Rhyme and meter, part 3: What we can hear, and what they could

I'll want to return to my previous set of examples in a future post; here I want to start by considering one more.  A naive historian of rhyme might think that what doesn't sound like a rhyme to us ("hand or eye / symmetry") would have been more natural in a different dialect or pronunciation.  True we can hear eye as diphthongized (as the unlovely linguistic term has it): the slow-motion pronunciation would decompress it to "ah-ee" (the way Mark Twain or Kate Chopin might write it).  That tweak would turn this into a natural rhyme, which sounds forced only to those who pronounce as we do, here, now.

But it's harder to say the same of the near parallel, and very frequent rhymes on internal "i" sounds.  Shakespeare and Donne, to quote the two most obvious examples, rhyme such words as wind and mind. (The doggerel rhyme to Rosalind in As You Like It in my first example has taught generations of actors how to pronounce her name: majority rhyme seems to win, though I think it would be interesting to go with the early returns that turn out to be the minority: Ind and wind.)

From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lined
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no fair be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind. 

* * *

If a hart do lack a hind,
Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Winter garments must be lined,
So must slender Rosalind.
They that reap must sheaf and bind;
Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find
Must find love's prick and Rosalind. 

-----------------

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
            And find
            What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

Remember that Wyatt, too, knows where is an hind, though in a net he seeks to catch the wind.  Nor let us forget Arlo Guthrie's great motorcycle song, which has him, as needed, rhyming pickle with motor-sickle, and die with motor-sigh- / (cul), as his folk rock pronunciation allows.

So wind/mind is okay, but you'll never find (I do not think) weened/mind, though that would seem a closer parallel to eye/symmetry or (say) we/my.

So here's the passage I want to think about, from Sidney, the octet of Atrophel and Stella 86:

Alas, whence came this change of lookes? if I
Haue chang'd desert, let mine owne conscience be
A still felt plague, to selfe condemning me:
Let wo gripe on my heart, shame loade mine eye,
But if all faith, like spotlesse Ermine ly
Safe in my soule, which onely doth to thee
(As his sole object of felicitie)
With wings of Loue in aire of wonder flie....

Note that the rhyme scheme is obvious here abbaabba.  But this isn't inevitable: some of the sonnets rhyme (in their octets) abababab, and if eye can rhyme with me, it would seem that some could argue that the latter rhyme scheme governs here as well. We're facing here an example of the sort of thing that Wittgenstein ponders when he considers the problem of rule-following: there is a rule that can justify any sequence.  (My favorite recent example is the sequence that begins sweetly enough as 0, 1, 2, but whose fourth member (scroll down if this isn't of tremendous interest to you) is

260,121,894,356,579,510,020,490,322,708,104,361,119,152,187,501,694,578,572,754,183,785,083,563,115,694,738,224,067,857,795,813,045,708,261,992,057,589,224,725,953,664,156,516,205,201,587,379,198,458,774,083,252,910,524,469,038,881,188,412,376,434,119,195,104,550,534,665,861,624,327,194,019,711,390,984,553,672,727,853,709,934,562,985,558,671,936,977,407,000,370,043,078,375,899,742,067,678,401,696,720,784,280,629,229,032,107,161,669,867,260,548,988,445,514,257,193,985,499,448,939,594,496,064,045,132,362,140,265,986,193,073,249,369,770,477,606,067,680,670,176,491,669,403,034,819,961,881,455,625,195,592,566,918,830,825,514,942,947,596,537,274,845,624,628,824,234,526,597,789,737,740,896,466,553,992,435,928,786,212,515,967,483,220,976,029,505,696,699,927,284,670,563,747,137,533,019,248,313,587,076,125,412,683,415,860,129,447,566,011,455,420,749,589,952,563,543,068,288,634,631,084,965,650,682,771,552,996,256,790,845,235,702,552,186,222,358,130,016,700,834,523,443,236,821,935,793,184,701,956,510,729,781,804,354,173,890,560,727,428,048,583,995,919,729,021,726,612,291,298,420,516,067,579,036,232,337,699,453,964,191,475,175,567,557,695,392,233,803,056,825,308,599,977,441,675,784,352,815,913,461,340,394,604,901,269,542,028,838,347,101,363,733,824,484,506,660,093,348,484,440,711,931,292,537,694,657,354,337,375,724,772,230,181,534,032,647,177,531,984,537,341,478,674,327,048,457,983,786,618,703,257,405,938,924,215,709,695,994,630,557,521,063,203,263,493,209,220,738,320,923,356,309,923,267,504,401,701,760,572,026,010,829,288,042,335,606,643,089,888,710,297,380,797,578,013,056,049,576,342,838,683,057,190,662,205,291,174,822,510,536,697,756,603,029,574,043,387,983,471,518,552,602,805,333,866,357,139,101,046,336,419,769,097,397,432,285,994,219,837,046,979,109,956,303,389,604,675,889,865,795,711,176,566,670,039,156,748,153,115,943,980,043,625,399,399,731,203,066,490,601,325,311,304,719,028,898,491,856,203,766,669,164,468,791,125,249,193,754,425,845,895,000,311,561,682,974,304,641,142,538,074,897,281,723,375,955,380,661,719,801,404,677,935,614,793,635,266,265,683,339,509,760,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 --

a number with 1,747 digits. But there's a rule for that.*  Wittgenstein wants to know what makes a rule the right rule to follow, when there's no rule that could make it the right rule to follow that couldn't itself be followed in an infinite number of different ways.  His answer, more or less, is practice ratified by the relationship of learning and teaching the belongs to "agreement in forms of life."  Hannah Ginsborg, more or less in agreement with Stanley Cavell, calls such agreement in forms of life "primitive normativity."

Anyhow, back to our example.  Sidney likes partially ambiguous forms.  The famous "night and day" sonnet has only two rhyme words:

Now that of absence the most irksome night,
With darkest shade doth ouercome my day;
Since Stellas eyes wont to giue me my day,
Leauing my Hemisphere, leaue me in night,
Each day seemes long, and longs for long-staid night,
The night as tedious, wooes th'approch of day;
Tired with the dustie toyles of busie day,
Languisht with horrors of the silent night;
Suffering the euils both of the day and night,
While no night is more darke then is my day,
Nor no day hath lesse quiet then my night:
With such bad mixture of my night and day,
That liuing thus in blackest winter night,
I feele the flames of hottest sommer day.

Two rhyme words, but what's the rhyme scheme?  I think it's too easy to stay with just a and b: most sonnets in Astrophel and Stella have four or five different rhyme pairs, typically rhymed abbaabbacdcdee, sometimes, e.g. the sonnet previous to this one, ababababccdeed, and again sometimes, as in the one before that, ababbabaccdccd.  I think it would be better, and more natural, to "chunk" the night and day sonnet as rhymed abbaabbacdcdee: the rule of the sonnet form seems to require that.

Note that we're already chunking by taking homoteleuton (or repetition of endings) as rhyme.  "Night" doesn't rhyme with "night," not even richly.  It repeats the word (as in a sestina, the form Sidney introduced into English).   You might almost call it a duina, at least the part that cycles night day day night night day day night. (On the relation of n-inas to prime numbers, see this short paper which proves that if an n-ina cycles, 2n+1 is prime: 5 in the case of a duina, where n=2. The converse doesn't hold, though.) In Dante, except for the repeated endings on "Christ" - which must not be adulterated by the arbitrary similarity of rhyming words - repetition is always rime riche: this is a principle of interpretation, so that you can understand an ambiguous word (such as torna, palma, and pianta, all rhymed with homonyms in Paradiso IX) as requiring difference in meaning between its orthographically identical homonyms, which can help solve the ambiguity.

The point is that in reading rhymed poetry we assess similarity pretty subtly, and assess as well the difference that prevents similarity from just being identity. Rhymes have a lot of give, but (as with stress) how much give they have is always contextualized by the rhyme scheme that determines them, and by the rhymes that surround them.  Night and day rhyme with themselves because they belong to a sonnet with a familiar rhyme scheme; piante and piante rhyme because they belong to a rhyme schemes that eschews self-rhyming, so that they therefore don't mean the same thing.

And this allows us to return to sonnet 86, where we can have no doubt that the rhyme scheme is abbaabba. Why no doubt?  Why not abababab?  Because the prosodical context and the closeness of sound brings out, here, the difference between I and be, me and eye.  Sidney takes pains to prevent our being misled by the conventional rhyming of, say, me and eye, by making sure that the first, the a, rhyme-pair is homophonic: I/eye. We then have to work to separate them via their different meanings, and that very work of separation (as in Dante) pairs them: very similar but still different.

Sidney's fearless symmetry makes sure we keep track of what's rhyming with what, even when doing so requires some involved and subtle distinction.

And here's the payoff of the always pain-in-the-ass subtlety of following a formal analysis.  Making us keep track of the rhymes, especially in a fairly monochromatic context, is a way of infiltrating our sense of rhyme with a sense of meaning and vice versa.  These are considerations that we're used to understanding when it comes to poetic meter, where the interaction of metrical and semantic stress contributes to our understanding of what's being said.  It's interesting that there's a subtle analogue of this in rhyme as well, which suggests that the interaction, both prosodically and semantically, between rhyme and meter is closer than has usually been suspected.

-----
*viz., 0 followed by 0 bangs = 0; 1 followed by 1 bang (1! or 1 factorial) = 1; 2!! (2 factorial factorial, 2 followed by 2 bangs = 2; 3!!! (3 factorial factorial factorial) = 720! = the foregoing.

Rhyme and meter, part 2: Non-regular rhyme

Try this little experiment.  Read these passages of rhymed poetry:

Girls and boys, come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day;
Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,
And come with your playfellows into the street.
Come with a whoop, come with a call,
Come with a good will or not at all.
Up the ladder and down the wall,
A half-penny roll will serve us all.
You find milk, and I'll find flour,
And we'll have a pudding in half an hour.
                                                              --Mother Goose

* * *

Hush-a-by baby
On the tree top,
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will fall baby
Cradle and all.
                                 --Ibid.

* * *

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.
                                     --Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

* * *

Your pain still hangs in air,
Sharp motes of it suspended;
The voice of your despair —
That also is not ended:

When near your death a friend
Asked you what he could do,
"Remember me," you said.
We will remember you.

Once when you went to see
Another with a fever
In a like hospital bed,
With terrible hothouse cough
And terrible hothouse shiver
That soaked him and then dried him,
And you perceived that he
Had to be comforted,

You climbed in there beside him
And hugged him plain in view,
Though you were sick enough,
And had your own fears too.
                                           --Thom Gunn, "Memory Unsettled"

* * *

He thought he saw an Elephant
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
"At length I realize," he said,
"The bitterness of life!"

He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister's Husband's Niece.
"Unless you leave this house," he said,
"I'll send for the police!"

he thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that it cannot speak!"
                                       --Lewis Carroll, "The Mad Gardener's Song."

* * *

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
                                                              --Wyatt

* * *

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portions of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
                                                              --Dickinson

* * *

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
                                                              --Blake

* * *

Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd
Vpon the pillours of Eternity,
That is contrayr to Mutabilitie:
For, all that moueth, doth in Change delight:
But thence-forth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O thou great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.
                                                               --Spenser, The Mutabilitie Cantos

* * *

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
                                                               --The Intimations Ode

Each of them contains what Pope (the purest of English rhymers) would regard as a false rhyme.  And not only Pope, but Pope can set the standard.  How quickly do you notice them?  What words did you think rhymed that didn't, at least by what you might call standard standards?

Anyhow, I am going to propose that we call these non-regular rhymes ("irregular rhymes" would be misleading, since we're used to talking about as irregularly rhyming poems, e.g. poems, Lycidas).  Non-regular rhymes would be pairs that register as rhymes the way irregular past tenses register as past tenses, without our generally noticing them.

In my next post I want to think about how and why they work.

Here I'll just draw attention to the way Auden's rhymes are sometimes an anthology or cento of rhymes like those above:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful. --Auden, "Lullaby"

We sense rhyme here, and it takes a while to figure out what rhymes with what.  That's an interesting perceptual combination.

The second in a series of short posts about rhyme's relation to meter

The Unimmediate Stages of the Erotic

I claimed in my last post that people are needlessly confused by "When the Lamp is Shattered." But that's not quite right. The poem is confusing, the way the fate of love is confusing. It's confusing because, as with love, you lose track of the pronouns.  So it's worth looking at them carefully.

Here, again, are the last two stanzas:

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

The important thing to remember abut Shelley is the supernatural delicacy of his effects ("Ah, sister, desolation is a delicate thing"). You can see that delicacy in the mingled interchange of reference.  As the opening stanzas make clear, this poem is an example of a particularly  Shelleyan version of allegory. "The light in the dust lies dead" can't quite mean that you can see light in the dust of the ground (as though the oil were still burning), because the light is dead. It almost means that, but it means that only if you understand that "the light in the dust" also and more deeply means: the light of life and love that animates the dust that we are, to which we will return. We've lost our spark, alive but loveless. The light in the dust that is still biologically alive has been extinguished.

Allegory figures through externalization, so the allegorical figuration of that is light actually lying dead in the dust, as on a battlefield, exteriorized. This is not quite an image, though it sounds like one. It's a verbal substitution for an image, a verbal form which can never be imagined as a pure image, since you would have to imagine light and its extinction at once. I do imagine that, but only by personifying the image of light prone and dead somehow in the dust, light still but dead, like Burke's not quite imaginable "angel of the Lord."

This is the mode of the last two stanzas as well. After love has expressed itself (when the hearts have mingled and mingle no longer, "when the lips have spoken), it does not last. Not for both: the weak one still loves though love is over. This is the meaning of the self-discrepancy of the light lying dead in the dust. Love is dead, the weak one still loves.

The well-built nest decays when love leaves it. Who leaves? The one who doesn't love anymore, and so: love departs. Who stays? The one who loves, debilitated by loss, and so: love stays. It does both at once.  Each is the equivalent of the other.  Love's departure brings out the love felt by the one who's lost all, and from whom love can never depart.

Love doesn't return to its eagle home; its only nest now is the place where the weak remains forlorn since love is gone. Love is gone, and what's left is love. Allegorical exteriorization is just the right figure for this discrepancy within experience: what is inside can only be seen now from the outside, and that fact tells powerfully and devastatingly on inner experience and brings us back to inner experience.

So in the last stanza, the pronouns are only hard to fix if you think they have to be fixed. "Thee" is Love, addressed already in the second person in the previous stanza: "Why choose you the frailest / For your cradle, your home, and your bier?" So "its passions" are the passions of the "weak one" who must "endure what it once possessed."

And yet: it's the passions of love that must be rocking the weak one, who endures it. The change in antecedent this reading implies is confirmed by the shift from "you" ("Why choose you the frailest") to "thee," the weak one.

The final, deepest allegorical figure of love is the person whom love abandons, leaving that person to be love's image, the frail and sorrowful personification of love's frailty. What's left when love is faithless and abandons you is the truest image of the faithfulness of love, faithful love.

"What may I do when my master feareth, But in the field with him to live and die? For good is the life ending faithfully."