download PDF version: 47.1MB - Global Grey

APPENDIX TO CHAPTERS VIII & IX 241
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore ;
Turr wheresoe'er I may.
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more !
The opening lines of the poem "The Bells/' by the
American poet, Edgar Allan Poe (1809 to 1849) read :
Hear the sledges with the bells
Silver bells !
What a world of merriment their melody foretells !
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night
!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight ;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically swells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
The " Poeta laureatus " of England, Alfred Tennyson
(1809 to 1893), was equally fond of irregular rhyme and
rhythm, employing it alike in poetry of a merry, playful, or
powerful character and in serious vein.
Here are the first lines of the poem " The Mermaid " :
Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne ?
Written in the Bacon-Shakespeare style the poem, with
its internal rhymes, would probably have read thus :
Q