perhaps more frequent still, bringing us to the form already familiar in roundel:

Arethusa arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,—
From cloud and from crag
With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;-
Her steps paved with green

The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams.-SHELLEY.

The connection between this shape and the ordinary line thus becomes apparent; at the same time it is seen necessary not to confuse the order of rhyming under notice with this particular way of writing it. From its enlivening effect in whatever mode arranged into verses, it might not be amiss to denominate this succession of rhymes speedwell.

In a stave of four feet the rhymes may be three of a sort successive, thus:

If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking,

Could more than drinking my cares compose,
A cure for sorrow from sighs I'd borrow
And hope to-morrow would end my woes.
But as in wailing there's nought availing,
And death unfailing will strike the blow.
Then for that reason, and for a season,
Let us be merry before we go!-CURRAN.

But this third rhyme is not preserved on subdivision into the roundel :

:

0 may I steal

Along the vale,

Of humble life secure from foes;

My friends sincere,

My judgment clear,

And gentle business my repose.-YOUNG.

Verses may be so diversified by the single expedient of division at the mid-rhyme, as to assume the aspect of another

measure altogether, as in this used by Ingoldsby Barham, in

Bays wakeful guard around Ingoldsby Hall.'

The diversity introduced into the stave and stanza by the same expedient is equally notable.

Come Hope, thou little cheating sprite,

And let us set the quarrel right;

Come thou to me,

Or I to thee,

No matter so we both agree.-CUMBERLAND.

As here, it is generally used to form the close, where, with the concluding line, it is equivalent to a demi-roundel :

Once again the voice beside her sounded,
Low and faint, and solemn was its tone-
'Nor by form nor by shade am I surrounded,
Fleshly home and dwelling have I none.
They are passed away—

Woe is me! to-day

Hath robbed me of myself, and made me lone.'-AYTOUN.

More swift than lightning can I fly

About their airy welkin soon,

And in a minute's space descry

Each thing that's done beneath the moon:

And send them home with ho, ho, ho!-BEN JONSON.

In the next we have the mid-rhyme pair unequal, and surpassing in some the average line, whence the shortening of the final line to make up, which however was not imperative.

At anchor in Hampton roads we lay,

On board of the Cumberland sloop of war:
And at times from the fortress across the bay
The alarum of drums swept past,

Or a bugle blast

From the camp on the shore.-LONGFELLOW.

In the following, though the line is left undivided, we have an approach to the out-about:

We are born of the golden Sun,
Of the Star, of the Wave, of Air,

Of the Flowers of Light, that make earth bright,
As though it an Elysium were.

We soar on the wide serene,
We float o'er the eyes of earth,

We dance in the beam, on the flashing stream,

And sing round the Poet's birth.-E. V. KENEALY.

To conclude with a piece of which the long ballad swing is hardly to be surpassed.

Up the long broomy loan, wi' mickle dool and moan,

'And out upon the hillside track,

Nurse Flory forward bent, crooning as she went,

With the wee bairn clinging on her back.

But Moira hand in hand with Marion forward ran,

Nor dool, nor any care had they,

But they chased the heather bee, and they sang aloud for glee,

As they hied up the mountain way.-J. C. SHAIRP.

XIV.

REMAINING FORMS OF THE ODE.

THE following specimens as distinguished from others before treated, with the exception of the lay, are more diversified in form and aspect, gradually becoming still further so in the higher varieties, till at length resemblance between one stanza and another is not even aimed at.

The shorter forms that remain have generally something fantastic, or at least individual, in their structure, which removes them from others.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run,

But to the evensong;

And having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.-HERRICK.

Another little fanciful piece, addressed by the same poet

to Blossoms':

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past,

But you may stay yet here awhile,
To blush and gently smile

And go at last.

Arise, arise, arise!

There is blood on earth that denies ye

Be wounds like eyes

your

bread;

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.

What other griefs were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren were they;

Who said they were slain on the battle-day ?-SHELLEY.

Drowned, frozen, dead for ever;

We look on the past

And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,

Of hopes which thou and I beguiled

To death on Life's dark river.-SHELLEY.

The next approaches more to the lay, save that the short lines are of two lengths :

King Christian stood besides the mast;

Smoke, mixt with flame,

Hung o'er his guns, that rattled fast
Against the Gothman, as they passed,
Then sunk each hostile sail and mast
In smoke and flame.

'Fly,' said the foe, 'fly all that can,

Nor wage with Denmark's Christian,

The dread unequal game.'-G. BORROW.

Milton's 'Ode on the Nativity' is but a roundel closed by an unequal couplet :

Such music as, 'tis said,

Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung,

While the Creator great

His constellations set,

And the well balanced world on hinges hung,

And cast the dark foundations deep,

And bid the weltering waves their oozy channels keep.

The next is a double quatrain of unusual length of line:

(5) Away, away! to thy sad and silent home,

(6)

Pour bitter tears on its desolated earth,

Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,

And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

(7) The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head; The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet;

(6)

(7)

But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.-SHELLEY.

The following ode to the nightingale would be regular five foot but for one line cut short. In rhymes it is a quatrain