Actually, Amanda, I think I said those lines from Robert Frost were hendecasyllabics, not hexameters. Or I may have misspoken. Regardless, hendecasyllabic they are, the eleven-syllable line passing into English ultimately from Latin.

Here, for example is the meter of Horace’s alcaic stanza in Latin poetry:

x — u — — ^^ — u u — u x
x — u — — ^^ — u u — u x
x — u — — — u — x
— u u — u u — u — x

(Where “—” means a long syllable, “u” a short, and “x” either, and “^^” means the caesura.)

Translated into stresses, with a trochee substituted for the spondee, that makes it in English:

x / v / v / v v / v x
x / v / v / v v / v x
x / v / v / v / x
/ v v / v v / v / x

The first two lines here are hendecasyllabics. Such eleven-syllable lines have a strong life in Italian—in Dante, for instance—where they are very flexible and where rules have emerged to keep track of the dactyl and the number of stresses.

Still, there’s a difference in the ways these hendecasyllabic lines are used in English. One can speak here of asclepiads, first, second, etc., but an easier way to think of it might be this: The hendecasyllabic line in narrative poetry wants the two unstressed syllables to come early, the opening two hendecasyllabic lines in an alcaic want them to come late.

The example you cite, Robert Frost’s “For Once, Then, Something,” is a fine example of narrative hendecasyllabics. What’s amazing, I think, about this poem is that it sounds unstrained, but every line is exactly regular: /v/vv/v/v/v.

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
/v/vv/v/v/v
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
/v/vv/v/v/v
Deeper down in the well than where the water
/v/vv/v/v/v
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
/v/vv/v/v/v
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
/v/vv/v/v/v
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
/v/vv/v/v/v

Tennyson’s “Hendecasyllabics” is perhaps even more amazing, though much more artificial, for Tennyson has tried to line up long syllables (so the poem is accurate in quantity) with the stresses:

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
/v/vv/v/v/v
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
/v/vv/v/v/v
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
/v/vv/v/v/v
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
/v/vv/v/v/v
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
/v/vv/v/v/v
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him
/v/vv/v/v/v

In the two hendecasyllabic lines that open an alcaic stanza, however, the dactyl typically comes later in the line, not as the second foot but after the caesura: not /v/vv/v/v/v but x/v/v/vv/vx. So, for example, here are the opening two lines of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Alcaics: to H. F. B.”

Brave lads in olden musical centuries
//v/v/vv/vv
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,
//v/v/vv/vv

And here are the opening two lines of Tennyson’s “Milton: Alcaics” (again a tour-de-force, trying to line up quantity and stress):

O mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies,
//v/v/vv/vv
O skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity,
//v/v/vv/vv

Here’s the beginning of Arthur Hugh Clough’s “Alcaics”:

So spake the voice: and as with a single life
//v/v/vv/vx
Instinct, the whole mass, fierce, irretainable,
//v/v/vv/vx

It’s interesting that these Victorian examples all attempt the difficult task of forcing a spondee to begin each line. Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Late Summer” doesn’t attempt that (although I think he may “hear” it in some way, thickening that opening foot with a hint of quantity):

Confused, he found her lavishing feminine
v/v/v/vv/vv
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable;
/vv/v/vv/vv

As this example shows, there’s plenty of room for substitution in the first few feet, but that dactyl in the penultimate position seems to me the defining feature of the hendecasyllabic line in an alcaic stanza.

More recent poets have treated the opening two lines of the alcaic stanza in English as almost genuine “syllabic” lines: carrying any metrical pattern that sounds good, as long as it has eleven syllables. W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” are alcaics that will sometimes use the traditional pattern:

Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
/v/v/v/vv/v

but often Auden will vary this wildly, to great effect:

For about him till the very end were still
/v/v/v/v/v/
those he had studied, the fauna of the night,
/vv/vv/v/v/

Regardless, after the opening eleven-syllable lines, the alcaic stanza adds two more, a nine-syllable line and a ten-syllable line. At an early stage in Greek, these were apparently one nineteen-syllable line, but by the time they reach the Romans, it is routine to hear them as two lines (so Horace, for example, will admit hiatus between them).

x/v/v/v/x
/vv/vv/v/x

To use the same examples as above, here’s Stevenson’s “Alcaics: to H. F. B.”:

Brave lads in olden musical centuries
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,
Sat late by alehouse doors in April
Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising.

These final lines run //v/v/v/v and /vv/vv/v/v. Tennyson’s “Milton: Alcaics” is precisely the same:

O mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies,
O skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;

These end with //v/v/v/x and /vv/vv/v/x, as do Clough’s “Alcaics”:

So spake the voice: and as with a single life
Instinct, the whole mass, fierce, irretainable,
Down on that unsuspecting host swept;
Down, with the fury of winds, that all night

Robinson’s “Late Summer” drops the attempt to have a spondee open the third line, but otherwise uses the same pattern for the last two lines, v/v/v/v/x and /vv/vv/v/x:

Confused, he found her lavishing feminine
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable;
And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors
Be as they were, without end, her playthings?

These, then are the two main uses of hendecasyllabic lines in English: As a straight-forward narrative line, with the substitution typically in the second foot, and as the opening of an alcaic stanza, with the substituted dactyl typically coming later in the line.

More information than you need, Amanda, to appreciate the Frost poem, I know, but there it is.

Last night I saw The Lion in Winter, the movie about Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their three sons gathered together for the Christmas holidays. The threats, the manipulation, the backbiting–imagine if George and Martha had had three children, and crowns.

One line of dialogue struck me in particular. Eleanor is with her sons, two of them being the future kings Richard and John, when Richard pulls out a knife. John squeals “He’s got a knife!” to which his mother replies:

“Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little–that’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.

Aside from two factual errors–the 12th century saw a splendid renaissance, and syphilis had yet to appear in Europe–the quotation is brilliant. Contra Marx and other theoreticians of history, war’s ultimate cause lies like a disease in the human heart. Sin plagues us and we cannot escape. In fact, the whole play is a study in original sin. A family that might, as their mother says, have “so much to love each other for” spends its Christmas festering in hate.

From the end of the quotation above, you might think that redemption lurks on the horizon. But Eleanor is just as conniving and unforgiving as the rest. Her love for Henry and Henry’s love for her cannot overcome their own selfish desires, and so love only acts as salt in the wounds they inflict. At the end there is a kind of peace, more wrought by fatigue and impending departure than by forgiveness, and we last see the king and queen sailing away and promising to see each other at Easter.

There is no sign that things will stand differently then. The royal succession will still be up for grabs, and one imagines the whole drama playing out all over again. Because, contra Eleanor’s hopes, they cannot change the world on their own. Left to their own devices, they might not kill each other, but they can do much worse. Without the operation of some kind of grace, all will remain in their depravity.

Sarah Palin was a nervy choice for John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee, and—nervy being right on the edge of the nerves—it makes me edgy.

Palin has a lot of possibilities, which is another way of saying that the public’s perception of her could break either way. There is an enormous chance of appealing to voters in her, but she also offers the media an opportunity to paint her as a nut or as a fool. Dan Quayle was another such candidate, and by the time the newspapers got through with him, he looked like a bumbling idiot.

Count me nervously pleased with this choice.

Well, McCain has chosen, and our editor won’t be the only one relieved to see that the nod has gone to the staunchly pro-life Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.

A former beauty-queen with a passion for grueling outdoor sports and an unembarrassed attachment to family and religion, Mrs. Palin is quite the All-American marvel. Because she has frequently defied GOP leaders in Alaska, she also has something like John McCain’s maverick reputation, which should endear her to the media. It seems social conservatives have good reason to be satisfied with McCain’s pick.

It seems to me that the Catholic bishops are missing a golden teaching opportunity.

Bishops are rightly concerned that for them to publicly warn or chastise politicians because of their voting records on abortion will be misunderstood as politically motivated. All sorts of issues get dragged into the discussion, such as separation of church and state and the role of prudential judgment in applying the Church’s moral and social teachings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, has presented the Church’s bishops with a very new situation. In her recent statement, she did not merely defend her legislative record; she has made a crystal-clear public declaration on a doctrinal question that is not in any way political in itself (though obviously it has implications in the political order). She says that she does not believe that life begins at conception, and she cites St. Augustine to support her position.

Here are some unambiguous facts:

(1) Pope John Paul II taught explicitly in Evangelium Vitae that direct killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral:

Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom. 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

(2) The teaching in question is an article of faith, according to an explicit statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (in the Commentary that accompanied the statement Ad Tuendam Fidem):

To the truths of the first paragraph belong the articles of faith of the Creed, the various Christological dogmas and Marian dogmas; the doctrine of the institution of the sacraments by Christ and their efficacy with regard to grace; the doctrine of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the sacrificial nature of the eucharistic celebration; the foundation of the Church by the will of Christ; the doctrine on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff; the doctrine on the existence of original sin; the doctrine on the immortality of the spiritual soul and on the immediate recompense after death; the absence of error in the inspired sacred texts; the doctrine on the grave immorality of direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.

About this category of doctrines the same document states:

These doctrines are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and defined with a solemn judgment as divinely revealed truths either by the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ‘ex cathedra,’ or by the College of Bishops gathered in council, or infallibly proposed for belief by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

These doctrines require the assent of theological faith by all members of the faithful. Thus, whoever obstinately places them in doubt or denies them falls under the censure of heresy, as indicated by the respective canons of the Codes of Canon Law.

(3) Whatever one’s theory of ensoulment might be, it is clear that the phrase “innocent human being” used both in Evangelium Vitae and in the statement of the CDF was meant to include unborn human life at all stages after conception.

Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that, while the general principle of the immorality of killing innocent human beings is an article of faith, the factual question of whether a child just after conception is a human being is not an article of faith. Yet, even if that is so, the humanity of the unborn child after conception would still be something taught infallibly by the ordinary magisterium, and fall under the category of “truths definitively to be held.” In the words of the same CDF document:

The second proposition of the Professio fidei states: “I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.” The object taught by this formula includes all those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area, which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed.

Such doctrines can be defined solemnly by the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ‘ex cathedra’ or by the College of Bishops gathered in council, or they can be taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church as a “sententia definitive tenenda.” Every believer, therefore, is required to give firm and definitive assent to these truths, based on faith in the Holy Spirit’s assistance to the Church’s Magisterium, and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium in these matters. Whoever denies these truths would be in a position of rejecting a truth of Catholic doctrine and would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church.

To all appearances, Pelosi has publicly and pointedly denied a “truth of Catholic doctrine” that is “definitively to be held” (“definitive tenenda”) by “all believers”, and the denial of which renders them “no longer . . . in full communion with the Catholic Church.” Moreover, Pelosi simultaneously proclaims her right to do so because “many Catholics” agree with her. Clearly, this is a scandal in the original sense of the term.

What can the bishops do? There is something very simple they can do that would have an enormously salutary effect.

They can, in a public statement, explain the doctrinal situation and require Pelosi to respond to the following question: “Do you assent to the teaching of the Church that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being at any stage after conception is gravely immoral?”

Her previous public statement makes it presumable that her answer is no. This presumption can only be removed by a clear affirmative answer. In light of the public nature and scandal caused by her earlier statement, she should be required to make a public assent to this Catholic teaching.

This is no longer a question of a politician claiming some kind of rights or leeway as a politician. It is a well-known Catholic very publicly explicitly rejecting a “truth of Catholic doctrine.”

Yesterday at the FT office, this Robert Frost poem came up in conversation. Technically masterful, with a regular but unusual metrical pattern, it is unrhymed and verbally simple yet laced together with a wistful lyricism that echoes between image and line. Joseph Bottum reads it as an uncommon example of English hexameter—and, more uncommon, hexameter that works—with an absent stress in each final foot, as allowed by classical prosody. (I’m inclined to scan it as trochaic pentameter, with dactylic substitutions.)

The trochaic rhythm of stress-unstress creates a strange feeling—almost as though the speaker is leaning over the edge of the well with his very words, peering into the rippling water that always eludes clear sight and resolution: Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. Moments of truth, I call these times, where we glimpse the deeper meaning for a moment, and then it’s beyond grasp. But the memory of that “once, then, something” stays . . . along with the knowledge of how little we know.

For Once, Then, Something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths–and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

–Robert Frost

At the New Liturgical Movement, Jeffrey Tucker argues that Summorum Pontificum is indicative of the new spirit of reform creeping into the Church, one in marked contrast to what came before:

Everyone knows the more obvious specifics. Vatican II said Gregorian chant should assume primary place but instead we got pop tunes more suitable for a children’s playground than Mass. We were told that nothing would change about the liturgy unless it was absolutely necessary, and instead with got liturgical revolution. With it came an upending of doctrine, morals, and the faith itself, with the inevitable draining of monasteries, convents, and seminaries.

If you were going to describe this false spirit correctly, the last word one would use is “liberal.” In fact, the spirit that was foisted upon us was illiberal in the extreme. It banned liturgical forms of the past. It sought to ban music of the past. It sought to ban our holy cards, our art, our architecture, our established prayers, our lay organizations, and our very way of life as Catholics. Change was in the air, but what was it all about? The only thing we knew for sure is that the past was off limits. And this was enforced.

The “Spirit of Vatican II” then became an excuse for mandatory heterodoxy, for undermining the true intent and contradicting the letter and the purpose of the reform. This Council that sought authenticate liberalization was ironically used by people invoking its spirit as a means for closing off all history and tradition, interdicting the past. A kind of autocratic and despotic censorship of all treasured things came into effect. This ill-liberal attitude shut it off the Catholic a source of its very name life, that is, its traditions. . . .

What Summorum represents, then, is far larger than what first appears. Summorum not only has a letter but also a spirit and that spirit is liberation, the liberty to love what came before. This is not only about the 1962 Missal. It is about a worldview and a civilization. What was holy then is holy now. I know that plenty of problems still exist and the claims about the “Spirit of Vatican II” haven’t been put to rest completely. But we seemed to have turned the corner, such that all old things seem new again.

Judging from what I’ve seen by just over a year in the Catholic Church, he’s right.

In the wake of Senator Obama’s acceptance speech last night, readers of First Things will enjoy David Brooks’ delightful satire. A sample:

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.

We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.