THE PATTERN OF A POEM

Not long ago a geologist made a collection of claystones found near a great river. They were marvellously designed in whorls and loops and medallions of clay that had once been plastic, not to the hands of man, but to the living fingers of water, heat, cold, pressure, and to the unnamed forces that began and have carried on the evolution of our earth. "They were lying there," said the geologist, "loose in a clay bank." And he added, "Is it not wonderful?"

It is indeed wonderful. Why should a handful of clay, here and there in the great bank, gradually take to itself this form of beauty? Why should the great bank of clay show no such strongly marked and easily perceived design? Why does Nature give such perfect and perceptible designs to claystones, quartz crystals and butterflies, while she lets the small hillocks ramble at will across the surface of the land? Why does she spread the forests about in uneven patches upon the hills, cut jagged gashes chaotically through the august sides of mountains, and make no regular plan for the windings of rivers? In small things Nature seems to perfect her designs and to work them out in strict symmetry. What is the law for great things?

Great things, also, have a pattern or design. All mountains are clearly manifest to us as mountains. We can see that a river is a river, though rivers have many ways of winding. It is just possible that great things have a symmetry which we, potent to the extent of five and a half feet, or so, of flesh and blood, eyes the size of a robin's egg and brains that could be carried in salt sacks, are not well able to perceive. Perhaps Nature's larger designs are too us, who see them only in part. may be arranged in sequence, in

large to seem symmetrical to The far away worlds in space a gigantic and balanced com

position of which we know very, very little. This much is certain-in all the large things that we do know we find order and design as an expression of the primal genius, even though we do not find a symmetry as strict as the symmetry of design in little things. And in every design variety pulls against symmetry as love pulls against law, the dynamic against the static, life against death.

Symmetry and variety, then, in the natural world, pull against each other and create order, design. When symmetry is sacrificed to variety there is bad design-failure. When a tree grows with all of its branches on one side, that tree is in peril; a great wind after a heavy rain may blow it down. And again, when variety is sacrificed to symmetry we have bad design—failure. When no alien pollen is brought to fertilize the flower, the seed of a plant deteriorates. Self-fertilization causes the plant's strength to dwindle. But, always, when the forces that make for symmetry are pulling hard against the forces that make for variety, so that a tension is created and an equilibrium maintained between them, we have the design at its very best in the world where Dame Nature is artist.

Now all of our human arts, to a certain degree, are subject to the same laws that govern nature. We human beings, little artists, possessed of some small share of the primal genius, have risen through many ranks of being and consciousness into that humanity of which we are inordinately proud. And when we are proud, it is often because we alone, of all living creatures, can consciously create patterns for our own pleasure. In all that we make for use, beauty and enduring life, we use patterns, good and bad. And in all patterns we find that the law of symmetry and the law of variety must be remembered. The penalty of forgetting either law is failure. Let us see how this applies to poetry, and especially to the poetry of our own period.

First of all we must realize that in all times when poems have been well made poets have made patterns for them; and these patterns have been of many kinds. The Psalms in our Bibles,

those sublime lyrics of worship, were made in accordance with the Hebrew idea of design, a parallelism, or balancing of words and phrases, emotions and ideas, one against another. Take, for example, the first two verses of Psalm XXIX:

Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord

glory and strength.

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name;

worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness.

This parallelism was the Hebrew way of providing for sym

Variety was subtly secured in The Japanese, who think that

metry in the design of a poem. symbol, cadence and diction. we have too many words in our poems, have exalted symbolism and made it the basic principle in the designs of their little poems in thirty-one or in seventeen syllables.

But a very large part of the world's poetry has found its symmetry of design in rhythm, and in most English poetry (by which I mean most poetry written in the English tongue) poets have added rhyme as a secondary symmetry, marking and defining rhythm. The variety of most of our poetry has been secured by the use of images and symbols, appropriate changes of cadence, extra syllables interpolated in a line that would otherwise be typical, to swing it momentarily from a too rigid symmetry, that the reader may enjoy the return. Variety has also been secured by the use of contrasted phrases or meanings, by vowel echoes and in countless little ways that the cunning of craftsmen has provided for the pleasure of readers. But just because the poetry of our tongue has usually found its symmetry in rhythm and its variety in other ways, we must be the more careful to remember that not all poetry has been made in this way in all places and times. And he would be rash indeed who would maintain that the best poetry must always be of one kind, must always meet the requirements of one race, one language and one artistic credo. When our poets, after studying the craftsmanship of other lands and times, try to introduce into our literature new ways of designing, it should be our

joy to read, understand, evaluate and encourage their attempts.

One more fact should be noted before we discuss in detail the kinds of patterns that are being made by poets of to-day. That is the matter of the effect of the length of the poem upon the design. Just as in nature the pattern seems to be more clearly defined and more symmetrical in small things than in large, so, in the poetry that has lived, short poems seem to be more strictly symmetrical than long poems; long poems seem to be more varied in design than short poems. A short poem is like a claystone in the river bank. A long poem is like the river.

We can make only one generalization with reference to the designs of contemporary poetry. And that is that the present tendency is toward a great freedom and variety in composition. This is a healthy thing, in the main, and a sign of power. In the Elizabethan period the same thing was true. The sonnet and other foreign forms had been introduced into English poetry and all good poets were experimenting with them. They were inventing forms and devices of their own. They were playing with rhythms and rhymes and symbols for the sheer joy of it, in the true craftsman's way. They were not trying to achieve a correct formality. They were, rather, audacious and joyful in their search for ways of making their poems vivid, fresh, colorful, strong. And they succeeded so well, and so often, that if we had no other English poetry at all but that which belongs to the Elizabethan period, our heritage would be rich beyond the power of words to tell. Therefore, when we say that the poets of today are seeking variety in their craft as the Elizabethans sought it, we say that they have a spiritual vitality like that of their great predecessors.

But unlike the best of the Elizabethan poets, many of those who call themselves poets in our day seem to have forgotten the importance of structural symmetry. In so far as that is true their achievement is poor. Their poetry, unfortunately, sometimes teeters and topples like a chair that has lost one leg. This disregard of symmetry in design is probably a reaction against