In serious poetry the combination is bad, generally speaking, which subjoins a short line to a long one, especially if they rhyme together; as,

Be thou thine own approver; honest praise

One reason is, that such a combination wants dignity, which is the more apparent in this instance, because the preceding line is the stately heroic verse. To give another example:

By Euphrates' flowery side

We did bide;

and

When poor Sion's doleful state,
Desolate.

In these lines the quick return of the rhyme nearly destroys the gravity of the matter. Another reason why these combinations are faulty, is the disproportion between the length of the lines. And upon this account, if lines as disproportionate as these were set in a contrary order, the combination would still be unpleasing, as in this instance :

As if great Atlas from his height

Should sink beneath his heavenly weight,
And with a mighty flow the flaming wall,

As once it shall,

Should gape immense, and, rushing down, o'erwhelm this

nether ball.

Dryden.

But a good combination is made by two lines, or more, increasing, as they proceed, in a modegreat degree: i.e. by one or two feet; example:

All real here the bard had seen

The glories of his pictured queen :
The tuneful Dryden had not flatter'd here,

His lyre had blameless been, his tribute all sincere.

Warton.

It is this gradual increase above the preceding lines which makes the Alexandrine so graceful in the close; for it has no beauty if set in the beginning of a poem or stanza, as it has been by some of our poets.

After this manner the verse of fourteen syllables may be brought in, and follow the Alexandrine with good effect:

The sylvans to their shades retire;

Those very shades and streams new shades and streams require,

And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.

Dryden.

The lighter sorts of poetry are not to be considered as necessarily subject to this rule. In epigrams, for instance, where wit is often most happily expressed by brevity, the point or concluding line may very properly be shorter than the preceding; as in this:

What a frail thing is beauty! says Baron le Cras,
Perceiving his mistress had one eye of glass;

And scarcely had he spoke it,

When she, more enraged as more angry she grew,
By a negligent rage proved the maxim too true:
She dropt the eye and broke it.

Prior.

The concluding specimens of mixed metres from Dryden's Alexander's Feast, Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, and The Sisters, furnish illustrations of still greater complexity.

Soothed with the sound the king grew vain,

Fought all his battles o'er again,

And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain,
The master saw the madness rise,

His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And when he heaven and earth defied,
Changed his hand and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful muse,

Soft pity to infuse :

He sang Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate,

Fall'n, fall'n, fall'n, fall'n,

Fallen from his high estate,

And weltering in his blood.

Dryden.

O divine light!

Through the cloud that roofs our noon with night,
Through the blotting mist, the blinding showers,
Far from out a sky for ever bright,

Over all the woodland's flooded bowers,

Over all the meadows drowning flowers,
Over all this ruined world of ours,

Break, divine light!

Tennyson.

F

But while the races of mankind endure,

Let his great example stand,

Colossal, seen of every land,

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure;
Till in all lands, and through all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory :

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame,
For many and many an age proclaim,

At civic revel and pomp and game,

And when the long-illumined cities flame
Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,

With honour, honour, honour, honour to him,
Eternal honour to his name.

Tennyson.

COMBINATIONS OF VERSES.

VERSES are combined to form poems either in continuous unbroken runs, extending in some instances to thousands of lines, or in detached groups of a varying number of lines, which are called stanzas.* The former consist of verses of the same metre, generally of iambic pentameter, without division or metrical complexity, and in this amorphous form, as it may be termed, all the great poems of our own and other tongues are embodied. The latter includes all our lyric poetry, and nearly all other minor poetic forms.

1. CONTINUOUS VERSE.

In continuous verse are the heroic measures of Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith, Keats, &c., and the noble blank verse of Milton, Shakspere,. Addison, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. All the great masters of song have clothed their lofty imaginings and philosophy in this form, since it allowed them the widest freedom of rhythmic roll, and harassed them with the fewest verbal diffi

* A verse is a succession of feet forming one line of a poem; a stanza a group of verses constituting a regular division of a poem.