without rhyme, there was suddenly far more chance of natural and unforced speech. And it was another glamorous and doomed poet with whom blank verse came into its own. Christopher Marlowe, born in 1564, electrified the London theater with his production of Tamburlaine the Great, which was published and performed in 1590. Here for the first time, blank verse was revealed to be a natural vehicle for rhythmic and sustained speech, where complex argument and emotion could be sustained without being drowned out by rhyme. Shakespeare chose blank verse for most of his plays, although usually made it a near neighbor of rhyme and song. But it was John Milton who took blank verse further again, arguing in his prose statement at the beginning of Paradise Lost that this measure was preferable to the jingling sound of like endings and that it provided music and example of the sense variously drawn out from one verse to another. The Contemporary Context: In America blank verse has become something of a rarity. The reason may have to do with the favor that plain speech enjoys. The poetic line has become shorter, so short that even tetrameter line at times seems long. Todays poetry has taken on the directness of journalism and the simplicity of speech. Elaborate sentences are considered part of mandarin speech inauthentic, self-involved, not committed to communication or at the very least not committed to delivering what might be easily, quickly acknowledged as the truth of a mood, say, or scene, or action. Our present-day preference for directness means fewer adjectives or adverbs, fewer

subordinate or qualifying clauses (except in academic writing) that might lengthen the sentence. In much of todays poetry there are many sentences that could not contain a line of blank verse, let alone two or three. Our mistrust of verbal play has made it hard for us to accept sentences that extend beyond a three or four stress line. Our rejection of elaboration is a Puritan inheritance to be sure, but never has it made such deep claims on a contemporary literary style as it has in the 20th and 21st centuries. Short declarative sentences, usually in the past or present tense suggest a resistance to what blank verse offers greater suspension of the sentence, an acceptance of duration, and, finally, an imitation or a description of thought. It is also true that many of todays poets do not hear blank verse because they have not read it and if they had there is no certainty they would recognize it. There is a misconception that blank verse must be stressed as Marlowes and as obviously rhetorical. The complexity of Miltons blank verse or the subtlety and suppleness of Wordworths are largely unacknowledged by todays poets whose timing is more attuned to audience response (at readings) than to metrical considerations.

Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, The Making of a Poem.

From Tamburlaine the Great (Part 1, Act V)

Christopher Marlowe

What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters thoughts And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds and muses on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein as in a mirror we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit If these had made one poems period And all combined in beautys worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest.

I thrice presented him a crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And sure he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause. What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason! Bear with me. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me. From Paradise Lost (Book 1, lines 710-746) John Milton
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With Golden Architrave; nor did there want Cornice or Frieze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n, The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon, Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equal'd in all their glories, to enshrine Belus or Serapis their Gods, or seat Their Kings, when gypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxurie. Th'ascending pile Stood fixt her stately height, and straight the doors Op'ning their brazen folds discover wide Within, her ample spaces, o're the smooth And level pavement: from the arched roof Pendant by subtle Magic many a row Of Starry Lamps and blazing Cressets fed With Naphtha and Asphaltus yielded light As from a sky. The hasty multitude Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise And some the Architect: his hand was known In Heav'n by many a Towred structure high, Where Scepter'd Angels held their residence, And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, Each in his Hierarchie, the Orders bright. Nor was his name unheard or unador'd In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber; and how he fell FromHeav'n, they fabl'd, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve, A Summersday; and with the setting Sun Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star, On Lemnos th' gean Isle

From Julius Caesar (III.ii. 70-104)

William Shakespeare
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrd with their bones. So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious. If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it. Here under leave of Brutus and the rest (For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men), Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me; But Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal

Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known---cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honored of them all--And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end. To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains; but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, my own Telemachus, To whom I leave the scepter and the isle--Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Rain
Edward Thomas
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying to-night or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be towards what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Directive Robert Frost

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if youll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And theres a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someones road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if youre lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now lefts no bigger than a harness gall. First theres the childrens house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.

Your destination and your destinys A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones cant find it, So cant get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustnt. (I stole the goblet from the childrens playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Lying by Richard Wilbur

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you havent of late, can do no harm. Your reputation for saying things of interest Will not be marred, if you hasten to other topics, Nor will the delicate web of human trust Be ruptured by that airy fabrication. Later, however, talking with toxic zest Of golf, or taxes, or the rest of it Where the beaked ladle plies the chuckling ice, You may enjoy a chill of severance, hearing Above your head the shrug of unreal wings. Not that the world is tiresome in itself: We know what boredom is: it is a dull Impatience or a fierce velleity, A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude To make or do. In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light: Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law Spins on the grill-end of the diners roof, Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town In sheen-swept pastureland, the horses neck Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones Beginning now to tug their shadows in And track the air with glitter. All these things Are there before us; there before we look Or fail to look; there to be seen or not By us, as by the bees twelve thousand eyes, According to our means and purposes. So too with strangeness not to be ignored, Total eclipse or snow upon the rose, And so with that more rare conception, nothing. What is it, after all, but something missed?

It is the water of a dried-up well Gone to assail the cliffs of Labrador. There is what galled the arch-negator, sprung From Hell to probe with intellectual sight The cells and heavens of a given world Which he could take but as another prison: Small wonder that, pretending not to be, He drifted through the bar-like boles of Eden In a black mist low creeping, dragging down And darkening with moody self-absorption What, when he left it, lifted and, if seen From the suns vantage, seethed with vaulting hues. Closer to making than the deftest fraud Is seeing how the catbirds tail was made To counterpoise, on the mock-orange spray, Its light, up-tilted spine; or, lighter still, How the shucked tunic of an onion, brushed To one side on a backlit chopping-board And rocked by trifling currents, prints and prints Its bright, ribbed shadow like a flapping sail. Odd that a thing is most itself when likened: The eye mists over, basil hints of clove, The river glazes toward the dam and spills To the drubbed rocks below its crashing cullet, And in the barnyard near the sawdust-pile Some great thing is tormented. Either it is A tarp torn loose and in the groaning wind Now puffed, now flattened, or a hip-shot beast Which tries again, and once again, to rise. What, though for pain there is no other word, Finds pleasure in the cruellest simile? It is something in us like the catbirds song From neighbor bushes in the grey of morning That, harsh or sweet, and of its own accord, Proclaims its many kin. It is a chant Of the first springs, and it is tributary To the great lies told with the eyes half-shut That have the truth in view: the tale of Chiron Who, with sage head, wild heart, and planted hoof Instructed brute Achilles in the lyre, Or of the garden where we first mislaid Simplicity of wish and will, forgetting Out of what cognate splendor all things came To take their scattering names; and nonetheless That matter of a baggage-train surprised By a few Gascons in the Pyrenees Which having worked three centuries and more In the dark caves of France, poured out at last The blood of Roland, who to Charles his king And to the dove that hatched the dovetailed world Was faithful unto death, and shamed the Devil.

Stanzas in Bloomsbury Richard Howard (Mrs. Wolfe entertains the notion of a novel about Lord Byron)
wanting to build up my imaginary figure with every scrap I could find, when suddenly the figure turns to merely one of the usual dead

In search of treasure near the Pyramids They all become unconscionably coy Having unearthed a vessel tightly sealed Secluded special and being set upon Opening it they found that it contained One object which they all agreed to be Honey by taste till hairs clinging to Just what was wanted though it seemed to me The private parts of an intrepid man Merely silly and tinkling as if once Drawn forth what met their eyes was a boy --I had ventured into the mens urinal! His limbs entire the flesh smooth what else But lust and tenderness afford relief? Each man is under his thumb just conceive Living your life in fear of drying up And on command plunging from the walls Though havent envisaged that fate for myself Enticed with hope of inevitable paradise On the contrary shall I ever have time enough And promise of pleasure eternal ecstasy To write out everything thats in my head Ordering this one or that to leap to his doom --though suppose whats in my head becomes absurd For the entertainment of others, after which --but would I even know it afterwards? Still others were pledged that night for their desires Besides I cannot believe I shall ever die I thank you for the bishops work on God Which I am reading though he prove no more Than what I have always thought: so I am Not impotent but I have had enough Where I was verging toward Spinoza not Of a mind to write books but to become Alien to his gloomy creed I would be Nice to other people (only now? This once?) Better than that? There is a power in me Obsessed beyond all reading to withstand: I cannot shake it off. I deny nothing Of all the accumulation of the past But doubt everything. Incessant guests Are quite as bad as solitary jail.