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 accustom 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 suppression 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 misfortune 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

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 necessarily 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 receive 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 interest 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 Professor Gummere has declared. "What is a lyric without 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

even more afraid of the pathetic and sentimental, that we suppress all cadences, and come out triumphant with a hybrid sort of performance that reminds one of a bird which should flap its wings without flying."

CHAPTER III

METER

Here, at the outset, we find precisely what differentiates verse from prose. These two possess much in common. Their ideals are often similar; their subjects may be identical; their cadences sometimes coincide. 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. Something 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 substitutions 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 anapestic 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

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 colloquial, since "conversational speech runs into iambic form more frequently than into any other kind of verse." Probably nine tenths of English poetry is iambic; 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 devising 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 putting 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 consolation 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 English 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.