In the couplet of Keats, and of a number of his successors, we have a really different measure from the "heroic couplet" proper. The individual line and the couplet alike cease to be prominent units of the verse. The effect is therefore closely allied to that of blank verse; the rimes, not being emphasized by marked pauses, serving rather as means of tone color than as organizers of the verse. See Mr. Saintsbury's remarks (quoted in the notes on Dryden, p. 195, above), on "lines made musical by the rhymes rather than divided by them." In like manner Mr. Symonds says that "the couplets of Marlowe, Fletcher, Shelley, and Keats follow the laws of blank verse, and add rhyme--that is to say, their periods and pauses are entirely determined by the sense." (_Blank Verse_, p. 66.) This is true of the couplets of Shelley and Keats, and to a less degree of those of Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_, but will hardly apply to Marlowe, nor, as we have seen, to the Elizabethans in general.[24] There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn. Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore, Under the gray beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, That I beheld her not. (SHELLEY: _Epipsychidion_, ll. 190-200. 1821.) Shelley carries the free treatment of this measure to the utmost limit. The couplet is not felt to be of significance, and many lines are so irregular in stress as to make scansion difficult. Compare this passage: "The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet Keeps up her love-lament; and the owls flit Round the evening tower; and the young stars glance Between the quick bats in their twilight dance."[25] The woods were long austere with snow: at last Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes, Brightened, 'as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods Our buried year, a witch, grew young again To placid incantations, and that stain About were from her caldron, green smoke blent With those black pines'--so Eglamor gave vent To a chance fancy. When a just rebuke From his companion; brother Naddo shook The solemnest of brows; 'Beware,' he said, 'Of setting up conceits in nature's stead.' (BROWNING: _Sordello_, ii. 1-12. 1840.)