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Updated: June 15, 2025
Diggon is a shepherd, who, in hope of gain, drove his flock into a far country, and coming home the poorer, relates to Hobbinol the evil ways of foreign shepherds among whom, playnely to speake of shepheards most what, Badde is the best. The 'October' eclogue belongs to the stanzaic group, and consists of a dialogue on the subject of poetry between the shepherds Piers and Cuddie.
But the significant point is this: "stanzaic law" makes for uniformity, for the endless repetition of the chosen pattern, which must still be recognized as a pattern, however subtly the artist modulates his details; and in adjusting the infinitely varied material of thought and feeling, phrase and image, picture and story to the fixed stanzaic design, there are bound to be gaps and patches, stretchings and foldings of the thought-stuff, for even as in humble tailor-craft, this many-colored coat of poetry must be cut according to the cloth as well as according to the pattern.
In the ideal poetic "pattern," these waves of idea, feeling and rhythmic speech would coincide more or less completely; we should have a union of "emotional law" with "stanzaic law," the soul of poetry would find its perfect embodiment.
For Cowley, failing to perceive that Pindar's apparent lawlessness was due to the corruption of the Greek text and to the modern ignorance of the rules of Greek choral music, made his English "Pindaric" odes an outlet for rebellion against all stanzaic law. The finer the poetic frenzy, the freer the lyric pattern!
It must be observed, however, that the English odes written in strictly uniform stanzas differ greatly in the simplicity of the stanzaic pattern. Andrew Marvell's "Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland," Collins's "Ode to Evening," Shelley's "To a Skylark," and Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" are all in very simple stanza forms.
He also introduces, as recited by one of the characters, 'The description of the Towre of vertue and honour, into which the noble Howarde contended to enter by worthy actes of chivalry, a stanzaic composition in honour of Sir Edward Howard, who died in 1513.
It is in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds, one of whom sings Cuddy's lament in lyrical stanzas, thus recalling Spenser's 'November. These stanzas do not reveal any great metrical gift. The last poem is a fragment 'concerning old age, which connects itself by its theme with the February eclogue, though the form is stanzaic.
Stanzaic law must follow emotional law, just as Kreisler's accompanist must keep time with Kreisler. All the rich devices of rhyme and tone-color must heighten and not cloy the singing quality. But why lengthen this list of truisms? The combination of genuine lyric emotion with expertness of technical expression is in reality very rare.
But if the passage flows independently of these, it must still flow inevitably it must, in short, show that it is governed by another and a yet deeper force, the inevitableness of emotional expression." This distinction between "stanzaic law" and "emotional law" is highly suggestive and not merely in its application to the metres of the famous regular and irregular odes of English verse.
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