LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION BY BRANDER MATTHEWS * \ PROFESSOR. IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO DALLAS BAN FRANCISCO Cije i-viuersiijc $tcfi55 Cambrilige MV1 COPYRIGHT, IQII, BY BRANDER MATTHEWS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THB U.S.A TO W. C. BROWNELL CRITIC OF POETS AND, PROSE-MASTERS PREFATORY NOTE IT is now about thirty years since I prepared an American edition of a little book by the younger Tom Hood, which purported to set forth the rules of rime (the " Rhymester," Appleton & Co., 1882) ; and it is just twenty years since I first gave a course in metrical rhetoric to a class of undergraduates in Columbia College. And I have long felt the need of a simple text-book for the beginner, which would serve as an introduction to the study of English versi- fication. There are many volumes devoted to the analysis of poetry, but there are few which confine themselves wholly to the problems of prosody; and scarcely any one of these is exactly adapted to the needs of the novice who knows little or nothing about the principles of the metrical art. The subject is treated casually and cursorily in many grammars and in many rhetorics ; but the main purpose of these books is to help the student to express himself accu- rately and satisfactorily in prose. This is the simple text-book for the beginner that I have undertaken in the present volume. It is a text-book of metrical rhetoric. Its aim is to explain to the inquirer the technic of verse-making and to show him how the poets have been able to achieve their effects. It seta forth what I believe to be the fundamental principle of the art, that all poetry is to be said or sung, and that its appeal is to the ear and not to the eye. This vi PREFATORY NOTE principle is here asserted, unhesitatingly ; and from it all the practices of modern English versification are here derived. No other principle is even discussed, and all controversy has been rigorously eschewed. The student will not be confused by any attempt to refute any other theory; and his time will not be wasted by the confutation of any code long ago dises- tablished. The main object of this book is to provide the stu- dent with an understanding of the mechanism of verse, that he may have a richer appreciation of poetry. The metrical mastery of Chaucer and of Milton, of Pope and of Tennyson, will be more keenly relished by the lover of poetry when he has attained to an insight into the methods whereby this mastery was achieved. But while this is its primary intent, the book has also a secondary purpose, to encourage teachers to give courses in metrical rhetoric, not with any vain hope that they will be able to train poets, but with the firm belief that exercise in verse is the best possible aid to easy flexibility in prose-writing. Verse-making is an admirable gymnastic; and the necessity of mating his words in rime and of adjust- ing them to rhythm enriches the student's vocabulary and increases his control over it. Constant practice in composing in stanzas prescribed by the instructor will not tend to puff up the young writer with the conceit that he is a poet. On the contrary, it is likely to take down his vanity by showing him how easy it is to acquire the elements of verse-making and by calling his attention to the technical dexterity possessed by the great craftsmen in verse. Indeed, there is no better corrective of undue pride, there is no more PREFATORY NOTE vii potent inciter of modesty, than the frequent attempt to pattern ourselves on the masters and to discover how lamentably we fall short of our lofty and unap- proachable models, B. M. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORE. CONTENTS I. THE STUDY OF VERSE ...... 1 II. RHYTHM 8 III. METER 31 IV. RIME 49 V. TONE-COLOB 73 VI. THE STANZA 102 VII. THE SONNET 126 VIII. OTHER FIXED FORMS ..... 144 IX. RIMELESS STANZAS 176 X. THE COUPLET 200 XI. BLANK VERSE 225 XII. POETIC LICENSE ....... 244 APPENDIX A: SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY .... 263 B: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS ... 266 INDEX . . . 269 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF VERSE As logic does not supply yon with arguments, but only defines the mode in which they are to be expressed or used, so versification does not teach you how to write poetry, but how to construct verse. It may be a means to the end, but it does not pretend to assure its attainment. Versification and logic are to poetry and reason what a parapet is to a bridge : they do not convey you across, but prevent you from falling over. TOM HOOD : The Rules of Rhyme. THIS is not a handbook of poetics ; and its aim is not to consider the several departments of poetry, epic and lyric and dramatic. It does not deal with simile and metaphor, nor does it seek to open the mind of the student to the nobler beauties of poetry. It is intended to be an introduction to the study of versification, of the metrical mechanism which sustains poetry, and which differentiates poetry from prose. It is devoted solely to the technic of the art of verse. It is an examination of the tools of the poet's trade. Although poets are said to be born and not made, there is no doubt that they have to be made after they are born. It is not a fact that the born poet warbles native wood-notes wild ; he has to serve an ap- prenticeship to his craft ; he has to acquire the art of verse ; he has to master its technic and to spy out its secrets. The poet is like the painter, who, as Sir 2 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION Joshua Reynolds declared, " is a painter only as he can put in practice what he knows, and communicate those ideas by visible representation." In his ignorance, the layman may be led to despise technic ; but this is a blunder of which the true artist is never guilty. Indeed, the true artist cherishes tech- nic ; he is forever thinking about it and enlarging his knowledge of it. He delights in discussing its prob- lems ; and when he is moved to talk about his art, technic is ever the theme of his discourse. The trea- tises on painting, for example, written by painters, by Reynolds or by La Farge, are full of technical criti- cism ; and so are the essays on poetry, written by the poets themselves. The processes of their art are con- sidered with unfailing zest by Pope and Wordsworth, by Coleridge and Poe. In fact, the artists are all aware that technic is almost the only aspect of their art which can be discussed profitably ; and every layman can see that it is the only aspect which the artists often care to talk about. The other part, no doubt the loftier part, the poet's message to humanity, this is too ethereal, perhaps too personal, too intimate, too sacred, to bear debate. Every work of art can be considered from two points of view. It has its content and it has its form. We may prefer to pay attention to what the artist has to say, or we may examine rather how he says it. The content of his work, what he has to say to us, is the more important, of course, but this must depend on his native gift, on his endowment ; and it is more or less beyond his control. He utters what he must utter ; and he voices what he is inspired to deliver. But the form in which he clothes this message, how he says THE STUDY OF VERSE 3 what he has to say, this is what he may choose to make it, no more and no less. This depends on him and on him alone ; it is not a gift but an acquisition ; it is the result of his skill, of the trouble he is willing to take, of his artistic integrity, of his desire to do his best always, and never to quit his work until he has made it as perfect as he can. This technical dexterity can be had for the asking ; or, at least, it can be bought with a price. It is the reward of intense interest, of incessant curiosity, of honest labor. And it is worth all that it costs, since we cannot really separate form and content, as we some- times vainly imagine. What the poet has to say is in- extricably intertwined with the way in which he saya it, and our appreciation of his ultimate message is en- hanced by our delight in his method of presenting it. In fact, our pleasure in his work is often due quite as much to the sheer artistry of his presentation as it is to the actual value of his thought and of his emotion. We might even go further and venture the assertion that it is by style alone that the poet survives, since his native gift profits him little unless he so presents his message that we cannot choose but hear. And, as Professor Bradley declared in one of his "Oxford Lectures on Poetry," " when poetry answers to its idea. and is purely or almost purely poetic, we find the identity of form and content, and the degree of purity may be tested by the degree in which we feel it hope- less to convey the effect of a poem or passage in any form but its own." There is benefit, therefore, for all of us in an en- deavor to understand the mechanism of the poet's art, to gain an elementary acquaintance with its processes, 4 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION to learn as much as we may about its delightful mys- teries, just as we must acquire a certain acquaint- ance with the conditions of building before we can gain a real insight into the beauty of architecture. This knowledge will increase our enjoyment of poetry, for it will give us a twofold interest, in the manner as well as in the matter. The more we know about versification, the better equipped we are to perceive the skill with which the poet has wrought his marvels and also to feel deeply his charm and his power. The more we know, the better we shall understand the real nature of poetic inspiration. " It is very natural," so Reynolds declared in another of his " Discourses on Painting," " for those who are unacquainted with the cause of anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to consider it as a kind of magic. They who have never observed the gradation by which art is acquired, who see only what is the full result of long labor and application of an infinite number and in- finite variety of acts, are apt to conclude, from their entire inability to do the same at once, that it is not only inaccessible to themselves, but can be done by those only who have some gift of the nature of in- spiration bestowed upon them." This book is intended, not so much for those who may desire to write verse, as it is for those who wish to gain an insight into the methods of the poets that they may have a keener and a deeper appreciation of poetry ; and yet its suggestions are available also for those who may feel themselves moved to speak in num- bers. Attention may be called to the fact that it never pretends to declare how verse ought to be written ; all that it endeavors to do is to show how verse has THE STUDY OF VERSE 5 been written by the poets who have enriched our litera- ture. If any laws emerge into view, these are the re- sult of a modest attempt to codify the practice of the poets themselves and to deduce the underlying princi- ples. It is never the privilege of the critic to lay down arbitrary rules for any art; it is his duty to examine what the great artists have given us, and to discover, if he can, the subtle means whereby they achieved their masterpieces. And it is a humble examination of this kind which is undertaken in this inquiry. As this is the main object of the present volume, the reader must not expect to find here things not germane to this intent. He will not have his attention distracted by any investigation into the origins of English verse. He will not be called upon to consider the conflicting theories of English prosody. He will not be confused by constant references to the very dif- ferent metrical system which was employed by the Greek and the Latin poets. These things are discussed at length in many other books ; and in this book they would be out of place. To consider them in these pages would interfere with the main purpose of the present volume, which is to provide the lover of poetry with an elementary knowledge of the principles that govern modern English versification. Exact definition tends to precision of thought ; and an acquaintance with technical terms is necessary to any scientific investigation. As Professor Mayor has declared, " the use of Prosody is to supply a technical language by which each specimen of verse is brought before us ; to distinguish the different kinds of verse, to establish a type of each, by reference to which ex- isting varieties may be compared ; and, finally, to 6 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION state the laws of composition which have been ob- served by those whom the world recognizes as poets. Then from this we may draw practical rules of art for the poet or the reader." An acquaintance with the technical terms, a know- ledge of the rules of the art, will not suffice to make any one of us a poet. But an ignorance of the underlying principles of verse will prevent now any one, how- ever gifted by nature, from attaining eminence as a poet. The earlier verse-writers had to work by instinct only at first, guided by their intuitive feeling for rhythm ; in time their successors had the solid support of tradition ; and to-day every poet can profit by a study of the means whereby his great predecessors wrought their marvels. No doubt, delicacy of ear still guides him more securely than any rule of thumb ; and yet he will find assistance in a knowledge of the science of verse which underlies the art of poetry. Appren- tice poets may now find this science set forth more or less accurately in the treatises of the critics, or they may absorb it for themselves by reverent study of the great masters of verse. It is true that versification is only the carved vase which holds the precious wine of poetry ; and yet with- out the vase the wine would be spilled and wasted. On the other hand, the vase itself stands empty unless the poet has within himself that which will fill it worthily. Amiel asserted that the group of French poets in the nineteenth century who were known as the Parnassians " sculptured urns of agate and of onyx ; but what do these urns contain ? Ashes ! " Yet the blunder of these Parnassians was not in the curious care with which they carved their urns of agate and THE STUDY OF VERSE 7 of onyx ; it was in their failure to fill the urns with an elixir worthy of receptacles thus adorned. It was their fault or their misfortune that they had nothing better than ashes to pour into their urns. Still, after all, the urns themselves had their own beauty. Every lover of poetry could cite numberless lyrics which delight him by their art alone, by their melody, by their merely external fascination, without regard to their content, to their ultimate meaning. In- deed, there are not a few lovely lyrics in our language the meaning of which is doubtful or even vague and intangible. They charm our ears with their music, even if they fail to appeal to our intellect. They live by melody, and almost by melody alone. And if this is a fact, surely it is well worth our while to seek for an understanding of the principles of an art which can work these marvels. If there are a few lyrics which survive by form rather than by content, none the less is it true that hi poetry form and content are inseparable ; and poetry demands for its full appreciation an under- standing of versification. Indeed, Professor Bradley does not go too far when he asserts that " the value of versification, when it is indissolubly fused with meaning, can hardly be exaggerated. The gift for feeling it, even more perhaps than the gift for feeling the value of style, is the specific gift for poetry, as dis- tinguished from the other arts." And Leigh Hunt went even further, for he insisted that " versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem. ... I know of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry ; no poetry of a mean order accompanied with verse of the highest." CHAPTER H RHYTHM Our new empiricism, following 1 where intuition leads the way, com- prehends the functions of vibrations : it perceives that every movement of matter, seized upon by universal force, is vibratory ; that vibrations, and nothing else, convey through the body the look and voice of na- ture to the soul ; that thus alone can one incarnate individuality ad- dress its fellow; that, to use old Bunyan's imagery, these vibrations knock at the ear-gate, and are visible to the eye-gate, and are sentient at the gates of touch of the living temple. The word describing their action is in evidence ; they ' ' thrill ' ' the body, they thrill the soul, both of which respond with subjective, interblending vibrations, ac- cording to the keys, the wave-lengths of their excitants. EDMUKD CLARENCE STEDMAN : The Nature and Elements of Poetry. IN any consideration of versification, we need to begin by reminding ourselves that poetry is always intended to be said or sung. Its appeal is primarily to the ear and only secondarily to the eye. At first, poetry was certainly sung, because it came into being long before the invention of the art of writing. After a while, poetry was both said and sung ; it was recited, either with or without the accompaniment of music. Only after long centuries, during which it survived on the tongue and in the ear, was it written down to reach the eye also. " To pass from hearing literature to read- ing it is to take a great and dangerous step," said Stevenson ; " with not a few, I think, a large propor- tion of their pleasure then comes to an end, . . . they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately syllable." Even now, the real approach of RHYTHM 9 poetry to the soul of man is through his ears ; and we do not feel its full force until we speak it our- selves or hear it from others. It might almost be as- serted that poetry is like music, in which the notation in black and white is only a device to preserve it and to transmit it ; and that like music, poetry does not fully exist until it is heard. As a result of this re- semblance to music, poetry is likely to lose something of its power when the poet thinks rather of his readers than of his hearers. Therefore, the true principles of versification can be seized only when we keep this fact always in mind, that the poet has intended his lines to be heard by the ear, to be spoken or chanted or sung by one for the pleasure of others. His verses, lyric or dramatic as they may be, are meant to be spoken and so they must adjust themselves to the vocal organs of man ; and they are meant to be heard and so they must be measured to the capacity of the human ear. Indeed, nearly all the elements of the art of versification are the direct result of this condition of oral delivery. The most important of these elements is rhythm. All nature is rhythmic. The tides rise and fall ; day , follows night ; and the seasons recur one after the other, year by year. Human nature is rhythmic also ; and emotion, which is the subject-matter of poetry, tends always to express itself rhythmically. Passionate language has its marked beats. Primitive man casts his war-songs and his love-songs into a rude but em- phatic rhythm. The wail of the tribe over its dead is rhythmic ; and so is the crooning of the mother over her babe in the cradle by her side. The chant of tri- umph has its rise and fall. In all these examples, the 10 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION character of the rhythm may be open to question , but the existence of the rhythm itself is beyond dis- pute. Lowell singled out for praise the song of De- borah and Barak : " Awake, awake, Deborah ! Awake, awake, utter a song ! Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam ! " This rhythmic utterance in moments of poignant emotion is spontaneous even to-day in our children. A few years ago the young daughter of a friend of mine was stricken to the heart by the crushing of a cherished doll under a rocking-chair. When the mother returned she found the little girl so pitiful and pathetic that she took the child in her arms and asked what had happened. And then the little daughter broke out in this lament : My dolly is dead ! My dolly is dead ! I loved my dolly, and I did n't want her to die ! But she died, and I buried her. And I wanted to bury her In the worst place I could find ; So I looked all over the flat For the very worst place I could find. And I buried her in the pail In the pail under the sink in the kitchen, In the pail where we put the old dinners And the old breakfasts and my crusts when I won't eat 'em : And I buried her there. It was the very worst place I could find. I buried her on top of the dinner And under the breakfast, And there 's oatmeal where her head ought to be. And Annie will put her on the dumbwaiter, And she '11 send her down to the janitor, And the janitor will put her into the barrel, And he '11 put the barrel out on the sidewalk ; RHYTHM 11 And the man will come along with the wagon, And he '11 empty her into the wagon, And he '11 drive her down to the dock, And he '11 dump her into the river, And she '11 go floating down the river Without any head and without any legs And I did n't want her to die ! My dolly, my dolly, my dolly, Is dead and I 've buried her, And I did n't want her to die i This childish dirge is curiously like the bold and formless lyric outpourings of savages. It is wildly rhythmic, not regular, not artificial, instinctive rather than artistic. It has even the repetition and redupli- cation and overt cataloging which often characterize the chants of primitive races. Even in the less spontaneous and more consciously artistic paragraphs of the great orators, we can often feel the rise and fall of rhythm, sometimes only in a single sentence and sometimes carried through a long passage. For instance, in a speech of John Bright's delivered during the Crimean war, he said that " the angel of death has been abroad through the land : we may almost hear the beating of his wings." It would be easy to adduce other examples from the orations which are charged with sweeping emotion. Certain of the novelists have now and again availed themselves of this same device to enhance the pathos of the situation they were setting forth. Dickens, in particular, could rarely resist the temptation to drop into very obvious rhythm whenever he stood by the death-bed or the tomb of one of his characters. Here, for example, is the concluding paragraph of " Nicholas Nickleby " : " The grass was green above the dead 12 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION boy's grave, trodden by feet so small and light, that not a daisy drooped its head beneath their pressure. Through all the spring and summer-time garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, rested upon the stone." In general, prose is for daily use in this workaday world ; and it becomes rhythmic when it has to express emotion, that is to say, only on special occasions. But even when it is properly rhythmic we do not like to have it encroach on the borders of actual verse. We feel that prose is one thing and that verse is another ; and therefore a delicate ear is annoyed by the excessive regularity of the rhythm in Dickens's elegies. It is a little too obvious, and it offends us as out of place in prose. The fundamental difference between the rhythms appropriate to prose and those appropriate to verse lies in the fact that the latter conform to a sim- ple pattern and that the former do not. If a writer of prose forces us to perceive his pattern by limiting it, as Dickens does, he loses the ample freedom proper to prose, and he suffers this loss without achieving the special merit of verse. In prose, our ear delights in the vague suggestion of a pattern, which is too large for us to grasp, even though we take pleasure in it. In verse, the poet spreads the pattern before us, in- vites our attention to it ; he awakes in us the expect- ancy that its elements will recur at regular intervals ; and it is partly by the gratification of this expectancy that he gives us pleasure. This pattern is the result of reducing rhythm to measure ; and it is this metrical rhythm which the writer of prose must avoid unless he is willing to annoy our ears. The orator and the novelist may deal with the same subject-matter as the RHYTHM 13 poet, but they must not infringe on his method. Their diction may be as impassioned as his, as lofty in phrasing, as elevated in imagination ; but they must avoid that formal regularity which we hold to be the privilege of the poet alone. This formal regularity is what constitutes English verse ; and it is easy to analyze. When we read a line of English poetry we cannot help noticing that certain syllables are bolder or longer or more emphatic than others. In Longfellow's Tell me not, in mournful numbers, these more important syllables are the first of every pair ; and in Drake's When Freedom from her mountain height, they are the second in every pair. We may indicate the rise and fall of these syllables in Longfellow's line by suggesting that it more or less resembles Ttimty, tumty, tumty, twnty, while in Drake's line it is litum, titum, titum, titum. In Byron's line And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, the more important syllables are the third in each group of three ; and the scheme of the line is Titilum, tititum, tititum, titifum. If we read as one line Hood's Make no deep scrutiny into her mutiny, the important syllables are the first in each group of three ; and the scheme is Twmtity, tumtity, tumtity, tumtity. 14 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION That these syllables have an importance superior to the other syllables in the same lines is undeniable. This importance may be due to the fact that they are either more emphatic or longer in time of utterance. But are these differences in tone or in accent the only difference between them? Here we enter on one of the most disputed questions in versification. The more important syllables may differ in length, in the time we take to utter them, that is to say, in quantity. They may differ also in emphasis, in stress, that is to say, in accent. They may differ further in pitch, in their melodic tone. Or the difference may sometimes be due to a combination of time, stress and pitch, for a syllable may be at once longer than the syllables which precede and follow, while it is also more sharply accented, as well as higher in pitch. We may be in doubt as to the cause of the superior importance of these syllables, but we never deny the fact that for some reason they are more important. And this supe- rior importance of certain syllables over other sylla- bles in the same line, whatever its cause may be, is the basis of English versification. There is no profit in here entering on the discussion as to the cause of this superior importance ; and hereafter in this book these syllables of superior importance will be called long^ even though they may owe their value to other ele- ments than mere duration of time. In like manner, the syllables of inferior importance will be called short, even though they may contain long vowels. And for the sake of convenience a long syllable will be marked or indicated by the sign - and a short syllable by the sign v. If now we substitute these signs for tumty and RHYTHM 15 tumtity, we find that Longfellow's line " Tell me not, in mournful numbers," may be represented thus : Drake's " When Freedom from her mountain height " will be translated into these symbols : V , V 5 V > V Byron's " And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea" has this scheme: V V J V V ) V V ) V V And Hood's " Make no deep scrutiny into her mu- tiny " has this : w> v v Thus we see that each of these lines is made by the fourfold repetition of the same unit. Each of these units we call a foot. In Longfellow's line this unit is - v, a long followed by a short ; and by tradition this foot is called a trochee. In Drake's line the unit is ^ -, a short followed by a long ; and this foot is called an iamb or iambus. In Byron's line the unit is v v -, two shorts followed by a long ; and the name of this foot is anapest. In Hood's line the unit is - v v, a long followed by two shorts, a foot which is known as a dactyl. These terms, trochee, iamb, anapest, and dactyl, have been taken over from Latin versification, although they there represent feet not really corre- sponding to the English feet which bear the same names. These four are probably the only feet possible in English versification, because in English, which is a strongly accented language, we seem to be unable to utter three syllables in succession without making one 16 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION of them more important than the other two, longer or more emphatic. Doubtless a few examples of three short syllables in succession may be discovered by a diligent examination of the whole body of English poetry ; but they are very few. In fact, our speech is so accentual that we find it almost impossible to give exactly equal emphasis to two syllables in the same foot ; and we are therefore deprived of the use of the spondee, made up of two longs, , a foot which was most useful in the versifi- cation of the Greeks and Romans. More than one English word taken by itself seems to be a spondee, baseball, for instance, and stronghold ; but when such words are used in verse, either the first syllable or the second is likely to be so lengthened or emphasized that we have a trochee or an iambus. Spondees can be discovered in English verse, especially in Milton, but they are infrequent. Two other feet known to classic meter are the amphibrach, v - w, a short, a long, and a short ; and the amphimacer, _ w -, a long, a short, and a long. But neither of these has established itself in English verse ; and when either of them has been attempted, the result is very doubtfully dis- tinguishable from a sequence of dactyls or anapests. Even Coleridge, a master of metrics, was not able to construct an English amphibrach and an English am- phimacer which should set itself off sharply from the anapest. Here is his ingenious attempt to exemplify the several feet : Trochee trips from long to short ; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot, yet ill able Ever to come np with Dactyl trisyllable. RHYTHM 17 Iambics march from short to long ; With a leap and a bound, the swift Anapests throng ; One syllable long with a short at each side Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride : First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred racer. To scan a line is to divide it into its constituent feet, to mark the longs and the shorts, to count the feet and to declare their character. All verse in the English language can be scanned with the aid of the trochee and the iambic, the anapest and the dactyl. When we scan Longfellow's line we find that it con- sists of four trochees ; and therefore we describe it as trochaic tetrameter. When a line has two feet we call it dimeter ; with three feet it is trimeter ; with four it is tetrameter ; with five, pentameter ; with six, hexameter, and with seven, heptameter. When Drake's line is scanned it is seen to be iambic tetrameter; Byron's is anapestic tetrameter ; and Hood's is dac- tylic tetrameter. When we scan Gray's The curfew tolls the knell of parting day we find this scheme and we declare that the line is iambic pentameter. And if we examine the first line of Baring Gould's hymn, Onward, Christian soldiers ! we discover that the scheme is and we decide that it is trochaic trimeter. Austin Dobson's Too hard it is to sing In these untunef ul times I 18 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION declares itself at once as iambic trimeter : v I v and Budyard Kipling's We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg is obviously anapestic heptameter, although it contains iambics as well as anapests, as the translation into symbols discloses at once : And this apparent irregularity, this commingling of anapests and iambics, leads us to another point of prime significance. Verse consists of a regular ar- rangement of feet, of a pattern which can be taken in by the ear without undue tension. In any single foot the ear permits many liberties with the short syl- lables ; but it tolerates only a little license with the long syllable. If there are in a line the required num- ber of long syllables, of emphatic beats, the ear is not at all particular about the less important short syllables. These may be inserted or even on occasion omitted altogether, without interfering with the rhythm, with the swing of the line as the ear expects to receive it. For example, an iambic pentameter may have an added syllable at the end almost without our noting it, as in Shakspere's To be, or not to be: that is the question. Or the final short syllable of a terminal trochee may be dropped without spoiling the expected pattern, as in Longfellow's " Psalm of Life " : RHYTHM 19 Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream ! v] For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. [ w ] Here the rhythm is trochaic ; and its flow is not broken by the dropping out of these short syllables at the end of the second and fourth lines. We may translate these lines into symbols, enclosing the dropped sylla- bles in brackets. V I V I V I V w I w I v I [wj w I w I v| v v I v I w I |_wj These lines still retain their four emphatic beats ; and so long as the ear can perceive these beats it is satis- fied. These beats carry the tune, so to speak. The ear not only permits variation of feet inside the frame- work of beats, it is even delighted when this is so adroitly done as to evade the monotony of strict regu- larity. For example, the ear authorizes the poet to sub- stitute a trochee for an iambus in the first foot of an iambic pentameter, as in Shakspere's O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend. w I v | v I v |v And it does not protest when a similar substitution is made hi one of the other feet, as in the fourth foot of Shakspere's A kingdom for a stage, princes to act. v I v I v I v Iv The ear does not protest because it is not sharply con- scious of the substitution. It expects the five long syl- 20 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION lables to occur substantially in the established order ; and if this expectation is fulfilled, it is more or less unconscious of the minor irregularity. In iambic meters, it allows not only the occasional substitution of a tro- chee but the frequent substitution of anapests. So in anapestic meters, it is willing to accept an occasional iambus. Indeed, in many ballads there is such an in- termixture of the iambus and of the anapest that it is almost impossible to decide whether the rhythm is really iambic or anapestic. In the older traditional ballads, the iambus predominates, but there is a free infusion of anapests, as in this line from " Sir Patrick Spens": To send us out, at this time of the year. i V I V W | V W These traditional ballads were, many of them, composed early in the history of English poetry by unknown bards, who were guileless of critical theory, and who sang their stanzas into being to please the ears of their own artless contemporaries. The traditional nurs- ery-rimes are equally spontaneous ; and they cast an equal illumination upon the natural methods of Eng- lish versification. If we examine certain of the primi- tive nursery-rimes we can see that the untutored lyr- ists unhesitatingly dropped out short syllables, never doubting that the ears of their young hearers would carry the tune securely in spite of this omission. One of the most familiar of nursery-rimes begins Hark ! Hark ! The dogs do bark The beggars are come to town. RHYTHM 21 The second and the third lines reveal to us that the rhythm is iambic; and this shows us that a short syl- lable has been suppressed in both of the feet of the first line. If we translate the three lines into symbols we have this : Take another nursery-rime quite as well known : Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot Nine days old. We all remember how this is to be spoken, with ita marked pauses and with its accompanying clapping of the hands. We see that the rhythm is trochaic ; and although many of the short syllables are missing, the place of each one of them is taken by a pause, by a silence, by a rest (as it would be called in musical no- tation). And yet our memory assures us that these silences do not interfere with the carrying of the tune. The four lines might be represented in this way : -[w] l- Perhaps the omissions can be made more evident by noting the omissions in the lines themselves : Pease [] | porridge | hot [w] Pease [w] I porridge | cold [ v ] Pease [w] I porridge | in the | pot [ v ] Nine [v] I days [w] | old [ w ] 22 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION An even more striking illustration of the instinctive ease with which short syllables may be suppressed, if their places are taken by pauses, by rests, can be found in another nursery-rime, that which invites us to sing a song of sixpence. One line of this, Now was n't that a dainty dish to set before the King ? makes it plain that we have here an iambic heptameter And yet at the end of the little ballad we are told about the maid in the garden hanging out the clothes, and we are informed that Down came a blackbird and snipt off her nose. And we find ourselves forced to translate this thus : [w] Down | [<./] came I a black I [ v ] bird | and suipt | [w] off | her nose. [v]-| [v]-|w-| [w]-| v-l [v]- Iv- Thus represented the line seems to the eye arbitrary, not to say awkward ; and yet the untrained ear of a child has never had any difficulty in feeling the full force of the rhythm. If the emphatic syllables assert themselves, if the successive beats of the line are clearly perceptible, then the ear can carry the tune, even if the silences, the pauses, the rests, are frequent. The line is still divided into a series of equal periods; and it is this series of equal periods that the ear expects and demands. The eye may be puzzled ; but the ear is satisfied. This device of boldly dropping out a short syllable in order to add weight to the long syllable, which then RHYTHM 23 stands forth alone, has been utilized not only by the simple makers of ballads and of nursery-rimes but also by the greater poets of our language. Tennyson was a devoted student of versification, and he found hia profit in all the ingenious devices of the adroit crafts- men who had preceded him. In one of his briefer lyrics, he may have taken a hint from the unknown writer of the nursery-rune about the beggars coming to town: Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. In reading this stanza, with due regard to its inten- tion, we feel that each of the four lines is equal in the time of delivery and in the number of beats. Thus there is a harmonious and satisfactory effect on the ear, although the eye may inform us that there are only three syllables in the first line while there are nine in the third. The line with three syllables is equal to the line of nine syllables because it has intervals of silence equivalent in duration of time to the syllables it lacks. The stanza is really anapestic trimeter ; and it may be thus represented: LW wj I [w vj I LW v] w v I [vj v I [wj v V V I W W I L W J w I v |_WJ W I W V I L V J w ~ In one of his "Cavalier Tunes" called "Marching Along," Browning got a series of vigorous effects by the repeated use of this device of substituting rests for actual syllables : Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing : 24 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. On examination, these lines are seen to be dactylic tetrameter, but with a free dropping out of the shorter syllables, which are not missed, since their places are taken by equivalent pauses, the rhythm therefore flow- ing on unbroken. Here is the translation into sym- bols: w v I |_v wj I w v I L^ vj w v I ww/l v v I |_w vj v I - [v] v I - v v I - [v v] v I - v w 1 - v w t - TV v] v _v Another peculiarity is to be noted both in Tenny- son's stanza and in Browning's : syllables that may seem to be suppressed in one line sometimes appear in another. At the end of Tennyson's third line, we find utter, which gives the line a short syllable too much ; but at the beginning of the fourth line we find that there is a short syllable too little. Perhaps the rhythm has been carried over from one line to the next. So at the beginning of Browning's third and fourth lines, we find a short syllable and, which is not needed in the first foot of either of these lines, but which stands instead of one of the two short syllables omitted at the ends of the lines preceding these two. This is evidence that the poets were not composing their lines one by one, and that they were thinking rather of their stanzas as wholes. These suppressions and insertions may seem abnormal to the eye which is looking for RHYTHM 25 exact symmetry ; but they are quite normal to the ear which is held by the swing of the rhythm. It should always be remembered that poets com- pose their lyrics not only for the ear, but also by the ear. Sometimes a poet does not write down his song until he has made it up in his head, chanting it to himself and fitting it to the tune that is running in his own ears. Scott, for example, often beat out his bold ballads while he was on horseback. Tennyson composed in the open air on the slopes of the hills of Haslemere ; afterwards he tested what he had done when he put it down in black and white ; but it owed its rhythmic ease to the earlier labor far from his desk. Composing to please his own ear, first of all, and then the ears of all who might speak his lines, the poet does not care whether the printed poem happens to conform to academic rules which are the result of the mistaken belief that poetry should appeal primarily to the eyes, a belief that no true poet has ever held. Professor Gummere has reminded us that Coleridge and Wordsworth, Scott and Tennyson, all read their verses in " a kind of chant " ; and Hazlitt has recorded that in the case of the three older poets, this " acted as a spell upon the hearer." And then Professor Gummere adds the needed explanation that "this chant was not singsong ; singsong simply shows the feet, baldly asserts meter, while rhythmical reading does justice to cadence and the harmonious movement of the verse." The poet may even choose to print his lines in a form which will possibly at first puzzle the eyes of those who seek to declare its metrical scheme; and this he does unhesitatingly if he has made sure that 26 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION the rhythm is easily apprehended by the ear. Here is the opening stanza of one of Poe's most beautiful lyrics, " For Annie " : Thank Heaven ! the crisis, The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last And the fever called " Living " Is conquered at last. The ear seizes the rhythm of this at once, and is per- fectly satisfied with it, however much the eye may be at a loss to declare just what the apparently irregular meter really is. This perplexity is due to the fact that the eye sees six lines as the poet has printed his poem, whereas the ear catches only three, each of which is an anapestic tetrameter. The transcription into signs shows this clearly : _w w w w w I w v w I w w I w V I V V I V V I W W I V The actual scheme is clearly revealed when we put these symbols into three lines : [_v J v I v w I v w I w v w v I w w I w w I w v I v w I w v I w v In his suggestive essay on the " Rationale of Verse," Poe adduced a most striking example of a poet's lack RHYTHM 27 of regard for the eye of the reader. He quoted the opening lines of Byron's " Bride of Abydos " (in which the British bard was echoing Goethe) : Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light winga of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gtil in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute. The American poet-critic then asked how these lines are to be scanned. The first is obviously dac- tylic, but the last is as obviously anapestic, and more than one of the others is doubtful in its apparent irreg- ularity. If the lines are considered severally, we are at a loss to declare the rhythm in which this beautiful prelude is written. But Byron did not compose them severally; he composed them continuously, or rather he composed the passage as a whole regardless of its division into lines. He was appealing to the ears of the hearer and not to the eyes of the reader, certain that the ears can carry the tune without regard to any division into lines for the purposes of print. Con- sidering the passage as a whole, we observe that the rhythm is dactylic from beginning to end, even in those lines which, taken by themselves, may seem to be anapestic. The syllables which appear to be missing at the end of the first line are to be found at the beginning of the second ; and those missing at the end of the second are to be found at the begin- ning of the third ; and so on. 28 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION In other words, the poet is free to select his pattern at will. He may choose a trochaic or an iambic rhythm, a dactylic or an anapestic. Having decided on the number of his beats, of his long syllables, he must ac- custom our ears to the pattern he has resolved upon. When this tune has rung in our ears he must sustain it with his long syllables, but he is at liberty to vary his short syllables at will, and even to suppress them, if these changes do not interfere with the tune of the verse. When we have once perceived the pattern, we are willing enough to allow the poet the privilege of any variation which does not interfere with the tune which he has given us to carry in our heads. Sometimes he profits by this liberty at his peril because he cannot always make sure that we are going to take his lines in exact accordance with his metrical intent. He may have supposed that his suppression of a short syllable, his substitution of a trochee for an iambus would not interrupt the flow of the rhythm. And he may have been at fault in this supposition, since for some reason unforeseen by him, the sup- pression or the substitution may call attention to itself and thus break the current of the rhythm. If this happens the poet can find no excuse in pointing out that the license he took was authorized by the practice of some earlier master of verse. If the mis- fortune befalls him, he cannot claim exemption by citing precedents. It is by the result of his own work that the poet must be judged. If his lines fail to fall agreeably on the ear, then is the poet himself at fault. The poet, no less than the prose-writer, is bound to observe what Herbert Spencer called the principle of RHYTHM 29 Economy of Attention. At any moment any one of us has just so much attention to give to the man who is addressing us. Some of this attention is neces- sarily taken up by the effort of seizing what he is saying ; and therefore the less his manner attracts our notice, the more attention we shall have to bestow upon his matter. The more clearly and the more simply he can deliver his message, the more amply can we re- ceive it. The poet has something to say to us and he employs verse to convey this to our ears ; therefore whenever the verse itself arrests our attention we have just so much the less to bestow upon what he has to say. If he has once set the tune and aroused in us the interest of expectancy for a definite rhythm, then whenever he violates this accepted rhythm he forces us suddenly to consider his instrument, and our in- terest is thereby at once distracted from his meaning. Therefore, it is safer for the poet to vary his lines very cautiously and to keep in mind always the limitations of the human ear, since it is only through the ear that he can move the soul of his fellow-man. And we as readers must do our part also. We must read verse aloud as the poet meant us to read it, as he read it himself when he sang it into being. " We must restore to poetry its primary intention as cadenced and melodious verse," so Pro- fessor Gummere has declared. " What is a lyric with- out its rhythmical values ? What is the wild water of a brook when it is dammed into a duckpond ? The very tropes and figures depend upon this charm of movement, like flashes of light thrown back by the hurrying waves. Yet we are so afraid of singsong, and 30 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION even more afraid of the pathetic and sentimental, that we suppress all cadences, and come out trium- phant with a hybrid sort of performance that reminds one of a bird which should flap its wings without flying." CHAPTER METER Here, at the outset, we find precisely what differentiates verse from prose. These two possess much in common. Their ideals are often sim- ilar ; their subjects may be identical ; their cadences sometimes coin- cide. Yet there is an essential difference, which has seldom been rightly stated, and which is a difference of mechanical method. The units of prose are diverse, irregular in length, rarely conformed to a common pattern. In verse, on the other hand, succession is continuous. Some- thing recurs with regularity. This is the distinctive note of verse, making its structure differ from that of prose ; no other absolute line of demarcation can be drawn. Typical recurrence, uniform repetition, is the prime postulate of meter. T. S. OMOND : A Study of Meter. WE have seen that the habits of the English language are such as to make it practically impossible to write English verse except in one of the four rhythms which we call iambic, trochaic, anapestic and dactylic. And the practice of the poets reveals that any poem in our language must be in one or another of these rhythms. The poet, having accustomed our ear to the rhythm he has chosen, must keep to the pattern of his choice. He must give us the succession of beats in the order he has promised them to us. He may make varied substitu- tions and frequent suppressions inside his lines, but he must preserve always the expected framework of the chosen form. That is to say, he must decide once for all, whether he will compose in an iambic rhythm or a trochaic, an auapestic or a dactylic. Of these four rhythms, the iambic has ever been the favorite. Indeed, there seem to have been periods when it was the only rhythm known. In King James' rules 82 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION for writing verse, published in 1585, only the iambus is considered, as if it was the sole possible rhythm. Even in Greek, Aristotle held the iambic to be the most col- loquial, since " conversational speech runs into iambic form more frequently than into any other kind of verse." Probably nine tenths of English poetry is iam- bic ; this is the basis of the blank verse of Shakspere's plays and of Milton's epic, of most ballads old and new, of the heroic couplet of Dryden and of Pope, of the sonnet, and of a large majority of the hymns. Even in the nineteenth century, when poets were eager in de- vising new stanzaic arrangements, most of them clung to the iambus. Perhaps this immense popularity is due to the simplicity of the rhythm, with its short followed by a long, in accord with the rhetorical precept of put- ting the emphasis at the end. Perhaps it is due to the fact that when the iambic is once established in the ear of the listener, the poet can avoid monotony by a wide variety of substitutions and suppressions. Although iambic and trochaic rhythms consist in a similar succession of alternating longs and shorts, the iambic is far bolder ; it is more masculine ; it has a direct vigor, which seems often to be lacking to the trochaic. The iambic apparently has a majesty of its own which fits it for loftier themes. The trochaic is gentler, sweeter, more feminine, adapted for consola- tion rather than for reinvigoration. It is inferior in terseness and in sharpness. The anapestic rhythm had served chiefly for satire and for humor, until the nineteenth century, when Eng- lish poets began to appreciate it and to employ it for nobler topics. It was the favorite of Swinburne, who handled it with superb freedom and mastery. METER 83 The dactylic rhythm is least used of the four, al- though Hood proved that it had advantages of its own, and although Browning employed it with clear under- standing of its special characteristics. In rimeless verse a poet might let any one of these rhythms flow on indefinitely, breaking off only when he had come to the end of his topic. But this un broken flow is too fatiguing for the ear; and there- fore poems are divided into lines, so that the ear can have intervals of rest. When a rhythm is thus cut into sections we have meter, for we can measure every line by the number of times the foot happens to be repeated. In the verse of the modern languages, the ends of the lines are generally distinguished by rimes, a device unknown to the ancients. In some modern languages, especially in French which lacks boldness of accent, these terminal rimes are so im- portant as to be almost essential. But in English, al- though rime is useful, it is not necessary; and the poets of our language have adventured themselves in many forms of unrimed verse. Whether there is or is not a terminal rime, there is generally a pause of some sort to mark the end of the line ; and there is often a full stop, although the more accomplished masters of meter reveal their dex- terity in carrying over the sense from line to line while still keeping the structure distinct. Here again the appeal is to the ear and not to the eye ; the poet may choose to print his lines to suit his own whim ; but the way in which he presents them does not de- termine the metrical scheme. That is decided by the ear of the listener and not by the eye of the reader. We may even disregard the arrangement of the rimes 34 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION in deciding what the meter really is. For example, Shelley chose to write this as six lines : - Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains, From cloud and from crag, With many a jag Shepherding her bright fountains. And Scott chose to write this as four lines : Who spilleth life, shall forfeit life, So bid my lord believe ; That lawless love is guilt above, This awful sign receive. While Macaulay was satisfied to set this down as only two lines : Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are ; And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre. But however different these three on the printed page may appear to the eye, the ear recognizes them at once as identical. They are all three of the iambic heptameter, modulated by occasional anapests. And when we translate them into symbols we see that Shelley's V W I W V V I W W I W V I V W I V V I W V I W W W I V I W I V and Scott's v Iv I v I w V I V I V v I w Iv I v" w I v I w The differing typographical presentations and the dif- fering rime-schemes may be disregarded since the effect upon the ear is identical in all three cases. Other examples of the advisability of disregarding the way in which the poet may have written his lines have been given in the second chapter, from Poe's " For Annie " and from Byron's " Bride of Abydos." In all these poems, the way in which the poet has preferred to present these lines to the eye of the reader is not really the way in which he composed them for his own ear and for the ears of his future readers. There is no limit to the number of feet which may be included in a single line, except in so far as excessive length may impose an undue burden on the ear and make it more difficult to carry the tune. Swinburne wrote a ballade in anapestic hexameter : There are cliffs to be climbed on land, there are ways to be trodden and ridden ; but we Strike out from the shore as the heart invites and beseeches, athirst for the foam. And once he even ventured on a long-drawn ana- pestic octameter, which called for twenty-four syllables in every line : Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendor of winter had passed out of sight, The ways of the woodland were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight. 36 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION Richard Hovey essayed a line of nine iambics : Let him await Another who shall come and sit in the Siegi Perilous, And live. In Him shall he behold how light can look in dark ness and forgive. Yet in practice the poets have rarely chosen to em- ploy any line longer than the heptameter ; and the pentameter has been used more often than any other measure ; it is the meter of the heroic couplet, of blank verse and of the sonnet. The reason for the popularity of these meters is physiological ; the pentameter and the heptameter adjust themselves to the normal breathing and are delivered by the voice, easily and without conscious effort. The tetrameter exactly ac- cords with the rate of breathing of the average man ; and this accounts for its " fatal facility." This principle was worked out by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his suggestive paper on the " Physiology of Versification." The average man breathes twenty times a minute ; and in a minute the average man will read aloud about twenty lines of " Hiawatha" or of " Marmion " ; that is to say, he will probably pronounce one line to each expiration of the breath, taking advantage of the pause at its close to breathe in again. " The only effort required is that of vocal- izing and articulating; the breathing takes care of itself, not even demanding a thought except where the sense may require a pause in the middle of a line. The very fault found with these octosyllabic lines is that they slip away too fluently, and run easily into a monotonous singsong." We need only recite a brief passage from either Scott's poem or Longfellow's to METER 37 assure ourselves that this adverse criticism is well founded. Here is an extract from " Marmion " : Thin curling in the morning air, The wreaths of failing smoke declare To embers now the brands decayed, Where the night-watch their fires had made. They saw, slow rolling on the plain, Full many a baggage-cart and wain, And dire artillery's clumsy car, By sluggish oxen tugged to war. In Longfellow's " Hiawatha," the singsong effect is probably intensified by the trochaic rhythm and also to some slight extent by the deliberate repeti* tions : But the fearless Hiawatha Heeded not her woman's warning ; Forth he strode into the forest, At each stride a mile he measured ; Lurid seemed the sky above him, Lurid seemed the earth beneath him, Hot and close the air around him, Filled with smoke and fiery vapors, As of burning woods and prairies, For his heart was hot within him, Like a living coal his heart was. The iambic pentameter line, so Holmes declared, will probably be read at the rate of about fourteen lines a minute. " If a breath is allowed to each line the respiration will be longer and slower than natural, and a sense of effort and fatigue will soon be the conse- quence " ; but this is rarely felt because there is a break or a pause generally about the middle of the line, which serves as a breathing-place. "This gives a degree of relief, but its management requires care in reading." Probably the immense popularity of the 38 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION pentameter is in part due to the fact that it is not so easy that it slips into singsong, and in part that it can be adjusted readily to the natural processes of the vocal apparatus. The iambic heptameter, which is the "common meter" of the hymn-books and the meter of most of the ballads, and which is perhaps the most popu- lar of English meters after the pentameter, is also satisfactory from a physiological point of view, since the fourteen syllables of the normal iambic line sub- divide themselves into sections of eight and six, allow- ing a longer pause at the end of the line. Even when a fair share of anapests has been substituted here and there for the normal iambs, there are still not more syllables in the section than can readily be uttered by a single breath, as can be observed by reading aloud the quotations from Shelley, Scott and Macaulay. Since verse is written to be spoken and to be heard, to be read aloud and not merely to be read, it is not difficult to see why the iambic hexameter has never been a favorite with the poets of our language. Dr. Holmes declared that it was " almost intolerable, from its essentially unphysiological character. One can read the ten-syllable line in a single expiration without any considerable effort. One instinctively divides the four- teen-syllable line so as to accommodate it to the respi- ratory rhythm. But the twelve-syllable line is too much for one expiration and not enough for two." Here are a few lines from Drayton's " Polyolbion " which will serve to show the justice of these remarks : The naiads and the nymphs extremely overjoyed, And on the winding banks all busily employed, METER 39 Upon this joyful day, some dainty chaplets twine: Some others chosen out, with fingers neat and fine, Brave diadems do make ; some baldrics up do bind : Some garlands : and to some the nosegays were assigned. Browning chose iambic hexameter for his " Fifine at the Fair " ; and perhaps the unfortunate meter is one reason why this poem has never attained an equal popularity with many of his other poems. Dr. Holmes asserted that this critical test of poetry by the stop-watch, and its classification according to its harmonizing more or less exactly with a great vital function, is exactly scientific ; but he warned us that we must not overlook the personal equation. A man "of ample chest and of quiet temperament may breathe habitually only fourteen times a minute, and find the iambic pentameter to correspond with his re- spiratory rhythm, and thus easier than any other for him to read. A person of narrower frame and more nervous habit may breathe oftener than twenty times in a minute, and find the seven-syllable verse of Dyer's ' Grongar Hill ' fits his respiration better than" the tetrameter of Scott and Longfellow. In childhood, before we have attained to the full-lunged power of our maturity and when our breathing is quicker than it is later, we find the briefer meters easiest ; and perhaps this accounts for the frequency of dimeter and of trimeter in our nursery-rimes : Goosey, goosey, gander, Where do you wander ? and Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet Eating her curds and whey. 40 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION As these nursery-rimes are artfully adjusted to the undeveloped breathing apparatus of the very young, so the patriotic chants of the several nations are never too long in meter, being gaged to the average of human respiration, as we perceive when we consider " Yankee Doodle " and " God Save the King," the " Marseillaise " and " What is the German Fatherland ? " " Nothing in poetry," Dr. Holmes in- sisted, " is widely popular that is not calculated with strict reference to the respiratory function." And then he made the striking suggestion that " the unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to the or- ganic rhythm is perhaps a more pervading fact than we have been in the habit of considering it. One can hardly doubt that Spenser breathed habitually more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had a quicker respiration than Homer. And this difference, which we conjecture from their rhythmical instincts, if our conjecture is true, probably, almost certainly, charac- terized all their vital movements." It would be inter- esting to push this suggestion further and to consider how much light the favorite meters of Tennyson and of Browning, of Swinburne and of Longfellow, of Whit- man and of Kipling, may shed on their physiological organization. A French student of versification has insisted that the hexameter of the Greeks and Latins and the so-called alexandrine of the French (iambic hexameter) mark the limit of single expiration of the human voice; and that therefore no longer line can ever succeed in winning a wide popularity. When the poet has chosen his meter and when he has established in our ears the expectancy proper to it, he is free to vary the strict monotony of the line, by METER 41 additions, by substitutions, by suppressions, and by shifting his central pause. He may do these things at his pleasure for our pleasure, within the sole restric- tion that he must not disappoint our ear of its expect- ancy. He must not violently force us to read any line unnaturally, by misplacing a normal accent or by unduly prolonging a syllable. He must so compose that when we read for the meaning we are reading also for the meter. Emerson declared that it was the secret of Shakspere's verse "that the thought con- structs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm." If a line satisfies the ear, when it is read naturally with full regard to its con- tent, then it is a good line prosodically ; since there can be no other test. If it fails to satisfy the ear, as we read it aloud, then the fault might be ours, for we may have read it wrong ; but on the other hand the fault might be the poet's, for he may not have been able to impose on us the rhythmic sequence he in- tended. It is the poet's duty not only to feel his rhythm himself, but so to transmit it that we cannot fail to feel it also. If he does not succeed in this, he violates the principle of Economy of Attention ; he interrupts the current of sympathy ; he throws us off the track. Herbert Spencer notes that we are put out by halting versification : " Much as at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a step more or less than we counted upon gives us a shock, so, too, does a mis- placed accent, or a supernumerary syllable," in the wrong place. And this is in accord with the advice given by Boileau in his " Art of Poetry " : Write what your reader may be pleased to hear, And for the measure bare a careful ear ; 42 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION On easy numbers fix your happy choice; Of jarring sounds avoid the odious noise; The fullest verse, and the most labored sense Displease us if the ear once take offence. We have seen already that in the iambic penta- meter the poet is at liberty to add a short syllable at the end of his line : To be, or not to be : that is the question. We have seen also that he can substitute a trochee for an iambus in the opening foot : O f5r a Muse of fire, that would ascend, or in almost any other foot in the line : A kingdom for a stage, prince's to act. He may also substitute a spondee for an iambus, as Milton often does : 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. So strongly accentual is our language that two con- secutive long syllables in any iambic line are likely to be read as an iambus by our unconscious shortening of the first of the two or by our unconscious lengthening of the second. And yet in these lines of Milton's it is almost impossible not to feel that the foot is really a spondee, infrequent and unnatural as that foot may be in English verse. If we read for the meaning only, without in any way forcing the rhythm, rough and dense in the first line and hands and wings in the second, are long syllables, of equal weight. Milton is ever a marvelous metrist, bending sounds to do his METER 43 bidding as no other English poet has ever been able to do. Milton, Pope and Tennyson are the three English poets whose artistry in verse is most certain. Their theories of poetry were very different ; but each of them was a deliberate and conscious artificer. " Again and again," wrote Wordsworth in a letter, " I must repeat that the composition of verse is infinitely more of an art than men are prepared to believe, and ab- solute success in it depends upon innumerable minu- tiae. . . . Milton talks of pouring easy his unpre- meditated verse. It would be odious and untrue to say there is anything like cant in this, but it is not true to the letter and tends to mislead. I could point out five hundred passages in Milton upon which labor has been bestowed." In nothing is Milton's art more obvious than in the skill with which he modulates his lines, keeping the tune intact for the ear of the listener and yet delighting this ear by the delicately chosen variations of accent. Without breaking his rhythm he can substitute trochees and spondees for iambs ; and he can change the march of his line to accommodate it more expressively to his thought, making the sound echo the sense. There is no English poet whose ver- sification better repays the most careful study ; and it is wonderful to discover how he can achieve massive effects by apparently simple devices. His verse justifies itself to the ear ; but it is so dextrously adapted to the ear that it has often puzzled the eyes of the theorists who have sought to apply an arbitrary method of syllable-counting, into which Milton's large and free lines frequently fail to fit. While Milton is the mighty master, the verse of 44 A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION many other poets rewards analysis. Especially to be noted is the pleasure the poet gives our ears when he modifies his tempo to accord with a change in the thought he is expressing. Emerson, for example, is often careless in his versification, not bestowing on it the unhasting and unresting attention which characterizes Milton's composition. Yet, on occasion, Emerson at- tains to a lofty level of lyric beauty : Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But It carves the bow of beauty there, And tne ripples iii rime the oar forsake. A part of the ease and melody of the last line of this quatrain is the result of the substitution of the two lighter anapests for the more sedate and stately iambs. There are fourteen feet in the quatrain and all but three are emphatically iambic. The three anapests occur at exactly the right intervals to lighten the movement most felicitously. And consider also this quatrain of Browning's : OvSr the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave, T5 speeding wind and 3, boTmding wave, A gallant armament. Something of the buoyancy of the first line is due to the substitution of a trochee for an iambus in the first foot ; and the two anapests in the third line, so a critic has declared, "give life and rapidity to the motion which the first two lines picture as vigorous and steady." The return to strict iambics in the final line " restores the original impression and enriches it with the added notion of security." METER 45 Attention has been called in the preceding chapter to the fact that the short syllables of a foot may be omitted at the beginning of a line or at the end or even within the line. It may be well to adduce other examples. Especially in dactylic rhythm either one or both of the short syllables at the ends of the lines may be suppressed with the result of enriching the verse by a variety which pleases the ear. We may take, for example, this stanza of Hood's " Bridge of Sighs," written in dactylic dimeter: One more Unfortunate, Weary of breath, [w vj Rashly importunate, Gone to her death ! [v v] Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care ; [w w] Fashioned so slenderly, Young, and so fair ! [ w v] The suppression of the two final short syllables which is only casual in Hood's poem may be consistent, as in this stanza of Austin Dobson's " On a Fan," written in dactylic trimeter : Ah, but things more than polite [v Hung on this toy, voyez-vous ! [ w Matters of state and of might, [ w vl Things that great ministers do ; [w