Jenny Kissed Me -- James Leigh Hunt

(Poem #103) Jenny Kissed Me Jenny kiss'd me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in! Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have miss'd me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kiss'd me. -- James Leigh Hunt

  Note: The Jenny in question was Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas
  Carlyle. Hunt had just recovered from an extended battle with influenza,
  and when he went to tell the Carlyles the news, Jenny (in a very
  uncharacteristic move) leaped up and kissed him.

While Hunt is perhaps best known for 'Abou Ben Adhem'[1], I think the
charming, somewhat whimsical 'Jenny Kissed Me' is a far nicer poem. The
simple, unaffected lyrics hide the construction somewhat, which is how it
should be - however, several details of the form are notable.

First off, the poem is perfectly trochaic[2], which is neither common nor
easy. Moreover, it is probably the most natural piece of trochaic verse I've
seen. It also avoids both the common traps of trochaic verse, one being a
tendency to sound singsong (thanks in part to the fact that the most common
perfect trochaics around are nursery rhymes like 'Twinkle, twinkle little
star') and the tendency to sound heavy and solemn. The latter is not
technically a trap; it is due to the 'falling' pattern of a trochaic foot,
and is often used to good effect. However, here the poem is slightly more
lighthearted, and needs something to offset the trochees. That something is
provided by the feminine rhymes - masculine rhymes are usually associated
with serious poetry, and feminine and triple rhymes with lighter verse, and
most serious trochaic poetry drops the last syllable throughout, having
implied caesuras (pauses) at the end of each line. The singsong effect is
offset by the abab (as opposed to aabb) rhyme scheme - it makes the verse,
rather than the couplet, the basic unit of the poem - and by the alternate
feminine rhymes, which tend to group every two lines into a longer line,
with the masculine rhymes being deemphasized.

The verse pattern used here (alternating between implied caesuras and
feminine rhymes) lends the poem a very natural tone, putting the reader in
comfortable and familiar territory versewise, and letting the words get
across unhindered and unshadowed by formal complications.

[1] may his tribe increase
[2] a trochaic foot is stress, unstress.
    'Jen ny 'kiss'd me 'when we 'met etc.

m.

Biography and Assessment:

Hunt, (James Henry) Leigh

 b. Oct. 19, 1784, Southgate, Middlesex, Eng.
 d. Aug. 28, 1859, Putney, London

English essayist, critic, journalist, and poet, who was an editor of
influential journals in an age when the periodical was at the height of its
power. He was also a friend and supporter of the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley
and John Keats. Hunt's poems, of which "Abou Ben Adhem" and "Jenny Kissed
Me" are probably the best known, reflect the influence of foreign
versification.

Though he falls short of greatness, Hunt, at his best, in some essays and
his Autobiography (1850; a rewriting of Lord Byron and Some of His
Contemporaries, 1828), has a charm that has gained him a high place in his
readers' affection. He excels in perceptive judgments of his contemporaries,
from Keats to the Victorian Tennyson; and, as Radical journalist, though not
much interested in politics, he attacks oppression with indignation. He
considered himself to be essentially a dilettante.

The poems in Juvenilia (1801), his first volume, show his love for Italian
literature. He looked to Italy for a "freer spirit of versification," and in
The Story of Rimini (1816), published in the year of his meeting with Keats,
he reintroduced a freedom of movement in English couplet verse lost in the
18th century. From him Keats derived his delight in colour and imaginative
sensual experience and a first acquaintance with Italian poetry, a potent
influence long after he had outgrown Hunt's tutelage.

        -- EB