Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, the earliest example of which was the translation of Virgil's Aeneid by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Surrey intended it as an English equivalent of the long classical line, the dactylic hexameter, and equal to the French Alexandrine and the Italian hendecasyllabic (eleven-syllable) lines in dignity. This meter became the medium in which thousands of Renaissance plays were written, in which Milton wrote his epics, and in which numerous poets have chosen to compose longer poems without the constraint of rhyme. Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare employed it for a great range of dramatic effects; Milton wrote in long sweeps of enjambed pentameters that have been called "verse paragraphs;" Wordsworth and Coleridge brought to perfection the ruminative manner that some eighteenth-century poets cultivated; and in the twentieth century Robert Frost used it to lend conversational informality to his longer poems. Blank verse is an instance of stichic (as opposed to stanzaic) poetry.
 

Indian Summer

[n. b. line 1 below is completed in line 2--and similarly in other broken lines]

            WHEN was the redman's summer?
                                                                   When the rose
            Hung its first banner out? When the gray rock,
            Or the brown heath, the radiant kalmia clothed?
            Or when the loiterer by the reedy brooks
            Started to see the proud lobelia glow
            Like living flame? When through the forest gleamed
            The rhododendron? Or the fragrant breath
            Of the magnolia swept deliciously
            Over the half-laden nerve?
                                                    No. When the groves
            In fleeting colours wrote their own decay,
            And leaves fell eddying on the sharpen'd blast
            That sang their dirge; when o'er their rustling bed
            The red deer sprang, or fled the shrill-voiced quail,
            Heavy of wing and fearful; when, with heart
            Foreboding or depress'd, the white man mark'd
            The signs of coming winter: then began
            The Indian's joyous season. Then the haze,
            Soft and illusive as a fairy dream,
            Lapp'd all the landscape in its silvery fold.
            The quiet rivers, that were wont to hide
            'Neath shelving banks, beheld their course betray'd
            By the white mist that o'er their foreheads crept,
            While wrapp'd in morning dreams, the sea and sky
            Slept 'neath one curtain, as if both were merged
            In the same element. Slowly the sun,
            And all reluctantly, the spell dissolved,
            And then it took upon its parting wing
            A rainbow glory.
                                                Gorgeous was the time
            Yet brief as gorgeous. Beautiful to thee,
            Our brother hunter, but to us replete
            With musing thoughts in melancholy train.
            Our joys, alas! too oft were woe to thee.
            Yet ah! poor Indian! whom we fain would drive
            Both from our hearts, and from thy father's lands,
            The perfect year doth bear thee on its crown,
            And when we would forget, repeat thy name.
                                                        --Lydia Sigourney
 
 

           FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
            Of five long winters! and again I hear
            These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
            With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
            Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
            That on a wild secluded scene impress
            Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
            The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
            The day is come when I again repose
            Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
            These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
            Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
            Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
            'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
            These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
            Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
            Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
            Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
                                                            --William Wordsworth

       On either side a formidable Shape.
       The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,
       But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
       Voluminous and vast--a serpent armed
       With mortal sting. About her middle round
       A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
       With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
       A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
       If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
       And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
       Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
       Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
       Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore;
       Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called
       In secret, riding through the air she comes,
       Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
       With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon
       Eclipses at their charms. The other Shape--
       If shape it might be called that shape had none
       Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
       Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
       For each seemed either--black it stood as Night,
       Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
       And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head
       The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
                                                            --John Milton
 

                “I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.
                But, Warren, please remember how it is:
                He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.
                He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.
                He may not speak of it, and then he may.
                I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
                Will hit or miss the moon.”

                                                        It hit the moon.

                Then there were three there, making a dim row,
                The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
                Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,
                Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

                “Warren,” she questioned.
                                                        “Dead,” was all he answered.
                                                                --Robert Frost
            The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
            Tells us of silence.
                                       And that simplest Lute,
            Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
            How by the desultory breeze caress'd,
            Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
            It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
            Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
            Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
            Over delicious surges sink and rise,
            Such a soft floating witchery of sound
            As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
            Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
            Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
            Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
            Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam'd wing!
                                                            --Samuel Taylor Coleridge

            O CONSTELLATIONS of the early night,
            That sparkled brighter as the twilight died,
            And made the darkness glorious! I have seen
            Your rays grow dim upon the horizon's edge,
            And sink behind the mountains. I have seen
            The great Orion, with his jewelled belt,
            That large-limbed warrior of the skies, go down
            Into the gloom. Beside him sank a crowd
            Of shining ones. I look in vain to find
            The group of sister-stars, which mothers love
            To show their wondering babes, the gentle Seven.
            Along the desert space mine eyes in vain
            Seek the resplendent cressets which the Twins
            Uplifted in their ever-youthful hands.
                                                        --William Cullen Bryant
 

            THE Frost performs its secret ministry,
            Unhelped by an wind. The owlet's cry
            Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
            The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
            Have left me to that solitude, which suits
            Abstruser musings: save that at my side
            My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
            'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
            And vexes meditation with its strange
            And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
            This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
            With all the numberless goings-on of life,
            Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
            Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
            Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
            Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
                                                --Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Longfellow may have hoped to introduce something comparable to blank verse with the unrhymed trochaic tetrameter of The Song of Hiawatha. He did not succeed:

            BY the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
            By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
            At the doorway of his wigwam,
            In the pleasant Summer morning,
            Hiawatha stood and waited.
            All the air was full of freshness,
            All the earth was bright and joyous,
            And before him through the sunshine,
            Westward toward the neighboring forest
            Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
            Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
            Burning, singing in the sunshine.

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