| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
RHYME. 169
Let Envy in a whirlwind's bosom hurled, Outrageous, search the corners of the world.
In him He all things with strange order hurled ; In him, that full abridgment of the world.
Another form of this blemish is, by pitching upon some rhyme, to which all the rest of the sentence is to be held subservient; and then, for want of a proper word to match with the rhyme already determined, the poet is often obliged to substitute such as he can get. Butler ridicules this in the couplet:
But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for another's sake.
A couplet from the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard will explain and exemplify what we mean. Pope had to express in rhyme and measure this sentence: "I would rather be the mistress of the man I love, than the empress of Caesar." Of this he took the strong energetic part for his close, " Make me mistress to the man I love," and having thus fixed his rhyme, he sacrifices the other line to it; for, as the sentence afforded him no second word to match with the rhyme he had taken, he was driven to make out the sense as well as he could by some substitute. He therefore substituted the term prove as an equivalent to be ; and the ardent sentiment of Eloisa was enfeebled by these expressions:
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to f/rove ; * No, make me mistress to the man I love.
Pope.
* All who have dabbled in amatory verse must have felt the want of more words to rhyme with love. |
||