RHYTHM OF PROSE AND VERSE
It is clear now that all language is more or less definitely rhythmical;
and that the two fundamental and determining elements of speech-rhythm
are time and stress. It is clear also that the essential thing in our
perception of rhythm is the experience or recognition of groups, these
groups being themselves distinguished and set off by stress and time.
When there is an easily felt regularity of the groups, when the
alternation of stress and unstress and the approximate equality of the
time intervals are fairly apparent, then the rhythm is simple. When the
regularity is not obvious, the rhythm is complex, but none the less
existent and pleasing.[12] In other words, the character of language
rhythm is determined by the relative proportion of coincidence and
syncopation. In verse, coincidence preponderates; in prose, syncopation
(and substitution). Between absolute coincidence, moreover, and the
freest possible syncopation and substitution, infinite gradations are
possible; and many passages indeed lie so close to the boundary between
recognizable preponderance of the one or of the other that it is
difficult to say _this_ is verse, _that_ is prose. Various standards
and conventions enter into the decision.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [12] When no organization of the irregularity is possible, |
| the language is unrhythmical; and such, of course, is often |
| the case in bad prose and bad verse. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
For practical convenience three main sorts of rhythmic prose may be
distinguished: (1) _characteristic prose_, or that in which no
regularity (coincidence) is easily appreciable; (2) _cadenced prose_, or
that in which the regularity is perceptible, but unobtrusive, and (3)
_metrical prose_, or that in which the regularity is so noticeable as to
be unpleasing. No very clear lines can be drawn; nor should one try to
classify more than brief passages in one group or another. And,
obviously, longer selections will combine two or more sorts in
succession. A few examples will serve to show what is meant.
* * * * *
_Characteristic Prose._ No prose, as has been said above, is without
rhythmic curves; but the best prose, that which always keeps in view the
best ideals of prose, carefully avoids consecutive repetitions of the
same rhythmic patterns. It is the distinction of verse to follow a
chosen pattern, with due regard to the artistic principles of variety
and uniformity; it is the distinction of prose to accomplish its object,
whether artistic or utilitarian, without encroaching on the boundaries
of its neighbor. Prose may be as 'poetic,' as charged with powerful
emotion, as possible, but it remains true prose only when it refuses to
borrow aids from the characteristic excellences of verse.
To be sure, it is not always easy to avoid regular patterns in writing
the most ordinary prose. They come uncalled; they seem to be inherent in
the language. Here is, chosen casually, the first sentence of a current
news item, written surely without artistic elaboration, and subjected,
moreover, to the uncertainties of cable transmission. It was no doubt
farthest from the correspondent's intention to write 'numerous' prose;
but notice how the sentence may be divided into a series of rhythmic
groups of two stresses each, with a fairly regular number of
accompanying unstressed syllables:
A general mobilization | in Syria has been ordered | as a reply to
the French | ultimatum to King Feisal | that he acquiesce in the
French | mandate for Syria, | according to a dispatch | to the
London Times | from Jerusalem.
No one would read the sentence with a very clear feeling of this
definite movement; in fact, to do so rather obscures the meaning. But
the potential rhythm is there, and the reader with a keen rhythmic sense
will be to some extent aware of it.
Again, there is in the following sentence from Disraeli's Endymion a
latent rhythm which actually affects the purely logical manner of
reading it:
She persisted in her dreams of riding upon elephants.
Here one almost inevitably pauses after _dreams_ (or prolongs the word
beyond its natural length), though there is no logical reason for doing
so. Why? Partly, at least, because _persisted in her dreams_ and _of
riding upon el_-have the same 'swing,' and the parallelism of mere sound
seems to require the pause.
For these reasons, then, among others, the most 'natural' spontaneous
and straightforward prose is not always the best. Study and careful
revision are necessary in order to avoid an awkward and unpleasant
monotony of rhythmic repetition, and at the same time obtain a flow of
sound which will form a just musical accompaniment to the ideas
expressed. Only the great prose masters have done this with complete
success. Of the three following examples the first is from Bacon; the
second is from Milton, who as a poet might have been expected to fall
into metre while writing emotional prose; the third is from Walter
Pater--the famous translation into words of the Mona Lisa painted by
Leonardo da Vinci. The first is elaborate but unaffected, the second is
probably spontaneous, the third highly studied.
This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the
schoolmen: who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of
leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up
in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as
their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and
colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did
out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit
spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant
in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon
matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh
according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon
itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and
brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness
of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, iv, 5.
Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and
was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended,
and his Apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a
wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian
Typhon with his conspirators how they dealt with the good Osiris,
took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand
pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever
since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating
the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris,
went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find
them.
Areopagitica.
Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come,"
and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought from
within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange
thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. ... She is
older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she
has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and
has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about
her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and,
as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the
mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of
lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has
moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the
hands.
"Leonardo da Vinci," in The Renaissance.
Here no continuous patterns are recognizable, yet the whole is felt to
be musically and appropriately rhythmic. In the next excerpt, however
(from John Donne), and in many passages in the Authorized Version of the
Psalms, of Job, of the Prophets, there is a visible balance of phrases
and of clauses, a long undulating swing which one perceives at once,
though only half consciously, and which approaches, if it does not
actually possess, the intentional coincidence of cadenced prose.
If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion in
north and south as that he hath winter and summer together in his
dominions; so large an extent east and west as that he hath day and
night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and
justice together. He brought light out of darkness, not out of a
lesser light; He can bring thy summer out of winter though thou
have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or of
understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now,
wintered and frozen, smothered and stupefied till now, now God
comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud
of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as
the sheaves in harvest to fill all penuries. All occasions invite
His mercies, and all times are His seasons.
* * * * *
_Cadenced Prose._ Cadenced prose is in English chiefly an historical
phenomenon of the seventeenth century. It is part of the late
Renaissance literary movement, when prose, after vaguely classic models,
was held worth cultivating on its own account; and is in some degree a
tempered afterglow of the crude brilliance of euphuistic balance and
alliteration. It made no effort to conceal its definite rhythmic
movements--rather, it gloried in them; but was always careful that they
should not become monotonous or too palpable.
In the following examples the rhythmic units are for the sake of
clearness indicated by separate lines, after the fashion of
'free-verse.' The passages should be read first with the line-division
uppermost in the attention; then as continuous prose. The result of the
second reading will be perhaps a fuller appreciation of the rhythmic
richness of the sentences, both as to variety and uniformity. Sing-song
and 'pounding' are by all means to be deprecated.
(_a_) Simple two-and three-beat rhythms--
O eloquent just
and mighty Death!
whom none could advise
thou hast persuaded;
what none hath dared
thou hast done;
and whom all the world hath flattered
thou only hast cast out of the world and despised.
Thou hast drawn together
all the far-stretched greatness
all the pride cruelty
and ambition of man,
and covered it all over
with these two
narrow words
_Hic jacet_.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH, History of the World, Bk. V, ch. vi.
(_b_) Simple three-and four-beat rhythms--
They that have great intrigues of the world
have a yoke upon their necks
and cannot look back.
And he that covets many things greedily
and snatches at high things ambitiously
that despises his neighbor proudly
and bears his crosses peevishly
or his prosperity impotently and passionately
he that is a prodigal of his precious time
and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes
is not a man disposed to this exercise:
he hath reason to be afraid of his own memory
and to dash his glass in pieces
because it must needs represent to his own eyes
an intolerable deformity.
JEREMY TAYLOR, Holy Dying, ch. ii, sect. 2.
(_c_) Mainly two-beat rhythms--
Now since these dead bones
have already outlasted
the living ones of Methuselah
and in a yard under ground
and thin walls of clay
outworn all the strong
and spacious buildings above it,
and quietly rested
under the drums and tramplings
of three conquests;
what Prince can promise
such diuturnity
unto his reliques
or might not gladly say
'Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim.'
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Urn Burial, ch. v.
(_d_) Mainly three-beat rhythms--
What song the Syrens sang
or what name Achilles assumed
when he hid himself among women though puzzling questions
are not beyond all conjecture.
What time the persons of these ossuaries
entered the famous nations of the dead
and slept with princes and counsellors
might admit a wide solution.
But who were the proprietaries of these bones
or what bodies these ashes made up
were a question above antiquarism;
not to be resolved by man
nor easily perhaps by spirits
except we consult the provincial
guardians or tutelary Observators.
Ibid.
* * * * *
_Metrical Prose._ The above passages are daring, but greatly daring. So
great is the subtlety, the variety, the art, that they never fail of
their intended effect. They are justifiable because they justify
themselves--partly by their lofty and dignified content, partly of
course by their sheer artistry. But when the same thing is attempted by
unskilful hands it fails ingloriously. We say it has "a palpable design
upon us," and balk. Gibbon and Burke, as inheritors of the
seventeenth-century tradition, sometimes fell into the error; Ruskin,
with his 'poetical' style, was sometimes guilty; but the worst and most
conspicuous offenders were Dickens and Blackmore. Examples are abundant.
Not all are equally unpleasant; the individual taste of some readers
will approve passages which others will reject. With Dickens and
Blackmore, however, the phenomenon approaches downright deliberate
trickiness.
The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing
the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar _are
purchased at ten thousand times their price_. The blood of man
should never _be shed but to redeem the blood of man_. It is well
shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country,
for our kind. _The rest is vanity; the rest is crime._
BURKE, Letters on a Regicide Peace, I.
When Death strikes down the innocent and young
for every fragile form from which he lets
the panting spirit free
a hundred virtues rise
in shapes of mercy, charity, and love,
to walk the world and bless it.
Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed
on such green graves
some good is born
some gentler nature comes.
DICKENS, Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 72
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost,
"I made it link by link, and yard by yard."
DICKENS, Christmas Carol.
I cannot rest, I cannot stay,
I cannot linger anywhere.
Ibid.
Much they saw and far they went,
and many homes they visited,
but always with a happy end.
DICKENS, Christmas Carol.
But above the curved soft elbow,
where no room was for one cross word
(according to our proverb)
three sad gashes
edged with crimson
spoiled the flow of the pearly flesh.
BLACKMORE, Lorna Doone, ch. 38.
A peculiar instance of metrical prose, avowedly an experiment and
fortunately (as most will think) not repeated, is the passage near the
end of Kingsley's Westward Ho! Kingsley called it 'prose shaped into
song.' The objection is simply that in such a situation song is out of
place. Let prose do the legitimate work of prose; and when the intensity
of feeling justifies song, let there be song. No hybrids, no
cross-breeding--unless, as here, for purposes of experiment. Here is a
part of the passage:
Then he took a locket from his bosom; and I heard him speak, Will,
and he said: "Here's the picture of my fair and true lady; drink to
her, Señors, all." Then he spoke to me, Will, and called me, right
up through the oar-weed and the sea: "We have had a fair quarrel,
Señor; it is time to be friends once more. My wife and your brother
have forgiven me; so your honour takes no stain."
* * * * *
_Elements of Prose Rhythm._ Thus far the discussion of language rhythm
has been confined to a general perception of rhythmic movement. When an
attempt is made to carry the investigation into greater detail, more
difficult and from a prosodic point of view really crucial problems
present themselves. The essential thing in any perception of rhythm is
the experience of groups; but what are the nature and determining
qualities of these groups? In music there are bars--the primary rhythmic
group, comprising a single rhythmic wave, that is, covering the
time-distance from one point of division to another--phrases, cadences,
etc. The dual nature of language, however, its union of sound elements
and thought elements, gives the question another aspect. Corresponding
to the musical bar there is the metrical foot; to the musical phrase,
the logical phrase; to the musical cadence, a similar melodious flow of
word-sounds. But there are also in prose what are called breath-groups
and attention-groups, series of words bound together by the
physiological requirements of utterance and the mental requirements of
perception and understanding.[13] The first step towards clearness will
be a closer distinction between prose and metrical rhythms.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [13] Compare the sentence from Disraeli on page 24, above. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
_Syllable._ The simplest and smallest unit of speech-sound is the
syllable; then follow, in increasing magnitude, the word, the phrase
(that is, words held together by their meaning or by their sound), the
clause, the sentence, the paragraph. These units exist in verse as well
as in prose, but while verse has other units (which are arbitrary and
artificial), prose rhythm has only these. The rhythm of a paragraph is
determined by the length, structure, content, and arrangement of the
sentences; that of a sentence by the length, structure, content, and
arrangement of the phrases; that of the phrase by the length, structure,
content, and arrangement of the words; that of a word by the character
of the syllables. Now syllables, as has been explained above, have the
sound attributes of duration, intensity (or lack of intensity), and
pitch--called, however, in the terminology of phonetics, length or
quantity, accent (or no accent), and pitch. These must be studied
individually before their combined effects can be understood.
* * * * *
_Length._ Length is of course comparative. Some vowels require a longer
time to enunciate than others: the _e_ in _penal_ than the _i_ in _pin_,
the _o_ in _coat_ than the _o_ in _cot_, etc. Again, some consonants are
shorter by nature than others: the explosives, _p_, _t_, _k_, etc., than
the continuants _s_, _z_, _th_, _f_, _m_, _n_, _l_, etc. When vowels and
consonants are combined into syllables the comparative length is still
more apparent: thus _form_ is longer than _god_, _stole_ than _poke_,
_curl_ than _cut_, etc. Moreover, it is not alone the natural quantity
of vowels and consonants that affects or determines their length, but
also their position in a word and in a sentence. Thus, for example, the
same sounds are uttered more rapidly when closely followed by one or
more syllables than when alone: as _bit_, _bitter_, _bitterly_; _hard_,
_hardy_, _hardily_. This elasticity of syllabic quantity is clearly
shown in Verrier's examples:[14]
[Illustration:
They come fast--faster yet--faster and faster
Barren mountain tracts--barren affections.]
These indications, moreover, cover normal utterance only; in emotional
language or elocutionary delivery there are deliberate and arbitrary
lengthenings and shortenings.[15]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [14] Vol. i, pp. 79, 80. The musical notation must be taken |
| as merely approximate. |
| |
| [15] Experiments have been made to obtain absolute |
| measurements of syllabic quantity, and elaborate rules |
| formulated for determining longs and shorts. Thus far, |
| however, the results have been very variable and |
| unsatisfactory, and should be accepted with great caution. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
_Accent and Stress._ The term _accent_ may best be reserved for
grammatical or dictionary accent--the greater emphasis placed according
to standard usage upon one syllable of a word as compared with the
others. Thus _portion_ has an accent on the first syllable, _material_
on the second, _apprehension_ on the third, _deliberation_ on the
fourth. The other syllables are either unaccented, as the first of
_material_ and the second of _portion_, or have a secondary accent, as
the second of _deliberation_.
Accent should be distinguished from _stress_, which is the rhythmical
emphasis in a series of sounds. In prose the rhythmical stress is
determined almost wholly by accent; in verse the two sometimes coincide
and sometimes differ markedly.
In certain words whose accent is somewhat evenly divided between two
syllables, and in certain combinations of monosyllables, there is a
tendency to subject even grammatical accent to rhythmical stress. Hence
the common pronunciations _Newfound_land, _Hawthorn_den; the alternation
of stress in _poor old man_, _sad hurt heart_; and the shift of accent
in "In a _Chi_nese restaurant the waiters are Chi_nese_."
* * * * *
_Pitch._ Pitch is a very uncertain and variable phenomenon. For the most
part it is an ornament or aid to simple language rhythms, but under some
conditions it plays an important rôle which cannot be neglected. Because
of the physical structure of the vocal organs pitch is constantly
changing in spoken discourse, though often the changes are not readily
perceptible. Usually it coincides with accent.[16] It is also a frequent
but by no means regular means of intensifying accent: compare "That was
done simply" (normal utterance) with "That was simply wonderful"
(intensive utterance). On the other hand pitch and accent sometimes
clash: compare "The idea is good" (normal utterance) with "The _i_dea!"
(exclamatory). Other examples of pitch as a significant factor in prose
are: "One should not say 'good' but 'good_ly_,' not 'brave' but
'brave_ly_'"; "Not praise but prais_ing_ gives him delight."[17]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [16] To adduce Greek in explanation of English pitch would |
| be a clear case of _ignotum per ignotius_. But interesting |
| parallels have been noted by Mr. Stone (in R. Bridges, |
| Milton's Prosody, 2d ed.). "The ordinary unemphatic English |
| accent," he says, "is exactly a raising of pitch, and |
| nothing more" (p. 143); and there are similar habits in |
| English and Greek of turning the grave accent into acute, as |
| in _to gèt money_ and _to gét it_. The Greeks recognized |
| three degrees of pitch: the acute (high), and the grave |
| (low), (which, according to Dionysius, differed by about the |
| musical interval of a fifth), and midway, the circumflex. |
| Compare _thát?_ (acute, expressing surprise); _thât?_ |
| (circumflex, expressing doubt); and _thàt book_ |
| (grave--'book' and not 'table'). The main difference between |
| the two languages is that so far as we can tell classical |
| Greek had (very much like modern French) a pitch-accent and |
| very little or no stress-accent, whereas English has both |
| (though stress-accent preponderates). |
| |
| [17] Cf. J. W. Bright, "Proper Names in Old English Verse," |
| Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. 14 |
| (1899), pp. 347 ff.; especially pp. 363-365. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Another aspect of pitch is that which in the rhetorics is usually called
inflection. A question is uttered with rising inflection, that is, with
a higher pitch at the end. Declarative sentences usually have a falling
inflection just before the final period, that is, a lower pitch.
Exclamations often have a circumflex inflection, as "Really!" spoken in
a sarcastic tone; that is, the pitch rises and falls.
Experimental attempts to indicate variations of pitch by our common
musical notation are given by Verrier. A single example will suffice
here.[18]
[Illustration: "I come from haunts of coot and hern"]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [18] Verrier, vol. iii, p. 229. A more ambitious attempt, |
| from Pierson, Métrique naturelle du langage (Paris, 1884), |
| pp. 226, 227, is given by Verrier, vol. ii, p. 14--a musical |
| transcription of the opening verses of Racine's Athalie. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Perhaps the most important aspect of pitch from the point of view of
rhythm is its actual influence upon accent. We say naturally: "He was
_fif_teen years old"; but place the numeral for emphasis at the end of
the sentence and it receives a kind of pitch accent: "His age was
fif_teen_." Compare also _Chi_nese and Chi_nese_ in the example above.
Observe carefully the elements of duration, stress, accent, and pitch in
the following sentences:
Now he's a great big man.
He was a _re_markable young fellow, but he had an _un_governable
temper.
Off went Joy; on came Despair.
* * * * *
_Word and Phrase Rhythm._ The next larger unit after the syllable is the
word; after the word, the phrase. Something has already been said in the
previous paragraphs on word and phrase rhythm: it remains to examine
them more closely.
Words vary in length from one to eight or even ten syllables; and the
accents (main and secondary) may fall on any of these syllables
according to the origin and historical development of the word--thus
words of two syllables: _ápple_, _alóne_; of three syllables:
_béautiful_, _accéssion_, _appercéive_; of four syllables: _ápoplexy_,
_matérial_, _evolútion_, _interreláte_. But generally in polysyllables
the tendency to rhythmic alternation of stress produces one or more
secondary accents more or less distinctly felt; thus on the first
syllable of _apperceive_ and on the third of _apoplexy_ there is an
obvious secondary accent; on the third syllable of _beautiful_ and the
fourth of _material_ there are potential accents, not regularly felt as
such but capable, under certain circumstances, of rhythmic stress. For
example, in the phrase 'beautiful clothes' there is no accent and no
stress on -_ful_; but in 'beautiful attire' the syllable -_ful_
receives a very slight accent (properly not recognized by the
dictionaries) which can well serve as a weak rhythmic stress. Long words
illustrate the same principle: _antitranssubstantionalistic_,
_pseudomonocotyledonous_, _perfectibiliarianism_. This potential stress
is of the utmost importance in verse--as when Milton out of three words,
two of which have no recognized secondary accent, makes a 5-stress line:
Immutable, immortal, infinite.
Paradise Lost, III, 373.
The result of this tendency to alternation, or in other words of the
difficulty of pronouncing more than three consecutive syllables without
introducing a secondary accent or stress, is that English phrases fall
naturally into four rhythmic patterns or movements (and their
combinations): 1. accent + no-accent (_a._ one syllable, _b._ two
syllables); 2. no-accent (_a._ one syllable, _b._ two syllables) +
accent. Examples: 1a _beauty_, 1b _beautiful_, 2a _relate_, 2b
_intercede_. These four movements are variously named: the first two are
called _falling_, the second two _rising_; 1a and 2a are called _duple_
or _dissyllabic_, 1b and 2b _triple_ or _trisyllabic_; 1a is called
_trochaic_, 1b _dactylic_, 2a _iambic_, 2b _anapestic_ (after the names
of the metrical feet in classical prosody). _Beauty_, by this usage, is
a trochee, _beautiful_ a dactyl, _relate_ an iamb, _intercede_ an
anapest. But these patterns alone are by no means sufficient to explain
or register all the phrasal movements of English prose--as a single
sentence will show.
He that hath wife and children | hath given hostages | to fortune,
| for they are impediments | to great enterprises | either of
virtue | or of mischief.
BACON, Essay VIII.
Here the first phrase is in falling rhythm, the second (probably) in
rising rhythm, the third is--rising or falling? To some readers it will
appear of one sort, to others of another. The fourth phrase is probably
rising, the fifth doubtful, the sixth falling, the seventh probably
rising. To say that the first phrase is made up of a dactyl and two
trochees means very little. The primary fact to be recognized and
understood is that these four patterns exist in English speech not as
absolute entities but as tendencies. In prose they are discontinuous,
irregularly alternating, often hardly perceptible; but they are there as
potential forces whose latent effects are brought out by regular metre.
Another problem at once obvious is to determine the limits of a phrase.
Some readers will feel "to fortune" in the above sentence as a separate
phrase, others will join it to the three words that precede. No rules
can be laid down. Two tentative but useful criteria are possible,
however. A phrase may be regarded as purely musical, a group of sounds
that either by their own nature or by their possibility of utterance in
a single expulsion of breath seem to belong together. But this is an
uncertain criterion, since we separate the sounds of words with great
difficulty from their meaning, and the periods of breathing are subject
to arbitrary control. And some phrases are uttered in much less than the
time required in normal breathing. The other criterion, sometimes
supporting sometimes contradicting the former, is the logical content of
words. But this also is uncertain, since logical content ought to hold
subject and verb together, whereas in the example above it clearly does
not. And neither breath grouping nor logical grouping will enable us to
determine whether "either of virtue or of mischief" is two phrases or
one.
The limits of the sentence, with its clauses, are, largely through the
modern conventions of printing, more distinctly felt and observed. But
its rhythm is none the less complex. For it is not only the sum of the
smaller rhythmic movements of word and phrase and clause, but forms a
new entity of itself, created by the union of the lesser elements--just
as a building is more than its component bricks, stones, and timbers.
* * * * *
_Composite Speech Rhythm._ Such, briefly described, are the rhythmic
elements of spoken English prose. When only small sections are analyzed
singly, it is possible to understand something, at least, of the
intricate pattern of forces which are interwoven in the rhythms of
ordinary language. When one undertakes to analyze and express the
combined rhythms--musical, logical, emotional--of connected sentences
and paragraphs, one finds no system of notation adequate; the melodies
and harmonies disappear in the process of being explained. Those who
wish to enjoy to the fullest the rhythmic beauties of English prose must
patiently scrutinize the smallest details, then study the details in
larger and still larger combinations--the balance and contrast of
phrases, the alternation of dependent and independent clauses, the
varieties of long and short sentences, of simple, compound, periodic
sentences--and finally endeavor to rejoin the parts into a complete
whole. To pursue the subject further would be to encroach upon the
domain of formal rhetoric and would be out of place here. The best
counsel is the old counsel: try to _understand_ and _feel_ the great
passages of the great prose masters. A few examples have been given on
pages 25 ff., above; they should be studied diligently.
* * * * *
_Prose and Verse Rhythm._ It is but a short step from the occasional
regularity of rhythm in the passages on pages 27-29 to the deliberately
continuous regularity of verse. A tendency to rhythmic flow, it has
already been shown, is inherent in ordinary language. When the words are
made to convey heightened emotion this tendency is increased, and "the
deeper the feeling, the more characteristic and decided the rhythm"
(John Stuart Mill). Then, as Coleridge says, "the wheels take fire from
the mere rapidity of their motion," and finally we have
high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted.
Intensified, regularized rhythm is reciprocally both a result of
impassioned feeling and a cause of it: hence its double function in
poetry. It springs, on the one hand, from "the high spiritual instinct
of the human being impelling us to seek unity by harmonious adjustment
and thus establishing the principle that _all_ the parts of an organized
whole must be assimilated to the more _important_ and _essential_
parts." On the other hand, it "resembles (if the aptness of the simile
may excuse its meanness) yeast, worthless or disagreeable by itself,
but giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is
proportionally combined."[19]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [19] Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ch. xviii. Compare the |
| more poetical expression of the same truth in Carlyle's |
| Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History: "Observe |
| too how all passionate language does of itself become |
| musical--with a finer music than the mere accent; the speech |
| of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All |
| deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central |
| essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappings |
| and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all |
| things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the |
| feeling they had of the inner structure of Nature; that the |
| soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music.... |
| See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature |
| _being_ everywhere music, if you can only reach it." (The |
| Hero as Poet.) |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
The question is as old as Aristotle, whether metre, that is, regularized
rhythm, is an inalienable and necessary concomitant of poetry. The
answer rests on a precise understanding of terms; for the right
antithesis, so far as there is one, is not between prose and poetry, but
between prose and verse. High and passionate thoughts, true poetical
feeling and expression may and do exist in prose, but their most natural
and characteristic expression is in verse. The old question has been
lately reopened, however, by the anomalous form called 'free-verse.'
Only the name is new; the thing itself is, at its best, but a carefully
rhythmed prose printed in a new shape: an effort to combine in an
effective union some of the characteristics of spatial rhythm with the
established temporal rhythms of language. Free-verse will be discussed
more fully on a later page; it is mentioned here because it is a natural
transition between prose and verse, claiming as it does the freedom of
the one and the powers of the other.
Another means of recognizing the close relations of verse and prose is
to try to determine which of several passages of similarly heightened
emotion, printed in the same form, was originally verse and which prose.
Yet, as I would not catch your love with a lie, but force you to
love me as I am, faulty, imperfect, human, so I would not cheat
your inward being with untrue hopes nor confuse pure truth with a
legend. This only I have: I am true to my truth, I have not
faltered; and my own end, the sudden departure from the virile
earth I love so eagerly, once such a sombre matter, now appears
nothing beside this weightier, more torturing bereavement.
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down to find him in the
valley; let the wild lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave the
monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill their thousand wreaths
of dangling water-smoke, that like a broken purpose waste in air.
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales await thee; azure
pillars of the hearth arise to thee; the children call, I thy
shepherd pipe.
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies; and from the west, where
the sun, his day's work ended, lingers as in content, there falls
on the old, gray city an influence luminous and serene, a shining
peace. The smoke ascends in a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
shine, and are changed. In the valley shadows rise. The lark sings
on. The sun, closing his benediction, sinks, and the darkening air
thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--night with her train
of stars and her great gift of sleep.
There, suddenly, within that crimson radiance, rose the apparition
of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it
was--grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of the
altar, voiceless she stood--sinking, rising, raving, despairing;
and behind the volume of incense, that, night and day, streamed
upwards from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the
shadow of that dreadful being who should have baptized her with the
baptism of death. But by her side was kneeling her better angel,
that hid his face with wings; that wept and pleaded for _her_; that
prayed when _she_ could _not_; that fought with Heaven by tears
for _her_ deliverance; which also, as he raised his immortal
countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory of his eye, that
from Heaven he had won at last.
Dost thou already single me? I thought gyves and the mill had tamed
thee. Oh that fortune had brought me to the field where thou art
famed to have wrought such wonders with an ass's jaw! I should have
forced thee soon wish other arms, or left thy carcass where the ass
lay thrown; so had the glory of prowess been recovered to
Palestine.
And when, in times made better through your brave decision
now,--might but Utopia be!--Rome rife with honest women and strong
men, manners reformed, old habits back once more, customs that
recognize the standard worth,--the wholesome household rule in
force again, husbands once more God's representative, wives like
the typical Spouse once more, and Priests no longer men of Belial,
with no aim at leading silly women captive, but of rising to such
duties as yours now,--then will I set my son at my right hand and
tell his father's story to this point.[20]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [20] The first is from a poem in free-verse, Meditation, by |
| Richard Aldington; the second is blank verse, from the Small |
| Sweet Idyl in Tennyson's Princess; the third is from |
| Henley's Margaritae Sorori (also in free-verse); the fourth |
| is from DeQuincey's English Mail-Coach, Dream Fugue IV |
| (prose); the fifth is from Milton's Samson Agonistes, ll. |
| 1092 ff. (blank verse); the sixth is from Browning's The |
| Ring and the Book, Bk. V (blank verse). |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
On the other hand, it is worth observing what effect metrical
arrangement has upon the emotional quality and power of words and
phrases. Hardly anyone would, perhaps, find the following passages
strikingly melodious:
Prince Lucifer uprose on a starr'd night. The fiend, tired of his
dark dominion, swung above the rolling ball, part screen'd in
cloud, where sinners hugg'd their spectre of repose.
Here there is sweet music that falls softer on the grass than
petals from blown roses, or night-dews on still waters in a
gleaming pass between walls of shadowy granite; music that lies
gentlier on the spirit than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
But turn these words back to their original metrical order, and it is
almost a miracle performed. One recalls Coleridge's definition of poetry
as the best words in the best places.
On a starr'd night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screen'd,
Where sinners hugg'd their spectre of repose.
MEREDITH, Lucifer in Starlight.
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between falls
Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass,
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
TENNYSON, Lotos Eaters.
It should now be clear that prose and verse are not so antithetical as
is often supposed; that they are only different forms of the same
substance, language; two branches from the same root. At certain points
they overlap and are practically one; at other points the divergence is
obvious but not great; and even in their extreme differences the common
basis of the rhythms is the same. In both prose and verse are the same
relations of time, stress, and pitch, except that in verse the
arrangement and order of them are according to a perceptible pattern.
_Verse is but prose fitted over a framework of metre._ Herein lies the
whole art of versification, the whole psychology of poetic rhythm, the
whole problem of metrical study and investigation.
We must always remember that "a line of verse is a portion of
speech-material with all its phonetic features (corresponding to its
ethos as well as its logos) _adjusted_, without violence, to a fixed and
definite metrical scheme. The two entities, metrical scheme and portion
of speech-material adjusted thereto, are distinct and the chief study of
the metricist is the manner of adjustment of the latter to the former,
the way in which a suitable portion of phonetic liquid is chosen and
poured into metrical bottles."[21] Only after having grasped what can be
grasped of the subtleties of prose rhythm, and having learned the common
forms and patterns of metre, can we put the two together, recognize
their new unity, perceive the new rhythmic beauties, harmonies,
modulations that spring from their mutual adjustment.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [21] Thomas Rudmose-Brown, "English and French Metric," in |
| Modern Language Review, vol. 8 (1913), p. 104. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
A word may be added here, though the subject is one rather of æsthetics
than of prosody, on the function of metre in emphasizing and reinforcing
the beauties of thought, emotion, and expression that poetry offers. Two
practical illustrations have just been given above. Every writer on
poetics, from Aristotle down, has had something to contribute, but the
substance of it all may be found in the eighteenth chapter of
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, from which a few sentences have
already been quoted.[22] It is not merely that verse by its external
appearance notifies the reader, or by its perceptible regularity
notifies the listener, that the writer is putting forth his highest
efforts, that language is being driven to its highest possibilities; it
is not that the use of verse signalizes greater aims and intentions than
the use of prose; but rather that the higher efforts, the greater aims,
turn by a natural, spontaneous, but partly mysterious instinct to
metrical forms for adequate or fit expression. The poets themselves have
proved this. No one, barring a few notable exceptions, who felt the
creative powers of poetry within him has dared neglect or refuse the
added difficulties and the potential beauties of metre. Not the sense of
obstacles overcome, but of possibilities realized prompts to formal
rhythms. Music, in Dryden's phrase, is inarticulate poetry; but poetry,
while it remains articulate and endeavors to accomplish its own
destinies, will always approach as close as its own conditions permit to
the powers of music. Some poets are inclined more powerfully to music
than others. Burns composed with definite melodies in mind; Shelley
often began with a little tune which he gradually crystallized into
words; Schiller tells us that inspiration often came to him first in the
form of music. Tennyson, Swinburne, and others, have chanted rather than
read their poetry aloud. And even Browning, who sometimes appears to
prefer discord to music, is found to have studied not only the science
of music, but also the musical effectiveness of words.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [22] A convenient collection of extracts from various |
| writers is made by Professor R. M. Alden in Part IV of his |
| English Verse, New York, 1903. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
While it is unquestionably going too far to insist as Hegel does that
"metre is the first and only condition absolutely demanded by poetry,
yea even more necessary than a figurative picturesque diction"; or even
to say that the finest poetry is always metrical; still it remains a
simple fundamental truth that metre is the natural form of poetic
language. The great exceptions to this--the poetic prose of a Sir Thomas
Browne, a Pater, a Carlyle, or the free-verse of Whitman--do but prove
its soundness; for we always feel them to be something exceptional,
something not quite natural though not quite amiss, something wonderful,
like _tours de force_. We would not wish them otherwise, perhaps; but we
should doubt them if we did not actually have them before us.