I regret that Professor Lowes's brilliant discussion of "Poetic Diction"
in his _Convention and Revolt_ did not appear until after this chapter was
written. There are stimulating remarks on Diction in Fairchild and
Eastman, in Raleigh's _Wordsworth_, in L. A. Sherman's _Analytics of
Literature_, chapter 6, in Raymond's _Poetry as a Representative Art_, and
in Hudson Maxim's _Science of Poetry_. Coleridge's description of
Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction in the _Biographia Literaria_ is
famous. Walt Whitman's _An American Primer_, first published in the
_Atlantic_ for April, 1904, is a highly interesting contribution to the
subject.
No theoretical discussion, however, can supply the place of a close study,
word by word, of poems in the classroom. It is advisable, I think, to
follow such analyses of the diction of Milton, Keats and Tennyson by a
scrutiny of the diction employed by contemporary poets like Edgar Lee
Masters and Carl Sandburg.
The following passages in prose and verse, printed without the authors'
names, are suggested as an exercise in the study of diction:
1. "The falls were in plain view about a mile off, but very distinct,
and no roar--hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green and white, far
below me; the dark, high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze
cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense
materiality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid,
spiritual, silent. Brief, and as quiet as brief, that picture--a
remembrance always afterward."
2. "If there be fluids, as we know there are, which, conscious of a
coming wind, or rain, or frost, will shrink and strive to hide
themselves in their glass arteries; may not that subtle liquor of the
blood perceive, by properties within itself, that hands are raised to
waste and spill it; and in the veins of men run cold and dull as his
did, in that hour!"
3. "On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner,
He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,
He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,
With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd."
4. "The feverish heaven with a stitch in the side,
Of lightning."
5. "Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are
the wine of the bloodshed of things."
6. "Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels."
7. "As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; their dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud."
8. "For the main criminal I have no hope
Except in such a suddenness of fate.
I stood at Naples once, a night so dark
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all:
But the night's black was burst through by a
blaze--
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and
bore,
Through her whole length of mountain visible:
There lay the city thick and plain with spires,
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved."