In its summer pride array'd,
Low our Tree of Hope is laid!
Low it lies: . . in evil hour,
Visiting the bridal bower,

Death hath levell'd root and flower.
Windsor, in thy sacred shade,
(This the end of pomp and power!)
Have the rites of death been paid:
Windsor, in thy sacred shade
Is the Flower of Brunswick laid!

Ye whose relics rest around, Tenants of this funeral ground! Know ye, Spirits, who is come, By immitigable doom

Summon'd to the untimely tomb?

Late with youth and splendour crown'd, Late in beauty's vernal bloom,

Late with love and joyaunce blest!

Never more lamented guest
Was in Windsor laid to rest.

Henry, thou of saintly worth,
Thou, to whom thy Windsor gave
Nativity and name, and grave;
Thou art in this hallowed earth
Cradled for the immortal birth;
Heavily upon his head
Ancestral crimes were visited:
He, in spirit like a child,
Meek of heart and undefiled,
Patiently his crown resign'd,

And fix'd on heaven his heavenly mind,
Blessing, while he kiss'd the rod,

His Redeemer and his God.
Now may he in realms of bliss
Greet a soul as pure as his.

Passive as that humble spirit, Lies his bold dethroner too; A dreadful debt did he inherit To his injured lineage due;

Ill-starr'd prince, whose martial merit
His own England long might rue!
Mournful was that Edward's fame,
Won in fields contested well,
While he sought his rightful claim:
Witness Aire's unhappy water,

Where the ruthless Clifford fell;

And when Wharfe ran red with slaughter,

On the day of Towton's field,

Gathering, in its guilty flood,
The carnage and the ill-spilt blood

That forty thousand lives could yield.

Cressy was to this but sport,..

Poictiers but a pageant vain ;

And the victory of Spain

Seem'd a strife for pastime meant,

And the work of Agincourt

Only like a tournament;

Half the blood which there was spent,
Had sufficed again to gain

Anjou and ill-yielded Maine,
Normandy and Aquitaine,
And Our Lady's Ancient towers,
Maugre all the Valois' powers,
Had a second time been ours...
A gentle daughter of thy line,
Edward, lays her dust with thine.

Thou, Elizabeth, art here; Thou to whom all griefs were known; Who wert placed upon the bier In happier hour than on the throne. Fatal daughter, fatal mother, Raised to that ill-omen'd station, Father, uncle, sons, and brother, Mourn'd in blood her elevation! Woodville, in the realms of bliss. To thine offspring thou may'st say, Early death is happiness; And favour'd in their lot are they Who are not left to learn below That length of life is length of woe. Lightly let this ground be prest; A broken heart is here at rest.

There, thrice fifty years, it lay,
Exempt from natural decay,
Unclosed and bright, as if to say,
A plague, of bloodier, baser birth,
Than that beneath whose rage he bled,
Was loose upon our guilty earth;
Such aweful warning from the dead,
Was given by that portentous eye;
Then it closed eternally.

Ye whose relics rest around,
Tenants of this funeral ground;
Even in your immortal spheres,
What fresh yearnings will ye feel,
When this earthly guest appears!
Us she leaves in grief and tears;
But to you will she reveal
Tidings of old England's weal;
Of a righteous war pursued,

Long, through evil and through good,
With unshaken fortitude;

Of peace, in battle twice achieved;
Of her fiercest foe subdued,

And Europe from the yoke reliev'd,
Upon that Brabantine plain !
Such the proud, the virtuous story,
Such the great, the endless glory
Of her father's splendid reign!
He who wore the sable mail,
Might at this heroic tale,
Wish himself on earth again.

One who reverently, for thee, Raised the strain of bridal verse, Flower of Brunswick! mournfully Lays a garland on thy herse.

SIR,

TO THE KING.

ONLY to your Majesty can the present publication with propriety be addressed. As a tribute to the sacred memory of our late revered Sovereign, it is my duty to present it to Your Majesty's notice; and to whom could an experiment, which, perhaps, may be considered hereafter as of some importance in English Poetry, be so fitly inscribed, as to the Royal and munificent Patron of science, art, and literature?

We owe much to the House of Brunswick; but to none of that illustrious House more than to Your Majesty, under whose government the military renown of Great Britain has been carried to the highest point of glory. From that pure glory there has been nothing to detract; the success was not more splendid than the cause was good; and the event was deserved by the generosity, the justice,

the wisdom, and the magnanimity of the counsels which prepared it. The same perfect integrity has been manifested in the whole administration of public affairs. More has been done than was ever before attempted, for mitigating the evils incident to our stage of society; for imbuing the rising race with those sound principles of religion on which the welfare of states has its only secure foundation; and for opening new regions to the redundant enterprize and industry of the people. Under Your Majesty's government, the Metropolis is rivalling in beauty those cities which it has long surpassed in greatness: sciences, arts, and letters are flourishing beyond all former example; and the last triumph of nautical discovery and of the British flag, which had so often been essayed in vain, has been accomplished. brightest portion of British history will be that which records the improvements, the works, and the achievements of the Georgian Age,

The

That Your Majesty may long continue to reign over a free and prosperous people, and that the blessings of the happiest form of government which has ever been raised by human wisdom under the favour of Divine Providence, may, under Your Majesty's protection, be transmitted unimpaired to posterity, is the prayer of

Your MAJESTY'S

Most dutiful Subject and Servant, ROBERT SOUTHEY.

PREFACE.

I.

HAVING long been of opinion that an English metre might be constructed in imitation of the ancient hexameter, which would be perfectly consistent with the character of our language, and capable of great richness, variety, and strength, I have now made the experiment. It will have some disadvantages to contend with, both among learned and unlearned readers; among the former especially, because, though they may divest themselves of all prejudice against an innovation, which has generally been thought impracticable, and might even be disposed to regard the attempt favourably, nevertheless they will, from inveterate association, be continually reminded of rules which are inapplicable to our tongue; and looking for quantity where emphasis only ought to be expected, will perhaps less easily be reconciled to the measure, than those persons who consider it simply as it is. To the one class it is necessary that I should explain the nature of the verse; to the other, the principle of adaption which has been followed.

First, then, to the former, who, in glancing over these long lines, will perceive that they have none of the customary characteristics of English versification, being neither marked by rhyme, nor by any certain number of syllables, nor by any regular recurrence of emphasis throughout the verse. Upon closer observation, they will find that (with a very few exceptions) there is a regular recurrence of emphasis in the last five syllables of every line, the first and the fourth of those syllables being accented, the others not. These five syllables form two of the feet by which the verse is measured, and which are called dactyls and trochees, the dactyl consisting of one long syllable and two short ones, as exemplified in the name of Wellington; the trochee, of one long and one short, as exemplified in the name of Nelson. Of such feet, there are six in every verse, The four first are disposed according to the judgement and convenience of the writer; that is, they may be all dactyls or all trochees, or any mixture of both in any arrangement: but the fifth is always a dactyl, and the sixth always a trochee, except in

1 And only one of foreign derivation, which is the word Egypt. Some readers, who have never practised metrical composition in their own language, may perhaps doubt this, and suppose that such words as twilight and evening, are spon

some rare instances, when, for the sake of variety, or of some particular effect, a trochee is admitted in the fifth place. One more remark will suffice for this preliminary explanation. These feet are not constituted each by a separate word, but are made up of one or more, or of parts of words, the end of one and the beginning of another, as may happen. A verse of the Psalms, originally pointed out by Harris of Salisbury as a natural and perfect hexameter, will exemplify what has been said:

Why do the heathen | rage, and the people i- | magine a | vain thing?

This, I think, will make the general construction of the metre perfectly intelligible to persons who may be unacquainted with the rules of Latin versification; those especially who are still to be called gentle readers, in this ungentle age. But it is not necessary to understand the principle upon which the verse is constructed, in order to feel the harmony and power of a metrical composition; . . . if it were, how few would be capable of enjoying poetry! In the present case, any one who reads a page of these hexameters aloud, with just that natural regard to emphasis which the sense of the passage indicates, and the usual pronunciation of the words requires, will perceive the rhythm, and find no more difficulty in giving it its proper effect, than in reading blank verse. This has often been tried, and with invariable success. If, indeed, it were not so, the fault would be in the composition, not in the measure.

The learned reader will have perceived by what has already been said, that in forming this English measure in imitation, rather than upon the model of the ancient hexameter, the trochee has been substituted for the spondee, as by the Germans. This substitution is rendered necessary by the nature of our pronunciation, which is so rapid, that I believe the whole vocabulary of the language does not afford a single instance of a genuine native spondee. The spondee, of course, is not excluded from the verse; and where it occurs, the effect, in general, is good. This alteration was necessary; but it is not the only one which, upon mature consideration and fair trial, it has been deemed expedient to make. If every line were to begin with a long syllable, the measure would presently appear exotic and forced, as being directly opposite to the general character of all our dignified metres, and indeed to the genius of the English language. Therefore the license has been taken of using any foot of two or three syllables at the beginning of a line; and sometimes, though less frequently, in the second, third, or fourth place. The metre, thus constructed, bears the same analogy to the ancient hexameter that our ten-syllable or heroic line does to iambic verse; iambic it is called, and it is so in its general movement; but it admits of many other feet, and would, in fact, soon become insupportably monotonous without their frequent intermixture.

daic; but they only appear so when they are pronounced singly, the last syllable then hanging upon the tongue, and dwelling on the ear, like the last stroke of the clock. Used in combination, they become pure trochees.

II.

Twenty years ago, when the rhythmical romance of Thalaba was sent from Portugal to the press, I requested, in the preface to that poem, that the author might not be supposed to prefer the rhythm in which it was written, abstractedly considered, to the regular blank verse, the noblest measure, in his judgement, of which our admirable language is capable: it was added, that the measure which was there used, had, in that instance, been preferred, because it suited the character of the poem, being, as it were, the Arabesque ornament of an Arabian tale. Notwithstanding this explicit declaration, the duncery of that day attacked me as if I had considered the measure of Thalaba to be in itself essentially and absolutely better than blank verse. The duncery of this day may probably pursue the same course on the present occasion. With that body I wage no war, and enter into no explanations. But to the great majority of my readers, who will take up the book without malevolence, and having a proper sense of honour in themselves, will believe the declarations of a writer whose veracity they have no reason to doubt, I will state what are the defects, and what the advantages, of the metre which is here submitted to their judgement, as they appear to me after this fair experiment of its powers.

It is not a legitimate inference, that because the hexameter has been successfully introduced in the German language, it can be naturalized as well in English. The English is not so well adapted for it, because it does not abound in like manner with polysyllabic words. The feet, therefore, must too frequently be made up of monosyllables, and of distinct words, whereby the verse is resolved and decomposed into its component feet, and the feet into their component syllables, instead of being articulated and inosculated throughout, as in the German, still more in the Greek, and most in the Latin measure. This is certainly a great defect.1 From the same cause the casura generally coincides with a pause in the sentence; but, though this breaks the continuity of the verse, it ought perhaps rather to be considered as an advantage; for the measure, like blank verse, thus acquires a greater variety. It may possibly be objected, that the four first feet are not metrical enough in their effect, and the two last too much so. I do not feel the objection; but it has been advanced by one, whose opinion upon any question, and especially upon a question of poetry, would make me distrust my own, where it happened to be different. Lastly, the double-ending may be censured as double rhymes used to be; but that objection belongs to the duncery.

On the other hand, the range of the verse being from thirteen syllables to seventeen, it derives from

that range an advantage in the union of variety with regularity, which is peculiar to itself. The capability which is thus gained, may perhaps be better appreciated by a few readers from their own sense of power, than it is exemplified in this experiment.

I do not, however, present the English hexameter as something better than our established metres, but as something different, and which therefore, for that reason, may sometimes advantageously be used. Take our blank verse, for all in all, in all its gradations, from the elaborate rhythm of Milton, down to its loosest structure in the early dramatists, and I believe that there is no measure comparable to it, either in our own or in any other language, for might and majesty, and flexibility and compass. And this is affirmed, not as the predilection of a young writer, or the preference of one inexperienced in the difficulties of composition, but as an opinion formed and confirmed during the long and diligent study, and the long and laborious practice of the art. But I am satisfied also that the English hexameter is a legitimate and good measure, with which our literature ought to be enriched.

"I first adventure; follow me who list!",

III.

I am well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of such innovations; not less so than the populace used to be of any foreign fashion, whether of foppery or convenience. Would that this literary intolerance were under the influence of a saner judgement, and regarded the morals more than the manner of a composition; the spirit rather than the form. Would that it were directed against those monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety, with which English poetry has, in our days, first been polluted! For more than half a century English literature had been distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, and in its turn, the cause of an improvement in national manners. A father might, without apprehension of evil, have put into the hands of his children any book which issued from the press, if it did not bear either in its title-page or frontispiece, manifest signs that it was intended as furniture for the brothel. There was no danger in any work which bore the name of a respectable publisher, or was to be procured at any respectable bookseller's. This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It is now no longer so; and woe to those by whom the offence cometh! The greater the talents of the offender, the greater is his guilt, and the more enduring will be his shame. Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are re

1 It leads also to this inconvenience, that the English line greatly exceeds the ancient one in literal length, so that it is actually too long for any page, if printed in types of the ordinary proportion to the size of the book, whatever that may be. The same inconvenience was formerly felt in that fine measure of the Elizabethan age, the seven-footed couplet; which, to the diminution of its powers, was, for that reason,

divided into quatrains, (the pause generally falling upon the eighth syllable,) and then converted into the common ballad stanza. The hexameter cannot be thus divided, and therefore must generally look neither like prose nor poetry. This is noticed as merely a dissight, and of no moment, our postry not being like that of the Chinese, addressed to the eye instead of the ear.