A fresh and clear discussion of the principles governing Rhythm and
Metre may be found in C. E. Andrews's _Writing and Reading of Verse_.
The well-known books by Alden, Corson, Gummere, Lewis, Mayor, Omond,
Raymond and Saintsbury are indicated in the Bibliography. Note also
the bibliographies given by Alden and Patterson.
I have emphasized in this chapter the desirability of compromise in some
hotly contested disputes over terminology and methods of metrical
notation. Perhaps I have gone farther in this direction than some teachers
will wish to go. But all classroom discussion should be accompanied by
oral reading of verse, by the teacher and if possible by pupils, and the
moment oral interpretations begin, it will be evident that "a satisfied
ear" is more important than an exact agreement upon methods of notation.
I venture to add here, for their suggestiveness, a few passages about
Rhythm and Metre, and finally, as an exercise in the study of the
prevalence of the "iambic roll" in sentimental oratory, an address by
Robert G. Ingersoll.
1. "Suppose that we figure the nervous current which corresponds to
consciousness as proceeding, like so many other currents of nature, in
_waves_--then we do receive a new apprehension, if not an explanation, of
the strange power over us of successive strokes.... Whatever things occupy
our attention--events, objects, tones, combinations of tones, emotions,
pictures, images, ideas--our consciousness of them will be heightened by
the rhythm as though it consisted of waves."
EASTMAN, _The Enjoyment of Poetry_, p. 93.
2. "Rhythm of pulse is the regular alternation of units made up of beat
and pause; rhythm in verse is a measured or standardized arrangement of
sound relations. The difference between rhythm of pulse and rhythm in
verse is that the one is known through touch, the other through hearing;
as rhythm, they are essentially the same kind of thing. Viewed generally
and externally, then, verse is language that is beaten into measured
rhythm, or that has some type of uniform or standard rhythmical
arrangement."
FAIRCHILD, _The Making of Poetry_, p. 117.
3. "A Syllable is a body of sound brought out with an independent, single,
and unbroken breath (Sievers). This syllable may be _long_ or _short_,
according to the time it fills; compare the syllables in _merrily_ with
the syllables in _corkscrew_. Further, a syllable may be _heavy_ or
_light_ (also called _accented_ or _unaccented_) according as it receives
more or less force or _stress_ of tone: compare the two syllables of
_treamer_. Lastly, a syllable may have increased or diminished _height-_of
tone,--_pitch: cf._ the so-called 'rising inflection' at the end of a
question. Now, in spoken language, there are infinite degrees of length,
of stress, of pitch....
"It is a well-known property of human speech that it keeps up a ceaseless
change between accented and unaccented syllables. A long succession of
accented syllables becomes unbearably monotonous; a long succession of
unaccented syllables is, in effect, impossible. Now when the ear detects
at regular intervals a recurrence of accented syllables, varying with
unaccented, it perceives _Rhythm_. Measured intervals of time are the
basis of all verse, and their _regularity_ marks off poetry from prose; so
that Time is thus the chief element in Poetry, as it is in Music and in
Dancing. From the idea of measuring these time-intervals, we derive the
name Metre; Rhythm means pretty much the same thing,--'a flowing,' an
even, measured motion. This rhythm is found everywhere in nature: the beat
of the heart, the ebb and flow of the sea, the alternation of day and
night. Rhythm is not artificial, not an invention; it lies at the heart of
things, and in rhythm the noblest emotions find their noblest expression."
GUMMERE, _Handbook of Poetics_, p. 133.
4. "It was said of Chopin that in playing his waltzes his left hand kept
absolutely perfect time, while his right hand constantly varied the rhythm
of the melody, according to what musicians call _tempo rubato_,'stolen' or
distorted time. Whether this is true in fact, or even physically possible,
has been doubted; but it represents a perfectly familiar possibility of
the mind. Two streams of sound pass constantly through the inner ear of
one who understands or appreciates the rhythm of our verse: one, never
actually found in the real sounds which are uttered, is the absolute
rhythm, its equal time-intervals moving on in infinitely perfect
progression; the other, represented by the actual movement of the verse,
is constantly shifting by quickening, retarding, strengthening or
weakening its sounds, yet always hovers along the line of the perfect
rhythm, and bids the ear refer to that perfect rhythm the succession of
its pulsations."
ALDEN, _An Introduction to Poetry_, p. 188.
5. "Many lines in Swinburne cannot be scanned at all except by the Lanier
method, which reduces so-called feet to their purely musical equivalents
of time bars. What, for instance, can be made by the formerly accepted
systems of prosody of such hexameters as
'Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly forever asway?'
The usual explanation of this line is that Mr. Swinburne, carelessly,
inadvertently, or for some occult purpose, interjected one line of five
feet among his hexameters and the scansion usually followed is by
arrangement into a pentameter, thus:
'Full-sailed | wide-winged | poised softly | forever | asway,'
the first two feet being held to be spondees, and the third and fourth
amphibrachs. It has also been proposed to make the third foot a spondee or
an iambus, and the remaining feet anapaests, thus:
'Full-sailed | wide-winged | poised soft- | ly forev- | er asway.'
"The confusion of these ideas is enough to mark them as unscientific and
worthless, to say nothing of the severe reflection they cast on the poet's
workmanship. We have not so known Mr. Swinburne, for, if there be anything
he has taught us about himself it is his strenuous and sometimes absurd
particularity about immaculate form. He would never overlook a line of
five feet in a poem of hexameters. But--as will, I think, appear later and
conclusively--the line is really of six feet, and is not iambic, trochaic,
anapaestic, the spurious spondaic that some writers have tried to
manufacture for English verse, or anything else recognized in Coleridge's
immortal stanza, or in text-books. It simply cannot be scanned by
classical rules; it cannot be weighed justly, and its full meaning
extracted, by any of the 'trip-time' or 'march-time' expedients of other
investigators. It is purely music; and when read by the method of music
appears perfectly designed and luminous with significance. Only a poet
that was at heart a composer could have made such a phrase, based
upon such intimate knowledge of music's rhythmical laws."
C. E. RUSSELL, "Swinburne and Music" _North American Review_,
November, 1907.
6. Dr. Henry Osborn Taylor has kindly allowed me to quote this passage
from his _Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_, pp. 246, 247:
"Classic metres expressed measured feelings. Hexameters had given voice to
many emotions beautifully, with unfailing modulation of calm or storm.
They had never revealed the infinite heart of God, or told the yearning of
the soul responding; nor were they ever to be the instrument of these
supreme disclosures in Christian times. Such unmeasured feelings could not
be held within the controlled harmonies of the hexameter nor within
sapphic or alcaic or Pindaric strophes. These antique forms of poetry
definitely expressed their contents, although sometimes suggesting further
unspoken feeling, which is so noticeable with Virgil. But characteristic
Christian poetry, like the Latin mediaeval hymn, was not to express its
meaning as definitely or contain its significance. Mediaeval hymns are
childlike, having often a narrow clearness in their literal sense; and
they may be childlike, too, in their expressed symbolism. Their
significance reaches far beyond their utterance; they suggest, they echo,
and they listen; around them rolls the voice of God, the infinitude of
His love and wrath, heaven's chorus and hell's agonies; _dies irae, dies
illa_--that line says little, but mountains of wrath press on it, from
which the soul shall not escape.
"Christian emotion quivers differently from any movement of the spirit in
classic measures. The new quiver, the new shudder, the utter terror, and
the utter love appear in mediaeval rhymed accentual poetry:
Desidero te millies,
Mê Jesu; quando venies?
Me laetum quando facies,
Ut vultu tuo saties?
Quo dolore
Quo moerore
Deprimuntur miseri,
Qui abyssis
Pro commissis
Submergentur inferi.
Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuae viae;
Ne me perdas ilia die.
* * * * *
Lacrymosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex fa villa,
Judicandus homo reus;
Huic ergo parce, Deus!
Pie Jesu, Domine,
Dona eis requiem.
"Let any one feel the emotion of these verses and then turn to some piece
of classic poetry, a passage from Homer or Virgil, an elegiac couplet or a
strophe from Sappho or Pindar or Catullus, and he will realize the
difference, and the impossibility of setting the emotion of a mediaeval
hymn in a classic metre."
7. "_Friends_: I know how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I
wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life and
death are equal things, all should be brave enough to meet what all the
dead have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and polluted
by the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds and
blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth, the
patriarchs and babes sleep side by side.
"Why should we fear that which will come to all that is?
"We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing--life or
death. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the
door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else at dawn.
Neither can we tell which is the more fortunate--the child dying in its
mother's arms, before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who
journeys all the length of life's uneven road, painfully taking the last
slow steps with staff and crutch.
"Every cradle asks us, 'Whence?' and every coffin, 'Whither?' The poor
barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as
intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful
ignorance of the one is just as consoling as the learned and unmeaning
words of the other. No man, standing where the horizon of a life has
touched a grave, has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and
tears. It may be that death gives all there is of worth to life. If those
we press and strain against our hearts could never die, perhaps that love
would wither from the earth. Maybe this common fate treads from out the
paths between our hearts the weeds of selfishness and hate, and I had
rather live and love where death is king, than have eternal life where
love is not. Another life is naught, unless we know and love again the
ones who love us here.
"They who stand with aching hearts around this little grave need have no
fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is and is to be tells us
that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know that through
the common wants of life--the needs and duties of each hour--their griefs
will lessen day by day, until at last this grave will be to them a place
of rest and peace--almost of joy. There is for them this consolation. The
dead do not suffer. And if they live again, their lives will surely be as
good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and
the same fate awaits us all.
"We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for
the dead."
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, "Address over a Little Boy's Grave."