The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within

Important to note that it is the stressed syllables that matter: ‘compelling’ and ‘appealing’ are perfectly legitimate alliteration words, as are ‘invention’ and ‘convenient’, ‘rolls’ and ‘directly’. So long as the stress falls heavily enough on the syllable belonging to the alliterating consonant, everything’s hotsy-totsy and right as a trivet. And I say again, because it might seem unusual after all the syllabic counting of the previous section of the book, IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MANY SYLLABLES THERE ARE, ONLY HOW MANY BEATS. Occasionally, in defiance of the b-b-b-crash rule you may see the fourth beat alliterate with the others, but usually it does not.

Although I said that it does not matter where in each half of the line the stressed elements go, it is close enough to a rule to say that the fourth stress (the CRASH) is very likely to be in the last word of the line, which may (like ‘lightning’ and ‘simple’ above) have a feminine ending.

I could give you some examples of Anglo-Saxon verse, but they involve special letters (yoghs, eths and thorns) and the language is distant enough from our own to be virtually incomprehensible to all but the initiated.

Medieval verse is not so tricky to decipher. Round about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries English poets began to write once more in the Anglo-Saxon style: this flowering, known as the Alliterative Revival, gave rise to some magnificent works. Here is the opening to William Langland’s ‘Piers Plowman’.³²In a somer sesoun, whan softe was the sonneI shope me into shroudes, as I a shep were,In habite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,Wente forth in the world wondres to here,And saw many selles and sellcouthe thynges.

You hardly need to know what every word means, but a rough translation would be:One summer, when the sun was gentleI dressed myself in rough clothes like a shepherdIn the habit of a lazy hermit³³Went forth into the world to hear wondersAnd saw many marvels and strange things.

You will notice that Langland does open with bang, bang, bang–bang. Perhaps it is his way of beginning his poem with special hoopla. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymous work from the same period (late fourteenth century: contemporary with Chaucer) opens thus: Sithen the sege and the assaut watz sesed at TroyeThe borgh brittened and brent to brondez and askezThe tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroghtWatz tried for his tricherie, the trewest on erthe;

My spellcheck has just resigned, but no matter. Here is a basic translation:Since the siege and the assault ceased at TroyThe town destroyed and burned to brands and ashesThe man that the wiles of treason there wroughtWas tried for his treachery, the veriest on earth;

The Gawain Poet (as he is known in the sexy world of medieval studies–he is considered by some to be the author of three other alliterative works–Pearl, Patience and Purity) occasionally breaks the ‘rule’ and includes an extra alliterating word, and therefore, one must assume, an extra beat, as he does here in the second line.

Modern poets (by which I mean any from the last hundred years) have tried their hands at this kind of verse with varying degrees of accomplishment. This is a perfect Langlandian four-stress alliterated line in two hemistichs and comes from R. S. Thomas’s ‘The Welsh Hill Country’:On a bleak background of bald stone.

Ezra Pound’s ‘The Sea Farer: from the Anglo-Saxon’ contains lines like ‘Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth’ and ‘Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world’s delight’ but for the most part it does not follow the hemistich b-b-b-c pattern with such exactness. Among the more successful in this manner was that great prosodic experimenter, W.H. Auden. These extracts are from his verse drama The Age of Anxiety.Deep in my dark the dream shinesYes, of you, you dear always;My cause to cry, cold but myStory still, still my music.Mild rose the moon, moving through ourNaked nights: tonight it rains;Black umbrellas blossom out;Gone the gold, my golden ball.