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herence to the decasyllabic scheme he has been able to vary his verse considerably, so that Lewis (p. 60) justly calls Milton "the greatest writer of blank verse."

Milton's verse has been treated in detail by Robert Bridges, Milton's Prosody, Oxford 1901, and Walter Thomas, Milton's Heroic Line Viewed from an Historical Standpoint, Modern Language Review 2, 289-315; 3, 16-39, 232-256. The following passages will illustrate Milton's blank verse:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning, how the heav'ns and earth
Rose out of Chaos. Or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet, in prose or rhyme.

(Paradise Lost I, 1-16.)
So pass'd they naked on, nor shunn'd the sight
Of God or Angel, for they thought no ill.
So hand in hand they pass'd, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love's embraces met;
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons: the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green

Stood whisp'ring soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down; and after no more toil
Of their sweet gard'ning labour than sufficed
To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell,
Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs
Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damask'd with flow'rs.

(Paradise Lost IV, 319-334.)

§ 220. Blank Verse in the XVIII and XIX Centuries. The blank verse of the eighteenth century like Milton's is nearly always decasyllabic, but the sentences are shorter; enjambement becomes rarer, and inverted accent and other irregularities of stress are avoided as far as possible; cp.:

Thro' the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes

Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day

With a continual flow. The cherished fields

Put on their winter-robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar heads; and, ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening-ray,
Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,

Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man.

(Thomson, Winter 229-240.)

Tir'd Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne

...

In rayless majesty, now stretches forth

Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor list'ning ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

(Young, Night Thoughts 1-5. 18—25.)

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and, while yet a nook is left

Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deformed
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies
And fields without a flower for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers.

(Cowper, The Task II, 1-10.)

In the nineteenth century the blank verse both of epic and of dramatic poetry again becomes freer. Sometimes it is too free; Mayor (Alden, Engl. Verse p. 249) says of Browning's blank verse:

"The extreme harshness of many of these lines is almost a match for anything in Surrey, only what in Surrey is helplessness seems the perversity of strength in Browning... yet no one can be more impressive than he is when he surrenders himself to the pure spirit of poetry, and flows onward in a stream of glorious music."

English critics praise the blank verse of Tennyson highly; e.g. Alden, p. 246:

"The blank verse of Tennyson is probably to be regarded as the most masterly found among modern poets. Its flexibility is almost infinite, yet never unmelodious."

Compare the following examples:

Oh, there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner; now free,

Free as a bird to settle where I will.

What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale
Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again.

(Wordsworth, The Prelude I, 1 ff.) The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the Night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learned the language of another world. 1 do remember me, that in my youth, When I was wandering,

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upon such a night I stood within the Coliseum's wall,

'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;

The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bay'd beyond the Tiber; and

More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song

Began and died upon the gentle wind.

(Byron, Manfred III, 4, 1--19.)

Count Guido Franceschini the Aretine,
Descended of an ancient house, though poor,
A beak-nosed bushy-bearded black-haired lord,
Lean, pallid, low of stature yet robust,

Fifty years old, - having four years ago
Married Pompilia Comparini, young,

Good, beautiful, at Rome, where she was born,
And brought her to Arrezzo, where they lived
Unhappy lives, whatever curse the cause,
This husband, taking four accomplices,
Followed this wife to Rome, where she was flod
From their Arezzo to find peace again,

In convoy, eight months earlier, of a priest,
Aretine also, of still nobler birth,

Giuseppe Caponsacchi, caught her there
Quiet in a villa on a Christmas night,
With only Pietro and Violante by,

Both her putative parents; killed the three,
Agèd, they, seventy each, and she, seventeen,
And, two weeks since, the mother of his babe
First-born and heir to what the style was worth
O' the Guido who determined, dared and did
This deed just as he purposed point to point.

(Browning, The Ring and the Book I, 780-796.)
Now when the dead man come to life beheld
His wife his wife no more, and saw the babe
Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee,
And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness,
And his own children tall and beautiful,
And him, that other, reigning in his place,

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