诗歌韵律

The combination of rhythm (that is, “iambic, trochaic, dactylic”, etc.), meter (that is, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, etc.), and rhyme scheme (for example, “a b c b”) can create certain stanzaic forms which have become accepted poetic conventions.(又是一个很重要的概念。 简单的说，一个 rhyme scheme 就可以当作一个 stanza)

Some of these historically important stanza forms in English poetry are:

Couplets(对句)Any two lines which rhyme, regardless of rhythm and meter(couplets 是诗歌最早的形式，压韵即可)

Example of a COUPLET

Candy Is dandy

Heroic Couplet(我找不到准确的译法，好象是英雄双韵体英雄双句体)Two lines which rhyme (a couplet) which are written in iambic pentameter. The “Heroic Couplet” was the dominant form of English poetry in the 18th century, and lots of authors from Chaucer to the present have used this form.

Example of an HEROIC COUPLET英雄双韵体

Say first, of God above, or man below What can we reason, but from what we know?

(from Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man )

Quatrains(四行诗)

Any stanza with 4 lines

Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker.

Ballad Stanza(???)

A “quatrain” with alternating tetrameter and trimeter E.g., the idiotic poem we have been studying! I put my hat upon my head And walked into the strand And there I met another man Whose hat was in his hand.

A serious example of BALLAD STANZA

The king sits in Dumferline town, Drinking the blood-red wine: “O where will I get a good sailor To sail this ship of mine?”

from anonymous, Sir Patrick Spens (after 1200)

The Sonnet(十四行诗)

14 lines Iambic pentameter Two main types:

Italian or Petrarchan( 彼特拉克体十四行诗) - Two quatrains plus a “sestet” (6 line unit) - often abba abba cdecde

English or Shakespearean(莎士比亚体十四行诗) - Three quatrains plus a couplet - often abab cdcd efef gg

An Italian Sonnet

Divers doth use, as I have heard and know, When that to change their ladies do begin To mourne and wail, and never for to lin, Hoping thereby to pease their painful woe. And some there be, that when it chanceth so That women change and hate where love hath been, They call them false and think with words to win The hearts of them which otherwhere doth grow. But as for me, though that by chance indeed Change hath outworn the favor that I had, I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad, Nor call her false that falsely did me feed, But let it pass, and think it is of kind That often change doth please a woman’s mind. Wyatt, Divers Doth Use (c. 1540)

A Shakespearean Sonnet

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self that seals up all the rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the deathbed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. (1609)

Blank Verse(无韵诗)

Unrhymed iambic pentameter Torment, sweet friend, that base and aged man That durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer, With greatest torments that our hell affords. Marlowe, Dr. Faustus (1604)

Some other stanzaic forms