"Fearlessly faring and frightful to foes,
"The Prophecy's Prince will prong them on bladepoint.
"Happily goes he to hack them to hash.
"No sweep of his sword but will slay at least five..."
- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Star Prince Charlie (New York, 1976), p. 148.
I quote this passage because it is alliterative verse which I had neither read nor heard until I received JRR Tolkien's The Fall Of Arthur (London, 2013) as a Christmas present:
"...the West waning, a wind rising
"in the waxing East. The world falters." (p. 32)
(Alliteration: West, waning, wind, waxing, world.)
Can we improve on Anderson's and Dickson's alliterations?
"No sweep of his sword but will slay at least six..."?
or:
"No sweep of his sword but will slay six or sev'n..."?
Immediately after the short verse, a lighter than air air fleet attacks a sea fleet. First, the bombers are so high that they often miss their targets with, in any case, inadequate explosives. Next, they come so low that they are "...in easy range of catapults..." (pp. 148-149). Thus, the easily repulsed "...onslaught was a pleasant diversion..." (p. 149). Yet the dictator who sent the fleet has a slogan, 'Victory through air power'!" (ibid.)
Before that, Charlie had discovered that, on New Lemuria, very easy riddles have been kept religiously and ritualistically secret with the result that the Priests expect him to be stumped by, e. g., "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Thus, he easily passes one of the prophesied tests without needing any extra help or outright fakery. And he is moved by the simple sincerity of the New Lemurians in a passage temporarily transcending humor.
5 comments:
"No sweep of his sword but will slay at least five..."
I don't swear to this, but I believe that according to the traditional rules for alliterative verse, the scop was supposed to alliterate three beats in a line, but not all four.
Also, how could you be such an Anderson fan, and not have encountered alliterative verse before? There's some in The Last Viking, Hrolf Kraki's Saga, Mother of Kings, and perhaps elsewhere.
Nick,
Thank you for your comments and reminders. You are right about three beats, not four.
Of course I have read the verse in THE LAST VIKING etc but I did not realize that their alliteration was an established poetic form until I read Christopher Tolkien's explanation in his notes to his father's THE FALL OF ARTHUR.
Paul.
...so I should now say not that I have never read alliterative verse but that I have read it without realizing!
Hi, Nicholas and Paul!
And Poul Anderson actually wrote large parts of A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST in blank verse. Something I had not realized was the case till Paul discussed that book in this blog.
Sean
Re: Aliterative verse
To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock
In a pestilential prison with a life long lock
Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper
On a big black block
Familiar?
BTW in 'The Trouble Twisters' Chee Lan quotes from the same work.
"Something humorous, but lingering, with either boiling oil or melted lead."
;^)
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