6

The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain,

From many a stately market-place;
From many a fruitful plain;
From many a lonely hamlet
Which hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest
Of purple Apennine.

Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
Right glorious to behold,

Came flashing back the noonday light,
Rank behind rank like surges bright
Of a broad sea of gold.
Four hundred trumpets sounded

A peal of warlike glee

As that great host with measured tread,
And spears advanced and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head,
Where stood the dauntless Three.

Scott is the best exemplifier of the standard form of the lay, as in his Lady of the Lake,' 'Marmion,' 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' &c.

Next morn the Baron climbed the tower,

To view afar the Scottish power,

Encamped on Flodden edge:

The white pavilions made a show,
Like remnants of the winter snow,
Along the dusky ridge.

Long Marmion looked ;—at length his eye
Unusual movement might descry

Amid the shifting lines:

The Scottish host drawn out appears,
And flashing on the edge of spears,

The eastern sunbeam shines.
Their front now deepening, now extending;
Their flank inclining, wheeling, bending,
Now drawing back and now descending,
The skilful Marmion well could know
They watched the motions of some foe
Who traversed on the plain below.

The lay, among its other variations, occasionally allows quick-foot intermixture as freely as this.

Or again,

If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;

For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold lights uncertain shower
Streams on the ruined central tower;
When buttress and buttress alternately,
Seemed framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die.

Merrily, merrily goes the bark

On a breeze from the northward free,
So shoots from the morning-sky the lark,
Or the swan through the summer-sea.
The shores of Mull on the eastward lay,
And Ulva dark, and Colonsay,

And all the group of islets gray

That guard famed Staffa round.
When all unknown its columns rose,
Where dark and undisturbed repose
The cormorant had found.

It admits even a succession of triplets.

And art thou cold and lowly laid,
The foeman's dread, the people's aid,
Breadalbane's boast, Clan-Alpine's shade!
For thee shall none a requiem say?
For thee, who loved the minstrel's lay,—
For thee, of Bothwell's house the stay,
The shelter of her exiled line,
E'en in this prison-house of thine,

I'll weep for Alpine's honoured pine.

Verses of five and four feet are occasionally found in the same admixture, though not often. The odes of Pindar have been done into English verse of this description by Abraham Moore, from which the subjoined. This writer admits an occasional verse of six feet also.

Their past Olympic feats have graced my song;
The future in their joyous day,

Hopes, promise, shall the muse display:
But fortunes and events to heaven belong.
Smile but their natal genius from above,
The rest to Mars we'll trust and ruling Jove.
Yet must I name their Pythian boughs,
Their wreaths from Thebes, from Argos brought:
And Jove's Lycæan altar knows

Their countless wonders in Arcadia got.

2. If the lay were formed in tripping metre, a kind of verse used at large by no poet yet, it would comprise, among others, such forms as these.

All are sleeping, weary heart!

Thou, thou only, sleepless art!
(All this throbbing, all this aching,
Evermore shall keep thee waking,
For a heart in sorrow breaking
Thinketh ever of its smart!

Couldst thou look as dear as when
First I sighed for thee,

Couldst thou make me feel again
Ev'ry wish I breathed thee then,
Oh how blissful life would be!
Hopes that now beguiling leave me,
Joys that lie in slumbers cold,

All would wake, couldst thou but give me

One dear smile like those of old.-T. MOORE.

Soldier rest! thy warfare o'er,

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking!

Dream of battled fields no more,

Days of danger, nights of waking,

In our isle's enchanted hall,

Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,

Fairy strains of music fall,

Every muse in slumber dewing.

Soldier rest! thy warfare o'er,

Dream of fighting fields no more:

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,

Morn of toil nor night of waking.-SCOTT.

3. The Lay in Quick Metre.-If neither in quick metre the lay has much recognised standing, still it is convenient to

group forms under, which otherwise must be presented as irregular varieties of stanza, on no principle whatever.

Cold, by this, was the midnight air;
But the Abbot's blood ran colder,

When he saw a gasping knight lie there,
With a gash beneath his clotted hair,
And a hump upon his shoulder.

And the loyal churchman strove in vain
To mutter a Pater Noster:

For he who writhed in mortal pain,
Was camped that night on Bosworth plain,
The cruel Duke of Gloster.-PRAED.

The wine-month shone in its golden prime,
And the red grapes clustering hung,

But a deeper sonnd through the Switzer's clime,
Than the vintage music rung—

A sound through vaulted cave,

A sound through echoing glen,

Like the hollow swell of the rushing wave,—

'Twas the tread of steel-girt men. -MRS. HEMANS,

The war-note of the Saracen

Was on the winds of France;

It had stilled the harp of the troubadour,

And the clash of the tournay's lance.

The sounds of the sea, and the sounds of the night,
And the hollow echoes of charge and flight,

Were around Clotilde, as she knelt to pray
In a chapel where the mighty lay,

On the old Provençal shore:
Many a Chatillon beneath,

Unstirred by the ringing trumpets' breath,

His shroud of armour wore.

But meekly the voice of the lady rose
Through the trophies of their proud repose:
And her fragile frame at every blast
That full of the savage warhorn passed,
Trembling, as trembles a bird's quick heart
When it vainly strives from its cage to part,-
So knelt she in her woe.-MRS. HEMANS.

H

XIII.

MID-RHYME FORMATIONS.

INTERMEDIATE between continuous linear use and the stave, having connections with one and the other, according as written, may be cited formations produced by mid-rhyme.

A line of seven feet may have two interior rhymes at the end of the second and fourth feet alike, as well as a different one at the close.

THE NUT-BROWN MAID.

Be it right or wrong, these men among, on women do complain,
Affirming this, how that it is a labour spent in vain

To love them well, for never a deal they love a man again;

For let a man do what he can their favour to attain,

Yet if a new do them pursue, their first true lover then

Laboureth for nought, for from her thought he is a banished man.

I say not nay, but that all day it is both writ and said,
That woman's faith is as who saith all utterly decayed;
But nevertheless right good witness in this case might be laid,
That they love true and continue; record the Nut-brown Maid;
Which from her love, when her to prove he came to make his moan,
Would not depart, for in her heart she loved but him alone.

This, like other seven feet formations, is more often written thus, having then a single mid-rhyme :

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And the great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits.-SHELLEY.

Sometimes certain stanzas of a ballad will have a midrhyme additional thus placed, others not. Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner' is an instance.

But a further subdivision following the membership is