The body of Judas Iscariot To and fro, and up and down He ran so swiftly there, As round and round the frozen pole "Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head, And the lights burned bright and clear, "O, who is that?" the Bridegroom said "Whose weary feet I hear?" 'Twas one looked from the lighted hall, And answered soft and slow The Bridegroom in his robe of white, "O who is that who moans without?" 'Twas one looked from the lighted hall, 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot Did hush itself and stand, And saw the Bridegroom at the door, The Bridegroom stood in the open door, And he was clad in white, And far within the Lord's supper Was spread so long and bright. The Bridegroom shaded his eyes and looked, * 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot Stood black, and sad, and bare, "I have wandered many nights and days, There is no light elsewhere." 'Twas the wedding guests cried out within, And their eyes were fierce and bright; 'Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door, And beckoned smiling sweet; 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot "The Holy supper is spread within, The supper wine is poured at last, As the ballad is a Teutonic form and has grown up among English-speaking people, it is germane to our race. A versified incident told with directness, simplicity, and rapidity, and appealing to the primitive emotions only, is sure to please even the modern generation. It has more affinity to our spiritual natures than descriptive or reflective verse has. Bret Harte's John Burns at Gettysburg and Whittier's Barbara Frietchie are ballad-like in form, and in them poetry has its true character as a social force, something not confined to the cultured, but appealing to the people through an ancestral form. It must be a matter of regret that ballad composing and singing is not more general than it is among our people. With us the production of oral, popular poetry has largely taken the form of composing and singing hymns, which being confined to a narrow range of emotion, lack the germinal and developing power of ballads. For this very reason the study of the old ballads is especially valuable to Americans. The impulse which a true poet feels to speak directly to his fellow-men and not merely through books to the few, the consciousness that poetry is a broadly human expression, inspired the following sonnet by Hartley Coleridge: Could I but harmonize one kindly thought, Which maids might warble as they tripped along, Or could I ease the laboring heart o'erfraught Might rustic lovers woo in phrase of mine, Could I bequeath a few remembered words Whose rhymes preserve from harm the pious birds, Or his, that dim full many a star-bright eye With woe for Barbara Allen's cruelty. CHAPTER III THE SONNET THE sonnet is in every regard different from the ballad. It is of a fixed length and meter, fourteen iambic pentameters. It is a foreign importation and has been used exclusively by the literary class; the ballad is indigenous and belongs primarily to the people. The sonnet is never recited or sung, though its Italian original, "sonnetto," means little song, and there are no anonymous sonnets. But as the sonnet form has been used with brief intermissions in our language since the sixteenth century and since the thirteenth century in Italy, it, too, has stood the test of time, and if it does not contain any popular quality, must have in itself an element of artistic perfection. The rules of the construction of a pure or Italian sonnet are: Ist. As said above, it must consist of fourteen five-accent lines of ten syllables each. 2d. It must be divided metrically into two parts; the first or octave or octette is made of eight lines, rhyming a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a, the remaining six lines, the sextette, rhyming in any fashion on either two or three terminals, as, c-d-c-d-c-d, or c-d-e-e-d-c. |