"These three books," said the curate, "are the best that have been written in Castilian in
heroic verse, and they may compare with the most famous of Italy; let them be preserved as the richest treasures of poetry that Spain possesses."
Less obstinate, and even less dangerous combats, have been described in good
heroic verse; but that of Gurth and the Miller must remain unsung, for want of a sacred poet to do justice to its eventful progress.
Imitation is only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic poets, whether they write in iambic or in
Heroic verse, are imitators in the highest degree?
According to some religious Anglo-Saxons, the existence and popularity of
heroic verse exposed the newly converted people to spiritual danger.
Tolkien writes a "sequel" to what is remembered as the finest example of Old English
heroic verse, gives it a fitting title for its epic context, then ironically undercuts both of these by focusing on the inglorious task of Tida and Totta.
Wickert realizes the muscularity and the fluidity of Tasso's
heroic verse best when he relaxes slightly his efforts to match Tasso's syntax, as in his chilling rendering of the epic simile that describes Rinaldo breaking into the barricaded Temple of Solomon: "Even as a ravening wolf in darkening air / comes prowling round a sheepfold bolted fast, / his maw greedy and gaunt, his hunger and care / by inborn wrath and hate matched and surpassed.
in
heroic verse, of love, betrayal, pain and guilt, life over death
Dryden was the first to attribute Milton's sublime style to a rhetorical technique (Jensen 111) and, in "The Author's apology For Heroic Poetry and Poetic License" which prefaced "The State of Innocence," his own operatic vision of Paradise Lost, Dryden took on the role of critic when he judged Milton's
heroic verse. As Dryden explained: "No man will disagree from another's judgment concerning the dignity of style in heroic poetry; but all reasonable men will conclude it necessary that sublime subjects ought to be adorned with the sublimest, and consequently often, with the most figurative expressions" (118).
By the time Brunichildis was killed in 613, history had already begun to evolve into legend, though the paucity of surviving German
heroic verse until the Hildebrandslied in the eleventh century has obliged scholars to trace several lost stages of its emergence from Burgundian to Frankish, Bavarian, and Austrian versions.
The Aeneid loses its sacred aura and is demystified at the same time it remains a model of
heroic verse. The epic inspires reflection on the design of the novel as it had developed from d'Urfe to Scudery, such that the new genre remains a variant of the epic (318).
Here the curse of the fall and not the world is "too much with us."
Heroic verse, he says, is "music / for taxiing to take-off; for cremation," life and death, but his commitment was to
heroic verse from his first great poem, Genesis, so his suffering is great: "How is it tuned, how can it be un- / tuned, with lithium, this harp of nerves?