C.--Choral

Different from either of the two classes of odes already represented are the irregular choral measures used by a few English poets in translation or imitation of the odes of the Greek drama.

Chorus.

O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious! Living or dying thou hast fulfilled The work for which thou wast foretold To Israel, and now liest victorious Among thy slain self-killed; Not willingly, but tangled in the fold Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more Than all thy life had slain before.

Semi-chorus.

While their hearts were jocund and sublime, Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine And fat regorged of bulls and goats, Chaunting their idol, and preferring Before our living Dread, who dwells In Silo, his bright sanctuary, Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent, Who hurt their minds, And urged them on with mad desire To call in haste for their destroyer. They, only set on sport and play, Unweetingly importuned Their own destruction to come speedy upon them. So fond are mortal men, Fallen into wrath divine, As their own ruin on themselves to invite, Insensate left, or to sense reprobate, And with blindness internal struck.

Semi-chorus.

But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame, And as an evening dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teemed, Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most When most unactive deemed; And, though her body die, her fame survives, A secular bird, ages of lives.

(MILTON: Samson Agonistes, ll. 1660-1707. 1671.)

Of this passage Mr. Swinburne says: "It is hard to realize and hopeless to reproduce the musical force of classic metres so recondite and exquisite as the choral parts of a Greek play. Even Milton could not; though with his godlike instinct and his godlike might of hand he made a kind of strange and enormous harmony by intermixture of assonance and rhyme with irregular blank verse, as in that last Titanic chorus of Samson which utters over the fallen Philistines the trumpet-blast and thunder of its triumphs." (Essays and Studies, pp. 162, 163.)

The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere; In the court of gods, in the city of men, And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen, In the still mountain air. Only to Typho it sounds hatefully,-- To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown, Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone, To embed them in the sea. Wherefore dost thou groan so loud? Wherefore do thy nostrils flash, Through the dark night, suddenly, Typho, such red jets of flame? Is thy tortured heart still proud? Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash? Still alert thy stone-crushed frame? Doth thy fierce soul still deplore Thine ancient rout by the Cilician hills, And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore? Do thy bloodshot eyes still weep The fight which crowned thine ills, Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep? Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair, Where erst the strong sea-currents sucked thee down, Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest, Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair? That thy groans, like thunder prest, Begin to roll, and almost drown The sweet notes whose lulling spell Gods and the race of mortals love so well, When through thy caves thou hearest music swell?

But an awful pleasure bland Spreading o'er the Thunderer's face, When the sound climbs near his seat, The Olympian council sees; As he lets his lax right hand, Which the lightnings doth embrace, Sink upon his mighty knees. And the eagle, at the beck Of the appeasing, gracious harmony, Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck, Nestling nearer to Jove's feet; While o'er his sovran eye The curtains of the blue films slowly meet. And the white Olympus-peaks Rosily brighten, and the soothed gods smile At one another from their golden chairs, And no one round the charmed circle speaks. Only the loved Hebe bears The cup about, whose draughts beguile Pain and care, with a dark store Of fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o'er; And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: Empedocles on Etna, Act II. Song of Callicles. 1853.)

Wherefore to me, this fear-- Groundedly stationed here Fronting my heart, the portent-watcher--flits she? Wherefore should prophet-play The uncalled and unpaid lay, Nor--having spat forth fear, like bad dreams--sits she On the mind's throne beloved--well-suasive Boldness? For time, since, by a throw of all the hands, The boat's stern-cables touched the sands, Has passed from youth to oldness,-- When under Ilion rushed the ship-borne bands.

And from my eyes I learn-- Being myself my witness--their return. Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul, Itself its teacher too, chants from within Erinus' dirge, not having now the whole Of Hope's dear boldness: nor my inwards sin-- The heart that's rolled in whirls against the mind Justly presageful of a fate behind. But I pray--things false, from my hope, may fall Into the fate that's not-fulfilled-at-all!

Especially at least, of health that's great The term's insatiable: for, its weight --A neighbor, with a common wall between-- Ever will sickness lean; And destiny, her course pursuing straight, Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen. Now, when a portion, rather than the treasure Fear casts from sling, with peril in right measure, It has not sunk--the universal freight, (With misery freighted over-full,) Nor has fear whelmed the hull. Then too the gift of Zeus, Two-handedly profuse, Even from the furrows' yield for yearly use Has done away with famine, the disease; But blood of man to earth once falling,--deadly, black,-- In times ere these,-- Who may, by singing spells, call back? Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knew The way to bring the dead again. But, did not an appointed Fate constrain The Fate from gods, to bear no more than due, My heart, outstripping what tongue utters, Would have all out: which now, in darkness, mutters Moodily grieved, nor ever hopes to find How she a word in season may unwind From out the enkindling mind.

(BROWNING: Agamemnon; chorus. 1877.)

Of the same general metrical character as the irregular odes are certain poems (like some of Patmore's) with no regularly organized structure and varying lengths of line. See, for example, Milton's verses At a Solemn Music and On Time; Swinburne's Thalassius and On the Cliffs; and William Morris's On a fair Spring Morning. Compare, also, the effect of the irregular strophic forms in Southey's Curse of Kehama, Shelley's Queen Mab, and the like.