CHAPTER II

RHYTHM

Our new empiricism, following where intuition leads the way, comprehends 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 nature to the soul; that thus alone can one incarnate individuality address 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, according to the keys, the wave-lengths of their excitants. — EDMUND 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 reading it is to take a great and dangerous step," said Stevenson; "with not a few, I think, a large proportion 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

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poetry to the soul of man is through his ears; and we do not feel its full force until we speak it ourselves or hear it from others. It might almost be asserted 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 resemblance 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 emphatic 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 triumph has its rise and fall. In all these examples, the

character of the rhythm may be open to question, but the existence of the rhythm itself is beyond dispute. Lowell singled out for praise the song of Deborah 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 'll send her down to the janitor,

And the janitor will put her into the barrel,

And he'll put the barrel out on the sidewalk;

And the man will come along with the wagon,
And he'll empty her into the wagon,
And he'll drive her down to the dock,
And he 'll dump her into the river,
And she 'll 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!

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 reduplication 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

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 simple 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, invites our attention to it; he awakes in us the expectancy 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