Blanketing

The act of to ing in a blanket. See BLANKET. - Cloth or material for blankets. Blank'ly, adv. In a blank manner; with palene or confusion. but it is principally in the heroic metre of ten syllable that blank-verse is used, and, indeed, by some the term is restricted to that kind of metre. As an example of blank verse: Of man's first dis | obe | dience, and the fruit Of that forbid | den tree | whose mor tal taste Brought sin | into | the world, | and all | our woe. Frequently, in dramatic blank-verse, a supernumerary syllable occurs at the end of the line, as To be, | or not | to be, | that is | the ques | tion. In blank-verse, the poet is le encumbered than in any other species of versification; and hence it is particularly adapted for subjects calling forth sublime and noble emotions. "The constrained elegance of this kind of versification (rhyme), and the studied smoothne of the sounds, answering regularly to each other at the end of the line, though they be quite consistent with gentle emotions, yet weaken the native force of sublimity; besides that, the superfluous words which the poet is often obliged to introduce, in order to fill up the rhyme, tend further to enfeeble it." ( Blair .) - It is also free from the full close which rhyme forces upon the ear at the end of each couplet, and allows the lines to run into each other without constraint. The German, probably, of all the languages of modern Europe, admits the greatest variety of blank-verse measures. From the practice of modern German poets it would appear that any species of verse which may be used in that language with rhyme, may also be used without it. In the German translations from Greek and Roman poets we find every spe cies of ancient metre succe fully imitated, and of course without rhyme. That which approaches nearest to, or rather is identical with, our ten-syllable blank-verse, is also much used, as in the following example: Der blinde Greis erhub sich also bald, Wählt einen Text, erklärt ihn, wandt ihn an, Ermahnte, warnte, strafte, tröstete So herzlich, da die Thränen mildiglich Ihm niederflo en in den grauen Bart. - KOSEGARTEN.