Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/331

 SAMSON AGONISTES

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��Let us not break in upon him,

and even these may be considered as iambic lines in which inversion has taken place in all the feet. Upon this simple iambic framework, various rhythms are embroid- ered by free inversion; but behind the shifting subtleties of rhythm thus intro- duced, the regular iambic beat is to be imagined as persisting.

One other variation, not accounted for by inversion, must be remembered; i. e. the possible substitution of a spondee, or foot of two stressed syllables, for the regular iambus. This usually occurs after a weak foot, e. g.,

\s r \j ^ r t ^/ / w '

The jaw | of a | dead ass, | their sword | of bone,

but sometimes in other position, as, for em- phasis, in the first foot of the line,

/ / \^ r / w v ' This, this | is he ; | softly | a while.

The general aesthetic effect at which Milton aimed in all this can be surmised. The prevailing mood of the drama is one of sombre dejection, and to establish this mood the monotonous iteration of the iam- bic rhythm is essential. But this prevail- ing mood is broken in upon fitfully, either by bursts of passionate recollection on the part of Samson, or by the lyric animation of the chorus. To have adopted for these breaks decided singing cadences would have introduced a too violent contrast, and de- stroyed the sense of oppression at which the poet aimed. By preserving the fiction of the iambic iteration, and syncopating upon it intermittent half-lyric strains, which rise above the norm with a certain effort and sink back into it with relief, Milton has not only kept the integrity of the mood, but has made the melancholy deepest at the very points where the lines seem to strive most to throw off their burden.

The same artistic motive prompted the peculiar use of rhyme in Samson. Nothing would more surely have dispelled the grey

��atmosphere in which the poem moves than a copious rhyme. Rhyme inevitably en- riches verse, makes it more winning and vivid. But for that reason Milton does not, as a lesser artist would have done, re- ject rhyme altogether. He lets it creep in, flicker lambently for a moment, then disappear, only to return again with the same faint-hearted insistence. Sometimes, as where the chorus announces the approach of Dalila, the rhyme is more copious, as befits the description of the woman and the richer atmosphere which she brings; but the neutral key is preserved by the employ- ment of only vowel rhymes, which the ear distinguishes with hesitation.

The length of line is manipulated to the same end. A line of any given length, kept up without interruption, tends to take on what might be called a self-satisfied air. The expectation of the reader being con- stantly fulfilled, he ceases to expect; the lines go their way with resolution. The blank-verse line, because of its powerful movement, is especially apt to sustain itself in this way, and to create an impression of confidence the very obverse of that which Milton was seeking. In the speculations and reflections of the chorus there is some- thing excitable and anxious, in the musings of the blind Samson something febrile, in- termittent, almost peevish, which only the lines of varying length could register. The prevalence throughout of feminine lines, i. e. those ending in an unstressed extrametrical syllable, adds to the cumula- tive sense of weariness.

A more formal account may also be given of the matter. The falsity of putting a thought of whatever dimensions into a line of fixed length, and packing or spreading it to suit, is obvious. In his blank verse Milton had escaped the difficulty by over- lapping phrases and sentences variously from line to line. The idea might naturally occur to him of casting away the fixed line altogether, as a useless fiction. Certainly, some such liberty as this he sought for him-

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