Poetry for Students, Volume 35

come and gone. The poem thus uses the image of
the ocean to give a vision of the vast stretch
of time and the changeable, transient nature of
human life when set against eternity. Time rushes
on, but eternity always remains what it is.

Style

Spenserian Stanza
These stanzas are written in what is called Spen-
serian stanzas. The Spenserian stanza is named
after Elizabethan English poet Edmund Spenser
(1552–1599), who invented the form in his poem
The Faerie Queene. The Spenserian stanza con-
sists of nine lines. The first eight lines are written
in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic
hexameter (also known as an Alexandrine).

An iamb is a poetic foot in which an unstressed
syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. (A foot
consists of two or three syllables, either one strongly

stressed syllable and one lightly stressed syllable

or one strong stress and two lighter ones.) A pen-

tameter consists of five feet. An iambic hexameter

consists of six iambic feet.

The poet occasionally varies the meter. The

most common variation is the substitution of a

trochee for an iamb at the beginning of the line,

in the first foot. A trochee consists of a stressed

syllable followed by an unstressed one; it is

therefore the opposite of an iamb. The inversion

of the first foot occurs, for example, in line 4

of stanza CLXXIX, in which the first syllable,

‘‘Stops,’’ is stressed. The inversion makes the

word stand out against the expected regular met-

rical base. Similar inversions to create a trochaic

first foot occur in stanza CLXXX (‘‘Spurning’’),

stanza CLXXXIII (‘‘Glasses’’ and ‘‘Icing’’), stanza

CLXXXIV (‘‘Borne’’), and elsewhere.

Occasionally the line contains an extra

unstressed syllable, as in the last line of stanza

CLXXXI: ‘‘Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of

Trafalgar.’’ This is known as a feminine ending. In

a regular iambic line, the final syllable is stressed,

and such lines are called masculine endings.

The rhyme scheme is as follows: line 1 rhymes

with lines 3; line 2 rhymes with lines 4, 5, and 7;

line 6 rhymes with lines 8 and 9. The rhyme

scheme can be described asababbcbcc.

The Spenserian stanza was used by other

English Romantic poets, including John Keats,

Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth.

Apostrophe

An apostrophe is a figure of speech in which a

poet directly addresses an absent person, inani-

mate object, or abstract quality. In this case, six

of the seven stanzas consist of apostrophes to the

ocean, beginning with stanza CLXXIX, ‘‘Roll on,

thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!’’ The poet

addresses the ocean using the terms ‘‘thou’’ and

‘‘thy’’ throughout. These are archaic words used

for the most part only in reference to God. The

poet’s use of them shows the reverence with which

he regards the ocean, and the god-like status he

ascribes to it. He writes as if he were approaching

a powerful, conscious being.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Romantic Movement

The romantic movement in English literature is

usually dated from 1798 to 1832. The principal

Illustration of a scene from Canto I of the poem
(ÓLebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy)

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage