"Sighs in the gale, and whispers in the grot." "Spans the pale nations with colossal stride."
The sweetness here is great, but, most undoubtedly, verse possessed of a much more perfect and uncloying species of melody has been produced by those poets who have admitted greater variety into the composition of their lines. The licence used by Shakspeare, for example, in respect of rhythm, accent, and pause, is unlimited; and beautiful, indeed, are the results:—
"The quality of mercy´ is not strain'd. It droppeth´ as the gentle dew from heaven Upon the place beneath´. It is twice bless'd: It blesseth him that gives´, and him that takes; 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest´; it becomes The throned monarch´ better than his crown; It is an attribute´ to God himself."
"Sweet´ are the uses of adversity, Which, like a toad´, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel´ in his head."
"I know a bank´ whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips´ and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied´ with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-ro´ses, and with eglantine."
It is unnecessary to multiply examples of this sort. The decasyllabic line of Shakspeare is varied in structure, as said, almost unlimitedly, the seat of the accent and pause being shifted from the first word to the last, as if at random, but often, in reality, with a fine regard to the sense. Ben Jonson, and indeed all our older writers, indulge in the like free variations of the heroic measure; and the poets of the present day, in imitating their higher qualities, have also followed their example in respect of mere versification. Wordsworth and Keats, perhaps, may be held as having excelled all the moderns, their contemporaries, in the _art_ of "building the lofty rhyme." Both attended specially to the subject, deeming it by no means beneath them to meditate well the melody of single lines, and the aptitude even of individual words. Hence may Coleridge justly praise Wordsworth for "his austere purity of language," and "the perfect appropriateness of his words to the meaning"—for his "sinewy strength" in isolated verses, and "the frequent _curiosa felicitas_ of his diction." But Wordsworth himself owns his artistic care and toil in composition even more strongly:—