The ballade in its commonest form consists of three 8-line stanzas riming ababbcbc and a 4-line stanza called 'envoy,' bcbc; the last line of each stanza being repeated as a refrain, and the a, b, and c rimes throughout the poem being the same. The lines contain usually either four or five stresses. The envoy is a sort of dedication, addressed traditionally to a "Prince." Variations of all kinds occur, encouraged by the difficulty of satisfying all the demands of the form. Examples may be found (with an excellent introduction) in Gleeson White's collection of Ballades and Rondeaus (Canterbury Poets), and Andrew Lang's Ballades of Blue China.

Rondeaus and rondels (two forms of the same word) are written with greater freedom of variation. Their organic principle is the use of the first phrase or first line, twice repeated, as a refrain (R). The commoner model in English is: aabba, aabR, aabbaR, in which the first half of the first line constitutes the refrain. Another type rimes ABba, abAB, abbaAB (the capital letters indicating the lines repeated). For examples see the reference above. Austin Dobson, Henley, and Swinburne have written successfully in this form.

The triolet is a sort of abbreviation of the second variety of rondeau. Its lines are usually short and rime ABaAabAB.

The villanelle, in its normal form, consists of five 3-line stanzas (aba) and a concluding 4-line stanza, all with but two rimes, the first line, moreover, being repeated as the sixth, twelfth, and eighteenth, the third line as the ninth, fifteenth, and nineteenth.

The pantoum is of Eastern origin, but it came into English through the French. It is extremely rare. It consists of a series of quatrains abab, with the second and fourth lines of each stanza repeated chainwise as the first and third of the next stanza. The closing stanza completes the chain by taking as its second and fourth lines the first and third of the first stanza.

From Italy have come, besides the ottava rima and the sonnet, two other metrical forms, the sestina and the terza rima. The sestina is composed of six 6-line stanzas and a final 3-line stanza. Instead of rimes the end words of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in this order 1.2.3.4.5.6. — 6.1.5.2.4.3. — 3.6.4.1.2.5. — 5.3.2.6.1.4. — 4.5.1.3.6.2. — 2.4.6.5.3.1. — and the last stanza 5.3.1. with 2.4.6. in the middle of the lines. Gosse, Swinburne, and Kipling have written sestinas; Swinburne one with the additional embellishment of rime.

The terza rima is the metre of Dante's Divine Comedy. The rimes are aba, bcb, cdc, etc.... yzy, zz. It has not been very successfully used in English, except in the stanzaic arrangement of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind,—aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ee. Other examples besides translations of Dante are short poems by Wyatt and Sidney, Browning's The Statue and the Bust, and Shelley's unfinished The Triumph of Life.



CHAPTER V

MELODY, HARMONY, AND MODULATION

The terms melody, harmony, and modulation, being borrowed from music, are not to be applied too literally to the art of versification. They represent metaphorically, however, certain important qualities of verse which, with the exception of rime, cannot from their very impalpability be formally explained, but can only be suggested and partially described. They are not the determining and fundamental characteristics of verse—those have already been discussed—but rather its sources of incremental beauty, of richness and, subtle power. To draw an illustration from another art, they add light and shadow, fullness, roundness, depth of perspective, vividness, to what would else be simple line-drawing.

The language of ordinary prose has its own melody and harmony, its own sonorous rhythms, and its own delicate adjustments between sound and meaning. All these natural beauties verse inherits from prose and then adds the further beauties that result from the union of prose rhythms and the formal patterns of verse. Some of these qualities which are the peculiar enhancements of verse will now be examined.

* * * * *

The simplest and most tangible of these is rime in its various forms. Rime is, in its most general signification, the repetition, usually at regulated intervals, of identical or closely similar sounds. According to the circumstances of the identical or similar sounds, four varieties are distinguishable: (1) alliteration, or initial rime, when the sounds at the beginning of accented syllables agree, as tale, attune; (2) consonance, when the vowel sounds differ and the final consonantal sounds agree, as tale, pull; (3) assonance, when the vowel sounds agree and the consonants differ, as tale, pain; and (4) rime proper, when both the vowels and the final consonants agree, as tale, pale.

Alliteration is a natural and obvious method of emphasis in English—and often difficult to avoid rather than to obtain. Popular sayings—wind and weather, time and tide, kith and kin, ever and aye, to have and to hold—are fond of it for its own sake. The early English, German, and Scandinavian prosodies made it a determining principle; and in the north of England it survived well into the fifteenth century; but since then it has been considered a too 'easy' kind of metrical ornament, one to be used sparingly and only for very special effects. "Apt alliteration's artful aid" is very well when it is apt and artful; but when some poets in their simplicity have gone so far as to "hunt the letter to the death," one cannot but condemn it, in John Burroughs' ironic phrase, as a "leprosy of alliteration." Most of the poets, however, have made skilful use of it, notably Tennyson and Swinburne, though the latter frequently overdid it, as in—

... rusted sheaves Rain-rotten in rank lands. A Ballad of Death.

Very remarkable is the combination of rime and frequent alliteration in Browning's Abt Vogler.

Analogous to alliteration and perhaps to be classed as a by-form of it is the subtle use of the same sound in unstressed parts of neighboring words, as in—

Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length. Paradise Lost, II, 1027-28.

Consonance is very similar to this latter form of alliteration. Its use is irregular and usually hidden. Note the alliteration and consonance in Milton's line, both the s's and the n's—

Through the soft silence of the list'ning night.

Assonance, like alliteration and consonance, occurs in modern verse sporadically, almost accidentally, but with great frequency in all languages. As a regular principle of verse (in place of rime) it is characteristic of Spanish and of Old French; in English its deliberate use is very rare—the best example is perhaps the song "Bright, O bright Fedalma" in George Eliot's The Spanish Gypsy.

Minute analysis is tedious and unsatisfactory, often indeed misleading, but a single example will perhaps suggest some of the ways in which alliteration, consonance, and assonance are interwoven for harmonic effects that, not being altogether obvious, are felt rather than directly perceived. Similar experiments may be made by the reader with other passages. The opening stanza of Gray's Elegy, quoted on page 55, above, is remarkable for its smooth and quiet flow, symbolic of the atmosphere described by the words. How is this 'atmosphere' produced? or rather, what is there that produces in us this sense of appropriate atmosphere? In the first place, the lines are 5-stress and have the "long iambic roll," and the rimes are simple abab. Furthermore, the coincidence of prose and verse rhythms is noticeable; there are only three variations: wind in the second line, which is too important to occupy the metrically unstressed position, and o'er in the second line and the second and in the fourth, which are not quite strong enough to stand in the stressed position. By a sort of substitution or 'occult balance' the weakness of o'er is compensated by the slight overweight of wind. And the weakness of and is strengthened by the rhetorical pause after darkness. A rough approximation in semi-musical notation would give for the second line

[U] — [U] — — — [U] [U] [U] —

There is a syncopation by which — — and [U][U] combine (the natural syllabic length of o'er helping considerably) without destroying the fundamental rhythm. In the fourth line, instead of

[U] — [U] — [U] —

we have

[U] — [U] [~] [U] [U] — ... to dark-ness and to me,—

the pause being supported by the meaning as well as by the structure of the verse. Alliteration is appropriately inconspicuous; it is limited to plowman ... plods and the conventional weary way. The consonance is significant. The most frequently repeated consonantal sounds are: l 10, d 9, r[78] 8, th 6, n 6, and w 5; that is, of the seventy consonantal sounds (counting th as one, p and l as two sounds) in the stanza, thirty-five, or one-half, are the comparatively soft sounds l, r, th, n, w. From the point of view of the line, a tabulation shows two or more occurrences in each line of—

1 — TH R T L 2 — TH R L D 3 — R L D P M W H 4 — R T L D N

That is, there is a kind of RTLD motif throughout the stanza. The assonance is even more striking. The stressed vowel sounds (which are of course the most important[79]) line by line are as follows:[80]

ŭ^{R} ō ĕ ā ē ō ŭ^{R} ō ō ī au ō ŏ ī ē ī ŭ^{R} ā ī

Here the five ō-sounds and four ī-sounds and three ŭ^{R}-sounds are noticeable.

- [78] According to the commonest American pronunciation. [79] The unaccented vowel sounds show the usual predominance of the obscure vowel e, with three occurrences of ĭ and ī. [80] Reference to the text will identify the symbols. -

Now while no one would dream of saying that such a mechanical examination unlocks the mystery of this quatrain's music, it cannot be denied that the predominance of some sounds (especially those that are peculiarly suggestive) over others is significant. And certainly such a tabulation reveals parts of the mystery which are not plain even to the trained eye and ear.

The origin of rime is much disputed, but it occurs, at least sporadically, in the poetry of nearly all peoples, and is likely to have been a spontaneous growth arising from a natural human pleasure in similar sounds. "It lies deep in our human nature and satisfies an universal need." It is an established phenomenon in Sanskrit and Persian prosody, in Arabic, in Chinese, in Celtic, in Icelandic. Greek prosody, and Latin, which was based upon Greek, rejected it, partly perhaps because it was too simple an ornament for the highly cultivated Greek taste, especially on account of the great frequency of similar inflectional endings, and perhaps because it was not entirely consistent with the quantitative principle.[81] In the popular Latin verse, however, which was accentual, rime is found; and when, before the fall of the later Empire, quantity was gradually abandoned, rime returned as a regular feature of Latin verse. From thence it passed into the Romance languages—ProvenASec.al, Italian, French—where it was for a time rivalled by assonance; and finally, under French influence after the Conquest, it made its way into England. But it had not been unknown in earliest English verse, though it occurred only here and there, as in Greek and Latin.[82] And from the fact that rimes appear with greater frequency in the later than in the earlier Anglo-Saxon verse, as the native poets became more familiar with the rimed Latin hymns, one may feel sure that it would have developed into a staple of English verse independently of French influence. From the twelfth century until the introduction of blank verse by the Elizabethans, practically all English verse, except that which belongs to the Alliterative Revival (mainly in the north of England) of the second half of the fourteenth century, was rimed.

[81] Rime occurs, however, here and there in Greek and Latin poetry, and is more frequent than perhaps we commonly suppose. [82] In the 3182 lines of Beowulf, for example, there are sixteen exact rimes and many more approximate rimes. There is also in Anglo-Saxon the so-called Riming Poem, of uncertain date, composed probably under Scandinavian influence.

From the A sthetic point of view rime has been severely attacked and faithfully defended. A lively controversy was waged at the end of the sixteenth century between the Renaissance classicists, who of course condemned it, and the native rimers, but was brought to a peaceful conclusion by Samuel Daniels' A Defence of Rhyme in 1603. In a prefatory note to the second edition of Paradise Lost, Milton delivered an arrogant but ineffectual counterblast. Rime, he said, was "no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than else they would have expressed them."

The chief arguments against rime are those mentioned by Milton, its tendency to conceal "wretched matter and lame metre," and the necessity it often forces upon poets of either twisting unpleasantly what they have to say or of adding irrelevant matter. Besides these there is also what Cowper called "clock-work tintinnabulum" mere empty jingle. But all the arguments are double-edged. For although many inferior poets have imposed for a while on readers and critics by the superficial melody of rime alone, "wretched matter and lame metre" were never long successfully concealed by it. And although, as Hobbes wrote, rime "forces a man sometimes for the stopping of a chink to say something he did never think," it is a fact nevertheless that the second thought, induced by rime-necessity, "the rack of truest wits,"[83] is sometimes if not better than the first, at least a worthy and handsome brother to it. Whether rime be a hindrance, vexation, and constraint to the poet depends almost wholly on his mastery of the technique of verse. It is not always easier to write in unrimed measures, for, as Milton proudly implied, good blank verse is the most difficult of all metres. And although the jingle of like sounds may become tedious and mechanical if unskilfully handled "to all judicious ears trivial and of no true musical delight," says Milton again it has also proved a source of richness and beauty of sound; and it should never be forgotten that in the true A sthetic judgment of poetry sound plays a very important part.[84]

[83] See the whole of Ben Jonson's Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme. [84] Compare Flaubert's extreme statement: "that a beautiful verse without meaning is superior to one that has meaning but is less beautiful."

The satisfaction which the ear receives from rime at the end of a verse has been aptly compared to the pleasure we feel when a long arch of melody returns to the dominant and then the tonic. More elaborate is Oscar Wilde's praise of rime—"that exquisite echo which in the music's hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of a real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rhyme, which can turn man's utterance into the speech of the gods; rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre."

The real problem in the arguments on rime is its fitness or unfitness in particular kinds of poetry. No rules or laws can be formulated; men have judged differently at different times; but it has been generally felt that shorter poems, inasmuch as they are in a way the concentrated essence of poetry, and must make their full impression almost instantaneously, require all the advantages of the poetic art. Tennyson's unrimed lyrics and Collins' Ode to Evening are unusual, though successful, experiments. For long poems, however, there is not this necessity of immediate effect. Here rime is sometimes a vexation, sometimes not. Justification lies in special circumstances. The classical French drama found it indispensable; English poetic drama gave it a trial in the seventeenth century and rejected it. Narrative poems which contain a large lyrical element, like the Faerie Queene and the Eve of St. Agnes, are, all agree, enhanced by the rime. But no one would now wish to have Paradise Lost in rimed verse, though it is clear from the publisher's note in 1668 that many readers at the time were 'stumbled' because it was not. On the other hand, we feel that Chapman's and Pope's Homer and Dryden's Virgil might have been better without rimes. Once more, it lies with the poet—and with the poem—to justify his use of rime or his refusal of it; if he is a good poet and his judgment is not warped by local or temporary conditions there will rarely be any doubt.

Rimes are called masculine when they consist of one syllable, as cries: arise; feminine when they consist of two or more syllables, as heedless: needless, beautiful: dutiful. When both vowel and following consonant agree the rime is called perfect, as might: right, solemn: column. When the preceding consonant as well as the vowel and following consonant agree the rime is called identical or echo rime, as reed: read, perfection: infection, ours: hours. When there is a difference either in the vowel sound or in the following consonantal sound, that is, when assonance or consonance is substituted for rime, the rime is usually said to be approximate or imperfect, as worth: forth, was: pass, gusht: dust (Coleridge). When the rime words look alike but are pronounced differently, they are called eye rimes, as war: car, brow: glow. Sometimes false rimes occur which have no similarity of sound or appearance, but are more or less sanctioned by earlier pronunciation or by custom, as high: humanity. Sometimes also unaccented syllables are rimed with accented syllables, as burning: sing.

Imperfect rimes of all sorts are used for various reasons. Compared with some languages, English is not very rich in rime words; and for many words which poets are prone to use, such as love, God, heaven, etc., few available rimes exist. When good rimes are few, older pronunciations are often resorted to, as the familiar love: move, blood: stood, north: forth. In reading the older poets we find many rimes which are now imperfect but were once entirely correct, as the eighteenth century fault: thought, join: shine, tea: way. On the other hand, the poet's carelessness or indifference is sometimes to blame for approximate rimes, as Gray's beech: stretch in the Elegy, and his relies: requires, Blake's lamb: name and tomb: come, Coleridge's forced: burst, Whittier's notorious pen: been, etc. But to dogmatize on a point like this is obviously very dangerous. Certain poets, especially among the moderns, may be said to choose imperfect rimes deliberately, both as a fresh means of securing variety and avoiding the monotony of hackneyed rimes, and also as a means of subtly suggesting the imperfection and futility of life. A few famous examples, defensible and indefensible, are: Wordsworth's robin: sobbing, sullen: pulling; Tennyson's with her: together, valleys: lilies; Keats's youths: soothe, pulse: culls; Swinburne's lose him: bosom: blossom. Keats and Rossetti are noted for their free use of approximate rimes. The humorous rimes of Byron and Browning, among others, are of course in a different category.

Feminine rimes have been frequently rejected as undignified. They are, said Coleridge, "a lower species of wit"; and he instanced, not very justly, the couplet of Smart:

Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader! Hast sent the hare? or hast thou swallowed her?[85]

But again the right justification is successful use, and no one will deny that Swinburne's double and triple rimes have greatly enriched his verse and revealed to others unused possibilities of metre. Such rimes as grey leaf: bay-leaf were practically a new thing in 1865.[86]

[85] Triple rimes are naturally excellent for joco-serious purposes, like the celebrated intellectual: henpecked you all, Timbuctoo: hymn book too, thin sand doubts: ins and outs. [86] Swinburne, Dedication, 1865.

* * * * *

Too evasive for explanatory analysis, almost too delicate and impalpable even for descriptive comment, are many of the best musical effects of fine poetry. The poet's ear and his sixth prosodic sense enable him to make his verse a perfect vehicle of his meaning and emotion. He chooses an appropriate stanza for his poem, discovers an unguessed power in some common measure, makes the words hurry or deliberately holds them back, varying the tempo with the spirit of the words, gives the pattern an unusual twist when the idea is unusual, startles or soothes by the sound as well as by the intellectual content of his lines—and accomplishes all these metrical nuances, not with the whip-snapping of the ring-master, but with the consummate art that conceals art. When his prosodic effects are obvious they lose their power; we can see how the trick is done and we do not marvel. But when we feel vaguely the haunting quality of a melodious line or the perfect metrical rightness of a phrase without knowing why the melody haunts us or the phrase just fits, then we both marvel and applaud; then the poet's gift, his divine authorization, is patent, and we recognize his superiority with awe.

Some of these effects have already been mentioned in the preceding paragraphs; but besides the 'tone-color' of assonance and consonance and rime proper there are also effects of pitch and of tempo and of repetition, and imitative effects, more or less concrete and explainable. It is true that many trained readers find subtleties of sound and suggestiveness where others find none, and also that many find rich beauties that the poet himself was not aware of and did not intend. This latter case may be accounted for in two ways: sometimes a reader is supersubtle and imagines embellishments that do not exist; and sometimes the poet builds better than he knows. His intuition, or inspiration, or whatever one chooses to call it, endows him with powers of whose complete functioning he is not at the time conscious. As readers must steer carefully between these two dangers, so also the poet has to avoid on the one hand repelling us by the appearance of a metrical device and on the other losing an effect which he intends but which may be too delicate to be seen or felt. No one probably ever missed the simple melody of Poe's

The viol, the violet, and the vine;

or the imitative effectiveness of Swinburne's

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

and though these beauties are obvious they are for most tastes not too obtrusive. But Tennyson's

Low on the sand and loud on the stone

is not so obvious, and there is danger of its escaping notice. One hears the line with increased pleasure after the imitation of sound is pointed out; but only the trained ear catches it at first.

This correspondence of sound and sense is called onomatopoeia. It may appear in a single word, as buzz, whack, crackle, roar, etc.; or a combination of imitative words, as Tennyson's

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees;

or a suggestive echo rather than direct imitation, as Shelley's

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingA"d thieves;

or a suggestion of motion rather than of sound, as Milton's sea-fish

huge of bulk, Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,

and the

Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream;

or an attempt to imitate the motion described, as Tennyson's picture of Excalibur when Sir Bedivere hurls it into the lake—

The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, whirled in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn;

and Swinburne's more simple

As a lamp Burns and bends all its blowing flame one way;

or even the correspondence of a harsh line and a harsh thought, as Browning's famous

Irks care the crop-full bird, frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?[87]

[87] For an extreme example of mimicry, see Southey's Lodore.

Sometimes there is obtained an effect of altered tempo; of which the best illustration, though hackneyed, is still Pope's clever couplets in the Essay on Criticism—

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.[88]

[88] Lines 370 ff. Dr. Johnson's comment on this last line is curious: "The swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exemplified. Why the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls, used for that purpose by the ancients, two short syllables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the alexandrine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word 'unbending,' one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion."

Examples of similar metrical skill may be found everywhere, especially among the more conscious literary artists, such as Shelley, Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Browning, too. A few worth study follow:

To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day. SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth, V, v.

To bellow through the vast and boundless deep. MILTON, Paradise Lost, I, 177.

—— Mixt Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight. Ibid., II, 913 f.

So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour he. Paradise Lost, II, 1021 f.

Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet reluctant amorous delay. Ibid., IV, 310 f.

See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused, With languished head unpropt, As one past hope, abandoned, And by himself given over. MILTON, Samson Agonistes, 118 ff.

With doubtful feet and wavering resolution. Ibid., 732

Some rousing motions in me, which dispose To something extraordinary my thoughts. Ibid., 1382 f.

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line. POPE, Essay on Criticism, 347.

The broad and burning moon lingeringly arose. SHELLEY, The Sunset.

Rugged and dark, winding among the springs. SHELLEY, Alastor, 88.

Here, where precipitate Spring, with one light bound. LANDOR, Fiesolan Idyl.

Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names. TENNYSON, The Princess, III, 361.

Myriads of rivulets, hurrying through the lawn. Ibid., VII, 205.

The league-long roller thundering on the reef. TENNYSON, Enoch Arden, 580.

Then Philip standing up said falteringly. Ibid., 283.

A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd hill. Ibid., 5.

Clang battle-axe and clash brand. TENNYSON, The Coming of Arthur, 492.

The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall In silence. TENNYSON, Merlin and Vivien, 230 f.

Immingled with heaven's azure waveringly. TENNYSON, Gareth, 914.

The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream, the stream ... Ibid., 1020.

The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring. TENNYSON, Milton.

And in the throbbing engine room Leap the long rods of polished steel. OSCAR WILDE, La Mer.

Something has already been said above on the nature and effects of pitch in spoken rhythm (pages 35 ff.). It is a constant factor of language, but its usual function is special emphasis or intensification. By itself it rarely dominates or determines the rhythm. And since the regular determinants of spoken rhythm are time and stress, it follows of course that pitch serves usually to reinforce these determinants.[89] But not always; for not only does pitch sometimes clash with rhythmic stress, but also it is sometimes a substitute for it. All three of these functions—strengthening, opposing, and replacing stress—are operative in verse.

[89] It is not to be understood, however, that the higher the pitch the greater the emphasis; for the contrary is often the case.

In Shelley's line

Laugh with an inextinguishable laughter,

a great deal of the effect is due to the combination of word accent and emphatic pitch in the syllable-ting-, so that not merely the one word but the one syllable dominates the whole verse. In such frequent conflicts of stress as "on the blue surface," where the prose rhythm is [U][U][][][U] while the verse pattern has [U][][U][][U], the so-called hovering accent (as it is usually described, with the theory that somehow the normal quantity of stress is divided between the and blue) is properly a circumflex accent, which in other words means pitch. Similarly in "If I were a dead leaf," the peculiar rhythm is to be explained as a balance of pitch against stress. And in that metrically notorious line of Tennyson's—

Take your own time, Annie, take your own time. TENNYSON, Enoch Arden, 463.

the chief irregularity or dissonance is the clash of pitch against stress in "own time." If the line read—

So you're on time, Annie, so you're on time,

there would be an unusual arrangement of stresses and unstressed syllables, a peculiar syncopation, but no great difficulty.[90] Much simpler and clearer is the conflict of stress and pitch in such passages as

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises. WORDSWORTH, To the Small Celandine.[91]

I only stirred in this black spot; I only lived—I only drew The accursA"d breath of dungeon-dew. BYRON, Prisoner of Chillon.[92]

and Keats's

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard.

and Marvel's

Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.'

[90] It is perhaps useless to debate about this line. Whether one divides thus: [][U] [U][] [][U] [][U] [U][] and says there is an 'inversion' in the first, third, and fourth feet, or preferably thus: [~][] [U]['][] [~][] [U][] [U]['][] the rhythm is extraordinary; and the added complexity of 'own' puts it entirely hors concours. Compare with it, however, Milton's Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foil'd. Paradise Lost, I, 273. Not merely titular, since by degree. Ibid., V, 774. [91] The italics are not Wordsworth's. [92] Here the italics are the poet's.

The most interesting, and the rarest, effect of pitch in verse is its use as a substitute for stress. In the much-discussed first line of Paradise Lost—

Of man's first disobedience and the fruit,

there is a metrical stress on dis-of "disobedience." This is not so much, however, an intensification of an already existent secondary accent, as in, for example, Shelley's

The eager hours and unreluctant years. Ode to Liberty, xi.

as the substitution of pitch for stress.[93] The adaptability of language to metre appears very clearly in such a line as Paradise Lost, III, 130—

Self-tempted, self-deprav'd: Man falls deceiv'd,

in which the first compound shows a conflict of pitch and stress ('self' having a pitch-accent, but occurring in an unstressed part of the line), while the second shows pitch taking the place of stress. The whole line, and indeed the whole passage, though not of high poetic value, is an admirable illustration of the Miltonic freedom of substitution and syncopation—pitch playing a very important rA'le. One should read the lines first as prose, with full emphasis on the expressive contrasts; then merely as verse, beating out the metre regardless of the meaning; finally, with mutual sacrifice and compromise between the two readings, producing that exquisite adjustment which is the characteristic of good verse. There is a similar example of pitch and stress in the familiar

What recks it them? what need they? They are sped.

[93] Some readers take the line thus: [U][][][U][U][][U]['][U][U][] with emphasis or pitch-accent on 'first'; in which case the above explanation does not hold.

Repetition is a rhetorical not a metrical device, though it is employed with great effectiveness in verse as well as in prose:

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas ...

The leaves they were crispA"d and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere.

But a frequent kind of repetition which is truly a prosodic phenomenon and which, though primarily an element of stanzaic form, has often an effect analogous to those just described, is the refrain. This may vary from the simple "My Mary" of Cowper's poem (see page 103, above) to the elaboration of such a stanza as Rossetti's Sister Helen:

"Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen? To-day is the third since you began."

"The time was long, yet the time ran, Little brother." (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)

in which the second, fifth, and sixth lines remain the same throughout the forty-two stanzas, and the second half of the last line as well.

Besides the prosodic variations and subtleties so far discussed, there are a great many peculiar rhythms, that is, unusual but harmonious changes from the set metrical pattern, modulations, adjustments and combinations of different melodies, which enormously en-rich the verse of a poem. As in music the ear at length tires of the familiar harmonies too often repeated, so the precise regularity of the metrical pattern too closely followed becomes tedious and almost demands variety. To be sure, a certain amount of variety results of necessity from the continual adaptation of ordinary language to the requirements of verse; but many of the examples of early heroic couplets and early blank verse are enough to show that this natural variety is too slight to satisfy the ear. The poet must exert a perpetual vigilance to prevent monotony. But on the other hand, only the highly cultivated ear appreciates the very unusual subtleties of rhythm, and the poet must therefore, unless he is willing to deprive himself of ordinary human comprehension and write esoterically for the "fit audience though few" (in Milton's proud phrase), limit himself to reasonably intelligible modulations. "It is very easy to see," says Mr. Robert Bridges, "how the far-sought effects of the greatest master in any art may lie beyond the general taste. In rhythm this is specially the case; while almost everybody has a natural liking for the common fundamental rhythms, it is only after long familiarity with them that the ear grows dissatisfied, and wishes them to be broken; and there are very few persons indeed who take such a natural delight in rhythm for its own sake that they can follow with pleasure a learned rhythm which is very rich in variety, and the beauty of which is its perpetual freedom to obey the sense and diction."[94] Some examples of these finer rhythms, in addition to the particular forms already given—rhythms not altogether 'learned,' but occasionally far-sought and peculiarly delicate—may be profitably examined. One should keep the metrical pattern constantly in mind as a test or touchstone of the variations. To classify or arrange these illustrations in special groups is difficult because so often the same line exemplifies more than one sort of variation, but the following more or less vague classes of modulation (substitution and syncopation) may be differentiated, and other peculiarities mentioned in passing.

[94] Milton's Prosody, p. 30 (ed. 1901).

The normal blank verse line calls for five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables; but when two light syllables are naturally and easily uttered in the time of one, trisyllabic feet occur, sometimes with and sometimes without special effect—

And pointed out those arduous paths they trod. POPE, Essay on Criticism, I, 95.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep. WORDSWORTH, Immortality Ode.

Departed from thee; and thou resembl'st now. MILTON, Paradise Lost, IV, 839.

To quench the drouth of Phebus; which as they taste. MILTON, Comus, 66.

When this extra syllable comes at the end of the line it is more noticeable; for if it is a weak syllable, it tends to give the line a falling rhythm, and if it is a heavy syllable, it distinctly lengthens the line, with a semi-alexandrine effect—

Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring. MILTON, Paradise Lost, I, 38.

Remember who dies with thee, and despise death. FLETCHER, Valentinian, V, i.

Sometimes there are two consecutive lines having such hypermetrical syllables—

Extolling patience as the truest fortitude; And to the bearing well of all calamities. MILTON, Samson Agonistes, 654 f.

Much more frequent, however, is the trisyllabic effect in which the number of syllables of a line remains constant, that is, in the heroic or 5-stress line does not exceed ten—

Infinite wrath and infinite despair. MILTON, Paradise Lost, IV, 74.

Suddenly flashed on her a wild desire.

TENNYSON, Lancelot and Elaine, 355.

And the following line (Comus, 8) contains an extra syllable at the end, one in the middle, and also a trisyllabic effect at the beginning—

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being.

This last phenomenon, the trisyllabic (or dactylic, or anapestic) effect, is commonly described as an inversion—the 'rule' being given that in certain parts of the line the iamb is inverted and becomes a trochee. This explanation is convenient, but it is open to the objection of inaccuracy. It almost stands to reason that when a rising rhythm is established the sudden reversal of it would produce a harsh discordant effect, would practically destroy the rhythmic movement for the time being. So it is in music, at any rate,[95] whereas it is not so with these 'inverted feet' of verse. Therefore it seems more reasonable to scan such a line as that of Tennyson thus:

[95] The pronounced syncopations of ragtime partially illustrate this.

[~] Sud denly flashed on her a wild desire,

and the substitution is simply that of a triple rising (anapestic) for a duple rising (iambic) rhythm in the same time. Sud-is a monosyllabic foot, and the preceding rest is easily accounted for by the pause at the end of the previous line. In fact, this phenomenon is nearly always in immediate proximity to a pause either at the beginning of a line or in the middle. Very common is the movement—

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel withdrawn. MILTON, Paradise Lost, VI, 751.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion. SHELLEY, Ode to the West Wind.

Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter's near. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 97.

Less simple are the following lines from Samson Agonistes—

The mystery of God, given me under pledge. 378.

With goodness principl'd not to reject. 760.

The jealousy of love, powerful of sway. 791.

To satisfy thy lust: love seeks to have love. 837.

Still more unusual are—

Yet fell: remember and fear to transgress. Paradise Lost, VI, 912.

Of thrones and mighty seraphim prostrate. Ibid., VI, 841.

But in the last example Milton's pronunciation would give the second syllable of 'prostrate' a weak accent to support the metrical stress. That he was willing to take the extreme risk, however, and actually invert the rhythm of the last foot, appears from unequivocal instances in Paradise Lost:

Which of us who beholds the bright surface. VI, 472.

Beyond all past example and future. X, 840.

In a short poem such lines as these last would presumably be unthinkable; probably Milton counted on the length of Paradise Lost to fix the rhythm so securely in the reader's ear that even this bold departure from the normal would seem a welcome relief. But it is both notable and certain that in a lyric measure the very same inversion does not seem unpleasantly dissonant—

I'm sittin' on the stile, Mary, Where we sat side by side On a bright May mornin' long ago, When first you were my bride. The corn was springin' fresh and green, And the lark sang loud and high, And the red was on your lip, Mary, And the love-light in your eye. LADY DUFFERIN, Lament of the Irish Emigrant.

Allied to this practice of inversion, or apparent inversion, are two other phenomena: the deliberate violation of normal word-accent to fit the metrical stress,[96] and an analogous violation of phrasal stress. The former is not such an entirely arbitrary procedure as it might at first seem; for at one period in the history of the language the accent of many words (especially those of French origin) was uncertain. Chaucer could say, without forcing, either nAiture, or natAre. The revival of English poetry in the sixteenth century owed a great deal to Chaucerian example, and thus a tradition of variable accent was accepted and became practically a convention, not limited to those words in which it had originally occurred. Parallels to Milton's "but extreme shift" (Comus, 273) are very frequent in Spenser and Shakespeare: the rhythm is not [U][][U][] nor [U][U][][] but a sort of compromise between the two. So in Shelley's To a Skylark—

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art,

and in verse of all kinds.

[96] In the specific cases mentioned below, this phenomenon is historically known as "recession of accent"; and it sometimes occurs in non-metrical contexts. It is also very similar to one of the aspects of pitch; see pages 181 f., above.

The wrenching of accent for metrical purposes, moreover, is not confined to the dissyllabic words which show the simple recession of accent. Some poets, especially the moderns (among others, Rossetti and Swinburne) have deliberately forced the word accent to conform to the metrical pattern in a way that can scarcely be called adaptation or adjustment; that is to say, the irregularities cannot successfully be 'organized' by syncopation and substitution so as to produce a true rhythmic movement. For example—

But coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom, Stems of soft grass, some withered red and some Fair and fresh-blooded, and spoil splendider Of marigold and great spent sunflower. SWINBURNE, The Two Dreams.

So Keats has—

The enchantment that afterwards befell.

Those whose taste sanctions such outrA(C) effects probably find pleasure in the strangeness and daring of the rhythm.

An analogous case to this distributed stress but with monosyllables instead of polysyllabic words is the familiar line in Lycidas—

The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.

One does not read: "but are not fed" nor "but are not fed" but rather something midway between. This variation, common with all poets, was a special favorite of Shelley's—

To deck with their bright hues his withered hair. ... His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain.... Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river. Alastor.

The monosyllabic foot in which the unstressed element is missing offers no difficulty. The familiar example of

Break, break, break,

has been discussed above (pages 63 f.). Compare also Tennyson's Sweet and Low; Fletcher's song—

Lay a garland on my hearse Of the dismal yew; Maidens, willow branches bear; Say, I died true;

and Yeats's—

We sat grown quiet at the name of love; We saw the last embers of daylight die. Adam's Curse.

Shelley has—

And wild roses and ivy serpentine. The Question.

and Swinburne—

Fragrance of pine-leaves and odorous breath. Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor.

(where it would be absurd to make two syllables of "pine"), and a debated but perfectly intelligible hexameter—

Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly forever asway.

where the whole music of the line depends upon giving due time-emphasis to "poised." There is one odd case, not to be made too much of because one cannot be entirely sure of the text, in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, II, ii, of the omission of the stressed element of a foot—

Than the soft myrtle; [~] but man, proud man.

The versification of the whole play, however, is peculiar, and this metrical anomaly may have been deliberate.

The older writers on versification, leaning heavily on the traditional prosody of Greek and Latin, made much of the cA sura or pause, especially in blank verse. As has already been frequently suggested, the varied placing of the pause is one of the commonest means of avoiding monotony and giving freedom and fluency to the verse, but it is often also a means of fitting the verse to the meaning. Since the pause comes most frequently near the middle of the line, when it occurs within the first or the last foot there is some special emphasis intended, as in Milton's

Before him, such as in their souls infix'd Plagues. Paradise Lost, VI, 837 f.

Last Rose as in dance the stately trees, and spread. Ibid., VII, 323 f.

For Milton these were rather bold and unusual. Later poets have made them familiar, but no less effective. Note Swinburne's repeated use in Atalanta in Calydon—

His helmet as a windy and withering moon Seen through blown cloud and plume-like drift, when ships Drive, and men strive with all the sea, and oars Break, and the beaks dip under, drinking death.[97]

Except in these two places, however, there is seldom a very particular effect sought. That there can be even a good deal of regularity without stiffness or monotony is plain from a passage like Paradise Lost, II, 344 ff.[98] The presence of several pauses in a line produces a broken, halting, retarded effect, as—

Through wood, through waste, o'er hill, o'er dale, his roam. Paradise Lost, IV, 538.

and is admirably used by Milton in describing Satan's arduous flight through Chaos—

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. Paradise Lost, II, 948 ff.

+ + [97] Note also the spondaic effect in the second line, the rime in the third, and the imitative movement in the fourth. [98] Here, dividing the lines into parts measured by the number of syllables, the series is: 6+4, 6+4, , 2+4+4, 6+4, 8+2, 6+4, 6+4, 6+4, 8+2, 8+2, etc. + +

Theoretically each rhythmic stress is of equal force or strength, but in verse there is the greatest variety, some stresses being so strong as to dominate a whole line, others so light as hardly to be felt. Thus it happens sometimes that in a 5-stress line there are actually only four or three stresses: the rhythmic result being a syncopation of four or three against five. Sometimes the word which contains the weak stress receives unusual emphasis, as—

Which if not victory is yet revenge. Paradise Lost, II, 105.

Fall'n cherub, to be weak is miserable. Ibid., I, 157.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly. Ibid., IV, 73.

Low-seated she leans forward massively. THOMSON, City of Dreadful Night.

Like earth's own voice lifted unconquerable. SHELLEY, Revolt of Islam, IX, 3.

Sometimes the emphasis seems distributed, as—

As he our darkness, cannot we his light. Paradise Lost, II, 269.

Passion and apathy and glory and shame. Ibid, II, 567.

Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves. Samson Agonistes, 41.

Envy and calumny and hate and pain. SHELLEY, Adonais, xl.

And sometimes no special emphasis is apparent, as—

Servile to all the skyey influences. SHAKESPEARE, Measure for Measure, III, i.

Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed. MILTON, Comus, 189.

Gorgons and hydras and chimA ras dire. Paradise Lost, II, 628.

But fooled by hope, men favor the deceit. DRYDEN.

The friar hooded and the monarch crowned. By strangers honour'd and by strangers mourn'd. POPE.

With forest branches and the trodden weed. KEATS.

The rhythm of the last four examples is very common in all English verse. Occasionally the metre becomes almost ambiguous—according to its metrical context the line may be either 4-stress or 5-stress, as—

To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepar'd. Paradise Lost, VIII, 299.

By the waters of life, where'er they sat. Ibid., IX, 79.

In the visions of God. It was a hill. Ibid., XI, 377.

Three-stress lines in blank verse are less frequent, but the more striking when they do occur. There is Shakespeare's famous—

To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.

Milton's

Omnipotent, Immutable, immortal, infinite, Eternal King. Paradise Lost, III, 372 ff.

(where the heaping up of the polysyllabic epithets adds greatly to the effect); and

Of difficulty or danger could deter. Paradise Lost, II, 499.

Of happiness and final misery. Ibid., II, 563.

Abominable, inutterable, and worse. Ibid., II, 626.

His ministers of vengeance and pursuit. Ibid., I, 170.

and Meredith's

The army of unalterable law. Lucifer in Starlight.

and such lines as—

Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved. Paradise Lost, II, 185.

for which parallels may be found in several other poets before and after Milton.

There is no reason why a metrically 5-stress line should not contain only two prose stresses, but examples are of course rare. Such an unusual rhythm would be seldom demanded. The phrase "acidulation of perversity" might do, for it is easily modulated to the metrical form. Occasionally, as in the last line of Christina Rossetti's sonnet quoted on pages 120 f., a series of monosyllables with almost level inflection will reduce the prose emphasis of a line and force attention on the important words—

Than that you should remember and be sad.

A better example is Shelley's

A sepulchre for its eternity. Epipsychidion, 173.

In direct contrast to these lines whose effectiveness springs from a lack of the normal quantity of stress are those which are metrically overweighted. A single stressed monosyllable, supported or unsupported by a pause, may occupy the place of a whole rhythmic beat, or it may be compressed to the value of a theoretically unstressed element. Thus Milton's well-known line—

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death. Paradise Lost, II, 621.

might if it stood by itself equally well be taken as an 8-stress or as a 5-stress line; and obviously in a blank verse context it produces a very marked retardation of the tempo. No one would dream of reading it in the same space of time as the rapid line which just precedes it and to which it stands in such striking contrast—

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp.

Similar are—

Light-armed, or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow. Paradise Lost, II, 902.

Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade. SHELLEY, Epipsychidion, 92.

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we Read in their smiles, and call reality. Ibid., 511 f.

We have lov'd, prais'd, pitied, crown'd, and done thee wrong. SWINBURNE, On the Cliffs.

For extreme examples of the accelerandos and ritenutos which our metrical ear seems willing to accept easily, one might compare two 4-stress lines by contemporary poets—

In the mystery of life. ROBERT BRIDGES.

On the highest peak of the tired gray world. SARA TEASDALE.

or Swinburne's—

The four boards of the coffin lid Heard all the dead man did....

The dead man asked of them: "Is the green land stained brown with flame?" After Death.

These few general classifications by no means exhaust the possibilities of metrical variations and adjustments. In a real sense, every line is rhythmically different from every other line; but many of these differences are subjective, that is, they are determined by the individual training, tastes, habits, of each reader, his familiarity with few or many poets, the physical constitution of his organs of hearing, even the temporary mood in which he reads. The actual, objective peculiarities of a line are always significant, if the poet is a true master, but such is the variableness of experience and of life itself that unless we possess the poet's understanding and his sensitiveness—or can cultivate them—we lose a certain part of the significance. For one person, therefore, to dogmatize is both impertinent and misleading: the following specimens of peculiar rhythm are accordingly left without special comment. Some of them have long been bones of contention among prosodists; some of them are almost self-explanatory, others are subtle and difficult (and must be felt rather than explained), others have perhaps only their unusualness to recommend them to one's attention. In every case, however, they should be studied both in their metrical context and by themselves. They should be approached not only as technical problems in the accommodation of natural speech emphasis to the formal patterns of verse, but also—and this is the more important point of view—as adjustments in the second degree, adjustments of the prose-and-verse harmonies to the fullest expressiveness of which language is capable. It is a common observation that emotional language tends of itself to become rhythmical; the emotional and highly wrought language of poetry requires the restraint of verse as a standard by which its rhythms may be more powerfully realized and its significant deviations therefrom measured. And it is almost a constant 'law' that the more acute or profound the emotion, the more complex is the rhythm which gives it fit and adequate expression in words. 'Complex' does not necessarily mean arcane or supersubtle or recherchA(C). On the contrary, simplification (though not simplicity) is one of the characteristics of the best and greatest art. But to simplify beyond a certain point the various entangled implications of a poignant emotion is merely to rob it of some of its fundamental qualities. Nor is it childish to reason that a peculiar or extraordinary idea is most naturally expressed by a peculiar or extraordinary rhythm. Argument aside, it is an observable and verifiable fact.

That we may so suffice his vengeful ire. MILTON, Paradise Lost, I, 148.

A mind not to be changed by time or place. Ibid., I, 253.

Behold me then, me for him, life for life. Ibid., III, 236.

Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man. Ibid., III, 316.

As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heav'n rung. Ibid., III, 347.

Infinite wrath and infinite despair. Ibid., IV, 74.

Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deign'd. Ibid., V, 221.

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms. Ibid., VI, 32.

Before thy fellows, ambitious to win. Ibid., VI, 160.

On me already lost, me than thyself More miserable. Both have sinned; but thou Against God only; I against God and thee. Ibid., N, 929 ff.

O miserable mankind, to what fall. Ibid., XI, 500.

And made him bow to the gods of his wives. Paradise Regained, II, 171.

Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both worlds. Ibid., IV, 633.

Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that gift? Samson Agonistes, 576.

Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn? KEATS, Hyperion, I, 134.

When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness. SHELLEY, Alastor, 30

Yielding one only response, at each pause. SHELLEY, Alastor, 564.

Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still Burning, yet ever inconsumable. SHELLEY, Epipsychidion, 578 f.

Lies to God, lies to man, every way lies. BROWNING, The Ring and the Book, IV, 216.

'Do I live, am I dead?' Peace, peace seems all. BROWNING, The Bishop Orders his Tomb.

Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke. Ibid.

I cry 'Life!' 'Death,' he groans, 'our better life!' BROWNING, Aristophanes' Apology, 1953.

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos. BROWNING, Caliban upon Setebos.

Even to the last dip of the vanishing sail. TENNYSON, Enoch Arden, 244.

Saying gently, Annie, when I spoke to you. Ibid., 445.

Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard. TENNYSON, The Princess, IV, 389.

Bearing all down, in thy precipitancy. TENNYSON, Gareth, 8.

First as in fear, step after step, she stole Down the long tower stairs, hesitating. TENNYSON, Lancelot and Elaine, 342 f.

This from Surrey's Aneid, because of its early date:

He with his hands strave to unloose the knots.

These two from Elizabethan drama—hundreds of interesting lines may be culled from this source, but the field is to be trodden with caution because of the uncertainties of the texts; though we quote 'Hamlet' we cannot be sure we are quoting Shakespeare, and in such a matter as this certainty is indispensable—

Do more than this in sport.—Father, father. King Lear, II, i.

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. WEBSTER, Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii.

And finally, three examples from Samson Agonistes of interwoven tunes, a sort of counterpoint of two melodies sounding simultaneously—

My griefs not only pain me As a lingering disease, But, finding no redress, ferment and rage. 617 ff.

To boast Again in safety what thou would'st have done To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more. 1127 ff.

Force with force Is well ejected when the conqueror can. 1206 f.

He all their ammunition And feats of war defeats, With plain heroic magnitude of mind. 1277 ff.

Stevenson compared the writer of verse with a juggler who cleverly keeps several balls in the air at one time. The comparison is suggestive, but is true only so far as it indicates the difficulty of the operation for those who are not jugglers. The juggler does not devote conscious attention to each individual ball. He has learned to keep them all moving at once, and when he starts them they go of their own accord. Now and then, by conscious effort, he shoots one higher than the others—but there is no need to labor the illustration. The technique of versification is a mechanical thing to be learned like any mechanical thing. The poet learns it—in sundry different ways, to be sure—and when he has mastered it he is no more conscious of its complex details while he is composing than the pianist is conscious of his ten fingers while he is interpreting a Chopin concerto. There is a feeling, an idea, a poetic conception, which demands expression in words. The compound of direct intellectual activity and of automatic responses from a reservoir of intuitions long since filled by practice and experience no poet has ever been able to analyze—much less a psychologist who is not a poet. Often the best ideas, the best phrases, the perfect harmony of thought and expression emerge spontaneously; sometimes they have to be sought, diligently and laboriously sought.

"When one studies a prosody or a metrical form," says M. Verrier, "one may well ask if these alliterations, these assonances, these consonances, these rimes, these rhythmic movements, these metres, which one coldly describes in technical terms—if they actually produce the designated effects and especially if the poet 'thought of all that.' So it is when an amateur opens a scientific treatise on music and learns by what series of chords one modulates from one key to another, or even how the chord of the dominant seventh is resolved to the tonic in its fundamental form.... That the poet has not 'thought of all that' is evident, but not in the ordinary sense. When the illiterate countryman makes use of the subjunctive, he is not aware that a subjunctive exists, still less that one uses it for historical and logical and also perhaps for emotional reasons. But the subjunctive exists nevertheless, and the reasons too."[99]

[99] Verrier, vol. i, p. 134.

The analogy is helpful, though not altogether persuasive. There is the familiar story of Browning's reply to the puzzled admirer: "Madam, I have no idea what I meant when I wrote those lines." So much for warning to the oversedulous. But if I honestly find and feel a marvelous rhythmic effect where Robert Browning did not plan one, then such effect certainly exists—for me, at least, and for all whom I can persuade of its presence. On the other hand, there is a potent warning in the following exuberance:

But the thought of the king and his villainies stings him into rage again, and the rhythm slowly rises on three secondary stresses—

or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave's offal.

The last phrase twists and writhes through a series of secondary stresses with an intensity of hatred and bitterness that takes shape in a following series of peculiar falling rhythm waves, each one of which has a foam-covered crest 'white as the bitten lip of hate.' This rhythm, curling, hissing, tense, topful of venom, Alecto's serpents coiling and twisting through it, makes one of the most awful passages in all English poetry—

Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

and culminates in Hamlet's cry

O vengeance!

which, with its peculiar sustained falling close, vibrates through the rest of the verse.[100]

[100] Mark H. Liddell, An Introduction to the Scientific Study of English Poetry, New York, 1901, pp. 291 f.

Professional prosodists doubt and dispute one another with the zeal and confidence of metaphysicians and editors of classical texts. They are all blind guides—perhaps even the present one!—if followed slavishly. There is only one means (a threefold unity) to the right understanding of the metrical element in poetry: a knowledge of the simple facts of metrical form, a careful scrutiny of the existent phenomena of ordinary language rhythms, and a study of the ways in which the best poets have fitted the one to the other with the most satisfying and most moving results.



GLOSSARIAL INDEX

A few terms not mentioned in the text are included here for the sake of completeness.

ACCENT, the greater emphasis placed, in normal speech, on one syllable of a work as compared with the other syllables, 6, 34 f., 37 f. See also STRESS; it is convenient to distinguish the two terms, but they are sometimes used interchangeably.

ACEPHALOUS, headless; used to describe a line which lacks the unstressed element of the first foot. See TRUNCATION.

ALEXANDRINE, a 6-stress iambic line, 85 ff. 88.

ALLITERATION, repetition of the same or closely similar sounds at the beginning of neighboring words or accented syllables (occasionally also unaccented syllables); sometimes called Initial Rime, 166.

AMPHIBRACH, a classical foot, [U]—[U], 51.

ANACRUSIS, one or more extra syllables at the beginning of a line, 71.

ANAPEST, a foot consisting of two unstresses and a stress, [U][U][#], 38, 51, 70, 80 ff.

ANTISTROPHE, the counter-turn, or stanza answering to the first, of a Pindaric Ode, 131.

ARSIS, a confusing term sometimes borrowed from classical prosody for the stressed element of a foot; the unstressed element is called Thesis.

ASSONANCE, the repetition, in final syllables, of the same vowel sound followed by a different consonantal sound, 166 f. See RIME.

BALLAD METRE (Common Measure, C. M. of the Hymnals), the stanza a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}, but admitting certain variations, 87, 103.

BALLADE, a formal metrical scheme of three stanzas riming ababbcbC with an Envoi bcbC, keeping the same rimes throughout, and the last line of each stanza (C) being the same. The lines are usually 5-stress, 163.

BLANK VERSE, unrimed 5-stress lines used continuously, 94, 133 ff., ch. V passim; the 'single-moulded' line, 135 f.; Marlow's, 137 f.; Shakespeare's, 138 ff., later dramatic, 140 f.; Milton's, 142 ff.; conversational, 147 ff.

CAESURA, the classical term for a pause, usually grammatical and extra-metrical (i. e. not reckoned in the time scheme). When it follows an accented syllable it is called masculine; when it follows an unaccented syllable it is feminine; when it occurs within a line it is called medial; when it occurs after an 'extra' unstressed syllable it is called epic (though as frequent in drama as in epic), as—

And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on. MILTON, Comus, l. 509

CATALEXIS; see TRUNCATION.

CHORIAMB, a classical foot, —[U][U]—, 51.

COMMON MEASURE (C. M.), the regular Ballad Metre, 103 f.

CONSONANCE, specifically, in metrics, a form of incomplete rime in which the consonantal sounds agree but the vowel sounds differ, 166 f. See RIME.

COA-RDINATION, the agreement or coincidence of the natural prose rhythm with the metrical (rhythmical) pattern; the process of making them agree, 17 f.

COUPLET, a group of two lines riming aa, 88; closed couplet, one which contains an independent clause or sentence and does not run on into the next of the series, 91 f.; heroic couplet, one of 5-stress lines, usually iambic (called also pentameter couplet), 89, 93 ff.; short couplet, one of 4-stress iambic or trochaic lines (also called octosyllabic couplet), 89 ff.

DACTYL, a foot consisting of a stress followed by two unstresses, [#][U][U], 38, 51, 70, 84.

DECASYLLABLE, a 5-stress (pentameter) line; a term used properly only of syllable-counting metres such as the French.

DISTICH, couplet; usually in classical prosody the elegiac couplet of a hexameter and a pentameter, 162.

DOGGEREL, any rough irregular metre.

DUPLE RHYTHM, a rhythm of two beats (though corresponding generally to A3/4 time in music), one stress and one unstress, [][U] or [U][].

DURATION, the length of time occupied by the enunciation of speech-sounds, and therefore an element in all language rhythm, 5. See also TIME.

ELEGIAC STANZA, the quatrain abab^{5}, 103, 107 f.

ELISION, the omission or crowding out of unstressed words or unaccented syllables to make the metre smoother; a term belonging to classical prosody and inappropriate in English prosody except where syllable-counting verse is concerned. Various forms of Elision are called Syncope, Synizesis, and Synaloepha.

END-STOPPED LINE, one with a full or strong grammatical pause at the end.

ENJAMBEMENT, a French term ('long stride') for the continuation of the sense from one line (or couplet) to the next without a grammatical pause, 62, 92; opposite of End-stopping. See OVERFLOW; RUN-ON LINE.

EPODE, the third (sixth, ninth) stanza of a Pindaric ode, 131.

FEMININE ENDING, an extra unstressed syllable at the end of an iambic or anapestic line, 71.

FOOT, the smallest metrical unit of rhythm, composed of a stressed element and one or more unstressed elements (or a pause), 49 ff.

FREE-VERSE, irregular rhythms, not conforming to a fixed metrical pattern, 150 ff.

HEADLESS LINE, acephalous; and see TRUNCATION.

HENDECASYLLABLE, a 5-stress line with feminine ending, thus making ordinarily eleven syllables; usually referring to a special metre used by Catullus and others (as in Tennyson's imitation, 'O you chorus of indolent reviewers'), 162.

HEROIC LINE, a 5-stress iambic line.

HEXAMETER, classical or dactylic, the standard line of Greek and Latin poetry, composed of six feet, the fifth of which is nearly always a dactyl, the sixth a spondee or trochee, the rest either dactyls or spondees; imitated in English with more or less success by substituting stress for quantity, 159 ff.

HIATUS, unexpected absence of elision.

HOLD, pause on a word or syllable, 62 f.

HOVERING ACCENT, a term sometimes used for the coordination of the metrical rhythm [U][][U][] with the prose rhythm [U][U][][] as in "and serene air" (Comus, l. 4); the accent is thought of as 'hovering' over the first syllable of serene, 182.

HYPERMETRIC, used of a syllable which is not reckoned or expected in the regular metrical pattern.

IAMB, Iambus, a foot consisting of an unstress and a stress, [U][#], 38, 51, 69, 84 ff.

IN MEMORIAM STANZA, a quatrain riming abba^{4}, 103, 105 ff.

INVERSION, the substitution of a trochee for an iamb or of a dactyl for an anapest (or vice versa), 51, 187 ff.; a misleading term; see SUBSTITUTION.

LENGTH, the comparative duration of the enunciation of syllables, 33 f. In classical prosody syllables were regarded by convention as either 'long' or 'short' (a 'long' being theoretically equal to two 'shorts'), and this usage has been sometimes (not successfully, and yet not entirely without reason) super-imposed upon English verse.

LINE, a metrical division composed of one or more feet and either used continuously or combined in stanzas, 52 f., 69 ff. See VERSE (1).

LOUDNESS, the comparative strength or volume of a sound, 6.

LONG MEASURE (L. M. of the Hymnals) the quatrain riming abab^{4} or abcb^{4}, 103.

METRE, a regular, artificial, rhythmic pattern, the formal basis of versification.

OCTOSYLLABLE, an 8-syllable or 4-stress line. See DECASYLLABLE.

OCTAVE, a stanza of eight lines; especially the two quatrains of an Italian sonnet, 120.

ODE, a kind of exalted lyric poem, not strictly a metrical term but often used as such to describe the simple stanzaic structure of the 'Horatian' ode or the complex system of strophe, antistrophe and epode of the 'Pindaric' ode, 131 ff.

ONOMATOPOEIA, primarily a rhetorical figure but of much wider application, covering all cases from single words to phrases and lines of verse in which there is agreement, by echo or suggestions, between the sound of the words and their meaning; as a metrical term, the agreement of the verse rhythm with the idea expressed, 177 ff.

OTTAVA RIMA, the stanza (of Italian origin) riming abababcc^{5}, 111 f.

OVERFLOW, the running over of the parts of a sentence from one line to the next without a pause at the end of the line, 62. See ENJAMBEMENT, RUN-ON.

PAEON, a classical foot, —[U][U][U], 51, 76 ff.

PAUSE, (1) logical or grammatical, that which separates the formal parts of a sentence, 61, 63; (2) rhythmical, that which separates the breath-groups of spoken sentences, 61 ff.; (3) metrical, (a) that which separates the parts of a metrical pattern, as at the end of a line, 62, and also (b) that which takes the place of an unstressed element of a foot, being equivalent to the rest in music (indicated by the sign [~]), 62 ff.

PENTAMETER, a 5-stress line, 52. (This term is well established, but open to objection.)

PHRASE, a group of words held together either by their meaning (or content) or by their sound, 32 f; 37 ff.

PINDARIC, see ODE.

PITCH, the characteristic of a sound dependent upon its number of vibrations per second; (usually indicated by its place in the musical scale; high or 'acute,' low or 'grave'); 5 f., 35 ff.; sometimes functions in verse for emphasis or for stress, 8, 35 ff., 181 ff.

POULTER'S MEASURE, an old-fashioned couplet, composed of an alexandrine and a septenary, a^{6}a^{7}, 88 f.

PROSE, Characteristic, prose with natural and varied rhythms, 23 ff.; Cadenced, prose with carefully sought rhythmic movements, 27 ff.; Metrical, a hybrid of prose and verse, 29 ff.

PYRRHIC, a classical foot, [U][U], 51.

QUANTITY, the length of a syllable; established by convention in classical prosody; in English prosody very uncertain but always present. See Length.

QUATRAIN, a stanza of four lines, 103 ff.

REFRAIN, a line or part of a line repeated according to the metrical pattern, 184 f.; the term repetend is occasionally used.

REST, see PAUSE (3, b).

RHYTHM, regular arrangement or repetition of varied parts, see ch. I, ch. II, and passim; objective, having external concrete existence, 3 ff.; subjective, felt by the individual, 3, 12 ff.; spatial, in which the units are spaces, 4; temporal, in which the units are periods of time, 4 ff.; rising, beginning with the stressed element, 38; falling, beginning with the unstressed element, 38; duple, having a stress and one unstressed element (syllable), 38; triple, having a stress and two unstressed elements (syllables), 38.

RIME, repetition of the same sound (or sounds) usually at the end of the line, 165 ff.; Masculine, when the repeated sound consists of one stressed syllable; Feminine, when a stressed + one or more unstressed syllables; Triple, when a stressed + two unstressed syllables; Echo or Identical, when the preceding consonantal sound also agrees; Eye-rime, when the words agree in spelling but not in pronunciation, 174. As distinct from end-rime, there is Internal or Leonine rime, which occurs within the line (sometimes merely a matter of printing). See also ASSONANCE, CONSONANCE.

RIME COUA%E, see TAIL-RIME STANZA.

RIME-ROYAL, a stanza borrowed by Chaucer from the French, ababbcc^{5}; also called Troilus stanza, Chaucer stanza, 109 f.

RONDEAU, RONDEL, French metrical forms characterized by the repetition of the first phrase or lines twice as a refrain, e. g. aabba aabR aabbaR (R being the first phrase of the first line), or ABba abAB abbaAB (the capitals indicating the whole lines repeated), 163.

RUN-ON LINE, one in which the sense runs over into the following line without a grammatical pause, 62, 92. See ENJAMBEMENT; OVERFLOW.

SAPPHIC, a 4-line stanza used by Sappho (and Catullus and Horace) and often imitated in English; the pattern is [U] [U] [U][U] [U] [U] thrice repeated, then [U][U] [U], 161 f.

SEPTENARY, SEPTENARIUS (fourteener), the old 14-syllable or 7-stress iambic line, later split up into the Ballad metre, 87; and used also with the alexandrine in the Poulter's Measure.

SESTET, a group of six lines, especially the last six of an Italian sonnet, 120.

SESTINA, an elaborate metrical form consisting of six 6-line stanzas and a 3-line stanza with repetition of the same end-words in different order instead of rime, 164.

SHORT MEASURE (S. M. of the Hymnals), the Poulter's Measure broken into a quatrain: ab^{3}a^{4}b^{3}, ab^{3}c^{4}b^{3}, 89.

SONNET, 118 ff., (1) Italian, a 14-line stanza composed of two quatrains riming abba and two tercets riming cde cde (cde dee, etc.), 120 ff.; (2) English, 14-line stanza of three quatrains riming abab cdcd efef, and a closing couplet gg, 127 ff. There are also mixed forms and many variations.

SPENSERIAN STANZA, a 9-line stanza riming ababbcbc^{5}c^{6}; the final alexandrine is the characteristic feature, 85 f., 112 ff. Several variations were used in the seventeenth century consisting of shorter lines with a closing alexandrine, 117.

SPONDEE, a classical prosody a foot of two long syllables; in English prosody a foot of two 'long' or accented or stressed words or syllables, 51.

STANZA, a group of lines arranged according to a special pattern, usually marked by rimes, 53, 88 ff.; see also Verse (3).

STRESS, the comparative emphasis which distinguishes a sound from others not so strongly or plainly emphasized, 34 f., 37 f., 56 f., 65 f. Then by UNSTRESS or no stress is meant absence or comparative weakness of emphasis. Stress is used in this book for rhythmic and metrical emphasis; see ACCENT.

STROPHE, same as Stanza, 53; in the Pindaric ode, the first (fourth, etc.) stanza, 131.

SUBSTITUTION (1) replacing one rhythmic unit by its temporal equivalent, as an iamb by an anapest or by a trochee, etc., 20; called also Inversion (q.v.) of the foot; (2) the use of pitch or duration (pause) for a stress or unstress, 20, 181 ff.

SYLLABLE, the smallest and simplest unit of speech-sound, 32 f.; sometimes used as a metrical unit, 49.

SYNCOPATION, the union, or perception of the union, of two or more rhythmic patterns, 18 ff.

TAIL-RIME STANZA, one usually of six lines riming aa^{4}b^{3}cc^{4}b^{3}, but with many variations (e. g. the Burns stanza, aaa^{4}b^{2}a^{4}b^{2}), the general type being a combination of long lines in groups with single short lines, 109.

TAILED SONNET, a sonnet with a tail (coda), or addition. About the only one in English is Milton's On the New Forcers of Conscience: the rimes are abba abba cde dec^{5} c^{3}ff^{5}f^{3}gg^{5}.

TERCET, a group of three lines, especially in the sestet of the Italian sonnet, 102, 120.

TERZA RIMA, an Italian rime scheme aba bcb cdc ... yzy zz; rarely used in English, but triumphantly (in stanzas) in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, 164.

TETRAMETER, a classical term (four 'measures' or eight feet) incorrectly used for the English 4-stress line, 52.

THESIS, see ARSIS.

TIME, an inevitable element in English verse (as well as prose), but not the sole basis, 56 ff.

TONE-COLOR, TONE QUALITY, 'timbre,' the characteristic of a sound determined by the number of partial tones (overtones), as richness, sweetness, thinness, stridency; hence sometimes applied to the musical quality of a verse or phrase, 6 and note, 177.

TRIBRACH, a classical foot, [U][U][U], 51.

TRIMETER, a classical term (three 'measures' or six feet) incorrectly used for the English 3-stress line, 52.

TRIOLET, a French metrical form, mainly for light themes, riming ABaAabAB(the capitals indicating repeated lines) and usually with short lines, 163.

TRIPLET, a group of three lines, especially when rimed aaa, 101 f. See also TERCET.

TROCHEE, a foot consisting of a stress and an unstress, [#][U], 38, 51, 70, 82 ff.

TRUNCATION, omission of the final unstressed element of a line, usually in the trochaic metres, 76; also called Catalexis (the opposite of which, the non-omission of this element, is Acatalexis). Initial Truncation is the omission of the first unstressed element of a line, usually in the iambic metres, thus making a Headless verse.

UNSTRESS, the element of a rhythmic unit which is without emphasis or has a relatively weak emphasis.

VERSE, (1) a metrical line, 52; (2) collectively, for metre, metrical form; (3) commonly in England, and in America in the churches, used for Stanza.

VILLANELLE, a French verse form of nineteen lines on three rimes, certain lines being repeated at fixed intervals, 163 f.

THE END