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diff --git a/8221-8.txt b/8221-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..926a3b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/8221-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9266 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Study of Poetry, by Bliss Perry +#2 in our series by Bliss Perry + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: A Study of Poetry + +Author: Bliss Perry + +Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8221] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on July 3, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Charles Bidwell +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +A STUDY OF POETRY + +by +BLISS PERRY + +_Professor of English Literature in Harvard University_ + +Author of "A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION," "WALT WHITMAN," +"THE AMERICAN MIND," etc. + + + +TO + +M. S. P. + + + +PREFACE + +The method of studying poetry which I have followed in this book was +sketched some years ago in my chapter on "Poetry" in _Counsel Upon the +Reading of Books_. My confidence that the genetic method is the natural +way of approaching the subject has been shared by many lovers of poetry. +I hope, however, that I have not allowed my insistence upon the threefold +process of "impression, transforming imagination, and expression" to +harden into a set formula. Formulas have a certain dangerous usefulness +for critics and teachers, but they are a very small part of one's training +in the appreciation of poetry. + +I have allotted little or no space to the specific discussion of epic and +drama, as these types are adequately treated in many books. Our own +generation is peculiarly attracted by various forms of the lyric, and in +Part Two I have devoted especial attention to that field. + +While I hope that the book may attract the traditional "general reader," +I have also tried to arrange it in such a fashion that it may be utilized +in the classroom. I have therefore ventured, in the Notes and +Illustrations and Appendix, to suggest some methods and material for the +use of students. + +I wish to express my obligations to Professor R. M. Alden, whose +_Introduction to Poetry_ and _English Verse_ I have used in my own Harvard +courses in poetry. His views of metre have probably influenced mine even +more than I am aware. The last decade, which has witnessed such an +extraordinary revival of interest in poetry, has produced many valuable +contributions to poetic theory. I have found Professor Fairchild's _Making +of Poetry_ particularly suggestive. Attention is called, in the Notes and +Bibliography, to many other recent books on the subject. + +Professors A. S. Cook of Yale and F. B. Snyder of Northwestern University +have been kind enough to read in manuscript certain chapters of this book, +and Dr. P. F. Baum of Harvard has assisted me most courteously. I am +indebted to several fellow-writers for their consent to the use of +extracts from their books, particularly to Brander Matthews for a passage +from _These Many Years_ and to Henry Osborn Taylor for a passage from his +_Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_. + +I wish also to thank the publishers who have generously allowed me to use +brief quotations from copyrighted books, especially Henry Holt & Co. for +permission to use a quotation and drawing from William James's +_Psychology_, and The Macmillan Company for permission to borrow from John +La Farge's delightful _Considerations on Painting_. + +B. P. + + + +CONTENTS + +PART I + +POETRY IN GENERAL + +I. A GLANCE AT THE BACKGROUND + +II. THE PROVINCE OF POETRY + +III. THE POET'S IMAGINATION + +IV. THE POET'S WORDS + +V. RHYTHM AND METRE + +VI. RHYME, STANZA AND FREE VERSE + + +PART II + +THE LYRIC IN PARTICULAR + +VII. THE FIELD OF LYRIC POETRY + +VIII. RELATIONSHIPS AND TYPES OF THE LYRIC + +IX. RACE, EPOCH AND INDIVIDUAL + +X. THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE LYRIC + +NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS + +APPENDIX + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + +INDEX + + + +A STUDY OF POETRY + +PART I + +POETRY IN GENERAL + + "Sidney and Shelley pleaded this cause. + Because they spoke, must we be dumb?" +GEORGE E. WOODBERRY, _A New Defense of Poetry_ + + + +A STUDY OF POETRY + +CHAPTER I + + +A GLANCE AT THE BACKGROUND + +It is a gray day in autumn. I am sitting at my desk, wondering how to +begin the first chapter of this book about poetry. Outside the window +a woman is contentedly kneeling on the upturned brown earth of her +tulip-bed, patting lovingly with her trowel as she covers the bulbs +for next spring's blossoming. Does she know Katharine Tynan's verses +about "Planting Bulbs"? Probably not. But I find myself dropping the +procrastinating pen, and murmuring some of the lines: + + "Setting my bulbs a-row + In cold earth under the grasses, + Till the frost and the snow + Are gone and the Winter passes-- + + * * * * * + + "Turning the sods and the clay + I think on the poor sad people + Hiding their dead away + In the churchyard, under the steeple. + + "All poor women and men, + Broken-hearted and weeping, + Their dead they call on in vain, + Quietly smiling and sleeping. + + "Friends, now listen and hear, + Give over crying and grieving, + There shall come a day and a year + When the dead shall be as the living. + + "There shall come a call, a foot-fall, + And the golden trumpeters blowing + Shall stir the dead with their call, + Bid them be rising and going. + + "Then in the daffodil weather, + Lover shall run to lover; + Friends all trooping together; + Death and Winter be over. + + "Laying my bulbs in the dark, + Visions have I of hereafter. + Lip to lip, breast to breast, hark! + No more weeping, but laughter!" + +Yet this is no way to start your chapter, suggests Conscience. Why do you +not write an opening paragraph, for better for worse, instead of looking +out of the window and quoting Katharine Tynan? And then it flashes over +me, in lieu of answer, that I have just discovered one way of beginning +the chapter, after all! For what I should like to do in this book is to +set forth in decent prose some of the strange potencies of verse: its +power, for instance, to seize upon a physical image like that of a woman +planting bulbs, and transmute it into a symbol of the resurrection of the +dead; its capacity for turning fact into truth and brown earth into +beauty; for remoulding the broken syllables of human speech into sheer +music; for lifting the mind, bowed down by wearying thought and haunting +fear, into a brooding ecstasy wherein weeping is changed into laughter and +autumnal premonitions of death into assurance of life, and the narrow +paths of individual experience are widened into those illimitable spaces +where the imagination rules. Poetry does all this, assuredly. But how? And +why? That is our problem. + +"The future of poetry is immense," declared Matthew Arnold, and there are +few lovers of literature who doubt his triumphant assertion. But the past +of poetry is immense also: impressive in its sheer bulk and in its +immemorial duration. At a period earlier than any recorded history, poetry +seems to have occupied the attention of men, and some of the finest +spirits in every race that has attained to civilization have devoted +themselves to its production, or at least given themselves freely to the +enjoyment of reciting and reading verse, and of meditating upon its +significance. A consciousness of this rich human background should +accompany each new endeavor to examine the facts about poetry and to +determine its essential nature. The facts are indeed somewhat complicated, +and the nature of poetry, in certain aspects of it, at least, will remain +as always a mystery. Yet in that very complication and touch of mystery +there is a fascination which has laid its spell upon countless generations +of men, and which has been deepened rather than destroyed by the advance +of science and the results of scholarship. The study of folklore and +comparative literature has helped to explain some of the secrets of +poetry; the psychological laboratory, the history of criticism, the +investigation of linguistics, the modern developments in music and the +other arts, have all contributed something to our intelligent enjoyment of +the art of poetry and to our sense of its importance in the life of +humanity. There is no field of inquiry where the interrelations of +knowledge are more acutely to be perceived. The beginner in the study of +poetry may at once comfort himself and increase his zest by remembering +that any real training which he has already had in scientific observation, +in the habit of analysis, in the study of races and historic periods, in +the use of languages, in the practice or interpretation of any of the fine +arts, or even in any bodily exercise that has developed his sense of +rhythm, will be of ascertainable value to him in this new study. + +But before attempting to apply his specific knowledge or aptitude to the +new field for investigation, he should be made aware of some of the wider +questions which the study of poetry involves. The first of these questions +has to do with the relations of the study of poetry to the general field +of Aesthetics. + + +_1. The Study of Poetry and the Study of Aesthetics_ + +The Greeks invented a convenient word to describe the study of poetry: +"Poetics." Aristotle's famous fragmentary treatise bore that title, and it +was concerned with the nature and laws of certain types of poetry and with +the relations of poetry to the other arts. For the Greeks assumed, as we +do, that poetry is an art: that it expresses emotion through words +rhythmically arranged. But as soon as they began to inquire into the +particular kind of emotion which is utilized in poetry and the various +rhythmical arrangements employed by poets, they found themselves compelled +to ask further questions. How do the other arts convey feeling? What +arrangement or rhythmic ordering of facts do they use in this process? +What takes place in us as we confront the work of art, or, in other words, +what is our reaction to an artistic stimulus? + +For an answer to such wider questions as these, we moderns turn to the +so-called science of Aesthetics. This word, derived from the Greek +_aisthanomai_ (to perceive), has been defined as "anything having to do +with perception by the senses." But it was first used in its present sense +by the German thinker Baumgarten in the middle of the eighteenth century. +He meant by it "the theory of the fine arts." It has proved a convenient +term to describe both "The Science of the Beautiful" and "The Philosophy +of Beauty"; that is, both the analysis and classification of beautiful +things as well as speculation as to the origin and nature of Beauty +itself. But it should be borne in mind that aesthetic inquiry and answer +may precede by thousands of years the use of the formal language of +aesthetic theory. Mr. Kipling's "Story of Ung" cleverly represents the +cave-men as discussing the very topics which the contemporary studio and +classroom strive in vain to settle,--in vain, because they are the eternal +problems of art. Here are two faces, two trees, two colors, one of which +seems preferable to the other. Wherein lies the difference, as far as the +objects themselves are concerned? And what is it which the preferable face +or tree or color stirs or awakens within us as we look at it? These are +what we call aesthetic questions, but a man or a race may have a delicate +and sure sense of beauty without consciously asking such questions at all. +The awareness of beautiful objects in nature, and even the ability to +create a beautiful work of art, may not be accompanied by any gift for +aesthetic speculation. Conversely, many a Professor of aesthetics has +contentedly lived in an ugly house and you would not think that he had +ever looked at river or sky or had his pulses quickened by a tune. +Nevertheless, no one can turn the pages of a formal History of Aesthetics +without being reminded that the oldest and apparently the most simple +inquiries in this field may also be the subtlest and in a sense the most +modern. For illustration, take the three philosophical contributions of +the Greeks to aesthetic theory, as they are stated by Bosanquet: +[Footnote: Bosanquet, _History of Aesthetic_, chap. 3.] +(1) the conception that art deals with images, not realities, i.e. with +aesthetic "semblance" or things as they appear to the artist; +(2) the conception that art consists in "imitation," which they carried to +an absurdity, indeed, by arguing that an imitation must be less "valuable" +than the thing imitated; +(3) the conception that beauty consists in certain formal relations, such +as symmetry, harmony of parts--in a word, "unity in variety." + +Now no one can snap a Kodak effectively without putting into practice the +first of these conceptions: nor understand the "new music" and "free +verse" without reckoning with both the second and the third. The value to +the student of poetry of some acquaintance with aesthetic theory is +sometimes direct, as in the really invaluable discussion contained in +Aristotle's _Poetics_, but more often, perhaps, it will be found in the +indirect stimulus to his sympathy and taste. For he must survey the +widespread sense of beauty in the ancient world, the splendid periods of +artistic creation in the Middle Ages, the growth of a new feeling for +landscape and for the richer and deeper human emotions, and the emergence +of the sense of the "significant" or individually "characteristic" in +the work of art. Finally he may come to lose himself with Kant or Hegel or +Coleridge in philosophical theories about the nature of beauty, or to +follow the curious analyses of experimental aesthetics in modern +laboratories, where the psycho-physical reactions to aesthetic stimuli are +cunningly registered and the effects of lines and colors and tones upon +the human organism are set forth with mathematical precision. He need not +trouble himself overmuch at the outset with definitions of Beauty. The +chief thing is to become aware of the long and intimate preoccupation of +men with beautiful objects and to remember that any inquiry into the +nature and laws of poetry will surely lead him into a deeper curiosity as +to the nature and manifestations of aesthetic feeling in general. + + +_2. The Impulse to Artistic Production_ + +Furthermore, no one can ask himself how it is that a poem comes into being +unless he also raises the wider question as to the origin and working of +the creative impulse in the other arts. It is clear that there is a gulf +between the mere sense of beauty--such as is possessed by primitive man, +or, in later stages of civilization, by the connoisseur in the fine +arts--and the concrete work of art. Thousands enjoy the statue, the +symphony, the ode; not one in a thousand can produce these objects. +Mere connoisseurship is sterile. "The ability to produce one fine line," +said Edward FitzGerald, "transcends all the Able-Editor ability in this +ably-edited universe." What is the impulse which urges certain persons to +create beautiful objects? How is it that they cross the gulf which +separates the enjoyer from the producer? + +It is easier to ask this question than to find a wholly satisfactory +answer to it. Plato's explanation, in the case of the poet, is simple +enough: it is the direct inspiration of the divinity,--the "god" takes +possession of the poet. Perhaps this may be true, in a sense, and we shall +revert to it later, but first let us look at some of the conditions for +the exercise of the creative impulse, as contemporary theorists have +endeavored to explain them. + +Social relations, surely, afford one of the obvious conditions for the +impulse to art. The hand-clapping and thigh-smiting of primitive savages +in a state of crowd-excitement, the song-and-dance before admiring +spectators, the chorus of primitive ballads,--the crowd repeating and +altering the refrains,--the rhythmic song of laboring men and of women at +their weaving, sailors' "chanties," the celebration of funeral rites, +religious processional and pageant, are all expressions of communal +feeling, and it is this communal feeling--"the sense of joy in widest +commonalty spread"--which has inspired, in Greece and Italy, some of the +greatest artistic epochs. It is true that as civilization has proceeded, +this communal emotion has often seemed to fade away and leave us in the +presence of the individual artist only. We see Keats sitting at his garden +table writing the "Ode to Autumn," the lonely Shelley in the Cascine at +Florence composing the "West Wind," Wordsworth pacing the narrow walk +behind Dove Cottage and mumbling verses, Beethoven in his garret writing +music. But the creative act thus performed in solitude has a singular +potency, after all, for arousing that communal feeling which in the moment +of creation the artist seems to escape. What he produces in his loneliness +the world does not willingly let die. His work, as far as it becomes +known, really unites mankind. It fulfills a social purpose. "Its function +is social consolidation." + +Tolstoy made so much of this "transmission of emotion," this "infectious" +quality of art as a means of union among men, that he reduced a good case +to an absurdity, for he argued himself into thinking that if a given work +of art does not infect the spectator--and preferably the uneducated +"peasant" spectator--with emotion, it is therefore not art at all. He +overlooked the obvious truth that there are certain types of difficult +or intricate beauty--in music, in architecture, and certainly in +poetry--which so tax the attention and the analytical and reflective +powers of the spectator as to make the inexperienced, uncultured spectator +or hearer simply unaware of the presence of beauty. Debussy's music, +Browning's dramatic monologues, Henry James's short stories, were not +written for Tolstoy's typical peasant. They would "transmit" to him +nothing at all. But although Tolstoy, a man of genius, overstated his case +with childlike perversity, he did valuable service in insisting upon +emotion as a basis for the art-impulse. The creative instinct is +undeniably accompanied by strong feeling, by pleasure in the actual work +of production and in the resultant object, and something of this pleasure +in the harmonious expression of emotion is shared by the competent +observer. The permanent vitality of a work of art does consist in its +capacity for stimulating and transmitting pleasure. One has only to think +of Gray's "Elegy" and the delight which it has afforded to generations of +men. + +Another conception of the artistic impulse seeks to ally it with the +"play-instinct." According to Kant and Schiller there is a free "kingdom +of play" between the urgencies of necessity and of duty, and in this +sphere of freedom a man's whole nature has the chance to manifest itself. +He is wholly man only when he "plays," that is, when he is free to create. +Herbert Spencer and many subsequent theorists have pointed out the analogy +between the play of young animals, the free expression of their surplus +energy, their organic delight in the exercise of their muscles, and that +"playful" expenditure of a surplus of vitality which seems to characterize +the artist. This analogy is curiously suggestive, though it is +insufficient to account for all the phenomena concerned in human artistic +production. + +The play theory, again, suggests that old and clairvoyant perception of +the Greeks that the art-impulse deals with aesthetic appearances rather +than with realities as such. The artist has to do with the semblance of +things; not with things as they "are in themselves" either physically or +logically, but with things as they appear to him. The work of the +impressionist painter or the imagist poet illustrates this conception. The +conventions of the stage are likewise a case in point. Stage settings, +conversations, actions, are all affected by the "_optique du théâtre_" +they are composed in a certain "key" which seeks to give a harmonious +impression, but which conveys frankly semblance and not reality. The +craving for "real" effects upon the stage is anti-aesthetic, like those +gladiatorial shows where persons were actually killed. I once saw an +unskilful fencer, acting the part of Romeo, really wound Tybalt: the +effect was lifelike, beyond question, but it was shocking. + +From this doctrine of aesthetic semblance or "appearance" many thinkers +have drawn the conclusion that the pleasures afforded by art must in their +very nature be disinterested and sharable. Disinterested, because they +consist so largely in delighted contemplation merely. Women on the stage, +said Coquelin, should afford to the spectator "a theatrical pleasure only, +and not the pleasure of a lover." Compare with this the sprightly egotism +of the lyric poet's + + "If she be not so to me, + What care I how fair she be?" + +A certain aloofness is often felt to characterize great art: it is +perceived in the austerity and reserve of the Psyche of Naples and the +Venus of Melos: + + "And music pours on mortals + Its beautiful disdain." + +The lower pleasures of the senses of taste and touch, it is often pointed +out, are less pleasurable than the other senses when revived by memory. +Your dinner is _your_ dinner--your exclusive proprietorship of lower +pleasure--in a sense in which the snowy linen and gleaming silver and +radiant flowers upon the table are not yours only because they are +sharable. If music follows the dinner, though it be your favorite tune, it +is nevertheless not yours as what you have eaten is yours. Acute observers +like Santayana have denied or minimized this distinction, but the general +instinct of men persists in calling the pleasures of color and form and +sound "sharable," because they exist for all who can appreciate them. +The individual's happiness in these pleasures is not lessened, but rather +increased, by the coexistent happiness of others in the same object. + +There is one other aspect of the artistic impulse which is of peculiar +importance to the student of poetry. It is this: the impulse toward +artistic creation always works along lines of order. The creative impulse +may remain a mystery in its essence, the play of blind instinct, as many +philosophers have supposed; a portion of the divine energy which is +somehow given to men. All sorts of men, good and bad, cultured and savage, +have now and again possessed this vital creative power. They have been +able to say with Thomas Lovell Beddoes: + + "I have a bit of fiat in my soul, + And can myself create my little world." + +The little world which their imagination has created may be represented +only by a totem pole or a colored basket or a few scratches on a piece of +bone; or it may be a temple or a symphony. But if it be anything more than +the mere whittling of a stick to exercise surplus energy, it is ordered +play or labor. It follows a method. It betrays remeditation. It is the +expression of something in the mind. And even the mere whittler usually +whittles his stick to a point: that is, he is "making" something. +His knife, almost before he is aware of what he is doing, follows a +pattern--invented in his brain on the instant or remembered from other +patterns. He gets pleasure from the sheer muscular activity, and from +his tactile sense of the bronze or steel as it penetrates the softer wood. +But he gets a higher pleasure still from his pattern, from his sense of +making something, no matter how idly. And as soon as the pattern or +purpose or "design" is recognized by others the maker's pleasure is +heightened, sharable. For he has accomplished the miracle: he has thrown +the raw material of feeling into form--and that form itself yields +pleasure. His "bit of fiat" has taken a piece of wood and transformed it: +made it expressive of something. All the "arts of design" among primitive +races show this pattern-instinct. + +But the impulse toward an ordered expression of feeling is equally +apparent in the rudimentary stages of music and poetry. The striking of +hands or feet in unison, the rhythmic shout of many voices, the regular +beat of the tom-tom, the excited spectators of a college athletic contest +as they break spontaneously from individual shouting into waves of +cheering and of song, the quickened feet of negro stevedores as some one +starts a tune, the children's delight in joining hands and moving in a +circle, all serve to illustrate the law that as feeling gains in intensity +it tends toward ordered expression. Poetry, said Coleridge, in one of his +marvelous moments of insight, is the result of "a more than usual state of +emotion" combined "with more than usual order." + +What has been said about play and sharable pleasure and the beginning of +design has been well summarized by Sidney Colvin: +[Footnote: Article on "The Fine Arts" in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.] + +"There are some things which we do because we must; these are our +necessities. There are other things which we do because we ought; these +are our duties. There are other things which we do because we like; these +are our play. Among the various kinds of things done by men only because +they like, the fine arts are those of which the results afford to many +permanent and disinterested delight, and of which the performance, calling +for premeditated skill, is capable of regulation up to a certain point, +but that point passed, has secrets beyond the reach and a freedom beyond +the restraint of rules." + + +_3. "Form" and "Significance" in the Arts_ + +If the fine arts, then, deal with the ordered or harmonious expression of +feeling, it is clear that any specific work of art may be regarded, at +least theoretically, from two points of view. We may look at its "outside" +or its "inside"; that is to say at its ordering of parts, its pattern, its +"form," or else at the feeling or idea which it conveys. This distinction +between form and content, between expression and that which is expressed, +is temptingly convenient. It is a useful tool of analysis, but it is +dangerous to try to make it anything more than that. If we were looking at +a water-pipe and the water which flows through it, it would be easy to +keep a clear distinction between the form of the iron pipe, and its +content of water. But in certain of the fine arts very noticeably, such as +music, and in a diminished degree, poetry, and more or less in all of +them, the form is the expression or content. A clear-cut dissection of the +component elements of outside and inside, of water-pipe and water within +it, becomes impossible. Listening to music is like looking at a brook; +there is no inside and outside, it is all one intricately blended complex +of sensation. Music is a perfect example of "embodied feeling," as +students of aesthetics term it, and the body is here inseparable from the +feeling. But in poetry, which is likewise embodied feeling, it is somewhat +easier to attempt, for purposes of logical analysis, a separation of the +component elements of thought (i.e. "content") and form. We speak +constantly of the "idea" of a poem as being more or less adequately +"expressed," that is, rendered in terms of form. The actual form of a +given lyric may or may not be suited to its mood, +[Footnote: Certainly not, for instance, in Wordsworth's "Reverie of Poor +Susan."] +or the poet may not have been a sufficiently skilful workman to achieve +success in the form or "pattern" which he has rightly chosen. + +Even in poetry, then, the distinction between inside and outside, +content and form, has sometimes its value, and in other arts, like +painting and sculpture, it often becomes highly interesting and +instructive to attempt the separation of the two elements. The French +painter Millet, for instance, is said to have remarked to a pupil who +showed him a well-executed sketch: "You can paint. But what have you to +say?" The pupil's work had in Millet's eyes no "significance." The English +painter G. F. Watts often expressed himself in the same fashion: "I paint +first of all because I have something to say.... My intention has not been +so much to paint pictures that will charm the eye as to suggest great +thoughts that will appeal to the imagination and the heart and kindle all +that is best and noblest in humanity.... My work is a protest against the +modern opinion that Art should have nothing to say intellectually." + +On the other hand, many distinguished artists and critics have given +assent to what has been called the "Persian carpet" theory of painting. +According to them a picture should be judged precisely as one judges a +Persian rug--by the perfection of its formal beauty, its harmonies of +line, color and texture, its "unity in variety." It is evident that the +men who hold this opinion are emphasizing form in the work of art, and +that Millet and Watts emphasized significance. One school is thinking +primarily of expression, and the other of that which is expressed. The +important point for the student of poetry to grasp is that this divergence +of opinion turns upon the question of relative emphasis. Even pure form, +or "a-priori form" as it has sometimes been called,--such as a +rectangle, a square, a cube,--carries a certain element of association +which gives it a degree of significance. There is no absolutely bare or +blank pattern. "Four-square" means something to the mind, because it is +intimately connected with our experience. +[Footnote: See Bosanquet, _Three Lectures on Aesthetic_, pp. 19, 29, 39, +and Santayana, _The Sense of Beauty_, p. 83.] +It cannot be a mere question of balance, parallelism and abstract "unity +in variety." The acanthus design in architectural ornament, the Saracenic +decoration on a sword-blade, aim indeed primarily at formal beauty and +little more. The Chinese laundryman hands you a red slip of paper covered +with strokes of black ink in strange characters. It is undecipherable to +you, yet it possesses in its sheer charm of color and line, something of +beauty, and the freedom and vigor of the strokes are expressive of +vitality. It is impossible that Maud's face should really have been + + "Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, + Dead perfection, no more." + +Nevertheless, though absolutely pure decorative beauty does not exist, the +artist may push the decorative principle very far, so far, indeed, that +his product lacks interest and proves tedious or nonsensical. There is +"nonsense-verse," as we shall see later, which fulfills every condition +for pure formal beauty in poetry. Yet it is not poetry, but only +nonsense-verse. + +Now shift the interest from the form to the meaning contained in the work +of art, that is, to its significance. An expressive face is one that +reveals character. Its lines are suggestive of something. They are +associated, like the lines of purely decorative beauty, with more or less +obscure tracts of our experience, but they arouse a keen mental interest. +They stimulate, they are packed closely with meaning, with fact, with +representative quality. The same thing is true of certain landscapes. +Witness Thomas Hardy's famous description of Egdon Heath in _The Return of +the Native_. It is true of music. Certain modern music almost breaks down, +as music, under the weight of meaning, of fact, of thought, which the +composer has striven to make it carry. + +There is no question that the principle of significance may be pushed too +far, just as the principle of decorative or purely formal beauty may be +emphasized too exclusively. But is there any real antagonism between the +elements of form and significance, beauty and expressiveness? This +question has been debated ever since the time of Winckelmann and Lessing. +The controversy over the work of such artists as Wagner, Browning, +Whitman, Rodin has turned largely upon it. + +Browning himself strove to cut the difficult aesthetic knot with a rough +stroke of common sense: + + "Is it so pretty + You can't discover if it means hope, fear, + Sorrow or joy? Won't beauty go with these?" +[Footnote: "Fra Lippo Lippi."] + +He tried again in the well-known passage from _The Ring and the Book_: + + "So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, + Beyond mere imagery on the wall,-- + So note by note bring music from your mind + Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived,-- + So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, + Suffice the eye and save the soul beside." + +How Whistler, the author of _Ten O'Clock_ and the creator of exquisitely +lovely things, must have loathed that final line! But Bosanquet's +carefully framed definition of the beautiful, in his _History of +Aesthetic_, endeavors, like Browning, to adjust the different claims of +form and significance: "The beautiful is that which has characteristic or +individual expressiveness for sense-perception or imagination, subject to +the conditions of general or abstract expressiveness in the same medium." +That is to say, in less philosophical language, that as long as you +observe the laws of formal beauty which belong to the medium in which you +are working, you may be as expressive or significant as you like. But the +artist must be obedient to the terms of his chosen medium of expression; +if he is composing music or poetry he must not break the general laws of +music or poetry in order to attempt that valiant enterprise of saving a +soul. + + +_4. The Man in the Work of Art_ + +Though there is much in this matter of content and form which is baffling +to the student of general aesthetic theory, there is at least one aspect +of the question which the student of poetry must grasp clearly. It is +this: there is nothing in any work of art except what some man has put +there. _What he has put in_ is our content question; _what shape he has +put it into_ is our form question. In Bosanquet's more technical language: +"A man is the middle term between content and expression." There is +doubtless some element of mystery in what we call creative power, but this +is a part of man's mystery. There is no mystery in the artist's material +as such: he is working in pigments or clay or vibrating sound or whatever +other medium he has chosen. The qualities and possibilities of this +particular medium fascinate him, preoccupy him. He comes, as we say, to +think in terms of color or line or sound. He learns or may learn in time, +as Whistler bade him, "never to push a medium further than it will go." +The chief value of Lessing's epoch-making discussion of "time-arts" and +"space-arts" in his _Laokoon_ consisted in the emphasis laid upon the +specific material of the different arts, and hence upon the varying +opportunities which one medium or another affords to the artist. But +though human curiosity never wearies of examining the inexhaustible +possibilities of this or that material, it is chiefly concerned, after +all, in the use of material as it has been moulded by the fingers and the +brain of a particular artist. The material becomes transformed as it +passes through his "shop," in some such way as iron is transformed into +steel in a blast furnace. An apparatus called a "transformer" alters the +wave-length of an electrical current and reduces high pressure to low +pressure, or the reverse. The brain of the artist seems to function in a +somewhat similar manner as it reshapes the material furnished it by the +senses, and expresses it in new forms. Poetry furnishes striking +illustrations of the transformations wrought in the crucible of the +imagination, and we must look at these in detail in a subsequent chapter. +But it may be helpful here to quote the testimony of two or three artists +and then to examine the psychological basis of this central function of +the artist's mind. + +"Painting is the expression of certain sensations," said Carolus Duran. +"You should not seek merely to copy the model that is posed before you, +but rather to take into account the impression that is made upon the +mind.... Take careful account of the substances that you must +render--wood, metal, textures, for instance. When you fail to reproduce +nature _as you feel it_, then you falsify it. _Painting is not done with +the eyes, but with the brain_." + +W. W. Story, the sculptor, wrote: "Art is art because it is not nature.... +The most perfect imitation of nature is therefore not art. _It must pass +through the mind of the artist and be changed_. Art is nature reflected +through the spiritual mirror, and tinged with all the sentiment, feeling, +passion of the spirit that reflects it." + +In John La Farge's _Considerations on Painting_, a little book which is +full of suggestiveness to the student of literature, there are many +passages illustrating the conception of art as "the representation of the +artist's view of the world." La Farge points out that "drawing from life +is an exercise of memory. It might be said that the sight of the moment is +merely a theme upon which we embroider the memories of former likings, +former aspirations, former habits, images that we have cared for, and +through which we indicate to others our training, our race, the entire +educated part of our nature." + +One of La Farge's concrete examples must be quoted at length: +[Footnote: _Considerations on Painting_, pp. 71-73. Macmillan.] + + "I remember myself, years ago, sketching with two well-known men, + artists who were great friends, great cronies, asking each other all + the time, how to do this and how to do that; but absolutely + different in the texture of their minds and in the result that they + wished to obtain, so far as the pictures and drawings by which they + were well known to the public are concerned. + + "What we made, or rather, I should say, what we wished to note, was + merely a memorandum of a passing effect upon the hills that lay + before us. We had no idea of expressing ourselves, or of studying in + any way the subject for any future use. We merely had the intention + to note this affair rapidly, and we had all used the same words to + express to each other what we liked in it. There were big clouds + rolling over hills, sky clearing above, dots of trees and water and + meadow-land below us, and the ground fell away suddenly before us. + Well, our three sketches were, in the first place, different in + shape; either from our physical differences, or from a habit of + drawing certain shapes of a picture, which itself usually + indicates--as you know, or ought to know--whether we are looking far + or near. Two were oblong, but of different proportions; one was more + nearly a square; the distance taken in to the right and left was + smaller in the latter case, and, on the contrary, the height up and + down--that is to say, the portion of land beneath and the portion of + sky above--was greater. In each picture the clouds were treated with + different precision and different attention. In one picture the open + sky above was the main intention of the picture. In two pictures the + upper sky was of no consequence--it was the clouds and the mountains + that were insisted upon. The drawing was the same, that is to say, + the general make of things; but each man had involuntarily looked + upon what was most interesting to him in the whole sight; and though + the whole sight was what he meant to represent, he had unconsciously + preferred a beauty or an interest of things different from what his + neighbour liked. + + "The colour of each painting was different--the vivacity of colour + and tone, the distinctness of each part in relation to the whole; + and each picture would have been recognized anywhere as a specimen + of work by each one of us, characteristic of our names. And we spent + on the whole affair perhaps twenty minutes. + + "I wish you to understand, again, that we each thought and felt as if + we had been photographing the matter before us. We had not the first + desire of expressing _ourselves_, and I think would have been very + much worried had we not felt that each one was true to nature. And + we were each one true to nature.... If you ever know how to paint + somewhat well, and pass beyond the position of the student who has + not yet learned to use his hands as an expression of the memories of + his brain, you will always give to nature, that is to say, what is + outside of you, the character of the lens through which you see + it--which is yourself." + +Such bits of testimony from painters help us to understand the brief +sayings of the critics, like Taine's well-known "Art is nature seen +through a temperament," G. L. Raymond's "Art is nature made human," and +Croce's "Art is the expression of impressions." These painters and critics +agree, evidently, that the mind of the artist is an organism which acts as +a "transformer." It receives the reports of the senses, but alters these +reports in transmission and it is precisely in this alteration that the +most personal and essential function of the artist's brain is to be +found. + +Remembering this, let the student of poetry now recall the diagram used in +handbooks of psychology to illustrate the process of sensory stimulus of a +nerve-centre and the succeeding motor reaction. The diagram is usually +drawn after this fashion: + +Sensory stimulus Nerve-centre Motor Reaction +________________________________O______________________________ + --------------------> --------------------> + +The process is thus described by William James: +[Footnote: _Psychology, Briefer Course_, American Science Series, p. 91. +Henry Holt.] + + "The afferent nerves, when excited by some physical irritant, be this as + gross in its mode of operation as a chopping axe or as subtle as the + waves of light, convey the excitement to the nervous centres. The + commotion set up in the centres does not stop there, but discharges + through the efferent nerves, exciting movements which vary with the + animal and with the irritant applied." + +The familiar laboratory experiment irritates with a drop of acid the hind +leg of a frog. Even if the frog's brain has been removed, leaving the +spinal cord alone to represent the nervous system, the stimulus of the +acid results in an instant movement of the leg. Sensory stimulus, +consequent excitement of the nerve centre and then motor reaction is the +law. Thus an alarmed cuttlefish secretes an inky fluid which colors the +sea-water and serves as his protection. Such illustrations may be +multiplied indefinitely. +[Footnote: See the extremely interesting statement by Sara Teasdale, +quoted in Miss Wilkinson's _New Voices_, p. 199. Macmillan, 1919.] +It may seem fanciful to insist upon the analogy between a frightened +cuttlefish squirting ink into sea-water and an agitated poet spreading ink +upon paper, but in both cases, as I have said elsewhere, "it is a question +of an organism, a stimulus and a reaction. The image of the solitary +reaper stirs a Wordsworth, and the result is a poem; a profound sorrow +comes to Alfred Tennyson, and he produces _In Memoriam_." +[Footnote: _Counsel upon the Reading of Books_, p. 219. Houghton Mifflin +Company.] + +In the next chapter we must examine this process with more detail. But the +person who asks himself how poetry comes into being will find a +preliminary answer by reflecting upon the relation of "impression" to +"expression" in every nerve-organism, and in all the arts. Everywhere he +must reckon with this ceaseless current of impressions, "the stream of +consciousness," sweeping inward to the brain; everywhere he will detect +modification, selections, alterations in the stream as it passes through +the higher nervous centres; everywhere he will find these transformed +"impressions" expressed in the terms of some specific medium. Thus the +temple of Karnak expresses in huge blocks of stone an imagination which +has brooded over the idea of the divine permanence. The Greek +"discus-thrower" is the idealized embodiment of a typical kind of athlete, +a conception resulting from countless visual and tactile sensations. An +American millionaire buys a "Corot" or a "Monet," that is to say, a piece +of colored canvas upon which a highly individualized artistic temperament +has recorded its vision or impression of some aspect of the world as it +has been interpreted by Corot's or Monet's eye and brain and hand. A +certain stimulus or "impression," an organism which reshapes impressions, +and then an "expression" of these transformed impressions into the terms +permitted by some specific material: that is the threefold process which +seems to be valid in all of the fine arts. It is nowhere more intricately +fascinating than in poetry. + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE PROVINCE OF POETRY + + "The more I read and re-read the works of the great poets, + and the more I study the writings of those who have some + Theory of Poetry to set forth, the more am I convinced that + the question _What is Poetry?_ can be properly answered only if + we make _What it does_ take precedence of _How it does it_." + J. A. STEWART, _The Myths of Plato_ + +In the previous chapter we have attempted a brief survey of some of the +general aesthetic questions which arise whenever we consider the form and +meaning of the fine arts. We must now try to look more narrowly at the +special field of poetry, asking ourselves how it comes into being, what +material it employs, and how it uses this material to secure those +specific effects which we all agree in calling "poetical," however widely +we may differ from one another in our analysis of the means by which the +effect is produced. + +Let us begin with a truism. It is universally admitted that poetry, like +each of the fine arts, has a field of its own. To run a surveyor's +line accurately around the borders of this field, determining what belongs +to it rather than to the neighboring arts, is always difficult and +sometimes impossible. But the field itself is admittedly "there," in all +its richness and beauty, however bitterly the surveyors may quarrel about +the boundary lines. (It is well to remember that professional surveyors do +not themselves own these fields or raise any crops upon them!) How much +map-making ingenuity has been devoted to this task of grouping and +classifying the arts: distinguishing between art and fine art, between +artist, artificer and artisan; seeking to arrange a hierarchy of the arts +on the basis of their relative freedom from fixed ends, their relative +complexity or comprehensiveness of effect, their relative obligation to +imitate or represent something that exists in nature! No one cares +particularly to-day about such matters of precedence--as if the arts were +walking in a carefully ordered ecclesiastical procession. On the other +hand, there is ever-increasing recognition of the soundness of the +distinction made by Lessing in his _Laokoon: or the Limits of Painting and +Poetry_; namely, that the fine arts differ, as media of expression, +according to the nature of the material which they employ. That is to say, +the "time-arts"--like poetry and music--deal primarily with actions that +succeed one another in time. The space-arts--painting, sculpture, +architecture--deal primarily with bodies that coexist in space. Hence +there are some subjects that belong naturally in the "painting" group, and +others that belong as naturally in the "poetry" group. The artist should +not "confuse the genres," or, to quote Whistler again, he should not push +a medium further than it will go. Recent psychology has more or less upset +Lessing's technical theory of vision, +[Footnote: F. E. Bryant, _The Limits of Descriptive Writing_, etc. Ann +Arbor, 1906.] +but it has confirmed the value of his main contention as to the fields +of the various arts. + + +_1. The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice_ + +An illustration will make this matter clear. Let us take the Greek myth of +Orpheus and Eurydice, which has been utilized by many artists during more +than two thousand years assuredly, and how much longer no one knows. +Virgil told it in the _Georgics_ and Ovid in the _Metamorphoses_. It +became a favorite theme of medieval romance, and whether told in a French +_lai_ or Scottish ballad like "King Orfeo," it still keeps, among all the +strange transformations which it has undergone, "the freshness of the +early world." Let us condense the story from King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon +version of Boethius's _De Consolatione Philosophiae_: "There was once a +famous Thracian harper named Orpheus who had a beautiful wife named +Eurydice. She died and went to hell. Orpheus longed sorrowfully for her, +harping so sweetly that the very woods and wild beasts listened to his +woe. Finally, he resolved to seek her in hell and win her back by his +skill. And he played so marvelously there that the King of Hell to reward +him gave him back his wife again, only upon the condition that he should +not turn back to look at her as he led her forth. But, alas, who can +constrain love? When Orpheus came to the boundary of darkness and light, +he turned round to see if his wife was following--and she vanished." + +Such was the myth in one of its manifold European forms. It deals +obviously with a succession of events, with actions easily narratable by +means of a "time-art" like poetry. The myth itself is one of fascinating +human interest, and if a prose writer like Hawthorne had chosen to tell it +in his _Wonder-Book_, we should doubtless speak of it as a "poetic" story. +We should mean, in using that adjective, that the myth contained +sentiment, imagination, passion, dramatic climax, pathos--the qualities +which we commonly associate with poetry--and that Hawthorne, although a +prose writer, had such an exquisite sympathy for Greek stories that his +handling of the material would be as delicate, and the result possibly as +lovely, as if the tale had been told in verse. But if we would realize the +full value of Lessing's distinction, we must turn to one of the countless +verse renderings of the myth. Here we have a succession of actions, +indeed, quite corresponding to those of the prose story. But these images +of action, succeeding one another in time, are now evoked by successive +musical sounds,--the sounds being, as in prose, arbitrary word-symbols of +image and idea,--only that in poetry the sounds have a certain ordered +arrangement which heightens the emotional effect of the images evoked. +Prose writer and poet might mean to tell precisely the same tale, but in +reality they cannot, for one is composing, no matter how cunningly, in the +tunes of prose and the other in the tunes of verse. The change in the +instrument means an alteration in the mental effect. + +Now turn to Lessing's other exemplar of the time-arts, the musician--for +musicians as well as poets, painters and sculptors have utilized the myth +of Orpheus and Eurydice. What can the musician do with the theme? Gluck's +opera may serve for answer. He cannot, by the aid of music alone, call up +very definite ideas or images. He cannot tell the Orpheus story clearly to +one who has never heard it. But to one who already knows the tale, a +composer's overture--without stage accessories or singing actors or any +"operatic" devices as such--furnishes in its successions and combinations +of musical sound, without the use of verbal symbols, a unique pleasurable +emotion which strongly and powerfully reinforces the emotions suggested by +the Orpheus myth itself. Certain portions of the story, such as those +relating to the wondrous harping, can obviously be interpreted better +through music than through the medium of any other art. + +What can Lessing's "space-arts," sculpture and painting, do with the +material furnished by the Orpheus myth? It is clear that they cannot tell +the whole story, since they are dealing with "bodies that coexist" rather +than with successive actions. They must select some one instant of action +only, and preferably the most significant moment of the whole, the parting +of husband and wife. In the museum at Naples there is the wonderful Greek +treatment of this theme, in sculptured high relief. The sculptor has +chosen the moment of parting. Hermes, the messenger of the gods to recall +Eurydice, has twined his hand gently around the left hand of the woman. +With her right hand she still touches her husband, but the dread instant +is upon them all. The sculptor, representing the persons in three +dimensions, as far as high relief allows, has sufficiently +characterized their faces and figures, and with exquisite sense of rhythm +and balance in his composition has fulfilled every requirement of formal +beauty that marble affords. + +In Sir Frederick Leighton's painting of Orpheus and Eurydice and in many +another less famous painter's rendering of the theme, there is likewise +the portrayal of an arrested moment. But the painter represents the +personages and the background in two dimensions. He can separate his +figures more completely than the sculptor, can make their instant of +action more "dramatic," can portray certain objects, such as the +diaphanous robe of Eurydice as she vanishes into mist, which are beyond +the power of the sculptor to represent, and above all he can suggest the +color of the objects themselves, the degree of light and shade, the +"atmosphere" of the whole, in a fashion unapproachable by the rival arts. + +The illustration need not be worked out more elaborately here, though the +student may profitably reflect upon the resources of the modern moving +picture--which is a novel combination of the "time" and "space" arts--and +of the mimetic dance, as affording still further opportunities for +expressing the artistic possibilities of the Orpheus story. But the chief +lesson to be learned by one who is attempting in this way to survey the +provinces of the different arts is this: no two of all the artists who +have availed themselves of the Orpheus material have _really had the same +subject_, although the title of each of their productions, if catalogued, +might conveniently be called "Orpheus and Eurydice." Each has had his own +conception of the theme, each his own professional technique in handling +his chosen medium, each his own habits of brain, each, in a word, has +found his own subject. "Are these children who are playing in the +sunlight," said Fromentin, "or is it a place in the sunlight in +which children are playing?" One is a "figure" subject, that is to say, +while the other is a landscape subject. + +The whole topic of the "provinces" of the arts becomes hopelessly academic +and sterile if one fails to keep his eye upon the individual artist, whose +free choice of a subject is conditioned solely by his own artistic +interest in rendering such aspects of any theme as his own medium of +expression will allow him to represent. Take one of the most beautiful +objects in nature, a quiet sea. Is this a "painter-like" subject? +Assuredly, yet the etcher has often rendered the effect of a quiet sea in +terms of line, as a pastellist has rendered it in terms of color, and a +musician in terms of tone-feeling, and a poet in terms of tone-feeling +plus thought. Each one of them finds something for himself, selects +his own "subject," from the material presented by the quiet sea, and +whatever he may find belongs to him. We declaim against the confusion of +the genres, the attempt to render in the terms of one art what belongs, as +we had supposed, to another art, and we are often right in our protest. +Yet artists have always been jumping each other's claims, and the sole +test of the lawfulness of the procedure is the success of the result. If +the border-foray of the impressionist or imagist proves successful, well +and good, but a triumphant raid should not be mistaken for the steady +lines of the main campaign. + + +_2. The Special Field_ + +What then do we mean by the province of poetry? Simply that there is a +special field in which, for uncounted centuries, poets have produced a +certain kind of artistic effect. Strictly speaking, it is better to say +"poets" rather than "the poet," just as William James confesses that +strictly speaking there is no such thing as "the Imagination," there are +only imaginations. But "the poet" is a convenient expression to indicate a +man functioning _qua_ poet--i.e. a man poetizing; and we shall continue to +use it. When we say that "the poet" in Sir Walter Scott inspires this or +that utterance, while "the novelist" or "the historian" or "the critic" in +him has prompted this or that other utterance, we are within our rights. + +The field of poetry, as commonly understood, is that portion of human +feeling which expresses itself through rhythmical and preferably metrical +language. In this field "the poet" labors. The human feeling which he +embodies in verse comes to him originally, as feeling comes to all men, in +connection with a series of mental images. These visual, auditory, motor +or tactile images crowd the stream of consciousness as it sweeps inward to +the brain. There the images are subjected to a process of selection, +modification, transformation. +[Footnote: "The finest poetry was first experience; but the thought +has suffered a transformation since it was an experience." Emerson, +_Shakespeare: The Poet_.] +At some point in the process the poet's images tend to become verbal,--as +the painter's or the musician's do not,--and these verbal images are then +discharged in rhythmical patterns. It is one type of the threefold process +roughly described at the close of Chapter I. What is peculiar to the poet +as compared with other men or other artists is to be traced not so much in +the peculiar nature of his visual, auditory, motor or tactile images--for +in this respect poets differ enormously among one another--as in the +increasingly verbal form of these images as they are reshaped by his +imagination, and in the strongly rhythmical or metrical character of the +final expression. + +Let carbon represent the first of the stages, the excited feeling +resulting from sensory stimulus. That is the raw material of poetic +emotion. Let the diamond represent the second stage, the chemical change, +as it were, produced in the mental images under the heat and pressure of +the imagination. The final stage would be represented by the cutting, +polishing and setting of the diamond, by the arrangement of the +transformed and now purely verbal images into effective rhythmical or +metrical designs. + +Wordsworth once wrote of true poets who possessed + + "The vision and the faculty divine, + Though wanting the accomplishment of verse." + +Let us venture to apply Wordsworth's terminology to the process already +described. The "vision" of the poet would mean his sense-impressions of +every kind, his experience, as Goethe said, of "the outer world, the inner +world and the other world." The "faculty divine," into which vision blends +insensibly, would mean the mysterious change of these sense-impressions-- +as they become subjected to reflection, comparison, memory, "passion +recollected in tranquillity,"--into words possessing a peculiar life and +power. The "accomplishment of verse" is easier to understand. It is the +expression, by means of these words now pulsating with rhythm--the natural +language of excitement--of whatever the poet has seen and felt, modified +by his imagination. The result is a poem: "embodied feeling." + +Browning says to his imaginary poet: + + "Your brains beat into rhythm--you tell + What we felt only." + +There is much virtue, for us, in this rudely vigorous description of "the +poet." Certainly all of us feel, and thus far we are all potential poets. +But according to Browning there is, so to speak, a physiological +difference between the poet's brain and ours. His brain beats into rhythm; +that is the simple but enormous difference in function, and hence it is +that he can tell what we only feel. That is, he becomes a "singer" as well +as "maker," while we, conscious though we may be of the capacity for +intense feeling, cannot embody our feelings in the forms of verse. We may +indeed go so far as to reshape mental images in our heated brains--for all +men do this under excitement, but to sing what we have thus made is denied +to us. + + +_3. An Illustration from William James_ + +No one can be more conscious than the present writer of the impossibility +of describing in plain prose the admittedly complicated and mysterious +series of changes by which poetry comes into being. Those readers who find +that even the lines just quoted from Wordsworth and Browning throw little +new light upon the old difficulties, may nevertheless get a bit of help +here by turning back to William James's diagram of the working of the +brain. It will be remembered that in Chapter I we used the simplest +possible chart to represent the sensory stimulus of a nerve-centre and the +succeeding motor reaction, and we compared the "in-coming" and "out-going" +nerve processes with the function of Impression and Expression in the +arts. But to understand something of what takes place in the making of +poetry we must now substitute for our first diagram the slightly more +complicated one which William James employs to represent, not those lower +nerve-centres which "act from present sensational stimuli alone," but the +hemispheres of the human brain which "act from considerations." +[Footnote: _Psychology, Briefer Course_, pp. 97, 98. Henry Holt.] +Considerations are images constructed out of past experience, they are +reproductions of what has been felt or witnessed. + + "They are, in short, _remote_ sensations; and the main difference + between the hemisphereless animal and the whole one may be concisely + expressed by saying that _the one obeys absent, the other only present, + objects. The hemispheres would then seem to be the chief seat of + memory._" + +Then follows the accompanying diagram and illustration. + + "If we liken the nervous currents to electric currents, we can compare + the nervous system, _C_, below the hemispheres to a direct circuit from + sense-organ to muscle along the line _S... C... M_. The hemisphere, _H_, + adds the long circuit or loop-line through which the current may pass + when for any reason the direct line is not used. + +[Illustration: M ?----- C ?----- H ?----- C ?---- S ] + + "Thus, a tired wayfarer on a hot day throws himself on the damp earth + beneath a maple-tree. The sensations of delicious rest and coolness + pouring themselves through the direct line would naturally discharge + into the muscles of complete extension: he would abandon himself to the + dangerous repose. But the loop-line being open, part of the current is + drafted along it, and awakens rheumatic or catarrhal reminiscences, + which prevail over the instigations of sense, and make the man arise and + pursue his way to where he may enjoy his rest more safely." + +William James's entire discussion of the value of the hemisphere +"loop-line" as a reservoir of reminiscences is of peculiar suggestiveness +to the student of poetry. For it is along this loop-line of "memories and +ideas of the distant" that poetry wins its generalizing or universalizing +power. It is here that the life of reason enters into the life of mere +sensation, transforming the reports of the nerves into ideas and thoughts +that have coherence and general human significance. It is possible, +certainly, as the experiments of contemporary "imagists" prove, to write +poetry of a certain type without employing the "loop-line." But this is +pure sensorium verse, the report of retinal, auditory or tactile images, +and nothing more. "Response to impressions and representation of those +impressions in their _original isolation_ are the marks of the new poetry. +Response to impressions, _correlation of those impressions into a +connected body of phenomena_, and final interpretation of them as a whole +are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all +literature, whether poetry or prose." +[Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naiveté," _Atlantic_, April, +1916.] +To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not, +except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to +the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ocular envelopes or +auditory canals. Their power lies in their freightage of association, +in their tactical position at the focus of converging experience, in +the number and vigor of the occasions in which they have crossed and +re-crossed the palpitating thoroughfares of life. ... Sense-impressions +are poetically valuable only in the measure of their power to procreate or +re-create experience." +[Footnote: O. W. Firkins, "The New Movement in Poetry," _Nation_, October +14, 1915.] + +One may give the fullest recognition to the delicacy and sincerity of +imagist verse, to its magical skill in seeming to open new doors of sense +experience by merely shutting the old doors of memory, to its naive +courage in rediscovering the formula of "Back to Nature." +[Footnote: See the discussion of imagist verse in chap. III.] +Like "free verse," it has widened the field of expression, although its +advocates have sometimes forgotten that thousands of "imagist" poems lie +embedded in the verse of Browning and even in the prose of George +Meredith. +[Footnote: J. L. Lowes, "An Unacknowledged Imagist," _Nation_, February +24, 1916.] +We shall discuss some of its tenets later, but it should be noted at this +point that the radical deficiency of imagist verse, as such, is in its +lack of general ideas. Much of it might have been written by an infinitely +sensitive decapitated frog. It is "hemisphereless" poetry. + + +_4. The Poet and Other Men_ + +The mere physical vision of the poet may or may not be any keener than the +vision of other men. There is an infinite variety in the bodily endowments +of habitual verse-makers: there have been near-sighted poets like +Tennyson, far-sighted poets like Wordsworth, and, in the well-known +case of Robert Browning, a poet conveniently far-sighted in one eye and +near-sighted in the other! No doubt the life-long practice of observing +and recording natural phenomena sharpens the sense of poets, as it does +the senses of Indians, naturalists, sailors and all outdoors men. The +quick eye for costume and character possessed by a Chaucer or a Shakspere +is remarkable, but equally so is the observation of a Dickens or a Balzac. +It is rather in what we call psychical vision that the poet is wont to +excel, that is, in his ability to perceive the meaning of visual +phenomena. Here he ceases to be a mere reporter of retinal images, and +takes upon himself the higher and harder function of an interpreter of the +visible world. He has no immunity from the universal human experiences: he +loves and he is angry and he sees men born and die. He becomes according +to the measure of his intellectual capacity a thinker. He strives to see +into the human heart, to comprehend the working of the human mind. He +reads the divine justice in the tragic fall of Kings. He penetrates +beneath the external forms of Nature and perceives her as a "living +presence." Yet the faculty of vision which the poet possesses in so +eminent a degree is shared by many who are not poets. Darwin's outward eye +was as keen as Wordsworth's; St. Paul's sense of the reality of the +invisible world is more wonderful than Shakspere's. The poet is indeed +first of all a seer, but he must be something more than a seer before he +is wholly poet. + +Another mark of the poetic mind is its vivid sense of relations. The part +suggests the whole. In the single instance there is a hint of the general +law. The self-same Power that brings the fresh rhodora to the woods brings +the poet there also. In the field-mouse, the daisy, the water-fowl, he +beholds types and symbols. His own experience stands for all men's. The +conscience-stricken Macbeth is a poet when he cries, "Life is a walking +shadow," and King Lear makes the same pathetic generalization when he +exclaims, "What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?" Through the +shifting phenomena of the present the poet feels the sweep of the +universe; his mimic play and "the great globe itself" are alike an +"insubstantial pageant," though it may happen, as Tennyson said of +Wordsworth, that even in the transient he gives the sense of the +abiding, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." + +But this perception of relations, characteristic as it is of the poetic +temper, is also an attribute of the philosopher. The intellect of a +Newton, too, leaps from the specific instance to the general law; every +man, in proportion to his intelligence and insight, feels that the world +is one; while Plato and Descartes play with the time and space world with +all the grave sportiveness of Prospero. + +Again, the poets have always been the "genus irritabile"--the irritable +tribe. They not only see deeply, but feel acutely. Often they are too +highly sensitized for their own happiness. If they receive a pleasure more +exquisite than ours from a flower, a glimpse of the sea, a gracious +action, they are correspondingly quick to feel dissonances, imperfections, +slights. Like Lamb, they are "rather squeamish about their women and +children." Like Keats, they are "snuffed out by an article." Keener +pleasures, keener pains, this is the law of their life; but it is +applicable to all persons of the so-called artistic temperament. It is one +of the penalties of a fine organism. It does not of itself describe a +poet. +[Footnote: I have here utilized a few paragraphs from my chapter on +"Poetry" in _Counsel upon the Reading of Books_, Houghton Mifflin +Company.] + +The real difference between "the poet" and other men is rather to be +traced, as the present chapter has tried to indicate, in his capacity for +making and employing verbal images of a certain kind, and combining these +images into rhythmical and metrical designs. In each of his functions--as +"seer," as "maker," and as "singer"--he shows himself a true creator. +Criticism no longer attempts to act as his "law-giver," to assert what he +may or may not do. The poet is free, like every creative artist, to make a +beautiful object in any way he can. And nevertheless criticism--watching +countless poets lovingly for many a century, observing their various +endowments, their manifest endeavors, their victories and defeats, +observing likewise the nature of language, that strange medium (so much +stranger than any clay or bronze!) through which poets are compelled to +express their conceptions--criticism believes that poetry, like +each of the sister arts, has its natural province, its own field of the +beautiful. We have tried in this chapter to suggest the general direction +of that field, without looking too narrowly for its precise boundaries. In +W. H. Hudson's _Green Mansions_ the reader will remember how a few sticks +and stones, laid upon a hilltop, were used as markers to indicate the +outlines of a continent. Criticism, likewise, needs its poor sticks and +stones of commonplace, if it is to point out any roadway. Our own road +leads first into the difficult territory of the poet's imaginings, and +then into the more familiar world of the poet's words. + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE POET'S IMAGINATION + + "The essence of poetry is _invention_; such invention as, by producing + something unexpected, surprises and delights." + SAMUEL JOHNSON + + "The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets." + WALT WHITMAN + +We must not at the outset insist too strongly upon the radical +distinction between "the poet"--as we have called him for +convenience--and other men. The common sense of mankind asserts that this +distinction exists, yet it also asserts that all children are poets after +a certain fashion, and that the vast majority of adult persons are, at +some moment or other, susceptible to poetic feeling. A small girl, the +other day, spoke of a telegraph wire as "that message-vine." Her father +and mother smiled at this naive renaming of the world of fact. It was a +child's instinctive "poetizing" imagination, but the father and mother, +while no longer capable, perhaps, of such daring verbal magic, were +conscious that they had too often played with the world of fact, and, for +the instant at least, remoulded it into something nearer the heart's +desire. That is to say, they could still feel "poetically," though their +wonderful chance of making up new names for everything had gone as soon as +the gates were shut upon the Paradise of childhood. + +All readers of poetry agree that it originates somehow in feeling, and +that if it be true poetry, it stimulates feeling in the hearer. And all +readers agree likewise that feeling is transmitted from the maker of +poetry to the enjoyer of poetry by means of the imagination. But the +moment we pass beyond these accepted truisms, difficulties begin. + + +_1. Feeling and Imagination_ + +What is feeling, and exactly how is it bound up with the imagination? The +psychology of feeling remains obscure, even after the labors of +generations of specialists; and it is obvious that the general theories +about the nature of imagination have shifted greatly, even within the +memory of living men. Nevertheless there are some facts, in this +constantly contested territory, which now seem indisputable. One of them, +and of peculiar significance to students of poetry, is this: in the stream +of objects immediately present to consciousness there are no images of +feeling itself. +[Footnote: This point has been elaborated with great care in Professor A. +H. R. Fairchild's _Making of Poetry_. Putnam's, 1912.] + +"If I am asked to call up an image of a rose, of a tree, of a cloud, or of +a skylark, I can readily do it; but if I am asked to feel loneliness or +sorrow, to feel hatred or jealousy, or to feel joy on the return of +spring, I cannot readily do it. And the reason why I cannot do it is +because I can call up no image of any one of these feelings. For +everything I come to know through my senses, for everything in connection +with what I do or feel I can call up some kind of mental image; but for no +kind of feeling itself can I ever possibly have a direct image. The only +effective way of arousing any particular feeling that is more than mere +bodily feeling is to call up the images that are naturally connected with +that feeling." +[Footnote: Fairchild, pp. 24, 25.] + +If then, "the raw material of poetry," as Professor Fairchild insists, +is "the mental image," we must try to see how these images are presented +to the mind of the poet and in turn communicated to us. Instead of +asserting, as our grandfathers did, that the imagination is a "faculty" +of the mind, like "judgment," or accepting the theory of our fathers that +imagination "is the whole mind thrown into the process of imagining," the +present generation has been taught by psychologists like Charcot, James +and Ribot that we are chiefly concerned with "imaginations," that is, a +series of visual, auditory, motor or tactile images flooding in upon the +mind, and that it is safer to talk about these "imaginations" than about +"the Imagination." Literary critics will continue to use this last +expression--as we are doing in the present chapter--because it is too +convenient to be given up. But they mean by it something fairly definite: +namely, the images swarming in the stream of consciousness, and their +integration into wholes that satisfy the human desire for beauty. It is +in its ultimate aim rather than in its immediate processes that the +"artistic" imagination differs from the inventor's or scientist's or +philosopher's imagination. We no longer assert, as did Stopford Brooke +some forty years ago, that "the highest scientific intellect is a joke +compared with the power displayed by a Shakespeare, a Homer, a Dante." We +are inclined rather to believe that in its highest exercise of power the +scientific mind is attempting much the same feat as the highest type of +poetic mind, and that in both cases it is a feat of imaginative energy. + + +_2. Creative and Artistic Imagination_ + +The reader who has hitherto allowed himself to think of a poet as a sort +of freak of nature, abnormal in the very constitution of his mind, and +achieving his results by methods so obscure that "inspiration" is our +helpless name for indicating them, cannot do better than master such a +book as Ribot's _Essay on the Creative Imagination_. +[Footnote: Th. Ribot, _Essai sur l'Imagination créatrice_. Paris, 1900. +English translation by Open Court Co., Chicago, 1906.] +This famous psychologist, starting with the conception that the raw +material for the creative imagination is images, and that its basis lies +in a motor impulse, examines first the emotional factor involved in every +act of the creative imagination. Then he passes to the unconscious factor, +the involuntary "coming" of the idea, that "moment of genius," as Buffon +called it, which often marks the end of an unconscious elaboration of the +idea or the beginning of conscious elaboration. +[Footnote: See the quotation from Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the +mathematician, in the "Notes and Illustrations" for this chapter.] +Ribot points out that certain organic changes, as in blood circulation-- +the familiar rush of blood to the head--accompany imaginative activity. +Then he discusses the inventor's and artist's "fixed idea," their "will +that it shall be so," "the motor tendency of images engendering the +ideal." Ribot's distinction between the animal's revival of images and the +true creative combination of images in the mental life of children and of +primitive man bears directly upon poetry, but even more suggestive to us +is his diagram of the successive stages by which inventions come into +being. There are two types of this process, and three stages of each: (A) +the "idea," the "discovery" or invention, and then the verification or +application; or else (B) the unconscious preparation, followed +by the "idea" or "inspiration," and then by the "development" or +construction. Whether a man is inventing a safety-pin or a sonnet, the +series of imaginative processes seems to be much the same. There is of +course a typical difference between the "plastic" imagination, dealing +with clear images, objective relations, and seen at its best in the arts +of form like sculpture and architecture, and that "diffluent" imagination +which prefers vaguely outlined images, which is markedly subjective and +emotional, and of which modern music like Debussy's is a good example. But +whatever may be the specific type of imagination involved, we find alike +in inventor, scientist and artist the same general sequence of "germ, +incubation, flowering and completion," and the same fundamental motor +impulse as the driving power. + +Holding in mind these general characteristics of the creative imagination, +as traced by Ribot, let us now test our conception of the distinctively +artistic imagination. Countless are the attempts to define or describe it, +and it would be unwise for the student, at this point, to rest satisfied +with any single formulation of its functions. But it may be helpful to +quote a paragraph from Hartley B. Alexander's brilliant and subtle book, +_Poetry and the Individual_: +[Footnote: Putnam's, 1906.] + + "The energy of the mind or of the soul--for it welds all psychical + activities--which is the agent of our world-winnings and the + procreator of our growing life, we term imagination. It is + distinguished from perception by its relative freedom from the + dictation of sense; it is distinguished from memory by its power to + acquire--memory only retains; it is distinguished from emotion in + being a force rather than a motive; from the understanding in being + an assimilator rather than the mere weigher of what is set before it; + from the will, because the will is but the wielder of the reins--the + will is but the charioteer, the imagination is the Pharaoh in + command. It is distinguished from all these, yet it includes them + all, for it is the full functioning of the whole mind and in the + total activity drives all mental faculties to its one supreme + end--the widening of the world wherein we dwell. Through beauty the + world grows, and it is the business of the imagination to create the + beautiful. The imagination synthesises, humanises, personalises, + illumines reality with the soul's most intimate moods, and so exalts + with spiritual understandings." + +The value of such a description, presented without any context, will vary +with the training of the individual reader, but its quickening power will +be recognized even by those who are incapable of grasping all the +intellectual distinctions involved. + + +_3. Poetic Imagination in Particular_ + +We are now ready, after this consideration of the creative and artistic +imagination, to look more closely at some of the qualities of the poetic +imagination in particular. The specific formal features of that +imagination lie, as we have seen, in its use of verbal imagery, and in the +combination of verbal images into rhythmical patterns. But are there not +functions of the poet's mind preceding the formation of verbal images? The +psychology of language is still unsettled, and whether a man can think +without the use of words is often doubted. But a painter can certainly +"think" in terms of color, as an architect or mathematician can "think" in +terms of form and space, or a musician in terms of sound, without +employing verbal symbols at all. And are there not characteristic +activities of the poetic imagination which antedate the fixation and +expression of images in words? Apparently there are. + +The reader will find, in the "Notes and Illustrations" for this chapter, a +quotation from Mr. Lascelles-Abercrombie, in which he refers to the +"region where the outward radiations of man's nature combine with the +irradiations of the world." That is to say, the inward-sweeping stream of +consciousness is instantly met by an outward-moving activity of the brain +which recognizes relationships between the objects proffered to the senses +and the personality itself. The "I" projects itself into these objects, +claims them, appropriates them as a part of its own nature. Professor +Fairchild, who calls this self-projecting process by the somewhat +ambiguous name of "personalizing," rightly insists, I believe, that poets +make a more distinctive use of this activity than other men. He quotes +some of the classic confidences of poets themselves: Keats's "If a sparrow +come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the +gravel"; and Goethe on the sheep pictured by the artist Roos, "I always +feel uneasy when I look at these beasts. Their state, so limited, dull, +gaping, and dreaming, excites in me such sympathy that I fear I shall +become a sheep, and almost think the artist must have been one." I can +match this Goethe story with the prayer of little Larry H., son of an +eminent Harvard biologist. Larry, at the age of six, was taken by his +mother to the top of a Vermont hill-pasture, where, for the first time in +his life, he saw a herd of cows and was thrilled by their glorious bigness +and nearness and novelty. When he said his prayers that night, he was +enough of a poet to change his usual formula into this: + + "Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, + Bless thy little _cow_ to-night"-- + +_Larry being the cow._ + + "There was a child went forth every day," + +records Walt Whitman, + + "And the first object he look'd upon that object + he became." + +Professor Fairchild quotes these lines from Whitman, and a few of the many +passages of the same purport from Coleridge and Wordsworth. They are all +summed up in Coleridge's heart-broken + + "Oh, Lady, we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone does Nature live." + +This "animism," or identifying imagination, by means of which the child or +the primitive man or the poet transfers his own life into the unorganic or +organic world, is one of the oldest and surest indications of poetic +faculty, and as far as we can see, it is antecedent to the use of verbal +images or symbols. + +Another characteristic of the poetic temperament, allied with the +preceding, likewise seems to belong in the region where words are not as +yet emerging above the threshold of consciousness. I mean the strange +feeling, witnessed to by many poets, of the fluidity, fusibility, +transparency--the infinitely changing and interchangeable aspects--of the +world as it appears to the senses. It is evident that poets are not +looking--at least when in this mood--at our "logical" world of hard, clear +fact and law. They are gazing rather at what Whitman called "the eternal +float of solution," the "flowing of all things" of the Greeks, the +"river within the river" of Emerson. This tendency is peculiarly marked, +of course, in artists possessing the "diffluent" type of imagination, and +Romantic poets and critics have had much to say about it. The imagination, +said Wordsworth, "recoils from everything but the plastic, the pliant, the +indefinite." +[Footnote: Preface to 1815 edition of his _Poems_.] +"Shakespeare, too," says Carlye, +[Footnote: Essay on Goethe's Works.] +"does not look _at_ a thing, but into it, through it; so that he +constructively comprehends it, can take it asunder and put it together +again; _the thing melts as it were, into light under his eye, and anew +creates itself before him_. That is to say, he is a Poet. For Goethe, as +for Shakespeare, _the world lies all translucent, all fusible_ we might +call it, encircled with _Wonder_; the Natural in reality the Supernatural, +for to the seer's eyes both become one." + +In his essay on Tieck Carlyle remarks again upon this characteristic of +the mind of the typical poet: "He is no mere observer and compiler; +rendering back to us, with additions or subtractions, the Beauty which +existing things have of themselves presented to him; but a true Maker, to +whom the actual and external is but the excitement for ideal creations +representing and ennobling its effects." + +Coleridge's formula is briefer still; the imagination "dissolves, +diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create." +[Footnote: _Biographia Literaria_.] + +Such passages help us to understand the mystical moments which many poets +have recorded, in which their feeling of "diffusion" has led them to doubt +the existence of the external world. Wordsworth grasping "at a wall or +tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality," and +Tennyson's "weird seizures" which he transferred from his own experience +to his imaginary Prince in _The Princess_, are familiar examples of this +type of mysticism. But the sense of the infinite fusibility and change in +the objective world is deeper than that revealed in any one type of +diffluent imagination. It is a profound characteristic of the poetic +mind as such. Yet it should be remembered that the philosopher and +the scientist likewise assert that ours is a vital, ever-flowing, +onward-urging world, in the process of "becoming" rather than merely +"being." "We are far from the noon of man" sang Tennyson, in a +late-Victorian and evolutionary version of St. John's "It doth not +yet appear what we shall be." "The primary imagination," asserted +Coleridge, "is a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of +creation in the infinite _I am_." +[Footnote: _Biographia Literaria_, chap. 13.] +Here, evidently, unless the "God-intoxicated" Coleridge is talking +nonsense, we are in the presence of powers that do not need as yet any use +of verbal symbols. + + +_4. Verbal Images_ + +The plasticity of the world as it appears to the mind of the poet is +clearly evidenced by the swarm of images which present themselves to the +poet's consciousness. In the re-presentation of these pictures to us the +poet is forced, of course, to use verbal images. The precise point at +which he becomes conscious of employing words no doubt varies with the +individual, and depends upon the relative balance of auditory, visual or +tactile images in his mind. Swinburne often impresses us as working +primarily with the "stuff" of word-sounds, as Browning with the stuff of +sharp-cut tactile or motor images, and Victor Hugo with the stuff of +visual impressions. But in each case the poet's sole medium of _expression +to us_ is through verbal symbols, and it is hard to get behind these into +the real workshop of the brain where each poet is busily minting his own +peculiar raw material into the current coin of human speech. + +Nevertheless, many poets have been sufficiently conscious of what is going +on within their workshop to tell us something about it. Professor +Fairchild has made an interesting collection +[Footnote: _The Making of Poetry_, pp. 78, 79.] +of testimony relating to the tumultuous crowding of images, each +clamoring, as it were, for recognition and crying "take me!" He instances, +as other critics have done, the extraordinary succession of images by +which Shelley strives to portray the spirit of the skylark. The similes +actually chosen by Shelley seem to have been merely the lucky candidates +selected from an infinitely greater number. In Francis Thompson's +captivating description of Shelley as a glorious child the reader is +conscious of the same initial rush of images, although the medium of +expression here is heightened prose instead of verse: +[Footnote: _Dublin Review_, July, 1908.] + + "Coming to Shelley's poetry, we peep over the wild mask of + revolutionary metaphysics, and we see the winsome face of the child. + Perhaps none of his poems is more purely and typically Shelleian than + The Cloud, and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs + from the faculty of make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, + though less purely conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the + child's faculty of make-believe raised to the nth power. He is still + at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, + and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. The + universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. + He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright + mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. + He teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the + shaking of its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of + heaven: its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild + over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets + between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of + patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred + wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in his song." + + +_5. The Selection and Control of Images_ + +It is easier, no doubt, to realize something of the swarming of images in +the stream of consciousness than it is to understand how these images are +selected, combined and controlled. Some principle of association, some law +governing the synthesis, there must be; and English criticism has long +treasured some of the clairvoyant words of Coleridge and Wordsworth upon +this matter. The essential problem is suggested by Wordsworth's phrase +"the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement." Is the +"excitement," then, the chief factor in the selection and combination of +images, and do the "feelings," as if with delicate tentacles, +instinctively choose and reject and integrate such images as blend with +the poet's mood? + +Coleridge, with his subtle builder's instinct, uses his favorite word +"synthesis" not merely as applied to images as such, but to all the +faculties of the soul: + +"The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man +into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other +according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and a +spirit of unity, that blends, and as it were fuses, each into each, by +that synthetic and magical power to which I would exclusively appropriate +the name of Imagination." "Synthetic and magical power," indeed, with a +Coleridge as Master of the Mysteries! But the perplexed student of poetry +may well wish a more exact description of what really takes place. + +An American critic, after much searching in recent psychological +explanations of artistic creation, attempts to describe the genesis of a +poem in these words: +[Footnote: Lewis E. Gates, _Studies and Appreciations_, p. 215. Macmillan, +1900.] + + "The poet concentrates his thought on some concrete piece of life, on + some incident, character, or bit of personal experience; because of + his emotional temperament, this concentration of interest stirs in + him a quick play of feeling and prompts the swift concurrence of many + images. Under the incitement of these feelings, and in accordance + with laws of association that may at least in part be described, + these images grow bright and clear, take definite shapes, fall into + significant groupings, branch and ramify, and break into sparkling + mimicry of the actual world of the senses--all the time delicately + controlled by the poet's conscious purpose and so growing + intellectually significant, but all the time, if the work of art is + to be vital, impelled also in their alert weaving of patterns by the + moods of the poet, by his fine instinctive sense of the emotional + expressiveness of this or that image that lurks in the background of + his consciousness. For this intricate web of images, tinged with his + most intimate moods, the poet through his intuitive command of words + finds an apt series of sound-symbols and records them with written + characters. And so a poem arises through an exquisite distillation of + personal moods into imagery and into language, and is ready to offer + to all future generations its undiminishing store of spiritual joy + and strength." + +A better description than this we are not likely to find, although some +critics would question the phrase, "all the time delicately controlled by +the poet's conscious purpose." +[Footnote: "Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according +to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose +poetry.'. . . It is not subject to the control of the active powers of the +mind. ... Its birth and recurrence have no necessary connection with the +consciousness or will." Shelley, _A Defense of Poetry_.] + +For sometimes, assuredly, the synthesis of images seems to take place +without the volition of the poet. The hypnotic trance, the narcotic dream +or revery, and even our experience of ordinary dreams, provide abundant +examples. One dreams, for instance, of a tidal river, flowing in with a +gentle full current which bends in one direction all the water-weeds and +the long grasses trailing from the banks; then somehow the tide seems to +change, and all the water and the weeds and grasses, even the fishes in +the stream, turn slowly and flow out to sea. The current synthesizes, +harmonizes, moves onward like music,--and we are aware that it is all a +dream. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," composed in a deep opium slumber, moves +like that, one train of images melting into another like the interwoven +figures of a dance led by the "damsel with a dulcimer." There is no +"conscious purpose" whatever, and no "meaning" in the ordinary +interpretation of that word. Nevertheless it is perfect integration of +imagery, pure beauty to the senses. Something of this rapture in the sheer +release of control must have been in Charles Lamb's mind when he wrote to +Coleridge about the "pure happiness" of being insane. "Dream not, +Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till +you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid, comparatively so." (June 10, +1796.) + +If "Kubla Khan" represents one extreme, Poe's account of how he wrote "The +Raven" +[Footnote: _The Philosophy of Composition_.] +--incredible as the story appears to most of us--may serve to illustrate +the other, namely, a cool, conscious, workmanlike control of every element +in the selection and combination of imagery. Wordsworth's naive +explanation of the task performed by the imagination in his "Cuckoo" and +"Leech-Gatherer" +[Footnote: Preface to poems of 1815-1845.] +occupies a middle ground. We are at least certain of his entire +honesty--and incidentally of his total lack of humor! + + "'Shall I call thee Bird, + Or but a wandering Voice?' + +"This concise interrogation characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the +voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal +existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by +a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard +throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight.... + + "'As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie + Couched on the bald top of an eminence, + Wonder to all who do the same espy + By what means it could thither come, and whence, + So that it seems a thing endued with sense, + Like a sea-beast crawled forth, which on a shelf + Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun himself. + + Such seemed this Man; not all alive or dead. + Nor all asleep, in his extreme old age. + * * * * * + Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood, + That heareth not the loud winds when they call, + And moveth altogether if it move at all.' + +"In these images, the conferring, the abstracting, and the modifying +powers of the Imagination, immediately and mediately acting, are all +brought into conjunction. The stone is endowed with something of the power +of life to approximate it to the sea-beast; and the sea-beast stripped of +some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which +intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the +original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure +and condition of the aged man; who is divested of so much of the +indications of life and motion as to bring him to the point +where the two objects unite and coalesce in just comparison." + +Wordsworth's analysis of the processes of his own imagination, like Poe's +story of the composition of "The Raven," is an analysis made after the +imagination had functioned. There can be no absolute proof of its +correctness in every detail. It is evident that we have to deal with an +infinite variety of normal and abnormal minds. Some of these defy +classification; others fall into easily recognized types, such as "the +lunatic, the lover and the poet," as sketched by Theseus, Duke of Athens. +How modern, after all, is the Duke's little lecture on the psychology of +imagination! + + "The lunatic, the lover and the poet + Are of imagination all compact; + One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, + That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, + Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: + The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, + Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; + And as imagination bodies forth + The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen + Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing + A local habitation and a name. + Such tricks hath strong imagination, + That, if it would but apprehend some joy, + It comprehends some bringer of that joy; + Or in the night, imagining some fear, + How easy is a bush supposed a bear!" +[Footnote: _Midsummer Night's Dream_, v, i, 7-22.] + +Shakspere, it will be observed, does not hesitate to use that dangerous +term "the poet!" Yet as students of poetry we must constantly bring +ourselves back to the recorded experience of individual men, and from +these make our comparisons and generalizations. It may even happen that +some readers will get a clearer conception of the selection and synthesis +of images if they turn for the moment away from poetry and endeavor to +realize something of the same processes as they take place in imaginative +prose. In Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_, for example, the dominant image, +which becomes the symbol of his entire theme, is the piece of scarlet +cloth which originally caught his attention. This physical object +becomes, after long brooding, subtly changed into a moral symbol of sin +and its concealment. It permeates the book, it is borne openly upon the +breast of one sufferer, it is written terribly in the flesh of another, it +flames at last in the very sky. All the lesser images and symbols of the +romance are mastered by it, subordinated to it; it becomes the dominant +note in the composition. The romance of _The Scarlet Letter_ is, as we say +of any great poem or drama, an "ideal synthesis"; i.e. a putting together +of images in accordance with some central idea. The more significant the +idea or theme or master image, the richer and fuller are the possibilities +of beauty in detail. Apply this familiar law of complexity to a poet's +conscious or unconscious choice of images. In the essay which we have +already quoted +[Footnote: _Studies and Appreciations_, p. 216.] +Lewis Gates remarks: + +"In every artist there is a definite mental bias, a definite spiritual +organization and play of instincts, which results in large measure from +the common life of his day and generation, and which represents this +life--makes it potent--within the individuality of the artist. This +so-called 'acquired constitution of the life of the soul'--it has been +described by Professor Dilthey with noteworthy acuteness and +thoroughness--determines in some measure the contents of the artist's +mind, for it determines his interests, and therefore the sensations and +perceptions that he captures and automatically stores up. It guides him in +his judgments of worth, in his instinctive likes and dislikes as regards +conduct and character, and controls in large measure the play of his +imagination as he shapes the action of his drama or epic and the destinies +of his heroes. Its prejudices interfiltrate throughout the molecules of +his entire moral and mental life, and give to each image and idea some +slight shade of attractiveness or repulsiveness, so that when the artist's +spirit is at work under the stress of feeling, weaving into the fabric of +a poem the competing images and ideas in his consciousness, certain ideas +and images come more readily and others lag behind, and the resulting work +of art gets a colour and an emotional tone and suggestions of value that +subtly reflect the genius of the age." + + +_6. "Imagist" Verse_ + +Such a conception of the association of images as reflecting not only this +"acquired constitution of the soul" of the poet but also the genius of the +age is in marked contrast to some of the theories held by contemporary +"imagists." As we have already noted, in Chapter II, they stress the +individual reaction to phenomena, at some tense moment. They discard, as +far as possible, the long "loop-line" of previous experience. As for +diction, they have, like all true artists, a horror of the _cliché_--the +rubber-stamp word, blurred by use. As for rhythm, they fear any +conventionality of pattern. In subsequent chapters we must look more +closely at these matters of diction and of rhythm, but they are both +involved in any statement of the principles of Imagist verse. Richard +Aldington sums up his article on "The Imagists" +[Footnote: "Greenwich Village," July 15, 1915.] +in these words: + +"Let me resume the cardinal points of the Imagist style: +1. Direct treatment of the subject. 2. A hardness and economy of speech. +3. Individuality of rhythm; vers libre. 4. The exact word. The Imagists +would like to possess 'le mot qui fait image, l'adjectif inattendu et +précis qui dessine de pied en cap et donne la senteur de la chose qu'il +est chargé de rendre, la touche juste, la couleur qui chatoie et vibre.'" + +In the preface to _Imagist Poets_ (1915), and in Miss Amy Lowell's +_Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_ (1917) the tenets of imagism are +stated briefly and clearly. Imagism, we are told, aims to use always the +language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the +nearly-exact nor the merely decorative word; to create new rhythms--as the +expression of new moods--and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo +old moods; to allow absolute freedom in the choice of a subject; to +present an image, rendering particulars exactly; to produce poetry that is +hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite; to secure condensation. + +It will be observed that in the special sort of picture-making which +Imagist poetry achieves, the question of free verse is merely incidental. +"We fight for it as a principle of liberty," says Miss Lowell, but she +does not insist upon it as the only method of writing poetry. Mr. +Aldington admits frankly that about forty per cent of _vers libre_ is +prose. Mr. Lowes, as we have already remarked, has printed dozens of +passages from Meredith's novels in the typographical arrangement of free +verse so as to emphasize their "imagist" character. One of the most +effective is this: + + "He was like a Tartar + Modelled by a Greek: + Supple + As the Scythian's bow, + Braced + As the string!" + +Suppose, however, that we agree to defer for the moment the vexed question +as to whether images of this kind are to be considered prose or verse. +Examine simply for their vivid picture-making quality the collections +entitled _Imagist Poets_ (1915,1916,1917), or, in the _Anthology of +Magazine Verse_ for 1915, such poems as J. G. Fletcher's "Green Symphony" +or "H. D.'s" "Sea-Iris" or Miss Lowell's "The Fruit Shop." Read Miss +Lowell's extraordinarily brilliant volume _Men, Women and Ghosts_ (1916), +particularly the series of poems entitled "Towns in Colour." Then read the +author's preface, in which her artistic purpose in writing "Towns in +Colour" is set forth: "In these poems, I have endeavoured to give the +colour, and light, and shade, of certain places and hours, stressing _the +purely pictorial effect_, and with little or no reference to any other +aspect of the places described. It is an enchanting thing to wander +through a city looking for its _unrelated beauty_, the beauty by which it +captivates the sensuous sense of seeing." [Footnote: Italics mine.] + +Nothing could be more gallantly frank than the phrase "unrelated beauty." +For it serves as a touchstone to distinguish between those imagist poems +which leave us satisfied and those which do not. Sometimes, assuredly, the +insulated, unrelated beauty is enough. What delicate reticence there is in +Richard Aldington's "Summer": + + "A butterfly, + Black and scarlet, + Spotted with white, + Fans its wings + Over a privet flower. + + "A thousand crimson foxgloves, + Tall bloody pikes, + Stand motionless in the gravel quarry; + The wind runs over them. + + "A rose film over a pale sky + Fantastically cut by dark chimneys; + Across an old city garden." + +The imagination asks no more. + +Now read my friend Baker Brownell's "Sunday Afternoon": + + "The wind pushes huge bundles + Of itself in warm motion + Through the barrack windows; + It rattles a sheet of flypaper + Tacked in a smear of sunshine on the sill. + A voice and other voices squirt + A slow path among the room's tumbled sounds. + A ukelele somewhere clanks + In accidental jets + Up from the room's background." + +Here the stark truthfulness of the images does not prevent an instinctive +"Well, what of it?" "And afterward, what else?" Unless we adopt the +Japanese theory of "stop poems," where the implied continuation of the +mood, the suggested application of the symbol or allegory, is the sole +justification of the actual words given, a great deal of imagist verse, in +my opinion, serves merely to sharpen the senses without utilizing the full +imaginative powers of the mind. The making of images is an essential +portion of the poet's task, but in memorably great poetry it is only a +detail in a larger whole. Miss Lowell's "Patterns" is one of the most +effective of contemporary poems, but it is far more than a document of +imagism. It is a triumph of structural imagination. + + +_7. Genius and Inspiration_ + +Whatever may be the value, for students, of trying to analyse the +image-making and image-combining faculty, every one admits that it is a +necessary element in the production of poetry. Let Coleridge have the +final statement of this mystery of his art: "The power of reducing +multitude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some +one predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but +can never be learnt. It is in this that _Poeta nascitur non fit_." We +cannot avoid the difficulties of the question by attributing the poet's +imagination to "genius." Whether genius is a neurosis, as some think, or +whether it is sanity at perfection, makes little difference here. +Both a Poe and a Sophocles are equally capable of producing ideal +syntheses. Nor does the old word "inspiration" help much either. +Whatever we mean by inspiration--a something not ourselves, supernatural +or sub-liminal--a "vision" of Blake, the "voices" of Joan of Arc, the +"god" that moved within the Corybantian revelers--it is an excitement of +the image-making faculty, and not that faculty itself. Disordered "genius" +and inspiration undisciplined by reason are alike powerless to produce +images that permanently satisfy the sense of beauty. Tolstoy's common- +sense remark is surely sound: "One's writing is good only where the +intelligence and the imagination are in equilibrium. As soon as one of +them over-balances the other, it's all up." +[Footnote: Compare W. A. Neilson's chapter on "The Balance of Qualities" +in _Essentials of Poetry_. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912.] + + +_8. A Summary_ + +Let us now endeavor to summarize this testimony which we have taken +from poets and critics. Though they do not agree in all details, and +though they often use words that are either too vague or too highly +specialized, the general drift of the testimony is fairly clear. Poets +and critics agree that the imagination is something different from the +mere memory-image; that by a process of selection and combination and +re-presentation of images something really new comes into being, and that +we are therefore justified in using the term _constructive_, or _creative_ +imagination. This imagination embodies, as we say, or "bodies forth," as +Duke Theseus said, "the forms of things unknown." It ultimately becomes +the poet's task to "shape" these forms with his "pen," that is to say, to +suggest them through word-symbols, arranged in a certain fashion. The +selection of these word-symbols will be discussed in Chapter IV, and their +rhythmical arrangement in Chapter V. But we have tried in the present +chapter to trace the functioning of the poetic imagination in those stages +of its activity which precede the definite shaping of poems with the pen. +If we say, with Professor Fairchild, +[Footnote: _Making of Poetry_, p. 34.] +that "the central processes or kinds of activity involved in the making of +poetry are three: personalizing, combining and versifying," it is obvious +that we have been dealing with the first two. If we prefer to use the +famous terms employed by Ruskin in _Modern Painters_, we have been +considering the penetrative, associative and contemplative types of +imagination. But these Ruskinian names, however brilliantly and +suggestively employed by the master, are dangerous tools for the beginner +in the study of poetry. + +If the beginner desires to review, at this point, the chief matters +brought to his attention in the present chapter, he may make a real test +of their validity by opening his senses to the imagery of a few lines of +poetry. Remember that poets are endeavoring to convey the "sense" of +things rather than the knowledge of things. Disregard for the moment the +precise words employed in the following lines, and concentrate the +attention upon the images, as if the image were not made of words at all, +but were mere naked sense-stimulus. + +In this line the poet is trying to make us _see_ something ("visual" +image): + + "The bride hath paced into the hall, + _Red as a rose_ is she." + +Can you see her? + +In these lines the poet is trying to make us _hear_ something ("auditory" +image): + + "A _noise like of a hidden brook_ + In the leafy month of June + That to the _sleeping woods all night + Singeth a quiet tune_." + +Do you hear the tune? Do you hear it as clearly as you can hear + + "_The tambourines + Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of Queens_"? + +In these lines the poet is trying to make us feel certain bodily +sensations ("tactile" image): + + "I closed my lids and kept them close, + _And the balls like pulses beat_; + For the sky and the sea and the sea and the sky, + _Lay like a load on my weary eye_, + And the dead were at my feet." + +Do your eyes feel that pressure? + +You are sitting quite motionless in your chair as you read these lines +("motor" image): + + "I _sprang_ to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; + I _galloped_, Dirck _galloped_, we _galloped_ all three!" + +Are you instantly on horseback? If you are, the poet has put you there by +conveying from his mind to yours, through the use of verbal imagery and +rhythm, his "sense" of riding, which has now become _your_ sense of +riding. + +If the reader can meet this test of realizing simple images through his +own body-and-mind reaction to their stimulus, the door of poetry is open +to him. He can enter into its limitless enjoyments. If he wishes to +analyse more closely the nature of the pleasure which poetry affords, he +may select any lines he happens to like, and ask himself how the various +functions of the imagination are illustrated by them. Suppose the lines +are Coleridge's description of the bridal procession, already quoted in +part: + + "The bride hath paced into the hall, + Red as a rose is she; + Nodding their heads before her goes + The merry minstrelsy." + +Here surely is imagination penetrative; the selection of some one +characteristic trait of the object; that trait (the "redness" or the +"nodding") re-presented to us, and emphasized by conferring, modifying or +abstracting whatever elements the poet wishes to stress or to suppress. +The result is a combination of imagery which forms an idealized picture, +presenting the shows of things as the mind would like to see them and thus +satisfying our sense of beauty. For there is no question that the mind +takes a supreme satisfaction in such an idealization of reality as +Coleridge's picture of the swift tropical sunset, + + "At one stride comes the dark," + +or Emerson's picture of the slow New England sunrise, + + "O tenderly the haughty day + Fills his blue urn with fire." + +Little has been said about beauty in this chapter, but no one doubts that +a sense of beauty guides the "shaping spirit of imagination" in that dim +region through which the poet feels his way before he comes to the +conscious choice of expressive words and to the ordering of those words +into beautiful rhythmical designs. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +THE POET'S WORDS + + "Words are sensible signs necessary for communication." + JOHN LOCKE, _Human Understanding_, 3, 2, 1. + + "As conceptions are the images of things to the mind within itself, so + are words or names the marks of those conceptions to the minds of them + we converse with." + SOUTH, quoted in Johnson's _Dictionary_. + + "Word: a sound, or combination of sounds, used in any language as the + sign of a conception, or of a conception together with its grammatical + relations.... A word is a spoken sign that has arrived at its value as + used in any language by a series of historical changes, and that holds + its value by virtue of usage, being exposed to such further changes, of + form and of meaning, as usage may prescribe...." + _Century Dictionary_. + + "A word is not a crystal--transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a + living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to + the circumstances and the time in which it is used." + Justice OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, _Towne vs. Eisner_. + + "I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of + prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order;--poetry = + the _best_ words in the best order." + COLERIDGE, _Table Talk_. + + +_1. The Eye and the Ear_ + +"Literary" language is commonly distinguished from the language of +ordinary life by certain heightenings or suppressions. The novelist or +essayist, let us say, fashions his language more or less in accordance +with his own mood, with his immediate aim in writing, with the capacity of +his expected readers. He is discoursing with a certain real or imaginary +audience. He may put himself on paper, as Montaigne said, as if he were +talking to the first man he happens to meet; or he may choose to address +himself to the few chosen spirits of his generation and of succeeding +generations. He trusts the arbitrary written or printed symbols of +word-sounds to carry his thoughts safely into the minds of other men. +The "literary" user of language in modern times comes to depend upon +the written or printed page; he tends to become more or less "eye-minded"; +whereas the typical orator remains "ear-minded"--i.e. peculiarly sensitive +to a series of sounds, and composing for the ear of listeners rather than +for the eye of readers. + +Now as compared with the typical novelist, the poet is surely, like the +orator, "ear-minded." Tonal symbols of ideas and emotions, rather than +visual symbols of ideas and emotions, are the primary stuff with which he +is working, although as soon as the advancing civilization of his race +brings an end to the primitive reciting of poetry and its transmission +through oral repetition alone, it is obvious that he must depend, like +other literary artists, or like the modern musicians, upon the written or +printed signs for the sounds which he has composed. But so stubborn are +the habits of our eyes that we tend always to confuse the look of the +poet's words upon the printed page with the sound of those words as they +are perceived by the ear. We are seldom guilty of this confusion in the +case of the musician. His "music" is not identified with the arbitrary +black marks which make up his printed score. For most of us there is +no music until those marks are actually translated into terms of tone-- +although it is true that the trained reader of music can easily translate +to his inner ear without any audible rendering of the indicated sounds. + +This distinction is essential to the understanding of poetry. A poem is +not primarily a series of printed word-signs addressed to the eye; it is a +series of sounds addressed to the ear, and the arbitrary symbols for these +sounds do not convey the poem unless they are audibly rendered--except to +those readers who, like the skilled readers of printed music, can +instantly hear the indicated sounds without any actual rendition of them +into physical tone. Many professed lovers of poetry have no real ear for +it. They are hopelessly "eye-minded." They try to decide questions of +metre and stanza, of free verse and of emotionally patterned prose by the +appearance of the printed page instead of by the nerves of hearing. Poets +like Mr. Vachel Lindsay--who recites or chants his own verses after the +manner of the primitive bard--have rendered a true service by leading +us away from the confusions wrought by typography, and back to that sheer +delight in rhythmic oral utterance in which poetry originates. + + +_2. How Words convey Feeling_ + +For it must never be forgotten that poetry begins in excitement, in some +body-and-mind experience; that it is capable, through its rhythmic +utterance of words which suggest this experience, of transmitting emotion +to the hearer; and that the nature of language allows the emotion to be +embodied in more or less permanent form. Let us look more closely at some +of the questions involved in the origin, the transmission and embodiment +of poetic feeling, remembering that we are now trying to trace these +processes in so far as they are revealed by the poet's use of words. +Rhythm will be discussed in the next chapter. + +We have already noted that there are no mental images of feeling itself. +The images recognized by the consciousness of poets are those of +experiences and objects associated with feeling. The words employed to +revive and transmit these images are usually described as "concrete" or +"sensuous" in distinction from abstract or purely conceptual. They are +"experiential" words, arising out of bodily or spiritual contact with +objects or ideas that have been personalized, colored with individual +feeling. Such words have a "fringe," as psychologists say. They are rich +in overtones of meaning; not bare, like words addressed to the sheer +intelligence, but covered with veils of association, with tokens of past +experience. They are like ships laden with cargoes, although the cargo +varies with the texture and the history of each mind. It is probable that +this very word "ship," just now employed, calls up as many different +mental images as there are readers of this page. Brander Matthews has +recorded a curious divergence of imagery aroused by the familiar word +"forest." Half a dozen well-known men of letters, chatting together in a +London club, tried to tell one another what "forest" suggested to each: + + "Until that evening I had never thought of forest as clothing itself + in different colors and taking on different forms in the eyes of + different men; but I then discovered that even the most innocent + word may don strange disguises. To Hardy forest suggested the sturdy + oaks to be assaulted by the woodlanders of Wessex; and to Du Maurier + it evoked the trim and tidy avenues of the national domain of France. + To Black the word naturally brought to mind the low scrub of the + so-called deer-forests of Scotland; and to Gosse it summoned up a + view of the green-clad mountains that towered up from the + Scandinavian fiords. To Howells forest recalled the thick woods that + in his youth fringed the rivers of Ohio; and to me there came back + swiftly the memory of the wild growths, bristling unrestrained by + man, in the Chippewa Reservation which I had crossed fourteen years + before in my canoe trip from Lake Superior to the Mississippi. Simple + as the word seemed, it was interpreted by each of us in accord with + his previous personal experience. And these divergent experiences + exchanged that evening brought home to me as never before the + inherent and inevitable inadequacy of the vocabulary of every + language, since there must always be two partners in any communication + by means of words, and the verbal currency passing from one to the other + has no fixed value necessarily the same to both of them." +[Footnote: Brander Matthews, _These Many Years_. Scribner's, New York, +1917.] + +But one need not journey to London town in order to test this matter. Let +half a dozen healthy young Americans stop before the window of a shop +where sporting goods are exhibited. Here are fishing-rods, tennis +racquets, riding-whips, golf-balls, running-shoes, baseball bats, +footballs, oars, paddles, snow-shoes, goggles for motorists, Indian clubs +and rifles. Each of these physical objects focuses the attention of the +observer in more or less exact proportion to his interest in the +particular sport suggested by the implement. If he is a passionate tennis +player, a thousand motor-tactile memories are stirred by the sight of the +racquet. He is already balancing it in his fingers, playing his favorite +strokes with it, winning tournaments with it--though he seems to be +standing quietly in front of the window. The man next him is already +snowshoeing over the frozen hills. But if a man has never played lacrosse, +or been on horseback, or mastered a canoe, the lacrosse racquet or +riding-whip or paddle mean little to him emotionally, except that they may +stir his imaginative curiosity about a sport whose pleasures he has never +experienced. His eye is likely to pass them over as indifferently as if he +were glancing at the window of a druggist or a grocer. These varying +responses of the individual to the visual stimulus of this or that +physical object in a heterogeneous collection may serve to illustrate his +capacity for feeling. Our chance group before the shop window thus becomes +a symbol of all human minds as they confront the actual visible universe. +They hunger and thirst for this or that particular thing, while another +object leaves them cold. + +Now suppose that our half-dozen young men are sitting in the dark, +talking--evoking body-and-mind memories by means of words alone. No two +can possibly have the same memories, the same series of mental pictures. +Not even the most vivid and picturesque word chosen by the best talker of +the company has the same meaning for them all. They all understand the +word, approximately, but each _feels_ it in a way unexperienced by his +friend. The freightage of significance carried by each concrete, sensuous, +picture-making word is bound to vary according to the entire physical and +mental history of the man who hears it. Even the commonest and most +universal words for things and sensations--such as "hand," "foot," "dark," +"fear," "fire," "warm," "home"--are suffused with personal emotions, +faintly or clearly felt; they have been or are _my_ hand, foot, fear, +darkness, warmth, happiness. Now the poet is like a man talking or singing +in the dark to a circle of friends. He cannot say to them "See this" or +"Feel that" in the literal sense of "see" and "feel"; he can only call up +by means of words and tunes what his friends have seen and felt already, +and then under the excitement of such memories suggest new combinations, +new weavings of the infinitely varied web of human experience, new voyages +with fresh sails upon seas untried. + +It is true that we may picture the poet as singing or talking to himself +in solitude and darkness, obeying primarily the impulse of expression +rather than of communication. Hence John Stuart Mill's distinction between +the orator and the poet: "Eloquence is _heard_; poetry is _over_heard. +Eloquence supposes an audience. The peculiarity of poetry appears to us to +lie in the poet's utter unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling +confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude, and embodying itself +in symbols which are the nearest possible representations of the feeling +in the exact shape in which it exists in the poet's mind." +[Footnote: J. S. Mill, "Thoughts on Poetry," in _Dissertations_, vol. 1. +See also F. N. Scott, "The Most Fundamental Differentia of Poetry and +Prose." Published by Modern Language Association, 19, 2.] +But whether his primary aim be the relief of his own feelings (for a man +swears even when he is alone!) or the communication of his feelings to +other persons, it remains true that a poet's language betrays his bodily +and mental history. "The poet," said Thoreau, "writes the history of his +own body." + +For example, a study of Browning's vocabulary made by Professor C. H. +Herford +[Footnote: _Robert Browning_, Modern English Writers, pp. 244-66. +Blackwood & Sons. 1905.] +emphasizes that poet's acute tactual and muscular sensibilities, his quick +and eager apprehension of space-relations: + + "He gloried in the strong sensory-stimulus of glowing color, of + dazzling light; in the more complex _motory_-stimulus of intricate, + abrupt and plastic form.... He delighted in the angular, indented, + intertwining, labyrinthine varieties of line and surface which call + for the most delicate, and at the same time most agile, adjustments + of the eye. He caught at the edges of things.... _Spikes_ and + _wedges_ and _swords_ run riot in his work.... He loved the grinding, + clashing and rending sibilants and explosives as Tennyson the + tender-hefted liquids.... He is the poet of sudden surprises, + unforseen transformations.... The simple joy in abrupt changes of + sensation which belonged to his riotous energy of nerve lent support + to his peremptory way of imagining all change and especially all + vital and significant becoming." + +The same truth is apparent as we pass from the individual poet to the +poetic literature of his race. Here too is the stamp of bodily history. +Hebrew poetry, as is well known, is always expressing emotion in terms of +bodily sensation. + + "_Anger_," says Renan, + [Footnote: Quoted by J. H. Gardiner, _The Bible as Literature_, p. + 114.] + "is expressed in Hebrew in a throng of ways, each picturesque, and + each borrowed from physiological facts. Now the metaphor is taken + from the rapid and animated breathing which accompanies the passion, + now from heat or from boiling, now from the act of a noisy breaking, + now from shivering. _Discouragement_ and _despair_ are expressed by + the melting of the heart, _fear_ by the loosening of the reins. + _Pride_ is portrayed by the holding high of the head, with the figure + straight and stiff. _Patience_ is a long breathing, _impatience_ + short breathing, _desire_ is thirst or paleness. Pardon is expressed + by a throng of metaphors borrowed from the idea of covering, of + hiding, of coating over the fault. In _Job_ God sews up sins in a + sack, seals it, then throws it behind him: all to signify that he + forgets them.... + + "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my + heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. + + "Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. + + "I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep + waters, where the floods overflow me. + + "I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I + wait for my God." + +Greek poetry, likewise, is made out of "warm, swift, vibrating" words, +thrilling with bodily sensation. Gilbert Murray +[Footnote: "What English Poetry may Learn from Greek," _Atlantic Monthly_, +November, 1912.] +has described the weaving of these beautiful single words into patterns: + + "The whole essence of lyric is rhythm. It is the weaving of words + into a song-pattern, so that the mere arrangement of the syllables + produces a kind of dancing joy.... Greek lyric is derived directly + from the religious dance; that is, not merely the pattering of the + feet, _but the yearning movement of the whole body_, the ultimate + expression of emotion that cannot be pressed into articulate speech, + compact of intense rhythm and intense feeling." + +Nor should it be forgotten that Milton, while praising "a graceful and +ornate rhetoric," declares that poetry, compared with this, is "more +simple, sensuous and passionate." +[Footnote: _Tract on Education._ ] +These words "sensuous" and "passionate," dulled as they have become by +repetition, should be interpreted in their full literal sense. While +language is unquestionably a social device for the exchange of ideas and +feelings, it is also true that poetic diction is a revelation of +individual experience, of body-and-mind contacts with reality. Every poet +is still an Adam in the Garden, inventing new names as fast as the new +wonderful Beasts---so terrible, so delightful!--come marching by. + + +_3. Words as Current Coin_ + +But the poet's words, stamped and colored as they are by unique individual +experience, must also have a general _transmission value_ which renders +them current coin. If words were merely representations of private +experience, merely our own nicknames for things, they would not pass the +walls of the Garden inhabited by each man's imagination. "Expression" +would be possible, but "communication" would be impossible, and indeed +there would be no recognizable terms of expression except the "bow-wow" or +"pooh-pooh" or "ding-dong" of the individual Adam----and even these +expressive syllables might not be the ones acceptable to Eve! + +The truth is that though the impulse to expression is individual, and that +in highly developed languages a single man can give his personal stamp to +words, making them say what he wishes them to say, as Dante puts it, +speech is nevertheless primarily a social function. A word is a social +instrument. "It belongs," says Professor Whitney, +[Footnote: W. D. Whitney, _Language and the Study of Language_, p. 404.] +"not to the individual, but to the member of society.... What we may +severally choose to say is not language until it be accepted and employed +by our fellows. The whole development of speech, though initiated by the +acts of individuals, is wrought out by the community." + +... A solitary man would never frame a language. Let a child grow up in +utter seclusion, and, however rich and suggestive might be the nature +around him, however full and appreciative his sense of that which lay +without, and his consciousness of that which went on within him, he would +all his life remain a mute." + +What is more, the individual's mastery of language is due solely to his +social effort in employing it. Speech materials are not inherited; they +are painfully acquired. It is well known that an English child brought up +in China and hearing no word of English will speak Chinese without a trace +of his English parentage in form or idiom. +[Footnote: See Baldwin's _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, +article "Language."] +His own body-and-mind experiences will be communicated in the medium +already established by the body-and-mind experiences of the Chinese race. +In that medium only can the thoughts of this English-born child have any +transmission value. His father and mother spoke a tongue moulded by +Chaucer and Shakspere, but to the boy whom we have imagined all that +age-long labor of perfecting a social instrument of speech is lost +without a trace. As far as language is concerned, he is a Chinaman and +nothing else. + +Now take the case of a Chinese boy who has come to an American school and +college. Just before writing this paragraph I have read the blue-book of +such a boy, written in a Harvard examination on Tennyson. It was an +exceptionally well-expressed blue-book, in idiomatic English, and it +revealed an unusual appreciation of Tennyson's delicate and sure +felicities of speech. The Chinese boy, by dint of an intellectual effort +of which most of his American classmates were incapable, had mastered many +of the secrets of an alien tongue, and had taken possession of the rich +treasures of English poetry. If he had been composing verse himself, +instead of writing a college blue-book, it is likely that he would have +preferred to use his own mother-tongue, as the more natural medium for the +expression of his intimate thoughts and feelings. But that expression, no +matter how artistic, would have "communicated" nothing whatever to an +American professor ignorant of the Chinese language. It is clear that the +power of any person to convey his ideas and emotions to others is +conditioned upon the common possession of some medium of exchange. + + +4. _Words an Imperfect Medium_ + +And it is precisely here that we face one of the fundamental difficulties +of the poet's task; a difficulty that affects, indeed, all human +intercourse. For words are notoriously an imperfect medium of +communication. They "were not invented at first," says Professor Walter +Raleigh in his book on Wordsworth, "and are very imperfectly adapted at +best, for the severer purposes of truth. They bear upon them all the +weaknesses of their origin, and all the maims inflicted by the +prejudices and fanaticisms of generations of their employers. They +perpetuate the memory or prolong the life of many noble forms of human +extravagance, and they are the monuments of many splendid virtues. But +with all their abilities and dignities they are seldom well fitted for the +quiet and accurate statement of the thing that is.... Beasts fight with +horns, and men, when the guns are silent, with words. The changes of +meaning in words from good to bad and from bad to good senses, which are +quite independent of their root meaning, is proof enough, without detailed +illustration, of the incessant nature of the strife. The question is not +what a word means, but what it imputes." +[Footnote: Raleigh's _Wordsworth_. London, 1903.] + +Now if the quiet and accurate statement of things as they are is the ideal +language of prose, it is obvious that the characteristic diction of poetry +is unquiet, inaccurate, incurably emotional. Herein lie its dangers and +its glories. No poet can keep for very long to the "neutral style," to the +cool gray wallpaper words, so to speak; he wants more color---passionate +words that will "stick fiery off" against the neutral background of +conventional diction. In vain does Horace warn him against "purple +patches"; for he knows that the tolerant Horace allowed himself to use +purple patches whenever he wished. All employers of language for emotional +effect--orators, novelists, essayists, writers of editorials--utilize in +certain passages these colored, heightened, figured words. It is as if +they ordered their printers to set individual words or whole groups of +words in upper-case type. + +And yet these "upper-case words" of heightened emotional value are not +really isolated from their context. Their values are relative and not +absolute. Like the high lights of a picture, their effectiveness depends +upon the tone of the composition as a whole. To insert a big or violent +word for its own potency is like sewing the purple patch upon a faded +garment. The predominant thought and feeling of a passage give the +richest individual words their penetrating power, just as the weight of +the axe-head sinks the blade into the wood. "Futurist" poets like +Marinetti have protested against the bonds of syntax, the necessity of +logical subject and predicate, and have experimented with nouns alone. +"Words delivered from the fetters of punctuation," says Marinetti, "will +flash against one another, will interlace their various forms of +magnetism, and follow the uninterrupted dynamics of force." +[Footnote: There is an interesting discussion of Futurism in Sir Henry +Newbolt's _New Study of English Poetry_. Dutton, 1919.] +But do they? The reader may judge for himself in reading Marinetti's poem +on the siege of a Turkish fort: + + "Towers guns virility flights erection telemetre exstacy toumbtoumb 3 + seconds toumbtoumb waves smiles laughs plaff poaff glouglouglouglou + hide-and-seek crystals virgins flesh jewels pearls iodine salts + bromide skirts gas liqueurs bubbles 3 seconds toumbtoumb officer + whiteness telemetre cross fire megaphone sight-at-thousand-metres + all-men-to-left enough every-man-to-his post incline-7-degrees + splendour jet pierce immensity azure deflowering onslaught alleys + cries labyrinth mattress sobs ploughing desert bed precision + telemetre monoplane cackling theatre applause monoplane equals + balcony rose wheel drum trepan gad-fly rout arabs oxen blood-colour + shambles wounds refuge oasis." + +In these vivid nouns there is certainly some raw material for a poem, just +as a heap of bits of colored glass might make material for a rose-window. +But both poem and window must be built by somebody: the shining fragments +will never fashion themselves into a whole. + + +5. _Predominant Tone-Feeling_ + +If each poem is composed in its own "key," as we say of music, with its +own scale of "values," as we say of pictures, it is obvious that the +separate words tend to take on tones and hues from the predominant +tone-feeling of the poem. It is a sort of protective coloration, like +Nature's devices for blending birds and insects into their background; or, +to choose a more prosaic illustration, like dipping a lump of sugar into a +cup of coffee. The white sugar and the yellowish cream and the black +coffee blend into something unlike any of the separate ingredients, yet +the presence of each is felt. It is true that some words refuse to be +absorbed into the texture of the poem: they remain as it were foreign +substances in the stream of imagery, something alien, stubborn, jarring, +although expressive enough in themselves. All the pioneers in poetic +diction assume this risk of using "un-poetic" words in their desire to +employ expressive words. Classic examples are Wordsworth's homely "tubs" +and "porringers," and Walt Whitman's catalogues of everyday implements +used in various trades. _Othello_ was hissed upon its first appearance on +the Paris stage because of that "vulgar" word handkerchief. Thus "fork" +and "spoon" have almost purely utilitarian associations and are +consequently difficult terms for the service of poetry, but "knife" has a +wider range of suggestion. Did not the peaceful Robert Louis Stevenson +confess his romantic longing to "knife a man"? + +But it is not necessary to multiply illustrations of this law of +connotation. The true poetic value of a word lies partly in its history, +in its past employments, and partly also in the new vitality which it +receives from each brain which fills the word with its own life. It is +like an old violin, with its subtle overtones, the result of many +vibrations of the past, but yet each new player may coax a new tune from +it. When Wordsworth writes of + + "The silence that is in the starry sky, + The sleep that is among the lonely hills," + +he is combining words that are immemorially familiar into a total effect +that is peculiarly "Wordsworthian." Diction is obviously only a part of a +greater whole in which ideas and emotions are also merged. A concordance +of all the words employed by a poet teaches us much about him, and +conversely a knowledge of the poet's personality and of his governing +ideas helps us in the study of his diction. Poets often have favorite +words--like Marlowe's "black," Shelley's "light," Tennyson's "wind," +Swinburne's "fire." Each of these words becomes suffused with the whole +personality of the poet who employs it. It not only cannot be taken out of +its context in the particular poem in which it appears, but it cannot be +adequately _felt_ without some recognition of the particular sensational +and emotional experience which prompted its use. Many concordance-hunters +thus miss the real game, and fall into the Renaissance error of +word-grubbing for its own sake, as if mere words had a value of their own +independently of the life breathed into them by living men. I recall a +conversation at Bormes with the French poet Angellier. He was complaining +humorously of his friend L., a famous scholar whose big book was "carrying +all the treasures of French literature down to posterity like a +cold-storage transport ship." "But he published a criticism of one of my +poems," Angellier went on, "which proved that he did not understand the +poem at all. He had studied it too hard! The words of a poem are +stepping-stones across a brook. If you linger on one of them too long, you +will get your feet wet! You must cross, _vite_!" If the poets lead us from +one mood to another over a bridge of words, the words themselves are not +the goal of the journey. They are instruments used in the transmission of +emotion. + + +6. _Specific Tone-Color_ + +It is obvious, then, that the full poetic value of a word cannot be +ascertained apart from its context. The value is relative and not +absolute. And nevertheless, just as the bit of colored glass may have a +certain interest and beauty of its own, independently of its possible +place in the rose-window, it is true that separate words possess special +qualities of physical and emotional suggestiveness. Dangerous as it is to +characterize the qualities of the sound of a word apart from the sense of +that word, there is undeniably such a thing as "tone-color." A piano and a +violin, striking the same note, are easily differentiated by the quality +of the sound, and of two violins, playing the same series of notes, it is +usually possible to declare which instrument has the richer tone or +timbre. Words, likewise, differ greatly in tone-quality. A great deal of +ingenuity has been devoted to the analysis of "bright" and "dark" vowels, +smooth and harsh consonants, with the aim of showing that each sound has +its special expressive force, its peculiar adaptability to transmit a +certain kind of feeling. Says Professor A. H. Tolman: +[Footnote: "The Symbolic Value of Sounds," in _Hamlet and Other Essays_, +by A. H. Tolman. Boston, 1904.] + + + "Let us arrange the English vowel sounds in the following scale: + + [short i] (little) [long i] (I) [short oo] (wood) + [short e] (met) [long u] (due) [long ow] (cow) + [short a] (mat) [short ah] (what) [long o] (gold) + [long e] (mete) [long ah] (father) [long oo] (gloom) + [ai] (fair) [oi] (boil) [aw] (awe) + [long a] (mate) [short u] (but) + + "The sounds at the beginning of this scale are especially fitted to + express uncontrollable joy and delight, gayety, triviality, rapid + movement, brightness, delicacy, and physical littleness; the sounds + at the end are peculiarly adapted to express horror, solemnity, awe, + deep grief, slowness of motion, darkness, and extreme or oppressive + greatness of size. The scale runs, then, from the little to the + large, from the bright to the dark, from ecstatic delight to horror, + and from the trivial to the solemn and awful." + +Robert Louis Stevenson in his _Some Technical Elements of Style in +Literature_, and many other curious searchers into the secrets of words, +have attempted to explain the physiological basis of these varying +"tone-qualities." Some of them are obviously imitative of sounds in +nature; some are merely suggestive of these sounds through more or less +remote analogies; some are frankly imitative of muscular effort or of +muscular relaxation. High-pitched vowels and low-pitched vowels, liquid +consonants and harsh consonants, are unquestionably associated with +muscular memories, that is to say, with individual body-and-mind +experiences. Lines like Tennyson's famous + + "The moan of doves in immemorial elms + And murmuring of innumerable bees" + +thus represent, in their vowel and consonantal expressiveness, the past +history of countless physical sensations, widely shared by innumerable +individuals, and it is to this fact that the "transmission value" of the +lines is due. + +Imitative effects are easily recognized, and need no comment: + + "Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings" + + "The mellow ouzel fluting in the elm" + + "The wind that'll wail like a child + and the sea that'll moan like a man." + +Suggestive effects are more subtle. Sometimes they are due primarily to +those rhythmical arrangements of words which we shall discuss in the next +chapter, but poetry often employs the sound of single words to awaken dim +or bright associations. Robert Bridges's catalogue of the Greek nymphs in +"Eros and Psyche" is an extreme example of risking the total effect of a +stanza upon the mere beautiful sounds of proper names. + + "Swift to her wish came swimming on the waves + His lovely ocean nymphs, her guides to be, + The Nereids all, who live among the caves + And valleys of the deep, Cymodocè, + Agavè, blue-eyed Hallia and Nesaea, + Speio, and Thoë, Glaucè and Actaea, + Iaira, Melitè and Amphinomè, + Apseudès and Nemertès, Callianassa, + Cymothoë, Thaleia, Limnorrhea, + Clymenè, Ianeira and Ianassa, + Doris and Panopè and Galatea, + Dynamenè, Dexamenè and Maira, + Ferusa, Doto, Proto, Callianeira, + Amphithoë, Oreithuia and Amathea." + +Names of objects like "bobolink" and "raven" may affect us emotionally by +the quality of their tone. Through association with the sounds of the +human voice, heard under stress of various emotions, we attribute joyous +or foreboding qualities to the bird's tone, and then transfer these +associations to the bare name of the bird. + +Names of places are notoriously rich in their evocation of emotion. + + "He caught a chill in the lagoons of Venice, + And died in Padua." + +Here the fact of illness and death may be prosaic enough, but the very +names of "Venice" and "Padua" are poetry--like "Rome," "Ireland," +"Arabia," "California." + + "Where the great Vision of the guarded mount + Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold." + +Who knows precisely where that "guarded mount" is upon the map? And who +cares? "The sailor's heart," confesses Lincoln Colcord, +[Footnote: _The New Republic_, September 16, 1916.] +"refutes the prose of knowledge, and still believes in delectable and +sounding names. He dreams of capes and islands whose appellations are +music and a song.... The first big land sighted on the outward passage is +Java Head; beside it stands Cape Sangian Sira, with its name like a +battle-cry. We are in the Straits of Sunda: name charged with the heady +languor of the Orient, bringing to mind pictures of palm-fringed shores +and native villages, of the dark-skinned men of Java clad in bright +sarongs, clamoring from their black-painted dugouts, selling fruit and +brilliant birds. These waters are rich in names that stir the blood, like +Krakatoa, Gunong Delam, or Lambuan; or finer, more sounding than all the +rest, Telok Betong and Rajah Bassa, a town and a mountain--Telok Betong at +the head of Lampong Bay and Rajah Bassa, grand old bulwark on the Sumatra +shore, the cradle of fierce and sudden squalls." + +It may be urged, of course, that in lines of true poetry the sense carries +the sound with it, and that nothing is gained by trying to analyse the +sounds apart from the sense. Professor C. M. Lewis +[Footnote: _Principles of English Verse_. New York, 1906.] +asserts bluntly: "When you say Titan you mean something big, and when you +say tittle you mean something small; but it is not the sound of either +word that means either bigness or littleness, it is the sense. If you put +together a great many similar consonants in one sentence, they will +attract special attention to the words in which they occur, and the +significance of those words, whatever it may be, is thereby intensified; +but whether the words are 'a team of little atomies' or 'a triumphant +terrible Titan,' it is not the sound of the consonants that makes the +significance. When Tennyson speaks of the shrill-edged shriek of +a mother, his words suggest with peculiar vividness the idea of a shriek; +but when you speak of stars that shyly shimmer, the same sounds only +intensify the idea of shy shimmering." This is refreshing, and yet it is +to be noted that "Titan" and "tittle" and "shrill-edged shriek" and "shyly +shimmer" are by no means identical in sound: they have merely certain +consonants in common. A fairer test of tone-color may be found if we turn +to frank nonsense-verse, where the formal elements of poetry surely exist +without any control of meaning or "sense": + + "The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, + Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, + And burbled as it came! + + "'T was brillig, and the slithy toves + Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; + All mimsy were the borogoves, + And the mome raths outgrabe." + + "It seems rather pretty," commented the wise Alice, "but it's rather + hard to understand! Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only + I don't exactly know what they are!" + +This is precisely what one feels when one listens to a poem recited in a +language of which one happens to be ignorant. The wonderful colored words +are there, and they seem somehow to fill our heads with ideas, only we do +not know what they are. Many readers who know a little Italian or German +will confess that their enjoyment of a lyric in those languages suffers +only a slight, if any, impairment through their ignorance of the precise +meaning of all the words in the poem: if they know enough to feel the +predominant mood--as when we listen to a song sung in a language of which +we are wholly ignorant--we can sacrifice the succession of exact ideas. +For words bare of meaning to the intellect may be covered with veils of +emotional association due to the sound alone. Garrick ridiculed--and +doubtless at the same time envied--George Whitefield's power to make women +weep by the rich overtones with which he pronounced "that blessed word +Mesopotamia." + +The capacities and the limitations of tone-quality in itself may be seen +no less clearly in parodies. Swinburne, a master technician in words and +rhythm, occasionally delighted, as in "Nephelidia," +[Footnote: Quoted in Carolyn Wells, _A Parody Anthology_. New York, 1904.] +to make fun of himself as well as of his poetic contemporaries: + + "Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft + to the spirit and soul of our senses + Sweetens the stress of surprising suspicion that + sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh; + Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical + moods and triangular tenses,-- + 'Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is + dark till the dawn of the day when we die.'" + +Or, take Calverley's parody of Robert Browning: + + "You see this pebble-stone? It's a thing I bought + Of a bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid o' the day. + I like to dock the smaller parts o' speech, + As we curtail the already cur-tail'd cur--" + +The characteristic tone-quality of the vocabulary of each of these +poets--whether it be + + "A soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses" + +or + + "A bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid o' the day"-- + +is as perfectly conveyed by the parodist as if the lines had been written +in dead earnest. Poe's "Ulalume" is a masterly display of tone-color +technique, but exactly what it means, or whether it means anything at all, +is a matter upon which critics have never been able to agree. It is +certain, however, that a poet's words possess a kind of physical +suggestiveness, more or less closely related to their mental significance. +In nonsense-verse and parodies we have a glimpse, as it were, at the body +of poetry stripped of its soul. + + +7. _"Figures of Speech"_ + +To understand why poets habitually use figurative language, we must recall +what has been said in Chapter III about verbal images. Under the heat and +pressure of emotion, things alter their shape and size and quality, ideas +are transformed into concrete images, diction becomes impassioned, plain +speech tends to become metaphorical. The language of any excited person, +whether he is uttering himself in prose or verse, is marked by "tropes"; +i.e. "turnings"--images which express one thing in the terms of another +thing. The language of feeling is characteristically "tropical," and +indeed every man who uses metaphors is for the moment talking like a +poet--unless, as too often happens both in prose and verse, the metaphor +has become conventionalized and therefore lifeless. The born poet +thinks in "figures," in "pictured" language, or, as it has been called, in +"re-presentative" language, +[Footnote: G. L. Raymond, _Poetry as a Representative Art_, chap. 19.] +since he represents, both to his own mind and to those with whom he is +communicating, the objects of poetic emotion under new forms. If he wishes +to describe an eagle, he need not say: "A rapacious bird of the falcon +family, remarkable for its strength, size, graceful figure, and +extraordinary flight." He represents these facts by making a picture: + + "He clasps the crag with crooked hands; + Close to the sun in lonely lands, + Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. + + "The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; + He watches from his mountain walls, + And like a thunderbolt he falls." +[Footnote: Tennyson, "The Eagle." ] + +Or suppose the poet is a woman, meditating upon the coming of old age, and +reflecting that age brings riches of its own. Observe how this thought is +"troped"; i.e. turned into figures which re-present the fundamental idea: + + "Come, Captain Age, + With your great sea-chest full of treasure! + Under the yellow and wrinkled tarpaulin + Disclose the carved ivory + And the sandalwood inlaid with pearl, + Riches of wisdom and years. + Unfold the India shawl, + With the border of emerald and orange and crimson and blue, + Weave of a lifetime. + I shall be warm and splendid + With the spoils of the Indies of age." +[Footnote: Sarah N. Cleghorn, "Come, Captain Age."] + +It is true, of course, that a poet may sometimes prefer to use +unornamented language, "not elevated," as Wordsworth said, "above the +level of prose." Such passages may nevertheless be marked by poetic +beauty, due to the circumstances or atmosphere in which the plain words +are spoken. The drama is full of such instances. "I loved you not," says +Hamlet; to which Ophelia replies only: "I was the more deceived." No +figure of speech could be more moving than that. + +I once found in an old graveyard on Cape Cod, among the sunny, desolate +sandhills, these lines graven on a headstone: + + "She died, and left to me + This heath, this calm and quiet scene; + This memory of what hath been, + And nevermore will be." + +I had read the lines often enough in books, but here I realized for the +first time the perfection of their beauty. + +But though a poet, for special reasons, may now and then renounce the use +of figurative language, it remains true that this is the characteristic +and habitual mode of utterance, not only of poetry but of all emotional +prose. Here are a few sentences from an English sailor's account of the +fight off Heligoland on August 28, 1915. He was on a destroyer: + + "Scarcely had we started when from out the mist and across our front, + in furious pursuit, came the first cruiser squadron--the town class, + Birmingham, etc.--each unit a match for three Mainzes; and as we + looked and reduced speed they opened fire, _and the clear + 'bang-bang!' of their guns was just a cooling drink_.... + + "The Mainz was immensely gallant. The last I saw of her, absolutely + wrecked alow and aloft, her whole midships a fuming inferno, she had + one gun forward and one aft still spitting forth fury and defiance + _like a wildcat mad with wounds_. + + "Our own four-funnel friend recommenced at this juncture with a + couple of salvos, but rather half-heartedly, and we really did not + care a d----, for there, straight ahead of us, in lordly procession, + _like elephants walking through a pack of dogs_, came the Lion, Queen + Mary, Invincible, and New Zealand, our battle cruisers, great and + grim and _uncouth as some antediluvian monsters_. How solid they + looked! How utterly _earthquaking_!" + +The use and the effectiveness of figures depend primarily, then, upon the +mood and intentions of the writer. Figures are figures, whether employed +in prose or verse. Mr. Kipling does not lose his capacity for employing +metaphors as he turns from writing verse to writing stories, and the +rhetorician's analysis of similes, personifications, allegories, and all +the other devices of "tropical" language is precisely the same, whether he +is studying poetry or prose. Any good textbook in rhetoric gives adequate +examples of these various classes of figures, and they need not be +repeated here. + + +8. _Words as Permanent Embodiment of Poetic Feeling_ + +We have seen that the characteristic vocabulary of poetry originates in +emotion and that it is capable of transmitting emotion to the hearer or +reader. But how far are words capable of embodying emotion in permanent +form? Poets themselves, in proud consciousness of the enduring character +of their creations, have often boasted that they were building monuments +more enduring than bronze or marble. When Shakspere asserts this in his +sonnets, he is following not only an Elizabethan convention, but a +universal instinct of the men of his craft. Is it a delusion? Here are +words--mere vibrating sounds, light and winged and evanescent things, +assuming a meaning value only through the common consent of those who +interchange them, altering that meaning more or less from year to year, +often passing wholly from the living speech of men, decaying when races +decay and civilizations change. What transiency, what waste and oblivion +like that which waits upon millions on millions of autumn leaves! + +Yet nothing in human history is more indisputable than the fact that +certain passages of poetry do survive, age after age, while empires pass, +and philosophies change and science alters the mental attitude of men as +well as the outward circumstances of life upon this planet. + +Some thoughts and feelings, then, eternalize themselves in human speech; +most thoughts and feelings do not. Wherein lies the difference? +If most words are perishable stuff, what is it that keeps other words from +perishing? Is it superior organization and arrangement of this fragile +material, "fame's great antiseptic, style"? Or is it by virtue of some +secret passionate quality imparted to words by the poet, so that the +apparently familiar syllables take on a life and significance which is +really not their own, but his? And is this intimate personalized quality +of words "style," also, as well as that more external "style" revealed in +clear and orderly and idiomatic arrangement? Or does the mystery of +permanence reside in the poet's generalizing power, by which he is able to +express universal, and hence permanently interesting human experience? And +therefore, was not the late Professor Courthope right when he declared, "I +take all great poetry to be not so much what Plato thought it, the +utterance of individual genius, half inspired, half insane, as the +enduring voice of the soul and conscience of man living in society"? + +Answers to such questions as these depend somewhat upon the "romantic" or +"classic" bias of the critics. Romantic criticism tends to stress the +significance of the personality of the individual poet. The classic school +of criticism tends to emphasize the more general and universal qualities +revealed by the poet's work. But while the schools and fashions of +criticism shift their ground and alter their verdicts as succeeding +generations change in taste, the great poets continue as before to +particularize and also to generalize, to be "romantic" and "classic" by +turns, or even in the same poem. They defy critical augury, in their +unending quest of beauty and truth. That they succeed, now and then, in +giving a permanently lovely embodiment to their vision is surely a more +important fact than the rightness or wrongness of whatever artistic theory +they may have invoked or followed. + +For many a time, surely, their triumphs are a contradiction of their +theories. To take a very familiar example, Wordsworth's theory of poetic +diction shifted like a weathercock. In the Advertisement to the _Lyrical +Ballads_ (1798) he asserted: "The following poems are to be considered as +experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far +the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is +adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure." In the Preface of the second +edition (1800) he announced that his purpose had been "to ascertain how +far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language +of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that +quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally +endeavour to impart." But in the famous remarks on poetic diction which +accompanied the third edition (1802) he inserted after the words "A +selection of language really used by men" this additional statement of his +intention: "And at the same time to throw over them a certain colouring of +the imagination whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in +an unusual aspect." In place of the original statement about the +conversation of the middle and lower classes of society, we are now +assured that the language of poetry "if selected truly and judiciously, +must necessarily be dignified and variegated and alive with metaphors and +figures.... This selection will form a distinction ... and will entirely +separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary +life." + +What an amazing change in theory in four years! Yet it is no more +remarkable than Wordsworth's successive emendations in the text of his +poems. In 1807 his blind Highland boy had gone voyaging in + + "A Household Tub, like one of those + Which women use to wash their clothes; + This carried the blind Boy." + +In 1815 the wash-tub becomes + + "The shell of a green turtle, thin + And hollow--you might sit therein, + It was so wide and deep." + +And in 1820 the worried and dissatisfied artist changes that unlucky +vessel once more into the final banality of + + "A shell of ample size, and light + As the pearly car of Amphitrite + That sportive dolphins drew." + +Sometimes, it is true, this adventurer in poetic diction had rather better +fortune in his alterations. The much-ridiculed lines of 1798 about the +child's grave-- + + "I've measured it from side to side, + 'T is three feet long and two feet wide"-- + +became in 1820: + + "Though but of compass small and bare + To thirsty suns and parching air." + +Like his friend Coleridge, Wordsworth forsook gradually his early +experiments with matter-of-fact phrases, with quaintly grotesque figures. +Revolt against conventional eighteenth-century diction had given him a +blessed sense of freedom, but he found his real strength later in subduing +that freedom to a sense of law. Archaisms, queernesses, flatly +naturalistic turns of speech gave place to a vocabulary of simple dignity +and austere beauty. Wordsworth attained his highest originality as an +artist by disregarding singularity, by making familiar words reveal new +potencies of expression. + +For after all, we must come back to what William James called the long +"loop-line," to that reservoir of ideas and feelings which stores up the +experience of individuals and of the race, and to the words which most +effectively evoke that experience. Two classes at Columbia University, a +few years ago, were asked to select fifty English words of basic +importance in the expression of human life. In choosing these words, they +were to aim at reality and strength rather than at beauty. When the two +lists were combined, they presented these seventy-eight different words, +which are here arranged alphabetically: age, ambition, beauty, bloom, +country, courage, dawn, day, death, despair, destiny, devotion, dirge, +disaster, divine, dream, earth, enchantment, eternity, fair, faith, +fantasy, flower, fortune, freedom, friendship, glory, glow, god, grief, +happiness, harmony, hate, heart, heaven, honor, hope, immortality, joy, +justice, knell, life, longing, love, man, melancholy, melody, mercy, moon, +mortal, nature, noble, night, paradise, parting, peace, pleasure, pride, +regret, sea, sigh, sleep, solitude, song, sorrow, soul, spirit, spring, +star, suffer, tears, tender, time, virtue, weep, whisper, wind and youth. +[Footnote: See Nation, February 23, 1911.] + +Surely these words, selected as they were for their significance, are not +lacking in beauty of sound. On the contrary, any list of the most +beautiful words in English would include many of them. But it is the +meaning of these "long-loop" words, rather than their formal beauty alone, +which fits them for the service of poetry. And they acquire in that +service a "literary" value, which is subtly blended with their "sound" +value and logical "meaning" value. They connote so much! They suggest more +than they actually say. They unite the individual mood of the moment with +the soul of mankind. + +And there is still another mode of union between the individual and the +race, which we must attempt in the next chapter to regard more closely, +but which should be mentioned here in connection with the permanent +embodiment of feeling in words,--namely, the mysterious fact of rhythm. +Single words are born and die, we learn them and forget them, they alter +their meanings, they always say less than we really intend, they are +imperfect instruments for signaling from one brain to another. Yet these +crumbling particles of speech may be miraculously held together and built +into a tune, and with the tune comes another element of law, order, +permanence. The instinct for the drumbeat lies deep down in our bodies; it +affects our mental life, the organization of our emotions, and our +response to the rhythmical arrangement of words. For mere ideas and words +are not poetry, but only part of the material for poetry. A poem does not +come into full being until the words begin to dance. + + + +CHAPTER V + +RHYTHM AND METRE + + "Rhythm is the recurrence of stress at intervals; metre is the + regular, or measured, recurrence of stress." + M. H. SHACKFORD, _A First Book of Poetics_ + + "Metres being manifestly sections of rhythm." + ARISTOTLE, _Poetics_, 4. (Butcher's translation) + + "Thoughts that voluntary move + Harmonious numbers." + MILTON + + +_1. The Nature of Rhythm_ + +And why must the words begin to dance? The answer is to be perceived in +the very nature of Rhythm, that old name for the ceaseless pulsing or +"flowing" of all living things. So deep indeed lies the instinct for +rhythm in our consciousness that we impute it even to inanimate objects. +We hear the ticking of the clock as tíck-tock, tíck-tock, or else +tick-tóck, tick-tóck, although psychologists assure us that the clock's +wheels are moving with indifferent, mechanical precision, and that it is +simply our own focusing of attention upon alternate beats which creates +the impression of rhythm. We hear a rhythm in the wheels of the train, and +in the purring of the motor-engine, knowing all the while that it +is we who impose or make-up the rhythm, in our human instinct for +organizing the units of attention. We cannot help it, as long as our own +pulses beat. No two persons catch quite the same rhythm in the sounds of +the animate and inanimate world, because no two persons have absolutely +identical pulse-beats, identical powers of attention, an identical +psycho-physical organism. We all perceive that there is a rhythm in a +racing crew, in a perfectly timed stroke of golf, in a fisherman's fly- +casting, in a violinist's bow, in a close-hauled sailboat fighting with +the wind. But we appropriate and organize these objective impressions in +subtly different ways. + +When, for instance, we listen to poetry read aloud, or when we read it +aloud ourselves, some of us are instinctive "timers," +[Footnote: See W. M. Patterson, _The Rhythm of Prose_. Columbia University +Press, 1916.] +paying primary attention to the spaced or measured intervals of time, +although in so doing we are not wholly regardless of those points of +"stress" which help to make the time-intervals plainer. Others of us are +natural "stressers," in that we pay primary attention to the "weight" of +words,--the relative loudness or pitch, by which their meaning or +importance is indicated,--and it is only secondarily that we think of +these weighted or "stressed" words as separated from one another by +approximately equal intervals of time. Standing on the rocks at Gloucester +after an easterly storm, a typical "timer" might be chiefly conscious of +the steady sequence of the waves, the measured intervals between +their summits; while the typical stresser, although subconsciously aware +of the steady iteration of the giant rollers, might watch primarily their +foaming crests, and listen chiefly to their crashing thunder. The point to +be remembered is this: that neither the "timing" instinct nor the +"stressing" instinct excludes the other, although in most individuals one +or the other predominates. Musicians, for instance, are apt to be +noticeable "timers," while many scholars who deal habitually with words in +their varied shifts of meaning, are professionally inclined to be +"stressers." + + +_2. The Measurement of Rhythm_ + +Let us apply these facts to some of the more simple of the vexed questions +of prosody, No one disputes the universality of the rhythmizing impulse; +the quarrel begins as soon as any prosodist attempts to dogmatize about +the nature and measurement of those flowing time-intervals whose +arrangement we call rhythm. No one disputes, again, that the only arbiter +in matters of prosody is the trained ear, and not the eye. Infinitely +deceptive is the printed page of verse when regarded by the eye. Verse may +be made to look like prose and prose to look like verse. Capital letters, +lines, rhymes, phrases and paragraphs may be so cunningly or +conventionally arranged by the printer as to disguise the real nature of +the rhythmical and metrical pattern. When in doubt, close your eyes! + +We agree, then, that in all spoken language--and this is as true of prose +as it is of verse--there are time-intervals more or less clearly marked, +and that the ear is the final judge as to the nature of these intervals. +But can the ear really measure the intervals with any approximation to +certainty, so that prosodists, for instance, can agree that a given poem +is written in a definite metre? In one sense "yes." No one doubts that the +_Odyssey_ is written in "dactylic hexameters," i.e., in lines made up of +six "feet," each one of which is normally composed of a long syllable plus +two short syllables, or of an acceptable equivalent for that particular +combination. But when we are taught in school that Longfellow's +_Evangeline_ is also written in "dactylic hexameters," trouble begins for +the few inquisitive, since it is certain that if you close your eyes and +listen carefully to a dozen lines of Homer's Greek, and then to a +dozen lines of Longfellow's English, each written in so-called +"hexameters," you are listening to two very different arrangements of +time-intervals, so different, in fact, that the two poems are really not +in the same "measure" or "metre" at all. For the Greek poet was, as a +metrist, thinking primarily of quantity, of the relative "timing" of his +syllables, and the American of the relative "stress" of his syllables. +[Footnote: "Musically speaking--because the musical terms are exact and +not ambiguous--true dactyls are in 2-4 time and the verse of _Evangeline_ +is in 3-8 time." T. D. Goodell, _Nation_, October 12, 1911.] + +That illustration is drearily hackneyed, no doubt, but it has a double +value. It is perfectly clear; and furthermore, it serves to remind us of +the instinctive differences between different persons and different races +as regards the ways of arranging time-intervals so as to create the +rhythms of verse. The individual's standard of measurement--his poetic +foot-rule, so to speak--is very elastic,--"made of rubber" indeed, as the +experiments of many psychological laboratories have demonstrated beyond a +question. Furthermore, the composers of poetry build it out of very +elastic units. They are simply putting syllables of words together into a +rhythmical design, and these "airy syllables," in themselves mere symbols +of ideas and feelings, cannot be weighed by any absolutely correct +sound-scales. They cannot be measured in time by any absolutely accurate +watch-dial, or exactly estimated in their meaning, whether that be literal +or figurative, by any dictionary of words and phrases. But this is only +saying that the syllables which make up the units of verse, whether the +units be called "foot" or "line" or "phrase," are not dead, mechanical +things, but live things, moving rhythmically, entering thereby into the +pulsing, chiming life of the real world, and taking on more fullness of +life and beauty in elastic movement, in ordered but infinitely flexible +design, than they ever could possess as independent particles. + + +_3. Conflict and Compromise_ + +And everywhere in the arrangement of syllables into the patterns of rhythm +and metre we find conflict and compromise, the surrender of some values of +sound or sense for the sake of a greater unity. To revert to +considerations dealt with in an earlier chapter, we touch here upon the +old antinomy--or it may be, harmony--between "form" and "significance," +between the "outside" and the "inside" of the work of art. For words, +surely, have one kind of value as _pure sound_, as "cadences" made up of +stresses, slides, pauses, and even of silences when the expected syllable +is artfully withheld. It is this sound-value, for instance, which you +perceive as you listen to a beautifully recited poem in Russian, a +language of which you know not a single word; and you may experience a +modification of the same pleasure in closing your mind wholly to the +"sense" of a richly musical passage in Swinburne, and delighting your ear +by its mere beauty of tone. But words have also that other value as +_meaning_, and we are aware how these meaning values shift with the stress +and turns of thought, so that a given word has a greater or less weight in +different sentences or even in different clauses of the same sentence. +"Meaning" values, like sound values, are never precisely fixed in a +mechanical and universally agreed-upon scale, they are relative, not +absolute. Sometimes meaning and sound conflict with one another, and one +must be sacrificed in part, as when the normal accent of a word +refuses to coincide with the verse-accent demanded by a certain measure, +so that we "wrench" the accent a trifle, or make it "hover" over two +syllables without really alighting upon either. And it is significant that +lovers of poetry have always found pleasure in such compromises. +[Footnote: Compare the passage about Chopin's piano-playing, quoted from +Alden in the Notes and Illustrations for this chapter.] +They enjoy minor departures from and returns to the normal, the expected +measure of both sound and sense, just as a man likes to sail a boat as +closely into the wind as he conveniently can, making his actual course a +compromise between the line as laid by the compass, and the actual facts +of wind and tide and the behavior of his particular boat. It is thus that +the sailor "makes it," triumphantly! And the poet "makes it" likewise, out +of deep, strong-running tides of rhythmic impulse, out of arbitrary words +and rebellious moods, out of + + "Thoughts hardly to be packed + Into a narrow act, + Fancies that broke through language and escaped," + +until he compels rhythm and syllables to move concordantly, and blend into +that larger living whole--the dancing, singing crowd of sounds and +meanings which make up a poem. + + +_4. The Rhythms of Prose_ + +Just here it may be of help to us to turn away for a moment from verse +rhythm, and to consider what Dryden called "the other harmony" of prose. +For no one doubts that prose has rhythm, as well as verse. Vast and +learned treatises have been written on the prose rhythms of the Greeks and +Romans, and Saintsbury's _History of English Prose Rhythm_ is a monumental +collection of wonderful prose passages in English, with the scansion of +"long" and "short" syllables and of "feet" marked after a fashion that +seems to please no one but the author. But in truth the task of inventing +an adequate system for notating the rhythm of prose, and securing a +working agreement among prosodists as to a proper terminology, is almost +insuperable. Those of us who sat in our youth at the feet of German +masters were taught that the distinction between verse and prose was +simple: verse was, as the Greeks had called it, "bound speech" and prose +was "loosened speech." But a large proportion of the poetry published in +the last ten years is "free verse," which is assuredly of a "loosened" +rather than a "bound" pattern. + +Apparently the old fence between prose and verse has been broken down. Or, +if one conceives of indubitable prose and indubitable verse as forming two +intersecting circles, there is a neutral zone, + +[Illustration: Prose / Neutral Zone / Verse] + +which some would call "prose poetry" and some "free verse," and which, +according to the experiments of Dr. Patterson +[Footnote: _The Rhythm of Prose_, already cited.] +may be appropriated as "prose experience" or "verse experience" according +to the rhythmic instinct of each individual. Indeed Mr. T. S. Omond has +admitted that "the very same words, with the very same natural stresses, +may be prose or verse according as we treat them. The difference is in +ourselves, in the mental rhythm to which we unconsciously adjust the +words." +[Footnote: Quoted in B. M. Alden, "The Mental Side of Metrical Form," +_Modern Language Review_, July, 1914.] +Many familiar sentences from the English Bible or Prayer-Book, such as the +words from the _Te Deum_, "We, therefore, pray thee, help thy servants, +whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood," have a rhythm which may +be felt as prose or verse, according to the mental habit or mood or +rhythmizing impulse of the hearer. + +Nevertheless it remains true in general that the rhythms of prose are more +constantly varied, broken and intricate than the rhythms of verse. They +are characterized, according to the interesting experiments of Dr. +Patterson, by syncopated time, +[Footnote: "For a 'timer' the definition of prose as distinguished from +verse experience depends upon a predominance of syncopation over +coincidence in the coordination of the accented syllables of the text with +the measuring pulses." _Rhythm of Prose_, p. 22.] +whereas in normal verse there is a fairly clean-cut coincidence between +the pulses of the hearer and the strokes of the rhythm. Every one seems to +agree that there is a certain danger in mixing these infinitely subtle and +"syncopated" tunes of prose with the easily recognized tunes of verse. +There is, unquestionably, a natural "iambic" roll in English prose, due to +the predominant alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in our +native tongue, but when Dickens--to cite what John Wesley would call "an +eminent sinner" in this respect--inserts in his emotional prose line after +line of five-stress "iambic" verse, we feel instinctively that the +presence of the blank verse impairs the true harmony of the prose. +[Footnote: Observe, in the "Notes and Illustrations" for this chapter, +the frequency of the blank-verse lines in Robert G. Ingersoll's "Address +over a Little Boy's Grave."] +Delicate writers of English prose usually avoid this coincidence of +pattern with the more familiar patterns of verse, but it is impossible to +avoid it wholly, and some of the most beautiful cadences of English prose +might, if detached from their context, be scanned for a few syllables as +perfect verse. The free verse of Whitman, Henley and Matthew Arnold is +full of these embedded fragments of recognized "tunes of verse," mingled +with the unidentifiable tunes of prose. There has seldom been a more +curious example of accidental coincidence than in this sentence from a +prosaic textbook on "The Parallelogram of Forces": "And hence no force, +however great, can draw a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line which +shall be absolutely straight." This is precisely the "four-stressed +iambic" metre of _In Memoriam_, and it even preserves the peculiar rhyme +order of the _In Memoriam_ stanza: + + "And hence no force, however great, + Can draw a cord, however fine, + Into a horizontal line + Which shall be absolutely straight." + +We shall consider more closely, in the section on Free Verse in the +following chapter, this question of the coincidence and variation of +pattern as certain types of loosened verse pass in and out of the zone +which is commonly recognized as pure prose. But it is highly important +here to remember another fact, which professional psychologists in their +laboratory experiments with the notation of verse and prose have +frequently forgotten, namely, the existence of a type of ornamented prose, +which has had a marked historical influence upon the development of +English style. This ornamented prose, elaborated by Greek and Roman +rhetoricians, and constantly apparent in the pages of Cicero, heightened +its rhythm by various devices of alliteration, assonance, tone-color, +cadence, phrase and period. Greek oratory even employed rhyme in highly +colored passages, precisely as Miss Amy Lowell uses rhyme in her +polyphonic or "many-voiced" prose. Medieval Latin took over all of these +devices from Classical Latin, and in its varied oratorical, liturgical and +epistolary forms it strove to imitate the various modes of _cursus_ +("running") and _clausula_ ("cadence") which had characterized the rhythms +of Isocrates and Cicero. +[Footnote: A. C. Clark, _Prose Rhythm in English_. Oxford, 1913. +Morris W. Croll, "The Cadence of English Oratorical Prose," _Studies in +Philology_. January, 1919. +Oliver W. Elton, "English Prose Numbers," in _Essays and Studies_ by +members of the English Association, 4th Series. Oxford, 1913.] +From the Medieval Latin Missal and Breviary these devices of prose rhythm, +particularly those affecting the end of sentences, were taken over into +the Collects and other parts of the liturgy of the English Prayer-Book. +They had a constant influence upon the rhythms employed by the translators +of the English Bible, and through the Bible the cadences of this ancient +ornamented prose have passed over into the familiar but intricate +harmonies of our "heightened" modern prose. + +While this whole matter is too technical to be dealt with adequately here, +it may serve at least to remind the reader that an appreciation of English +prose rhythms, as they have been actually employed for many centuries, +requires a sensitiveness to the rhetorical position of phrases and +clauses, and to "the use of sonorous words in the places of rhetorical +emphasis, which cannot be indicated by the bare symbols of prosody." +[Footnote: New York _Nation_, February 27, 1913.] +For that sonority and cadence and balance which constitute a harmonious +prose sentence cannot be adequately felt by a possibly illiterate +scientist in his laboratory for acoustics; the "literary" value of words, +in all strongly emotional prose, is inextricably mingled with the bare +sound values: it is thought-units that must be delicately "balanced" as +well as stresses and slides and final clauses; it is the elevation of +ideas, the nobility and beauty of feeling, as discerned by the trained +literary sense, which makes the final difference between enduring prose +harmonies and the mere tinkling of the "musical glasses." +[Footnote: This point is suggestively discussed by C. E. Andrews, +_The Writing and Reading of Verse_, chap. 5. New York, 1918.] +The student of verse may very profitably continue to exercise himself with +the rhythms of prose. He should learn to share the unwearied enthusiasm of +Professor Saintsbury for the splendid cadences of our sixteenth-century +English, for the florid decorative period of Thomas Browne and Jeremy +Taylor, for the eloquent "prose poetry" of De Quincey and Ruskin and +Charles Kingsley, and for the strangely subtle effects wrought by Pater +and Stevenson. But he must not imagine that any laboratory system of +tapping syncopated time, or any painstaking marking of macrons (-) breves +(u) and caesuras (||) will give him full initiation into the mysteries of +prose cadences which have been built, not merely out of stressed and +unstressed syllables, but out of the passionate intellectual life of many +generations of men. He may learn to feel that life as it pulsates in +words, but no one has thus far devised an adequate scheme for its +notation. + + +_5. Quantity, Stress and Syllable_ + +The notation of verse, however, while certainly not a wholly simple +matter, is far easier. It is practicable to indicate by conventional +printer's devices the general rhythmical and metrical scheme of a poem, +and to indicate the more obvious, at least, of its incidental variations +from the expected pattern. It remains as true of verse as it is of prose +that the "literary" values of words--their connotations or emotional +overtones--are too subtle to be indicated by any marks invented by a +printer; but the alternation or succession of long or short syllables, of +stressed or unstressed syllables, the nature of particular feet +and lines and stanzas, the order and interlacing of rhymes, and even the +devices of tone-color, are sufficiently external elements of verse to +allow easy methods of indication. + +When you and I first began to study Virgil and Horace, for instance, we +were taught that the Roman poets, imitating the Greeks, built heir verses +upon the principle of _Quantity_. The metrical unit was the foot, made up +of long and short syllables in various combinations, two short syllables +being equivalent to one long one. The feet most commonly used were the +Iambus [short-long], the Anapest [short-short-long], the Trochee +[long-short], the Dactyl [long-short-short], and the Spondee [long-long]. +Then we were instructed that a "verse" or line consisting of one foot was +called a monometer, of two feet, a dimeter, of three, a trimeter, of four, +a tetrameter, of five, a pentameter, of six, a hexameter. This looked like +a fairly easy game, and before long we were marking the quantities in the +first line of the Aeneid, as other school-children had done ever since the +time of St. Augustine: + + _Arma vi¦rumque ca¦no Tro¦jae qui ¦ primus ab¦oris_. + +Or perhaps it was Horace's + + _Maece¦nas, atavis ¦¦ edite reg¦ibus_. + +We were told, of course, that it was not all quite as simple as this: that +there were frequent metrical variations, such as trochees changing places +with dactyls, and anapests with iambi; that feet could be inverted, so +that a trochaic line might begin with an iambus, an anapestic line with a +dactyl, or _vice versa_; that syllables might be omitted at the beginning +or the end or even in the middle of a line, and that this "cutting-off" +was called _catalexis_; that syllables might even be added at the +beginning or end of certain lines and that these syllables were called +_hypermetric_; and that we must be very watchful about pauses, +particularly about a somewhat mysterious chief pause, liable to occur +about the middle of a line, called a _caesura_. But the magic password to +admit us to this unknown world of Greek and Roman prosody was after all +the word _Quantity_. + +If a few of us were bold enough to ask the main difference between this +Roman system of versification and the system which governed modern English +poetry--even such rude playground verse as + + "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, + Catch a nigger by the toe"-- + +we were promptly told by the teacher that the difference was a very plain +one, namely, that English, like all the Germanic languages, obeyed in its +verse the principles of _Stress_. Instead of looking for "long" and +"short" syllables, we had merely to look for "stressed" and "unstressed" +syllables. It was a matter, not of quantity, but of accent; and if we +remembered this fact, there was no harm but rather a great convenience, in +retaining the technical names of classical versification. Only we must be +careful that by "iambus," in English poetry, we _meant_ an unstressed +syllable, rather than a short syllable followed by a long one. And so with +"trochee," "dactyl," "anapest" and the rest; if we knew that accent and +not quantity was what we really had in mind, it was proper enough to speak +of _Paradise Lost_ as written in "iambic pentameter," and _Evangeline_ in +"dactylic hexameter," etc. The trick was to count stresses and not +syllables, for was not Coleridge's _Christabel_ written in a metre which +varied its syllables anywhere from four to twelve for the line, yet +maintained its music by regularity of stress? + +Nothing could be plainer than all this. Yet some of us discovered when we +went to college and listened to instructors who grew strangely excited +over prosody, that it was not all as easy as this distinction between +_Quantity_ and _Stress_ would seem to indicate. For we were now told that +the Greek and Roman habits of daily speech in prose had something to do +with their instinctive choice of verse-rhythms: that at the very time when +the Greek heroic hexameters were being composed, there was a natural +dactylic roll in spoken prose; that Roman daily speech had a stronger +stress than Greek, so that Horace, in imitating Greek lyric measures, had +stubborn natural word-accents to reconcile with his quantitative measures; +that the Roman poets, who had originally allowed normal word-accent and +verse-pulse to coincide for the most part, came gradually to enjoy a +certain clash between them, keeping all the while the quantitative +principle dominant; so that when Virgil and Horace read their verses +aloud, and word-accent and verse-pulse fell upon different syllables, the +verse-pulse yielded slightly to the word-accent, thus adding something of +the charm of conversational prose to the normal time-values of the rhythm. +In a word, we were now taught--if I may quote from a personal letter of a +distinguished American Latinist--that "the almost universal belief that +Latin verse is a matter of quantity only is a mistake. Word-accent was not +lost in Latin verse." + +And then, as if this undermining of our schoolboy faith in pure Quantity +were not enough, came the surprising information that the Romans had kept, +perhaps from the beginning of their poetizing, a popular type of accented +verse, as seen in the rude chant of the Roman legionaries, + + _Mílle Fráncos mílle sémel Sármatás occídimús_. +[Footnote: See C. M. Lewis, _Foreign Sources of Modern English +Versification_. Halle, 1898.] + +Certainly those sun-burnt "doughboys" were not bothering themselves +about trochees and iambi and such toys of cultivated "literary" persons; +they were amusing themselves on the march by inventing words to fit the +"goose-step." Their + + _Unus homo mille mille mille decollavimus_ + +which Professor Courthope scans as trochaic verse, +[Footnote: _History of English Poetry_, vol. 1, p. 73.] +seems to me nothing but "stress" verse, like + + _"Hay-foot, straw-foot, belly full of bean-soup--Hep--Hep!"_ + +Popular accentual verse persisted, then, while the more cultivated Roman +public acquired and then gradually lost, in the course of centuries, its +ear for the quantitative rhythms which originally had been copied from the +Greeks. + +Furthermore, according to our ingenious college teachers, there was still +a third principle of versification to be reckoned with, not depending on +Quantity or Stress, but merely _Syllabic_, or syllable-counting. This was +immemorially old, it seemed, and it had reappeared mysteriously in Europe +in the Dark Ages. + +Dr. Lewis cites from a Latin manuscript poem of the ninth century: +[Footnote: _Foreign Sources_, etc., p. 3.] + + _"Beatissimus namque Dionysius ¦ Athenis quondam episcopus, + Quem Sanctus Clemens direxit in Galliam ¦ propter praedicandi + gratiam_," etc. + +"Each verse contains 21 syllables, with a caesura after the 12th. No +further regularity, either metrical or rhythmical, can be perceived. +Such a verse could probably not have been written except for music." +Church-music, apparently, was also a factor in the development of +versification,--particularly that "Gregorian" style which demanded neither +quantitative nor accentual rhythm, but simply a fair count of syllables in +the libretto, note matching syllable exactly. But when the great medieval +Latin hymns, like _Dies ire_, were written, the Syllabic principle of +versification, like the Quantitative principle, dropped out of sight, +and we witness once more the emergence of the Stress or accentual system, +heavily ornamented with rhymes. +[Footnote: See the quotation from Taylor's _Classical Heritage of the +Middle Ages_ printed in the "Notes and Illustrations" for this chapter.] +Yet the Syllabic method reappears once more, we were told, in French +prosody, and thus affects the verse of Chaucer and of subsequent English +poetry, and it still may be studied, isolated as far as may be from +considerations of quantity and stress, in certain English songs written +for music, where syllable carefully matches note. The "long metre" +(8 syllables), "short metre" (6 syllables) and "common metre" +(7 syllables, 6 syllables) of the hymn books is a convenient +illustration of thinking of metre in terms of syllables alone. + + +_6. The Appeal to the Ear_ + +At this point, perhaps, having set forth the three theories of _Quantity, +Stress_ and _Syllable_, our instructors were sensible enough to make an +appeal to the ear. Reminding us that stress was the controlling principle +in Germanic poetry,--although not denying that considerations of quantity +and number of syllables might have something to do with the effect,--they +read aloud to us some Old English verse. Perhaps it was that _Song of the +Battle of Brunanburh_ which Tennyson has so skilfully rendered into modern +English words while preserving the Old English metre. And here, though the +Anglo-Saxon words were certainly uncouth, we caught the chief stresses +without difficulty, usually four beats to the line. If the instructor, +while these rude strokes of rhythm were still pounding in our ears, +followed the Old English with a dozen lines of Chaucer, we could all +perceive the presence of a newer, smoother, more highly elaborated +verse-music, where the number of syllables had been cunningly +reckoned, and the verse-accent seemed always to fall upon a syllable long +and strong enough to bear the weight easily, and the rhymes rippled like a +brook. Whether we called the metre of the _Prologue_ rhymed couplets of +iambic pentameter, or rhymed couplets of ten-syllabled, five-stressed +verse, the music, at least, was clear enough. And so was the music of the +"blank" or unrhymed five-stress lines of Marlowe and Shakspere and Milton, +and as we listened it was easy to believe that "stress" and "quantity" and +"syllable," all playing together like a chime of bells, are concordant and +not quarrelsome elements in the harmony of modern English verse. Only, to +be richly concordant, each must be prepared to yield a little if need be, +to the other! + +I have taken too many pages, perhaps, in thus sketching the rudimentary +education of a college student in the elements of rhythm and metre, and in +showing how the theoretical difficulties of the subject--which are +admittedly great--often disappear as soon as one resolves to let the ear +decide. A satisfied ear may soothe a dissatisfied mind. I have quoted from +a letter of an American scholar about quantity being the "controlling" +element of cultivated Roman verse, and I now quote from a personal letter +of an American poet, emphasizing the necessity of "reading poetry as it +was meant to be read": "My point is _not_ that English verse has no +quantity, but that the controlling element is not quantity but accent. The +lack of fixed _syllabic _quantity is just what I emphasize. This lack +makes definite _beat _impossible: or at least it makes it absurd to +attempt to scan English verse by feet. The proportion of 'irregularities' +and 'exceptions' becomes painful to the student and embarrassing to the +professor. He is put to fearful straits to explain his prosody and make it +fit the verse. And when he has done all this, the student, if he has a +good ear, forthwith forgets it all, and reads the verse as it was meant to +be read, as a succession of musical bars (without pitch, of course), in +which the accent marks the rhythm, and pauses and _rests _often take the +place of missing syllables. To this ingenuous student I hold out my hand +and cast in my lot with him. He is the man for whom English poetry is +written." + +It may be objected, of course, that the phrase "reading poetry as it was +meant to be read" really begs the question. For English poets have often +amused themselves by composing purely quantitative verse, which they wish +us to read as quantitative. The result may be as artificial as the +painfully composed Latin quantitative verse of English schoolboys, but the +thing can be done. Tennyson's experiments in quantity are well known, and +should be carefully studied. He was proud of his hexameter: + + "High winds roaring above me, dark leaves falling about me," + +and of his pentameter: + + "All men alike hate slops, particularly gruel." + +Here the English long and short syllables--as far as "long" and "short" +can be definitely distinguished in English--correspond precisely to the +rules of Roman prosody. The present Laureate, Robert Bridges, whose +investigations in English and Roman prosody have been incessant, has +recently published a book of experiments in writing English quantitative +hexameters. +[Footnote: _Ibant Obscuri_. New York, Oxford University Press, 1917.] +Here are half a dozen lines: + + "Midway of all this tract, with secular arms an immense elm + Reareth a crowd of branches, aneath whose lofty protection + Vain dreams thickly nestle, clinging unto the foliage on high: + And many strange creatures of monstrous form and features + Stable about th' entrance, Centaur and Scylla's abortion, + And hundred-handed Briareus, and Lerna's wild beast...." + +These are lines interesting to the scholar, but they are somehow +"non-English" in their rhythm--not in accordance with "the genius of the +language," as we vaguely but very sensibly say. Neither did the stressed +"dactylic" hexameters of Longfellow, written though they were by a skilful +versifier, quite conform to "the nature of the language." + + +_7. The Analogy with Music_ + +One other attempt to explain the difficulties of English rhythm and metre +must at least be mentioned here, namely the "musical" theory of the +American poet and musician, Sidney Lanier. In his _Science of English +Verse_, an acute and very suggestive book, he threw over the whole theory +of stress--or at least, retained it as a mere element of assistance, as in +music, to the marking of time, maintaining that the only necessary element +in rhythm is equal time-intervals, corresponding to bars of music. +According to Lanier, the structure of English blank verse, for instance, +is not an alternation of unstressed with stressed syllables, but a series +of bars of 3/8 time, thus: + +[Illustration: Five bars of 3/8 time, each with a short and a long note.] + +Thomson, Dabney and other prosodists have followed Lanier's general +theory, without always agreeing with him as to whether blank verse is +written in 3/8 or 2/4 time. Alden, in a competent summary of these various +musical theories as to the basis of English verse, +[Footnote: _Introduction to Poetry_, pp. 190-93. See also Alden's _English +Verse_, Part 3. "The Time-Element in English Verse."] +quotes with approval Mr. T. S. Omond's words: "Musical notes are almost +pure symbols. In theory at least, and no doubt substantially in practice, +they can be divided with mathematical accuracy--into fractions of 1/2, +1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc.--and the ideal of music is absolute accordance with +time. Verse has other methods and another ideal. Its words are concrete +things, not readily carved to such exact pattern.... The perfection of +music lies in absolute accordance with time, that of verse is continual +slight departures from time. This is why no musical representations of +verse ever seem satisfactory. They assume regularity where none exists." + + +_8. Prosody and Enjoyment_ + +It must be expected then, that there will be different preferences in +choosing a nomenclature for modern English metres, based upon the +differences in the individual physical organism of various metrists, and +upon the strictness of their adherence to the significance of stress, +quantity and number of syllables in the actual forms of verse. Adherents +of musical theories in the interpretation of verse may prefer to speak of +"duple time" instead of iambic-trochaic metres, and of "triple" time for +anapests and dactyls. Natural "stressers" may prefer to call iambic and +anapestic units "rising" feet, to indicate the ascent of stress as one +passes from the weaker to the stronger syllables; and similarly, to call +trochaic and dactylic units "falling" feet, to indicate the descent or +decline of stress as the weaker syllable or syllables succeed the +stronger. Or, combining these two modes of nomenclature, one may +legitimately speak of iambic feet as "duple rising," + + "And never lifted up a single stone"; + +trochaic as "duple falling," + + "Here they are, my fifty perfect poems"; + +anapestic as "triple rising," + + "But he lived with a lot of wild mates, and they never would let him be +good"; + +and dactylic as "triple falling"; + + "Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them." + +If a line is felt as "metrical," i.e. divided into approximately equal +time-intervals, the particular label employed to indicate the nature of +the metre is unimportant. It may be left to the choice of each student of +metre, provided he uses his terms consistently. The use of the traditional +terminology "iambic," "trochaic," etc., is convenient, and is open to no +objection if one is careful to make clear the sense in which he employs +such ambiguous terms. + +It should also be added, as a means of reconciling the apparently warring +claims of stress and quantity in English poetry, that recent +investigations in recording through delicate instruments the actual +time-intervals used by different persons in reading aloud the same lines +of poetry, prove what has long been suspected, namely, the close +affiliation of quantity with stress. +[Footnote: "Syllabic Quantity in English Verse," by Ada F. Snell, _Pub. Of +Mod, Lang. Ass_., September, 1918.] +Miss Snell's experiments show that the foot in English verse is made up of +syllables 90 per cent of which are, in the stressed position, longer than +those in the unstressed. The average relation of short to long syllables, +is, in spite of a good deal of variation among the individual readers, +almost precisely as 2 to 4--which has always been the accepted ratio for +the relation of short to long syllables in Greek and Roman verse. If one +examines English words in a dictionary, the quantities of the syllables +are certainly not "fixed" as they are in Greek and Latin, but the moment +one begins to read a passage of English poetry aloud, and becomes +conscious of its underlying type of rhythm, he fits elastic units of +"feet" into the steadily flowing or pulsing intervals of time. +The "foot" becomes, as it were, a rubber link in a moving bicycle chain. +The revolutions of the chain mark the rhythm; and the stressed or +unstressed or lightly stressed syllables in each "link" or foot, +accommodate themselves, by almost unperceived expansion and contraction, +to the rhythmic beat of the passage as a whole. + +Nor should it be forgotten that the "sense" of words, their +meaning-weight, their rhetorical value in certain phrases, constantly +affects the theoretical number of stresses belonging to a given line. In +blank verse, for instance, the theoretical five chief stresses are often +but three or four in actual practice, lighter stresses taking their place +in order to avoid a pounding monotony, and conversely, as in Milton's +famous line, + + "Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades of death," + +the rhetorical significance of the monosyllables compels an overloading of +stresses which heightens the desired poetic effect. Corson's _Primer of +English Verse_ and Mayor's _English Metres_ give numerous examples from +the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson to illustrate the constant +substitution and shifting of stresses in order to secure variety of music +and suggestive adaptations of sound to sense. It is well known that +Shakspere's blank verse, as he developed in command of his artistic +resources, shows fewer "end-stopped" lines and more "run-on" lines, with +an increasing proportion of light and weak endings. But the same principle +applies to every type of English rhythm. As soon as the dominant +beat--which is commonly, but not always, apparent in the opening measures +of the poem--once asserts itself, the poet's mastery of technique is +revealed through his skill in satisfying the ear with a verbal music which +is never absolutely identical in its time-intervals, its stresses or its +pitch, with the fixed, wooden pattern of the rhythm he is using. + +For the human voice utters syllables which vary their duration, stress and +pitch with each reader. Photographs of voice-waves, as printed by Verrier, +Scripture, and many other laboratory workers, show how great is the +difference between individuals in the intervals covered by the upward and +downward slides or "inflections" which indicate doubt or affirmation. And +these "rising" and "falling" and "circumflex" and "suspended" inflections, +which make up what is called "pitch-accent," are constantly varied, like +the duration and stress of syllables, by the emotions evoked in reading. +Words, phrases, lines and stanzas become colored with emotional overtones +due to the feeling of the instant. Poetry read aloud as something sensuous +and passionate cannot possibly conform exactly to a set mechanical pattern +of rhythm and metre. Yet the hand-woven Oriental rug, though lacking the +geometrical accuracy of a rug made by machinery, reveals a more vital and +intimate beauty of design and execution. Many well-known poets--Tennyson +being perhaps the most familiar example--have read aloud their own verses +with a peculiar chanting sing-song which seemed to over-emphasize the +fundamental rhythm. But who shall correct them? And who is entitled to say +that a line like Swinburne's + + "Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly forever asway" + +is irregular according to the foot-rule of traditional prosody, when it is +probable, as Mr. C. E. Russell maintains, that Swinburne was here +composing in purely musical and not prosodical rhythm? +[Footnote: "Swinburne and Music," by Charles E. Russell, _North American +Review_, November, 1907. See the quotation in the "Notes and +Illustrations" for this chapter.] + +Is it not true, furthermore, as some metrical sceptics like to remind us, +that if we once admit the principle of substitution and equivalence, of +hypermetrical and truncated syllables, of pauses taking the place of +syllables, we can very often make one metre seem very much like another? +The question of calling a given group of lines "iambic" or "trochaic," for +instance, can be made quite arbitrary, depending upon where you begin to +count syllables. "Iambic" with initial truncation or "trochaic" with final +truncation? Tweedle-dum or tweedle-dee? Do you count waves from crest to +crest or from hollow to hollow? When you count the links in a bicycle +chain, do you begin with the slender middle of each link or with one of +the swelling ends? So is it with this "iambic" and "trochaic" matter. +Professor Alden, in a suggestive pamphlet, +[Footnote: "The Mental Side of Metrical Form," already cited.] +confesses that these contrasting concepts of rising and falling metre are +nothing more than concepts, alterable at will. + +But while the experts in prosody continue to differ and to dogmatize, the +lover of poetry should remember that versification is far older than the +science of prosody, and that the enjoyment of verse is, for millions of +human beings, as unaffected by theories of metrics as the stars are +unaffected by the theories of astronomers. It is a satisfaction to the +mind to know that the stars in their courses are amenable to law, even +though one be so poor a mathematician as to be incapable of grasping and +stating the law. The mathematics of music and of poetry, while heightening +the intellectual pleasure of those capable of comprehending it, is +admittedly too difficult for the mass of men. But no lover of poetry +should refuse to go as far in theorizing as his ear will carry him. He +will find that his susceptibility to the pulsations of various types of +rhythm, and his delight in the intricacies of metrical device, will be +heightened by the mental effort of attention and analysis. The danger is +that the lover of poetry, wearied by the quarrels of prosodists, and +forgetting the necessity of patience, compromise and freedom from +dogmatism, will lose his curiosity about the infinite variety of metrical +effects. But it is this very curiosity which makes his ear finer, even if +his theories may be wrong. Hundreds of metricists admire and envy +Professor Saintsbury's ear for prose and verse rhythms while +disagreeing wholly with his dogmatic theories of the "foot," and his +system of notation. There are sure to be some days and hours when the +reader of poetry will find himself bored and tired with the effort of +attention to the technique of verse. Then he can stop analysing, close his +eyes, and drift out to sea upon the uncomprehended music. + + "The stars of midnight shall be dear + To her; and she shall lean her ear + In many a secret place + Where rivulets dance their wayward round, + And beauty born of murmuring sound + Shall pass into her face." + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +RHYME, STANZA AND FREE VERSE + + "Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, + Murmur in the house of life." + EMERSON + + "When this verse was first dictated to me I consider'd a Monotonous + Cadence like that used by Milton & Shakspeare, & all writers of + English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Rhyming, to + be a necessary and indispensible part of the verse. But I soon found + that in the mouth of a true Orator, such monotony was not only + awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. I therefore have + produced a variety in every line, both of cadences & number of + syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into its + fit place: the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, + the mild & gentle for the mild & gentle parts, and the prosaic for + inferior parts: all are necessary to each other. Poetry Fetter'd + Fetters the Human Race!" + WILLIAM BLAKE + + +_1. Battles Long Ago_ + +As we pass from the general consideration of Rhythm and Metre to some of +the special questions involved in Rhyme, Stanza and Free Verse, it may be +well to revert to the old distinction between what we called for +convenience the "outside" and the "inside" of a work of art. In the field +of music we saw that this distinction is almost, if not quite, +meaningless, and in poetry it ought not to be pushed too far. Yet it is +useful in explaining the differences among men as they regard, now the +external form of verse, and now its inner spirit, and as they ask +themselves how these two elements are related. Professor Butcher, in his +_Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, +[Footnote: Page 147.] +describes the natural tendencies of two sorts of men, who are quite as +persistent to-day as ever they were in Greece in looking at one side only +of the question: + + "We need not agree with a certain modern school who would empty all + poetry of poetical thought and etherealize it till it melts into a + strain of music; who sing to us we hardly know of what, but in such a + way that the echoes of the real world, its men and women, its actual + stir and conflict, are faint and hardly to be discerned. The poetry, + we are told, resides not in the ideas conveyed, not in the blending + of soul and sense, but in the sound itself, in the cadence of the + verse. Yet, false as this view may be, it is not perhaps more false + than that other which wholly ignores the effect of musical sound and + looks only to the thought that is conveyed. Aristotle comes + perilously near this doctrine." + +But it is not Aristotle only who permits himself at times to undervalue +the formal element in verse. It is also Sir Philip Sidney, with his famous +"verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry" and "it is not riming +and versing that maketh a poet." It is Shelley with his "The distinction +between poets and prose writers in a vulgar error.... Plato was +essentially a poet--the truth and splendor of his imagery, and the melody +of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive.... +Lord Bacon was a poet." It is Coleridge with his "The writings of Plato, +and Bishop Taylor, and the _Theoria Sacra_ of Burnet, furnish undeniable +proofs that poetry of the highest kind may be written without metre." + +In such passages as these, how generous are Sidney, Shelley, and Coleridge +to the prose-men! And yet these same poet-critics, in dozens of other +passages, have explained the fundamental justification of metre, rhyme and +stanza as elements in the harmony of verse. Harmony may be attained, it is +true, by rhythms too complicated to be easily scanned in metrical feet, +and by measures which disregard rhyme and stanza; and poets, as well as +critics, by giving exclusive attention to a single element in harmony, are +able to persuade themselves for the moment that all other elements are +relatively negligible. Milton, in his zeal for blank verse, attacked +rhyme, in which he had already proved himself a master, quite as fiercely +as any of our contemporary champions of free verse. Campion, a trained +musician, argued for a quantitative system of English prosody during the +very period when he was composing, in the accentual system, some of the +most exquisite songs in the language. Daniel, whose _Defense of Rhyme_ +(1603) was a triumphant reply to Campion's theory, gave courteous +praise to his opponent's practice. Dryden, most flexible-minded of +critics, argues now for, and now against the use of rhymed heroic couplets +in the drama, fitting his theories to the changing currents of +contemporary taste as well as to the varying, self-determined technique of +his own plays. "Never wholly out of the way, nor in it," was Dryden's +happy phrase to describe the artist's freedom, a freedom always conscious +of underlying law. + + +_2. Rhyme as a Form of Rhythm_ + +However theory and practice may happen to coincide or to drift apart, the +fundamental law which justifies rhyme and stanza seems to be this: if +rhythm is a primary fact in poetry, and metre is, as Aristotle called it, +sections of rhythm, any device of repeating identical or nearly identical +sounds at measured intervals is an aid to rhythmical effect. Rhyme is thus +a form, an "externalizing" of rhythm. It is structural as well as +decorative, or rather, it is _one way_ of securing structure, of building +verse. There are other devices, of course, for attaining symmetrical +patterns, for conveying an impression of unity in variety. The "parallel" +structure of Hebrew poetry, where one idea and phrase is balanced against +another, + + "I have slain a man to my wounding-- + And a young man to my hurt--" + +or the "envelope" structure of many of the Psalms, where the initial +phrase or idea is repeated at the close, after the insertion of +illustrative matter, thus securing a pattern by the "return" of the main +idea--the closing of the "curve"--may serve to illustrate the universality +of the principle of balance and contrast and repetition in the +architecture of verse. For Hebrew poetry, like the poetry of many +primitive peoples, utilized the natural pleasure which the ear takes in +listening for and perceiving again an already uttered sound. Rhyme +is a gratification of expectation, like the repetition of a chord in music +[Footnote: "Most musical compositions are written in quite obvious rhymes; +and the array of familiar and classical works that have not only rhymes +but distinct stanzaic arrangements exactly like those of poetry is worth +remembering. Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song' and Rubinstein's 'Romance in E +Flat' will occur at once as examples in which the stanzas are +unmistakable." C. E. Russell, "Swinburne and Music," _North American +Review_, November, 1907.] +or of colors in a rug. It assists the mind in grasping the sense-rhythm,-- +the design of the piece as a whole. It assists the emotions through the +stimulus to the attention, through the reinforcement which it gives to the +pulsations of the psycho-physical organism. + + "And _sweep_ through the _deep_ + While the stormy tempests blow, + While the battle rages long and loud + And the stormy tempests blow." + +The pulses cannot help quickening as the rhymes quicken. + +But in order to perform this structural, rhythmical purpose it is not +necessary that rhyme be of any single recognized type. As long as the +ear receives the pleasure afforded by accordant sound, any of the various +historical forms of rhyme may serve. It may be Alliteration, the +letter-rhyme or "beginning-rhyme" of Old English poetry: + + "_H_im be _h_ealfe stod _h_yse unweaxen, + _C_niht on ge_c_ampe, se full _c_aflice." + +Tennyson imitates it in his "Battle of Brunanburh": + + "Mighty the Mercian, + Hard was his hand-play, + Sparing not any of + Those that with Anlaf, + Warriors over the + Weltering waters + Borne in the bark's-bosom, + Drew to this island-- + Doomed to the death." + +This repetition of initial letters survives in phrases of prose like +"dead and done with," "to have and to hold," and it is utilized in modern +verse to give further emphasis to accentual syllables. But masters of +alliterative effects, like Keats, Tennyson and Verlaine, constantly employ +alliteration in unaccented syllables so as to color the tone-quality of a +line without a too obvious assault upon the ear. The unrhymed songs of +_The Princess_ are full of these delicate modulations of sound. + +In Common rhyme, or "end-rhyme" (found--abound), the accented vowel and +all succeeding sounds are repeated, while the consonants preceding the +accented vowel vary. Assonance, in its stricter sense, means the +repetition of an accented vowel (blackness--dances), while the succeeding +sounds vary, but the terms "assonance" and "consonance" are often employed +loosely to signify harmonious effects of tone-color within a line or group +of lines. Complete or "identical" rhymes (fair--affair), which were +legitimate in Chaucer's time, are not now considered admissible in +English. "Masculine" rhymes are end-rhymes of one syllable; "feminine" +rhymes are end-rhymes of two syllables (uncertain--curtain); internal or +"middle-rhymes" are produced by the repetition at the end of a line of a +rhyme-sound already employed within the line. + + "We were the _first_ that ever _burst_ + Into that silent sea." + +In general, the more frequent the repetitions of rhyme, the quicker is the +rhythmic movement of the poem, and conversely. Thus, the _In Memoriam_ +stanza attains its peculiar effect of retardation by rhyming the first +line with the fourth, so that the ear is compelled to wait for the +expected recurrence of the first rhyme sound. + + "Beside the river's wooded reach, + The fortress and the mountain ridge, + The cataract flashing from the bridge, + The breaker breaking on the beach." + +This gives a movement markedly different from that secured by rearranging +the same lines in alternate rhymes: + + "Beside the river's wooded reach, + The fortress and the mountain ridge, + The breaker breaking on the beach, + The cataract flashing from the bridge." + +If all the various forms of rhyme are only different ways of emphasizing +rhythm through the repetition of accordant sounds, it follows that the +varying rhythmical impulses of poets and of readers will demand now a +greater and now a less dependence upon this particular mode of rhythmical +satisfaction. Chaucer complained of the scarcity of rhymes in English as +compared with their affluence in Old French, and it is true that rhyming +is harder in our tongue than in the Romance languages. We have had +magicians of rhyme, like Swinburne, whose very profusion of rhyme-sounds +ends by cloying the taste of many a reader, and sending him back to blank +verse or on to free verse. The Spenserian stanza, which calls for one +fourfold set of rhymes, one threefold, and one double, all cunningly +interlaced, is as complicated a piece of rhyme-harmony as the ear of +the average lover of poetry can carry. It is needless to say that there +are born rhymers, who think in rhyme and whose fecundity of imagery is +multiplied by the excitement of matching sound with sound. They are often +careless in their prodigality, inexact in their swift catching at any +rhyme-word that will serve. At the other extreme are the self-conscious +artists in verse who abhor imperfect concordances, and polish their rhymes +until the life and freshness disappear. For sheer improvising cleverness +of rhyme Byron is still unmatched, but he often contents himself with +approximate rhymes that are nearly as bad as some of Mrs. Browning's and +Whittier's. Very different is the deliberate artifice of the following +lines, where the monotony of the rhyme-sound fits the "solemn ennui" +of the trailing peacocks; + + I + "From out the temple's pillared portico, + Thence to the gardens where blue poppies blow + The gold and emerald peacocks saunter slow, + Trailing their solemn ennui as they go, + Trailing their melancholy and their woe. + + II + "Trailing their melancholy and their woe, + Trailing their solemn ennui as they go + The gold and emerald peacocks saunter slow + From out the gardens where blue poppies blow + Thence to the temple's pillared portico." +[Footnote: Frederic Adrian Lopere, "World Wisdom," The International, +September, 1915.] + +Rhyme, then, is not merely a "jingle," it is rather, as Samuel Johnson +said of all versification, a "joining music with reason." Its blending of +decorative with structural purpose is in truth "a dictate of nature," or, +to quote E. C. Stedman, "In real, that is, spontaneous minstrelsy, the +fittest assonance, consonance, time, even rime,... _come of themselves +with imaginative thought_." + + +_3. Stanza_ + +There are some lovers of poetry, however, who will grant this theoretical +justification of rhyme as an element in the harmony of verse, without +admitting that the actual rhyming stanzas of English verse show +"spontaneous minstrelsy." The word "stanza" or "strophe" means literally +"a resting-place," a halt or turn, that is to say, after a uniform group +of rhymed lines. Alden defines it in his _English Verse_ as "the largest +unit of verse-measure ordinarily recognized. It is based not so much on +rhythmical divisions as on periods either rhetorical or melodic; that is, +a short stanza will roughly correspond to the period of a sentence, and a +long one to that of a paragraph, while in lyrical verse the original idea +was to conform the stanza to the melody for which it was written." +"Normally, then," Alden adds in his _Introduction to Poetry_, "all the +stanzas of a poem are identical in the number, the length, the metre, and +the rime-scheme of the corresponding verses." The question arises, +therefore, whether those units which we call "stanzas" are arbitrary or +vital. Have the lines been fused into their rhymed grouping by passionate +feeling, or is their unity a mere mechanical conformation to a pattern? In +Theodore Watts-Dunton's well-known article on "Poetry" in the +_Encyclopaedia Brittanica_ +[Footnote: Now reprinted, with many expansions, in his _Poetry and the +Renascence of Wonder_. E. P. Dutton, New York.] +the phrases "stanzaic law" and "emotional law" are used to represent the +two principles at issue: + + "In modern prosody the arrangement of the rhymes and the length of + the lines in any rhymed metrical passage may be determined either by + a fixed stanzaic law, or by a law infinitely deeper--by the law which + impels the soul, in a state of poetic exultation, to seize hold of + every kind of metrical aid, such as rhyme, caesura, etc., for the + purpose of accentuating and marking off each shade of emotion as it + arises, regardless of any demands of stanza.... If a metrical passage + does not gain immensely by being written independently of stanzaic + law, it loses immensely; and for this reason, perhaps, that the great + charm of the music of all verse, as distinguished from the music of + prose, is inevitableness of cadence. In regular metres we enjoy the + pleasure of feeling that the rhymes will inevitably fall under a + recognized law of couplet or stanza. But if the passage flows + independently of these, it must still flow inevitably--it must, in + short, show that it is governed by another and a yet deeper force, + the inevitableness of emotional expression." + +This distinction between "stanzaic law" and "emotional law" is highly +suggestive and not merely in its application to the metres of the famous +regular and irregular odes of English verse. It applies also to the +infinite variety of stanza-patterns which English poetry has taken over +from Latin and French sources and developed through centuries +ofexperimentation, and it affords a key, as we shall see in a moment, to +some of the vexed questions involved in free verse. + +Take first the more familiar of the stanza forms of English verse. They +are conveniently indicated by using letters of the alphabet to correspond +with each rhyme-sound, whenever repeated. + +Thus the rhymed couplet + + "Around their prows the ocean roars, + And chafes beneath their thousand oars" + +may be marked as "four-stress iambic," rhyming _aa_; the heroic couplet + + "The zeal of fools offends at any time, + But most of all the zeal of fools in rhyme" + +as five-stress iambic, rhyming _aa_. The familiar measure of English +ballad poetry, + + "The King has written a braid letter, + And signed it wi' his hand, + And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, + Was walking on the sand" + +is alternating four-stress and three-stress iambic, rhyming _ab cb_. The +_In Memoriam_ stanza, + + "Now rings the woodland loud and long, + The distance takes a lovelier hue, + And drown'd in yonder living blue + The lark becomes a sightless song" + +is four-stress iambic, rhyming _ab ba_. + +The Chaucerian stanza rhymes _a b a b b c c_: + + "'Loke up, I seye, and telle me what she is + Anon, that I may gone aboute thi nede: + Know iche hire ought? for my love telle me this; + Thanne wolde I hopen the rather for to spede.' + Tho gan the veyne of Troilus to blede, + For he was hit, and wex alle rede for schame; + 'Aha!' quod Pandare, 'here bygynneth game.'" + +Byron's "ottava rima" rhymes _a b a b a b c c_: + + "A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, + Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye + Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping + In sight, then lost amidst the forestry + Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping + On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; + A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown + On a fool's head--and there is London Town!" + +The Spenserian stanza rhymes _a b a b b c b c c_, with an extra foot in +the final line: + + "Hee had a faire companion of his way, + A goodly lady clad in scarlot red, + Purfled with gold and pearle of rich assay; + And like a Persian mitre on her hed + Shee wore, with crowns and owches garnished, + The which her lavish lovers to her gave: + Her wanton palfrey all was overspred + With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave, + Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave." + +In considering these various groups of lines which we call stanzas it is +clear that we have to do with thought-units as well as feeling-units, and +that both thought-units and feeling-units should be harmonized, if +possible, with the demands of beauty and variety of sound as represented +by the rhymes. It is not absurd to speak of the natural "size" of poetic +thoughts. Pope, for instance, often works with ideas of couplet size, just +as Martial sometimes amused himself with ideas of a still smaller epigram +size, or Omar Khayyam with thoughts and fancies that came in quatrain +sizes. Many sonnets fail of effectiveness because the contained thought is +too scanty or too full to receive adequate expression in the fourteen +lines demanded by the traditional sonnet form. They are sometimes only +quatrain ideas, blown up big with words to fill out the fourteen +lines, or, on the contrary, as often with the Elizabethans, they are whole +odes or elegies, remorselessly packed into the fashionable fourteen-line +limit. No one who has given attention to the normal length of phrases and +sentences doubts that there are natural "breathfuls" of words +corresponding to the units of ideas; and when ideas are organized by +emotion, there are waves, gusts, or ripples of words, matching the waves +of feeling. In the ideal poetic "pattern," these waves of idea, feeling +and rhythmic speech would coincide more or less completely; we should have +a union of "emotional law" with "stanzaic law," the soul of poetry would +find its perfect embodiment. + +But if we turn the pages of any collection of English poetry, say the +_Golden Treasury_ or the _Oxford Book of English Verse_, we find something +very different from this ideal embodiment of each poetic emotion in a form +delicately moulded to the particular species of emotion revealed. We +discover that precisely similar stanzaic patterns--like similar metrical +patterns--are often used to express diametrically opposite feelings,--let +us say, joy and sorrow, doubt and exultation, victory and defeat. The +"common metre" of English hymnology is thus seen to be a rough mould into +which almost any kind of religious emotion may be poured. If "trochaic" +measures do not always trip it on a light fantastic toe, neither do +"iambic" measures always pace sedately. Doubtless there is a certain +general fitness, in various stanza forms, for this or that poetic purpose: +the stanzas employed by English or Scotch balladry are admittedly +excellent for story-telling; Spenser's favorite stanza is unrivalled +for painting dream-pictures and rendering dream-music, but less available +for pure narration; Chaucer's seven-line stanza, so delicately balanced +upon that fourth, pivotal line, can paint a picture and tell a story too; +Byron's _ottava rima_ has a devil-may-care jauntiness, borrowed, it is +true, from his Italian models, but perfectly fitted to Byron's own mood; +the rhymed couplets of Pope sting and glitter like his antitheses, and the +couplets of Dryden have their "resonance like a great bronze coin thrown +down on marble"; each great artist in English verse, in short, chooses by +instinct the general stanza form best suited to his particular purpose, +and then moulds its details with whatever cunning he may possess. But the +significant point is this: "stanzaic law" makes for uniformity, for the +endless repetition of the chosen pattern, which must still be recognized +as a pattern, however subtly the artist modulates his details; and in +adjusting the infinitely varied material of thought and feeling, phrase +and image, picture and story to the fixed stanzaic design, there are bound +to be gaps and patches, stretchings and foldings of the thought-stuff,-- +for even as in humble tailor-craft, this many-colored coat of poetry must +be cut according to the cloth as well as according to the pattern. How +many pages of even the _Oxford Book of English Verse_ are free from some +touch of feebleness, of redundancy, of constraint due to the remorseless +requirements of the stanza? The line must be filled out, whether or not +the thought is quite full enough for it; rhyme must match rhyme, even if +the thought becomes as far-fetched as the rhyming word; the stanza, in +short, demands one kind of perfection as a constantly repeated musical +design, as beauty of form; and another kind of perfection as the +expression of human emotion. Sometimes these two perfections of "form" and +"significance" are miraculously wedded, stanza after stanza, and we have +our "Ode to a Nightingale," or "Ode to Autumn" as the result. (And perhaps +the best, even in this kind, are but shadows, when compared with the +absolute union of truth and beauty as the poetic idea first took rhythmic +form in the brain of the poet.) + +Yet more often lovers of poetry must content themselves, not with such +"dictates of nature" as these poems, but with approximations. Each +stanzaic form has its conveniences, its "fatal facility," its natural +fitness for singing a song or telling a story or turning a thought over +and over into music. Intellectual readers will always like the +epigrammatic "snap" of the couplet, and Spenser will remain, largely +because of his choice of stanza, the "poet's poet." Perhaps +the very necessity of fitting rhymes together stimulates as much poetic +activity as it discourages; for many poets have testified that the delight +of rhyming adds energy to the imagination. If, as Shelley said, "the mind +in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness," why may it not be the +breath of rhyme, as well as any other form of rhythmic energy, which +quickens its drooping flame? And few poets, furthermore, will admit that +they are really in bondage to their stanzas. They love to dance in these +fetters, and even when wearing the same fetters as another poet, they +nevertheless invent movements of their own, so that Mr. Masefield's +"Chaucerian" stanzas are really not so much Chaucer's as Masefield's. + +Each Ulysses makes and bends his own bow, after all; it is only the +unsuccessful suitors for the honors of poetic craftsmanship who complain +of its difficulties. Something of our contemporary impatience with fixed +stanzaic forms is due perhaps to the failure to recognize that the greater +poets succeed in making over every kind of poetic pattern in the act of +employing it, just as a Chopin minuet differs from a Liszt minuet, +although both composers are using the same fundamental form of dance +music. We must allow for the infinite variety of creative intention, +technique and result. The true defence of rhyme and stanza against the +arguments of extreme advocates of free verse is to point out that +rhyme and stanza are natural structural devices for securing certain +effects. There are various types of bridges for crossing different kinds +of streams; no one type of bridge is always and everywhere the best. To do +away with rhyme and stanza is to renounce some modes of poetic beauty; it +is to resolve that there shall be one less way of crossing the stream. An +advocate of freedom in the arts may well admit that the artist may bridge +his particular stream in any way he can,--or he may ford it or swim it or +go over in an airplane if he chooses. But some method must be found of +getting his ideas and emotions "across" into the mind and feelings of the +readers of his poetry. If this can adequately be accomplished without +recourse to rhyme and stanza, very well; there is _Paradise Lost_, for +instance, and _Hamlet_. But here we are driven back again upon the +countless varieties of artistic intention and craftsmanship and effect. +Each method--and there are as many methods as there are poets and far +more, for craftsmen like Milton and Tennyson try hundreds of methods in +their time--is only a medium through which the artist is endeavoring to +attain a special result. It is one way--only one, and perhaps not the best +way--of trying to cross the stream. + + +_4. Free Verse_ + +Recalling now the discussion of the rhythms of prose in the previous +chapter, and remembering that rhyme and stanza are special forms of +reinforcing the impulse of rhythm, what shall be said of free verse? It +belongs, unquestionably, in that "neutral zone" which some readers, in Dr. +Patterson's phrase, instinctively appropriate as "prose experience," and +others as "verse experience." It renounces metre--or rather endeavors to +renounce it, for it does not always succeed. It professes to do away with +rhyme and stanza, although it may play cunningly upon the sounds of like +and unlike words, and it may arrange phrases into poetic paragraphs, +which, aided by the art of typography, secure a kind of stanzaic effect. +It cannot, however, do away with the element of rhythm, with ordered time. +The moment free verse ceases to be felt as rhythmical, it ceases to be +felt as poetry. This is admitted by its advocates and its opponents +alike. The real question at issue then, is the manner in which free verse +may secure the effects of rhythmic unity and variety, without, on the one +hand, resorting to the obvious rhythms of prose, or on the other hand, +without repeating the recognized patterns of verse. There are many +competent critics who maintain with Edith Wyatt that "on an earth where +there is nothing to wear but clothes, nothing to eat but food, there is +also nothing to read but prose and poetry." "According to the results of +our experiments," testifies Dr. Patterson, "there is no psychological +meaning to claims for a third _genre_ between regular verse and prose, +except in the sense of a jumping back and forth from one side of the fence +to the other." +[Footnote: _The Rhythm of Prose_, p. 77.] +And in the preface to his second edition, after having listened to Miss +Amy Lowell's readings of free verse, Dr. Patterson remarks: "What is +achieved, as a rule, in Miss Lowell's case, is emotional prose, +emphatically phrased, excellent and moving. _Spaced prose_, we may call +it." + +Now "spaced prose" is a useful expression, inasmuch as it calls attention +to the careful emphasis and balance of phrases which up so much of the +rhetorical structure of free verse, and it also serves to remind us of the +part which typography plays in "spacing" these phrases, and stressing for +the eye their curves and "returns." But we are all agreed that +typographical appeals to the eye are infinitely deceptive in blurring the +distinction between verse and prose, and that the trained ear must be the +only arbiter as to poetical and pseudo-poetical effects. Ask a lover of +Walt Whitman whether "spaced prose" is the right label for "Out of the +Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and he will scoff at you. He will maintain that +following the example of the rich broken rhythms of the English Bible, the +example of Ossian, Blake, and many another European experimenter during +the Romantic epoch, Whitman really succeeded in elaborating a mode of +poetical expression, nearer for the most part to recitative than to +aria, yet neither pure declamation nor pure song: a unique embodiment of +passionate feeling, a veritable "neutral zone," which refuses to let +itself be annexed to either "prose" or "verse" as those terms are +ordinarily understood, but for which "free verse" is precisely the right +expression. _Leaves of Grass_ (1855) remains the most interesting of all +experiments with free verse, written as it was by an artist whose natural +rhythmical endowment was extraordinary, and whose technical curiosity and +patience in modulating his tonal effects was unwearied by failures and +undiscouraged by popular neglect. But the case for free verse does not, +after all, stand or fall with Walt Whitman. His was merely the most +powerful poetic personality among the countless artificers who have +endeavored to produce rhythmic and tonal beauty through new structural +devices. + +Readers who are familiar with the experiments of contemporary poets will +easily recognize four prevalent types of "free verse": + +(a) Sometimes what is printed as "free verse" is nothing but prose +disguised by the art of typography, i.e. judged by the ear, it is made up +wholly of the rhythms of prose. + +(b) Sometimes the prose rhythms predominate, without excluding a mixture +of the recognized rhythms of verse. + +(c) Sometimes verse rhythms predominate, and even fixed metrical feet are +allowed to appear here and there. + +(d) Sometimes verse rhythms and metres are used exclusively, although in +new combinations which disguise or break up the metrical pattern. + +A parody by F. P. A. in _The Conning Tower_ affords a convenient +illustration of the "a" type: + +ADD SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY + +Peoria, Ill., Jan. 24.--The Spoon River levee, which protected thousands +of acres of farm land below Havana, Ill., fifty-five miles south of here, +broke this morning. + +A score or more of families fled to higher ground. The towns of Havana, +Lewiston and Duncan Mills are isolated. Two dozen head of cattle are +reported drowned on the farm of John Himpshell, near Havana.--Associated +Press dispatch. + + Edgar Lee Masters wrote a lot of things + About me and the people who + Inhabited my banks. + All of them, all are sleeping on the hill. + Herbert Marshall, Amelia Garrick, Enoch Dunlap, + Ida Frickey, Alfred Moir, Archibald Highbie and the rest. + Me he gave no thought to-- + Unless, perhaps, to think that I, too, was asleep. + Those people on the hill, I thought, + Have grown famous; + But nobody writes about me. + I was only a river, you know, + But I had my pride, + So one January day I overflowed my banks; + It wasn't much of a flood, Mr. Masters, + But it put me on the front page + And in the late dispatches + Of the Associated Press. + +It is clear that the quoted words of the Associated Press dispatch from +Peoria are pure prose, devoid of rhythmical pattern, devoted to a plain +statement of fact. So it is with the imaginary speech of the River. Not +until the borrowed fourth line: + + "All of them, all are sleeping on the hill," + +do we catch the rhythm (and even the metre) of verse, and F. P. A. is +here imitating Mr. Masters's way of introducing a strongly rhythmical and +even metrical line into a passage otherwise flatly "prosaic" in its +time-intervals. But "free verse" adopts many other cadences of English +prose besides this "formless" structure which goes with matter-of-fact +statement. It also reproduces the neat, polished, perhaps epigrammatic +sentence which crystallizes a fact or a generalization; the more emotional +and "moving" period resulting from heightened feeling, and finally the +frankly imitative and ornamented cadences of descriptive and highly +impassioned prose. Let us take some illustrations from Sidney Lanier's +_Poem Outlines_, a posthumously published collection of some of his +sketches for poems, "jotted in pencil on the backs of envelopes, on the +margins of musical programmes, or little torn scraps of paper." + + "The United States in two hundred years + has made Emerson out of a witch-burner." + +This is polished, graphic prose. Here is an equally graphic, but more +impassioned sentence, with the staccato rhythm and the alliterative +emphasis of good angry speech: + + _To the Politicians_ + + "You are servants. Your thoughts are the thoughts of cooks curious to + skim perquisites from every pan, your quarrels are the quarrels of + scullions who fight for the privilege of cleaning the pot with most + leavings in it, your committees sit upon the landings of back-stairs, + and your quarrels are the quarrels of kitchens." + +But in the following passage, apparently a first draft for some lines in +_Hymns of the Marshes_, Lanier takes a strongly rhythmical, heavily +punctuated type of prose, as if he were writing a Collect: + + "The courses of the wind, and the shifts thereof, as also what way the + clouds go; and that which is happening a long way off; and the full face + of the sun; and the bow of the Milky Way from end to end; as also the + small, the life of the fiddler-crab, and the household of the marsh-hen; + and more, the translation of black ooze into green blade of marsh-grass, + which is as if filth bred heaven: This a man seeth upon the marsh." + +In that rhapsody of the marsh there is no recognizable metrical scheme, in +spite of the plainly marked rhythm, but in the following symbolic sketch +the imitation of the horse's ambling introduces an element of regular +metre: + + "Ambling, ambling round the ring, + Round the ring of daily duty, + Leap, Circus-rider, man, through the paper hoop of death, + --Ah, lightest thou, beyond death, on this same slow-ambling, + padded horse of life." + +And finally, in such fragments as the following, Lanier uses a regular +metre of "English verse"--it is true with a highly irregular third line-- + + "And then + A gentle violin mated with the flute, + And both flew off into a wood of harmony, + Two doves of tone." + +It is clear that an artist in words, in jotting down thoughts and images +as they first emerge, may instinctively use language which is subtly +blended of verse and prose, like many rhapsodical passages in the private +journals of Thoreau and Emerson. When duly elaborated, these passages +usually become, in the hands of the greater artists, either one thing or +the other, i.e. unmistakable prose or unmistakable verse. But it remains +true, I think, that there is another artistic instinct which impels +certain poets to blend the types in the endeavor to reach a new and hybrid +beauty. +[Footnote: Some examples of recent verse are printed in the "Notes and +Illustrations" for this chapter.] + +Take these illustrations of the "b" type--i.e. prose rhythms predominant, +with some admixture of the rhythms of verse: + + "I hear footsteps over my head all night. + They come and go. Again they come and again they go all night. + They come one eternity in four paces and they go one eternity in four + paces, and between the coming and the going there is Silence and Night + and the Infinite. + For infinite are the nine feet of a prison cell, and endless is the + march of him who walks between the yellow brick wall and the red iron + gate, thinking things that cannot be chained and cannot be locked, but + that wander far away in the sunlit world, in their wild pilgrimage + after destined goals. + Throughout the restless night I hear the footsteps over my head. + Who walks? I do not know. It is the phantom of the jail, the sleepless + brain, a man, the man, the Walker. + One--two--three--four; four paces and the wall." +[Footnote: From Giovanitti's "The Walker."] + +Or take this: + + "Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct, + The Crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise, + Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone, + Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from its waters + reflected, + Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, + all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation; + Pass'd! Pass'd! for us, forever pass'd, that once so mighty world, now + void, inanimate, phantom world, + Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, + myths, + Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and courtly + dames, + Pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armor on, + Blazon'd with Shakspere's purple page, + And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme." +[Footnote: Whitman, "Song of the Exposition."] + +Here are examples of the "c" type--i.e. predominant verse rhythms, with +occasional emphasis upon metrical feet: + + "Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? + Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? + List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. + + "Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,) + His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and + never was, and never will be; + Along the lower'd eve he came horribly raking us. + + * * * * * + "Our frigate takes fire, + The other asks if we demand quarter? + If our colors are struck and the fighting done? + + "Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, + _We have not struck_, he composedly cries, _we have just begun our part + of the fighting_. + + * * * * * + + "One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are + sinking. + + "Serene stands the little captain, + He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, + His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns. + Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us." +[Footnote: Whitman. "Song of Myself."] + +Read William Blake's description of the Bastille, in his recently printed +poem on "The French Revolution": + + "'Seest thou yonder dark castle, that moated around, keeps this city of + Paris in awe? + Go, command yonder tower, saying: "Bastille, depart! and take thy + shadowy course; + Overstep the dark river, thou terrible tower, and get thee up into the + country ten miles. + And thou black southern prison, move along the dusky road to Versailles; + there + Frown on the gardens--and, if it obey and depart, then the King will + disband + This war-breathing army; but, if it refuse, let the Nation's Assembly + thence learn + That this army of terrors, that prison of horrors, are the bands of the + murmuring kingdom."' + + "Like the morning star arising above the black waves, when a shipwrecked + soul sighs for morning, + Thro' the ranks, silent, walk'd the Ambassador back to the Nation's + Assembly, and told + The unwelcome message. Silent they heard; then a thunder roll'd round + loud and louder; + Like pillars of ancient halls and ruins of times remote, they sat. + Like a voice from the dim pillars Mirabeau rose; the thunders subsided + away; + A rushing of wings around him was heard as he brighten'd, and cried out + aloud: + 'Where is the General of the Nation?' The walls re-echo'd: 'Where is the + General of the Nation?'" + +And here are passages made up exclusively of the rhythms and metres of +verse, in broken or disguised patterns ("d" type): + + "Under a stagnant sky, + Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, + The River, jaded and forlorn, + Welters and wanders wearily--wretchedly--on; + Yet in and out among the ribs + Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles + Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, + Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, + Lingers to babble, to a broken tune + (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) + So melancholy a soliloquy + It sounds as it might tell + The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, + The terror of Time and Change and Death, + That wastes this floating, transitory world." +[Footnote: W. E. Henley, "To James McNeill Whistler." ] + +Or take this: + + "They see the ferry + On the broad, clay-laden + Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon, + With snort and strain, + Two horses, strongly swimming, tow + The ferry-boat, with woven ropes + To either bow + Firm-harness'd by the mane; a chief, + With shout and shaken spear, + Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern + The cowering merchants in long robes + Sit pale beside their wealth + Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops, + Of gold and ivory, + Of turquoise-earth and amethyst, + Jasper and chalcedony, + And milk-barr'd onyx-stones. + The loaded boat swings groaning + In the yellow eddies; + The Gods behold them." +[Footnote: Arnold, "The Strayed Reveller."] + + +_5. Discovery and Rediscovery_ + +It is not pretended that the four types of free verse which have been +illustrated are marked by clear-cut generic differences. They shade into +one another. But they are all based upon a common sensitiveness to the +effects of rhythmic prose, a common restlessness under what is felt to be +the restraint of metre and rhyme, and a common endeavor to break down the +conventional barrier which separates the characteristic beauty of prose +speech from the characteristic beauty of verse. In this endeavor to +obliterate boundary lines, to secure in one art the effects hitherto +supposed to be the peculiar property of another, free verse is only one +more evidence of the widespread "confusion of the genres" which marks +contemporary artistic effort. It is possible, with the classicists, to +condemn outright this blurring of values. +[Footnote: See, for instance, Irving Babbitt, _The New Laokoon_. Houghton +Mifflin Company, 1910.] +One may legitimately maintain, with Edith Wyatt, that the traditional +methods of English verse are to the true artist not oppressions but +liberations. She calls it "a fallacious idea that all individual and all +realistic expression in poetry is annulled by the presence of distinctive +musical discernment, by the movement of rhyme with its keen heightening of +the impulse of rhythm, by the word-shadows of assonance, by harmonies, +overtones and the still beat of ordered time, subconsciously perceived but +precise as the sense of the symphony leader's flying baton. To readers, to +writers for whom the tonal quality of every language is an intrinsic value +these faculties of poetry serve not at all as cramping oppressions, but as +great liberations for the communication of truth." +[Footnote: _New Republic_, August 24, 1918.] +But many practitioners of free verse would reply that this is not a matter +for theorizing, but of individual preference, and that in their endeavor +to communicate new modes of feeling, new aspects of beauty, they have a +right to the use of new forms, even if those new forms be compounded out +of the wreck of old ones. This argument for freedom of experiment is +unanswerable; the true test of its validity lies in the results secured. +That free verse has now and then succeeded in creating lovely flowering +hybrids seems to me as indubitable as the magical tricks which Mr. Burbank +has played with flowers and fruits. But the smiling Dame Nature sets her +inexorable limits to "Burbanking"; she allows it to go about so far, and +no farther. Freakish free verse, like freakish plants and animals, gets +punished by sterility. Some of the "imagist" verse patterns are uniquely +and intricately beautiful. Wrought in a medium which is neither wholly +verse nor wholly prose, but which borrows some of the beauty peculiar to +each art, they are their own excuse for being. And nevertheless they may +not prove fertile. It may be that they have been produced by "pushing a +medium farther than it will go." + +It must be admitted, furthermore, that a great deal of contemporary free +verse has been written by persons with an obviously incomplete command +over the resources of expression. Max Eastman has called it "Lazy Verse," +the product of "aboriginal indolence"; and he adds this significant +distinction, "In all arts it is the tendency of those who are ungrown to +confuse the expression of intense feeling with the intense expression of +feeling--which last is all the world will long listen to." Shakspere, +Milton, Keats are masters of concentrated, intensest expression: their +verse, at its best, is structural as an oak. Those of us who have read +with keen momentary enjoyment thousands of pages of the "New Verse," +are frequently surprised to find how little of it stamps itself upon the +memory. Intense feeling has gone into these formless forms, very +certainly, but the medium soaks up the feeling like blotting-paper. In +order to live, poetry must be plastic, a stark embodiment of emotion, and +not a solution of emotion. + +That fragile, transient fashions of expression have their own evanescent +type of beauty no one who knows the history of Euphuism will deny. And +much of the New Verse is Euphuistic, not merely in its self-conscious +cleverness, its delightful toying with words and phrases for their own +sake, its search of novel cadences and curves, but also in its naive +pleasure in rediscovering and parodying what the ancients had discovered +long before. "Polyphonic prose," for instance, as announced and +illustrated by Mr. Paul Fort and Miss Amy Lowell, is prose that +makes use of all the "voices" of poetry,--viz. metre, _vers libre_, +assonances, alliteration, rhyme and return. "Metrical verse," says Miss +Lowell in the Preface to _Can Grande's Castle_, "has one set of laws, +cadenced verse another; 'polyphonic prose' can go from one to the other in +the same poem with no sense of incongruity.... I finally decided to base +my form upon the long, flowing cadence of oratorical prose. The variations +permitted to this cadence enable the poet to change the more readily into +those of _vers libre_, or even to take the regular beat of metre, should +such a marked time seem advisable.... Rhyme is employed to give a richness +of effect, to heighten the musical feeling of a passage, but ... the +rhymes should seldom come at the ends of the cadences.... Return in +'polyphonic prose' is usually achieved by the recurrence of a dominant +thought or image, coming in irregularly and in varying words, but still +giving the spherical effect which I have frequently spoken of as +imperative in all poetry." + +Now every one of these devices is at least as old as Isocrates. It was in +this very fashion that Euphues and his Friends delighted to serve and +return their choicest tennis balls of Elizabethan phrase. But little De +Quincey could pull out the various stops of polyphonic prose even more +cleverly than John Lyly; and if one will read the admirable description of +St. Mark's in _Can Grandel’s Castle_, and then re-read Ruskin's +description of St. Mark's, he will find that the Victorian's orchestration +of many-voiced prose does not suffer by comparison. + +Yet though it is true enough of the arts, as Chaucer wrote suavely long +ago, that "There nys no newe thing that is not olde," we must remember +that the arts are always profiting by their naive rediscoveries. It is +more important that the thing should seem new than that it should really +be new, and the fresh sense of untried possibilities, the feeling that +much land remains to be possessed, has given our contemporaries the +spirits and the satisfactions of the pioneer. What matters it that a few +antiquaries can trace on old maps the very rivers and harbors which the +New Verse believed itself to be exploring for the first time? Poetry does +not live by antiquarianism, but by the passionate conviction that all +things are made new through the creative imagination. + + "Have the elder races halted? + Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? + We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, + Pioneers! O pioneers!" + + + + + PART II + +THE LYRIC IN PARTICULAR + + + "O hearken, love, the battle-horn! + The triumph clear, the silver scorn! + O hearken where the echoes bring. + Down the grey disastrous morn, + Laughter and rallying!" + WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE FIELD OF LYRIC POETRY + + + "'Lyrical,' it may be said, implies a form of musical utterance + in words governed by overmastering emotion and set free by a + powerfully concordant rhythm." + ERNEST RHYS, _Lyric Poetry_ + + +That "confusion of the genres" which characterizes so much of contemporary +art has not obliterated the ancient division of poetry into three chief +types, namely, lyric, epic and dramatic. We still mean by these words very +much what the Greeks meant: a "lyric" is something sung, an "epic" tells +a story, a "drama" sets characters in action. Corresponding to these +general purposes of the three kinds of poetry, is the difference which +Watts-Dunton has discussed so suggestively: namely, that in the lyric the +author reveals himself fully, while in the "epic" or narrative poem the +author himself is but partly revealed, and in the drama the author is +hidden behind his characters. Or, putting this difference in another way, +the same critic points out that the true dramatists possess "absolute" +vision, i.e. unconditioned by the personal impulses of the poet himself, +whereas the vision of the lyrist is "relative," conditioned by his own +situation and mood. The pure lyrist, says Watts-Dunton, has one voice and +sings one tune; the epic poets and quasi-dramatists have one voice but can +sing several tunes, while the true dramatists, with their objective, +"absolute" vision of the world, have many tongues and can sing in all +tunes. + + +_1. A Rough Classification_ + +Passing over the question of the historical origins of those various +species of poetry, such as the relation of early hymnic songs and +hero-songs to the epic, and the relation of narrative material and method +to the drama, let us try to arrange in some sort of order the kinds of +poetry with which we are familiar. Suppose we follow Watts-Dunton's hint, +and start, as if it were from a central point, with the Pure Lyric, the +expression of the Ego in song. Shelley's "Stanzas Written in Dejection +near Naples," Coleridge's "Ode to Dejection," Wordsworth's "She dwelt +among the untrodden ways," Tennyson's "Break--Break" will serve for +illustrations. These are subjective, personal poems. Their vision +is "relative" to the poet's actual circumstances. Yet in a "dramatic +lyric" like Byron's "Isles of Greece" or Tennyson's "Sir Galahad" it is +clear that the poet's vision is not occupied primarily with himself, but +with another person. In a dramatic monologue like Tennyson's "Simeon +Stylites" or Browning's "The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxed's +Church" it is not Tennyson and Browning themselves who are talking, but +imaginary persons viewed objectively, as far as Tennyson and Browning were +capable of such objectivity. The next step would be the Drama, preoccupied +with characters in action--the "world of men," in short, and not the +personal subjective world of the highly sensitized lyric poet. + +Let us now move away from that pure lyric centre in another direction. In +a traditional ballad like "Sir Patrick Spens," a modern ballad like +Tennyson's "The Revenge," or Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," is not the +poet's vision becoming objectified, directed upon events or things outside +of the circle of his own subjective emotion? In modern epic verse, like +Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur," Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," Morris's +"Sigurd the Volsung," and certainly in the "Aeneid" and the "Song of +Roland," the poet sinks his own personality, as far as possible, in the +objective narration of events. And in like manner, the poet may turn from +the world of action to the world of repose, and portray Nature as +enfolding and subduing the human element in his picture. In Keats's "Ode +to Autumn," Shelley's "Autumn," in Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper," +Browning's "Where the Mayne Glideth," we find poets absorbed in the +external scene or object and striving to paint it. It is true that the +born lyrists betray themselves constantly, that they suffuse both the +world of repose and the world of action with the coloring of their own +unquiet spirits. They cannot keep themselves wholly out of the story they +are telling or the picture they are painting; and it is for this reason +that we speak of "lyrical" passages even in the great objective dramas, +passages colored with the passionate personal feelings of the poet. For he +cannot be wholly "absolute" even if he tries: he will invent favorite +characters and make them the mouthpiece of his own fancies: he will devise +favorite situations, and use them to reveal his moral judgment of men and +women, and his general theory of human life. + + +_2. Definitions_ + +While we must recognize, then, that the meaning of the word "lyrical" has +been broadened so as to imply, frequently, a quality of poetry rather than +a mere form of poetry, let us go back for a moment to the original +significance of the word. Derived from "lyre," it meant first a song +written for musical accompaniment, say an ode of Pindar; then a poem whose +form suggests this original musical accompaniment; then, more loosely, a +poem which has the quality of music, and finally, purely personal poetry. +[Footnote: See the definitions in John Erskine's _Elizabethan Lyric_, E. +B. Heed's _English Lyrical Poetry_, Ernest Rhys's _Lyric Poetry_, F. E. +Schelling's _The English Lyric_, John Drinkwater's _The Lyric_, C. E. +Whitmore in _Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass._, December, 1918.] +"All songs, all poems following classical lyric forms; all short poems +expressing the writer's moods and feelings in rhythm that suggests music, +are to be considered lyrics," says Professor Reed. "The lyric is concerned +with the poet, his thoughts, his emotions, his moods, and his passions.... +With the lyric subjective poetry begins," says Professor Schelling. "The +characteristic of the lyric is that it is the product of the pure poetic +energy unassociated with other energies," says Mr. Drinkwater. These are +typical recent definitions. Francis T. Palgrave, in the Preface to the +_Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics_, while omitting to stress +the elements of musical quality and of personal emotion, gives a working +rule for anthologists which has proved highly useful. He held the term +"lyrical" "to imply that each poem shall turn on a single thought, feeling +or situation." The critic Scherer also gave an admirable practical +definition when he remarked that the lyric "reflects a situation or a +desire." Keats's sonnet "On first looking into Chapman's Homer," Charles +Kingsley's "Airlie Beacon" and Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" (_Oxford +Book of Verse_, Nos. 634, 739 and 743) are suggestive illustrations of +Scherer's dictum. + + +_3. General Characteristics_ + +But the lyric, however it may be defined, has certain general +characteristics which are indubitable. The lyric "vision," that is to say, +the experience, thought, emotion which gives its peculiar quality to lyric +verse, making it "simple, sensuous, passionate" beyond other species of +poetry, is always marked by freshness, by egoism, and by genuineness. + +To the lyric poet all must seem new; each sunrise "_herrlich wie am ersten +Tag._" "Thou know'st 'tis common," says Hamlet's mother, speaking of his +father's death, "Why seems it so particular with thee?" But to men of the +lyrical temperament everything is "particular." Age does not alter their +exquisite sense of the novelty of experience. Tennyson's lines on "Early +Spring," written at seventy-four, Browning's "Never the Time and the +Place" written at seventy-two, Goethe's love-lyrics written when he was +eighty, have all the delicate bloom of adolescence. Sometimes this +freshness seems due in part to the poet's early place in the development +of his national literature: he has had, as it were, the first chance at +his particular subject. There were countless springs, of course, before a +nameless poet, about 1250, wrote one of the first English lyrics for which +we have a contemporary musical score: + + "Sumer is icumen in, + Lhude sing cuccu." + +But the words thrill the reader, even now, as he hears in fancy that +cuckoo's song, + + "Breaking the silence of the seas + Beyond the farthest Hebrides." + +Or, the lyric poet may have the luck to write at a period when settled, +stilted forms of poetical expression are suddenly done away with. Perhaps +he may have helped in the emancipation, like Wordsworth and Coleridge in +the English Romantic Revival, or Victor Hugo in the France of 1830. The +new sense of the poetic possibilities of language reacts upon the +imaginative vision itself. Free verse, in our own time, has profited by +this rejuvenation of the poetic vocabulary, by new phrases and cadences to +match new moods. Sometimes an unwonted philosophical insight makes all +things new to the poet who possesses it. Thus Emerson's vision of the +"Eternal Unity," or Browning's conception of Immortality, afford the very +stuff out of which poetry may be wrought. Every new experience, in short, +like falling in love, like having a child, like getting "converted," +[Footnote: See William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_.] +gives the lyric poet this rapturous sense of living in a world hitherto +unrealized. The old truisms of the race become suddenly "particular" to +him. "As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he +flourisheth." That was first a "lyric cry" out of the depths of some fresh +individual experience. It has become stale through repetition, but many a +man, listening to those words read at the burial of a friend, has seemed, +in his passionate sense of loss, to hear them for the first time. + +Egoism is another mark of the lyric poet. "Of every poet of this class," +remarks Watts-Dunton, "it may be said that his mind to him 'a kingdom is,' +and that the smaller the poet the bigger to him is that kingdom." He +celebrates himself. Contemporary lyrists have left no variety of physical +sensation unnoted: they tell us precisely how they feel and look when they +take their morning tub. Far from avoiding that "pathetic fallacy" which +Ruskin analysed in a famous chapter, +[Footnote: _Modern Painters_, vol. 3, chap. 12.] +and which attributes to the external world qualities which belong only to +the mind itself, they revel in it. "Day, like our souls, is _fiercely +dark_," sang Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer. Hamlet, it will be remembered, +could be lyrical enough upon occasion, but he retained the power of +distinguishing between things as they actually were and things as they +appeared to him in his weakness and his melancholy. "This goodly frame, +the earth, seems _to me_ a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, +the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof +fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing _to me_ than a +foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! +How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!... And yet, _to me_, +what is this quintessence of dust?" + +Nevertheless this lyric egoism has certain moods in which the individual +identifies himself with his family or tribe: + + "O Keith of Ravelstone, + The sorrows of thy line!" + +School and college songs are often, in reality, tribal lyrics. The +choruses of Greek tragedies dealing with the guilt and punishment of a +family, the Hebrew lyrics chanting, like "The Song of Deborah," the +fortunes of a great fight, often broaden their sympathies so as to +include, as in "The Persians" of Aeschylus, the glory or the downfall of a +race. And this sense of identification with a nation or race implies no +loss, but often an amplification of the lyric impulse. Alfred Noyes's +songs about the English, D'Annunzio's and Hugo's splendid chants of the +Latin races, Kipling's glorification of the White Man, lose nothing of +their lyric quality because of their nationalistic or racial inspiration. +Read Wilfrid Blunt's sonnet on "Gibraltar" (_Oxford Book of Verse_, +No. 821): + + "Ay, this is the famed rock which Hercules + And Goth and Moor bequeath'd us. At this door + England stands sentry. God! to hear the shrill + Sweet treble of her fifes upon the breeze, + And at the summons of the rock gun's roar + To see her red coats marching from the hill!" + +Are patriotic lyrics of this militant type destined to disappear, as +Tolstoy believed they ought to disappear, with the breaking-down of the +barriers of nationality, or rather with the coming of + + "One common wave of thought and joy, + Lifting mankind again" + +over the barriers of nationality? Certainly there is already a type of +purely humanitarian, altruistic lyric, where the poet instinctively thinks +in terms of "us men" rather than of "I myself." It appeared long ago in +that rebellious "Titanic" verse which took the side of oppressed mortals +as against the unjust gods. Tennyson's "Lotos-Eaters" is a modern echo of +this defiant or despairing cry of the "ill-used race of men." The songs of +Burns reveal ever-widening circles of sympathy,--pure personal egoism, +then songs of the family and of clan and of country-side, then passion for +Scotland, and finally this fierce peasant affection for his own passes +into the glorious + + "It's comin' yet for a' that, + That man to man the world o'er + Shall brithers be for a' that." + +One other general characteristic of the lyric mood needs to be emphasized, +namely, its _genuineness_. It is impossible to feign + + "the lyric gush, + And the wing-power, and the rush + Of the air." + +Second-rate, imitative singers may indeed assume the role of genuine lyric +poets, but they cannot play it without detection. It is literally true +that natural lyrists like Sappho, Burns, Goethe, Heine, "sing as the bird +sings." Once endowed with the lyric temperament and the command of +technique, their cry of love or longing, of grief or patriotism, is the +inevitable resultant from a real situation or desire. Sometimes, like +children, they do not tell us very clearly what they are crying about, but +it is easy to discover whether they are, like children, "making believe." + + +_4. The Objects of the Lyric Vision_ + +Let us look more closely at some of the objects of the lyric vision; the +sources or material, that is to say, for the lyric emotion. Goethe's +often-quoted classification is as convenient as any: the poet's vision, he +says, may be directed upon Nature, Man or God. + +And first, then, upon Nature. One characteristic of lyric poetry is the +clearness with which single details or isolated objects in Nature may be +visualized and reproduced. The modern reflective lyric, it is true, often +depends for its power upon some philosophical generalization from a single +instance, like Emerson's "Rhodora" or Wordsworth's "Small Celandine." It +may even attempt a sort of logical or pseudo-logical deduction from given +premises, like Browning's famous + + "Morning's at seven; + The hillside's dew-pearled; + The lark's on the wing: + The snail's on the thorn; + God's in his Heaven-- + _All's right with the world!_" + +The imagination cannot be denied this right to synthesize and to +interpret, and nevertheless Nature offers even to the most unphilosophical +her endless profusion of objects that awaken delight. She does not insist +that the lyric poet should generalize unless he pleases. Moth and snail +and skylark, daisy and field-mouse and water-fowl, seized by an eye that +is quick to their poetic values, their interest to men, furnish material +enough for lyric feeling. The fondness of Romantic poets for isolating a +single object has been matched in our day by the success of the Imagists +in painting a single aspect of some phenomenon-- + + "Light as the shadow of the fish + That falls through the pale green water--" + +any aspect, in short, provided it affords the "romantic quiver," the +quick, keen sense of the beauty in things. What an art-critic said of the +painter W. M. Chase applies equally well to many contemporary Imagists who +use the forms of lyric verse: "He saw the world as a display of beautiful +surfaces which challenged his skill. It was enough to set him painting to +note the nacreous skin of a fish, or the satiny bloom of fruit, or the +wind-smoothed dunes about Shinnecock, or the fine specific olive of a +woman's face.... He took objects quite at their face value, and rarely +invested them with the tenderness, mystery and understanding that comes +from meditation and remembered feelings.... We get in him a fine, bare +vision, and must not expect therewith much contributary enrichment from +mind and mood." +[Footnote: _The Nation_, November 2, 1916.] +Our point is that this "fine, bare vision" is often enough for a lyric. It +has no time for epic breadth of detail, for the rich accumulation of +harmonious images which marks Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum" or Keats's "Eve +of St. Agnes." + +The English Romantic poets were troubled about the incursion of scientific +fact into the poet's view of nature. The awful rainbow in heaven might be +turned, they thought, through the curse of scientific knowledge, into the +"dull catalogue of common things." But Wordsworth was wiser than this. He +saw that if the scientific fact were emotionalized, it could still serve +as the stuff of poetry. Facts could be transformed into truths. No aspect +of Tennyson's lyricism is more interesting than his constant employment of +the newest scientific knowledge of his day, for instance, in geology, +chemistry and astronomy. He set his facts to music. Eugene Lee-Hamilton's +poignant sonnet about immortality is an illustration of the ease with +which a lyric poet may find material in scientific fact, if appropriated +and made rich by feeling. +[Footnote: Quoted in chap. VIII, section 7.] + +If lyric poetry shows everywhere this tendency to humanize its "bare +vision" of Nature, it is also clear that the lyric, as the most highly +personalized species of poetry, exhibits an infinite variety of visions of +human life. Any anthology will illustrate the range of observation, the +complexity of situations and desires, the constant changes in key, as the +lyric attempts to interpret this or that aspect of human emotion. Take for +example, the Elizabethan love-lyric. Here is a single human passion, +expressing itself in the moods and lyric forms of one brief generation of +our literature. Yet what variety of personal accent, what kaleidoscopic +shiftings of mind and imagination, what range of lyric beauty! Or take the +passion for the wider interests of Humanity, expressed in the lyrics of +Schiller and Burns, running deep and turbid through Revolutionary +and Romantic verse, and still coloring--perhaps now more strongly than +ever--the stream of twentieth-century poetry. Here is a type of lyric +emotion where self-consciousness is lost, absorbed in the wider +consciousness of kinship, in the dawning recognition of the oneness of the +blood and fate of all nations of the earth. + +The purest type of lyric vision is indicated in the third word of Goethe's +triad. It is the vision of God. Here no physical fact intrudes or mars. +Here thought, if it be complete thought, is wholly emotionalized. Such +transcendent vision, as in the Hebrew lyrists and in Dante, is itself +worship, and the lyric cry of the most consummate artist among English +poets of the last generation is simply an echo of the ancient voices: + + "Hallowed be Thy Name--Hallelujah!" + +If Tennyson could not phrase anew the ineffable, it is no wonder that most +hymn-writers fail. They are trying to express in conventionalized +religious terminology and in "long and short metre" what can with +difficulty be expressed at all, and if at all, by the unconscious art of +the Psalms or by a sustained metaphor, like "Crossing the Bar" or the +"Recessional." The medieval Latin hymns clothed their transcendent themes, +their passionate emotions, in the language of imperial Rome. The modern +sectaries succeed best in their hymnology when they choose simple ideas, +not too definite in content, and clothe them, as Whittier did, in words of +tender human association, in parables of longing and of consolation. + + +_5. The Lyric Imagination_ + +The material thus furnished by the lyric poet's experience, thought and +emotion is reshaped by an imagination working simply and spontaneously. +The lyrist is born and not made, and he cannot help transforming the +actual world into his own world, like Don Quixote with the windmills and +the serving-women. Sometimes his imagination fastens upon a single trait +or aspect of reality, and the resultant metaphor seems truer than any +logic. + + "Death lays his _icy hand_ on Kings." + + "I wandered _lonely as a cloud_." + +Sometimes his imagination fuses various aspects of an object into a +composite effect: + + "A lily of a day + Is fairer far in May, + Although it fall and die that night; + It was the _plant and flower of light_." + +The lyric emotion, it is true, does not always catch at imagery. It may +deal directly with the fact, as in Burns's immortal + + "If we ne'er had met sae kindly, + If we ne'er had loved sae blindly, + Never loved, and never parted, + We had ne'er been broken-hearted." + +The lyric atmosphere, heavy and clouded with passionate feeling, idealizes +objects as if they were seen through the light of dawn or sunset. It is +never the dry clear light of noon. + + "She was _a phantom_ of delight." + + "Thy soul was _like a star_, and dwelt apart, + Thou hadst a voice whose sound was _like the sea_, + Pure as _the naked heavens_...." + +This idealization is often not so much a magnification of the object as a +simplification of it. Confusing details are stripped away. Contradictory +facts are eliminated, until heart answers to heart across the welter of +immaterialities. + +Although the psychologists, as has been already noted, are now little +inclined to distinguish between the imagination and the fancy, it remains +true that the old distinction between superficial or "fanciful" +resemblances, and deeper or "imaginative" likenesses, is a convenient one +in lyric poetry. E. C. Stedman, in his old age, was wont to say that our +younger lyrists, while tuneful and fanciful enough, had no imagination or +passion, and that what was needed in America was some adult male verse. +The verbal felicity and richness of fancy that characterized the +Elizabethan lyric were matched by its sudden gleams of penetrative +imagination, which may be, after all, only the "fancy" taking a deeper +plunge. In the familiar song from _The Tempest_, for example, we have in +the second and third lines examples of those fanciful conceits in which +the age delighted, but that does not impair the purely imaginative beauty +of the last three lines of the stanza,--the lines that are graven upon +Shelley's tombstone in Rome: + + "Full fathom five thy father lies; + Of his bones are coral made; + Those are pearls that were his eyes: + Nothing of him that doth fade + But doth suffer a sea-change + Into something rich and strange." + +So it was that Hawthorne's "fancy" first won a public for his stories, +while it is by his imagination that he holds his place as an artist. For +the deeply imaginative line of lyric verse, like the imaginative +conception of novelist or dramatist, often puzzles or repels a poet's +contemporaries. Jeffrey could find no sense in Wordsworth's superb couplet +in the "Ode to Duty": + + "Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; + And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are + fresh and strong." + +And oddly enough, Emerson, the one man upon this side of the Atlantic from +whom an instinctive understanding of those lines was to be expected, was +as much perplexed by them as Jeffrey. + + +_6. Lyric Expression_ + +Is it possible to formulate the laws of lyric expression? "I do not mean +by expression," said Gray, "the mere choice of words, but the whole dress, +fashion, and arrangement of a thought." +[Footnote: Gray's _Letters_, vol. 2, p. 333. (Gosse ed.)] +Taking expression, in this larger sense, as the final element in that +threefold process by which poetry comes into being, and which has been +discussed in an earlier chapter, we may assert that there are certain +general laws of lyric form. One of them is the law of brevity. It is +impossible to keep the lyric pitch for very long. The rapture turns to +pain. "I need scarcely observe," writes Poe in his essay on "The Poetic +Principle," "that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, +by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this +elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychical +necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle +a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a +composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the +very utmost, it flags--fails--a revulsion ensues--and then the poem is, in +effect, and in fact, no longer such." + +In another passage, from the essay on "Hawthorne's 'Twice-Told Tales,'" +Poe emphasizes this law of brevity in connection with the law of unity of +impression. It is one of the classic passages of American literary +criticism: + + "Were we bidden to say how the highest genius could be most + advantageously employed for the best display of its own powers, we + should answer, without hesitation--in the composition of a rhymed poem, + not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour. Within this + limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. We need only + here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes of composition, + the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. + It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in + productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting. We may + continue the reading of a prose composition, from the very nature of + prose itself, much longer than we can preserve, to any good purpose, in + the perusal of a poem. This latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of + the poetic sentiment, induces an exaltation of the soul which cannot be + long sustained. All high excitements are necessarily transient. Thus a + long poem is a paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest + effects cannot be brought about. Epics were the offspring of an + imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. A poem _too_ brief + may produce a vivid, but never an intense or enduring impression. + Without a certain continuity of effort--without a certain duration or + repetition of purpose--the soul is never deeply moved." + +Gray's analysis of the law of lyric brevity is picturesque, and too little +known: + + "The true lyric style, with all its flights of fancy, ornaments, and + heightening of expression, and harmony of sound, is in its nature + superior to every other style; which is just the cause why it could not + be borne in a work of great length, no more than the eye could bear to + see all this scene that we constantly gaze upon,--the verdure of the + fields and woods, the azure of the sea-skies, turned into one dazzling + expanse of gems. The epic, therefore, assumed a style of graver colors, + and only stuck on a diamond (borrowed from her sister) here and there, + where it best became her.... To pass on a sudden from the lyric glare to + the epic solemnity (if I may be allowed to talk nonsense)...." +[Footnote: Gray's _Letters_, vol. 2, p. 304. (Gosse ed.)] + +It is evident that the laws of brevity and unity cannot be disassociated. +The unity of emotion which characterizes the successful lyric corresponds +to the unity of action in the drama, and to the unity of effect in the +short story. It is this fact which Palgrave stressed in his emphasis upon +"some single thought, feeling, or situation." The sonnets, for instance, +that most nearly approach perfection are those dominated by one thought. +This thought may be turned over, indeed, as the octave passes into the +sextet, and may be viewed from another angle, or applied in an unexpected +way. And yet the content of a sonnet, considered as a whole, must be as +integral as the sonnet's form. So must it be with any song. The various +devices of rhyme, stanza and refrain help to bind into oneness of form a +single emotional reflection of some situation or desire. + +Watts-Dunton points out that there is also a law of simplicity of +grammatical structure which the lyric disregards at its peril. Browning +and Shelley, to mention no lesser names, often marred the effectiveness of +their lyrics by a lack of perspicuity. If the lyric cry is not easily +intelligible, the sympathy of the listener is not won. Riddle-poems have +been loved by the English ever since Anglo-Saxon times, but the +intellectual satisfaction of solving a puzzle may be purchased at the cost +of true poetic pleasure. Let us quote Gray once more, for he had an +unerring sense of the difficulty of moulding ideas into "pure, perspicuous +and musical form." + + "Extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical, + is one of the grand beauties of lyric poetry. This I have always aimed + at, and never could attain; the necessity of rhyming is one great + obstacle to it: another and perhaps a stronger is, that way you have + chosen of casting down your first ideas carelessly and at large, and + then clipping them here and there, and forming them at leisure; this + method, after all possible pains, will leave behind it in some places a + laxity, a diffuseness; the frame of a thought (otherwise well invented, + well turned, and well placed) is often weakened by it. Do I talk + nonsense, or do you understand me?" +[Footnote: Gray's _Letters_, vol. 2, p. 352. (Gosse ed.)] + +Poe, whose theory of poetry comprehends only the lyric, and indeed chiefly +that restricted type of lyric verse in which he himself was a master, +insisted that there was a further lyric law,--the law of vagueness or +indefiniteness. "I know," he writes in his "Marginalia," "that +indefiniteness is an element of the true music--I mean of the true musical +expression. Give to it any undue decision--imbue it with any very +determinate tone--and you deprive it, at once, of its ethereal, its ideal, +its intrinsic and essential character. You dispel its luxury of dream. You +dissolve the atmosphere of the mystic upon which it floats. You exhaust it +of its breath of faëry. It now becomes a tangible and easily appreciable +idea--a thing of the earth, earthy." + +This reads like a defence of Poe's own private practice, and yet many +poets and critics are inclined to side with him. Edmond Holmes, for +instance, goes quite as far as Poe. "The truth is that poetry, which is +the expression of large, obscure and indefinable feelings, finds its +appropriate material in _vague_ words--words of large import and with many +meanings and shades of meaning. Here we have an almost unfailing test for +determining the poetic fitness of words, a test which every true poet +unconsciously, but withal unerringly, applies. Precision, whether in the +direction of what is commonplace or of what is technical, is always +unpoetical." +[Footnote: _What is Poetry_, p. 77. London and New York, 1900.] +This doctrine, it will be observed, is in direct opposition to the Imagist +theory of "hardness and economy of speech; the exact word," and it also +would rule out the highly technical vocabulary of camp and trail, +steamship and jungle, with which Mr. Kipling has greatly delighted our +generation. No one who admires the splendid vitality of "McAndrew's Hymn" +is really troubled by the slang and lingo of the engine-room. + +One of the most charming passages in Stedman's _Nature and Elements of +Poetry_ (pp. 181-85) deals with the law of Evanescence. The "flowers that +fade," the "airs that die," "the snows of yester-year," have in their very +frailty and mortality a haunting lyric value. Don Marquis has written a +poem about this exquisite appeal of the transient, calling it "The +Paradox": + + "'T is evanescence that endures; + The loveliness that dies the soonest has the longest life." + +But we touch here a source of lyric beauty too delicate to be analysed in +prose. It is better to read "Rose Aylmer," or to remember what Duke Orsino +says in Twelfth Night: + + "Enough; no more: + 'T is not so sweet now as it was before." + + +7._ Expression and Impulse_ + +A word must be added, nevertheless, about lyric expression as related to +the lyric impulse. No one pretends that there is such a thing as a set +lyric pattern. + + "There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, + And every single one of them is right." + +No two professional golfers, for instance, take precisely the same stance. +Each man's stance is the expression, the result, of his peculiar physical +organization and his muscular habits. There are as many "styles" as there +are players, and yet each player strives for "style," i.e. economy and +precision and grace of muscular effort, and each will assert that the +chief thing is to "keep your eye on the ball" and "follow through." "And +every single one of them is right." + +Apply this analogy to the organization of a lyric poem. Its material, as +we have seen, is infinitely varied. It expresses all conceivable "states +of soul." Is it possible, therefore, to lay down any general formula for +it, something corresponding to the golfer's "keep your eye on the ball" +and "follow through"? John Erskine, in his book on _The Elizabethan +Lyric_, ventures upon this precept: "Lyric emotion, in order to express +itself intelligibly, must first reproduce the cause of its existence. If +the poet will go into ecstasies over a Grecian urn, to justify himself he +must first show us the urn." Admitted. Can one go farther? Mr. Erskine +attempts it, in a highly suggestive analysis: +"Speaking broadly, all successful lyrics have three parts. In the first +the emotional stimulus is given--the object, the situation, or the thought +from which the song arises. In the second part the emotion is developed to +its utmost capacity, until as it begins to flag the intellectual element +reasserts itself. In the third part the emotion is finally resolved into a +thought, a mental resolution, or an attribute." +[Footnote: _The Elizabethan Lyric_, p. 17.] +Let the reader choose at random a dozen lyrics from the _Golden Treasury_, +and see how far this orderly arrangement of the thought-stuff of the lyric +is approximated in practice. My own impression is that the critic +postulates more of an "intellectual element" than the average English song +will supply. But at least here is a clear-cut statement of what one may +look for in a lyric. It shows how the lyric impulse tends to mould lyric +expression into certain lines of order. + +Most of the narrower precepts governing lyric form follow from the general +principles already discussed. The lyric vocabulary, every one admits, +should not seem studied or consciously ornate, for that breaks the law of +spontaneity. It may indeed be highly finished, the more highly in +proportion to its brevity, but the clever word-juggling of such +prestidigitators as Poe and Verlaine is perilous. Figurative language must +spring only from living, figurative thought, otherwise the lyric falls +into verbal conceits, frigidity, conventionality. Stanzaic law must follow +emotional law, just as Kreisler's accompanist must keep time with +Kreisler. All the rich devices of rhyme and tone-color must heighten +and not cloy the singing quality. But why lengthen this list of truisms? +The combination of genuine lyric emotion with expertness of technical +expression is in reality very rare. Goethe's "Ueber alien Gipfeln ist Ruh" +and Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" are miracles of art, yet one was scribbled in +a moment, and the other dreamed in an opium slumber. The lyric is the +commonest, and yet, in its perfection, the rarest type of poetry; the +earliest, and yet the most modern; the simplest, and yet in its laws of +emotional association, perhaps the most complex; and it is all these +because it expresses, more intimately than other types of verse, the +personality of the poet. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +RELATIONSHIPS AND TYPES OF THE LYRIC + + "_Milk-Woman_. What song was it, I pray? Was it 'Come, shepherds, deck + your heads'? or, 'As at noon Dulcina rested'? or, 'Phillida flouts me'? + or, 'Chevy Chase'? or, 'Johnny Armstrong'? or, 'Troy Town'?" + ISAAC WALTON, _The Complete Angler_ + +We have already considered, at the beginning of the previous chapter, the +general relationship of the three chief types of poetry. Lyric, epic and +drama, i.e. song, story and play, have obviously different functions to +perform. They may indeed deal with a common fund of material. A given +event, say the settlement of Virginia, or the episode of Pocahontas, +provides situations and emotions which may take either lyric or narrative +or dramatic shape. The mental habits and technical experience of the poet, +or the prevalent literary fashions of his day, may determine which general +type of poetry he will employ. There were born lyrists, like Greene in the +Elizabethan period, who wrote plays because the public demanded drama, and +there have been natural dramatists who were compelled, in a period when +the theatre fell into disrepute, to give their material a narrative form. +But we must also take into account the dominant mood or quality of certain +poetic minds. Many passages in narrative and dramatic verse, for instance, +while fulfilling their primary function of telling a story or throwing +characters into action, are colored by what we have called the lyric +quality, by that passionate, personal feeling whose natural mode of +expression is in song. In Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_, for instance, or Victor +Hugo's _Hernani_, there are superb pieces of lyric declamation, in which +we feel that Marlowe and Hugo themselves--not the imaginary Tamburlaine +and Hernani--are chanting the desires of their own hearts. Arnold's +"Sohrab and Rustum," after finishing its tragic story of the son slain by +the unwitting father, closes with a lyric description of the majestic Oxus +stream flowing on to the Aral sea. Objective as it all seems, this close +is intensely personal, permeated with the same tender stoicism which +colors Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "A Summer Night." The device of using a +Nature picture at the end of a narrative, to heighten, by harmony or +contrast, the mood induced by the story itself, was freely utilized +by Tennyson in his _English Idylls_, such as "Audley Court," "Edwin +Morris," "Love and Duty," and "The Golden Year." It adds the last touch of +poignancy to Robert Frost's "Death of the Hired Man." These descriptive +passages, though lacking the song form, are as purely lyrical in their +function as the songs in _The Princess _or the songs in _The Winter's +Tale_. + + +_1. The Blending of Types_ + +While the scope of the present volume, as explained in the Preface, +precludes any specific study of drama and epic, the reader must bear in +mind that the three main types of poetry are not separated, in actual +practice, by immovably hard and fast lines. Pigeonhole classifications of +drama, epic and lyric types are highly convenient to the student for +purposes of analysis. But the moment one reads a ballad like "Edward, +Edward" (_Oxford_, No. 373) or "Helen of Kirconnell" (_Oxford_, No. 387) +the pigeon-hole distinctions must be subordinated to the actual fact that +these ballads are a blend of drama, story and song. The "form" is lyrical, +the stuff is narrative, the mode of presentation is often that of purely +dramatic dialogue. + +Take a contemporary illustration of this blending of types. Mr. Vachel +Lindsay has told us the origins of his striking poem "The Congo." He was +already in a "national-theme mood," he says, when he listened to a sermon +about missionaries on the Congo River. The word "Congo" began to haunt +him. "It echoed with the war-drums and cannibal yells of Africa." Then, +for a list of colors for his palette, he had boyish memories of Stanley's +_Darkest Africa_, and of the dances of the Dahomey Amazons at the World's +Fair in Chicago. He had seen the anti-negro riots in Springfield, +Illinois. He had gone through a score of negro-saloons--"barrel-houses"-- +on Eleventh Avenue, New York, and had "accumulated a jungle impression +that remains with me yet." Above all, there was Conrad's _Heart of +Darkness_. "I wanted to reiterate the word Congo--and the several refrains +in a way that would echo stories like that. I wanted to suggest +the terror, the reeking swamp-fever, the forest splendor, the +black-lacquered loveliness, and above all the eternal fatality of Africa, +that Conrad has written down with so sure a hand. I do not mean to say, +now that I have done, that I recorded all these things in rhyme. But every +time I rewrote 'The Congo' I reached toward them. I suppose I rewrote it +fifty times in these two months, sometimes three times in one day." + +It is not often that we get so veracious an account of the making +of a poem, so clear a conception of the blending of sound-motives, +color-motives, story-stuff, drama-stuff, personal emotion, into a single +whole. + +Nor is there any clear separation of types when we strive to look back to +the primitive origins of these various forms of poetry. In the opinion of +many scholars, the origins are to be traced to a common source in the +dance. "Dances, as overwhelming evidence, ethnological and sociological, +can prove, were the original stuff upon which dramatic, lyric and epic +impulses wove a pattern that is traced in later narrative ballads mainly +as incremental repetition. Separation of its elements, and evolution to +higher forms, made the dance an independent art, with song, and then +music, ancillary to the figures and the steps; song itself passed to lyric +triumphs quite apart from choral voice and choral act; epic went its +artistic way with nothing but rhythm as memorial of the dance, and the +story instead of dramatic situation; drama retained the situation, the +action, even the chorus and the dance, but submitted them to the shaping +and informing power of individual genius." +[Footnote: Gummere, _The Popular Ballad_, p. 106.] +In another striking passage, Professor Gummere asks us to visualize "a +throng of people without skill to read or write, without ability to +project themselves into the future, or to compare themselves with the +past, or even to range their experience with the experience of other +communities, gathered in festal mood, and by loud song, perfect rhythm and +energetic dance, expressing their feelings over an event of quite local +origin, present appeal and common interest. Here, in point of evolution, +is the human basis of poetry, the foundation courses of the pyramid." + + +_2. Lyrical Element in Drama_ + +We cannot here attempt to trace, even in outline, the course of this +historic evolution of genres. But in contemporary types of both dramatic +and narrative poetry, there may still be discovered the influence of lyric +form and mood. We have already noted how the dramatist, for all of his +supposed objectivity, cannot refrain from coloring certain persons and +situations with the hues of his own fancy. Ibsen, for instance, injects +his irony, his love for symbolism, his theories for the reconstruction of +society, into the very blood and bone of his characters and into the +structure of his plots. So it is with Shaw, with Synge, with Hauptmann, +with Brieux. Even if their plays are written in prose, these men +are still "makers," and the prose play may be as highly subjective in +mood, as definitely individual in phrasing, as full of atmosphere, as if +it were composed in verse. + +But the lyric possibilities of the drama are more easily realized if we +turn from the prose play to the play in verse, and particularly to those +Elizabethan dramas which are not only poetical in essence, but which +utilize actual songs for their dramatic value. No less than thirty-six of +Shakspere's plays contain stage-directions for music, and his marvelous +command of song-words is universally recognized. The English stage had +made use of songs, in fact, ever since the liturgical drama of the Middle +Ages. But Shakspere's unrivalled knowledge of _stage-craft_, as well as +his own instinct for harmonizing lyrical with theatrical effects, enabled +him to surpass all of his contemporaries in the art of using songs to +bring actors on and off the stage, to anticipate following action, to +characterize personages, to heighten climaxes, and to express motions +beyond the reach of spoken words. +[Footnote: These points are fully discussed in J. Robert Moore's Harvard +dissertation (unpublished) on The Songs in the English Drama.] +The popularity of such song-forms as the "madrigal," which was sung +without musical accompaniment, made it easy for the public stage to cater +to the prevalent taste. The "children of the Chapel" or "of Paul's," who +served as actors in the early Elizabethan dramas, were trained choristers, +and songs were a part of their stock in trade. Songs for sheer +entertainment, common enough upon the stage when Shakspere began to write, +turned in his hands into exquisite instruments of character revelation and +of dramatic passion, until they became, on the lips of an Ophelia or a +Desdemona, the most touching and poignant moments of the drama. "Music +within" is a frequent stage direction in the later Elizabethan plays, and +if one remembers the dramatic effectiveness of the Easter music, +off-stage, in Goethe's _Faust_, or the horn in _Hernani_, one can +understand how Wagner came to believe that a blending of music with poetry +and action, as exhibited in his "music-dramas," was demanded by the ideal +requirements of dramatic art. Wagner's theory and practice need not be +rehearsed here. It is sufficient for our purpose to recall the +indisputable fact that in some of the greatest plays ever written, lyric +forms have contributed richly and directly to the total dramatic effect. + + +_3. The Dramatic Monologue_ + +There is still another _genre_ of poetry, however, where the +inter-relations of drama, of narrative, and of lyric mood are peculiarly +interesting. It is the dramatic monologue. The range of expressiveness +allowed by this type of poetry was adequately shown by Browning and +Tennyson, and recent poets like Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost +and Amy Lowell have employed it with consummate skill. The dramatic +monologue is a dynamic revelation of a soul in action, not a mere static +bit of character study. It chooses some representative and specific +occasion,--let us say a man's death-bed view of his career, as in "The +Bishop orders his Tomb" or the first "Northern Farmer." It is something +more than a soliloquy overheard. There is a listener, who, though without +a speaking part, plays a very real role in the dialogue. For the dramatic +monologue is in essence a dialogue of which we hear only the chief +speaker's part, as in "My Last Duchess," or in E. A. Robinson's "Ben +Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford." It is as if we were watching and +listening to a man telephoning. Though we see and hear but one person, we +are aware that the talk is shaped to a certain extent by the personality +at the other end of the line. In Tennyson's "Rizpah," for example, the +characteristics of the well-meaning, Bible-quoting parish visitor +determine some of the finest lines in the old mother's response. In +Browning's "Andrea del Sarto" the painter's wife, Lucrezia, says never a +word, but she has a more intense physical presence in that poem than many +of the _dramatis personae_ of famous plays. Tennyson's "Ulysses" and "Sir +Galahad" and "The Voyage of Maeldune" are splendid soliloquies and nothing +more. The first "Locksley Hall" is likewise a soliloquy, but in the second +"Locksley Hall" and "To-Morrow," where scraps of talk from the unseen +interlocutor are caught up and repeated by the speaker in passionate +rebuttal, we have true drama of the "confrontation" type. We see a whole +soul in action. + +Now this intense, dynamic fashion of revealing character through narrative +talk--and it is commonly a whole life-story which is condensed within the +few lines of a dramatic monologue--touches lyricism at two points. The +first is the fact that many dramatic monologues use distinctively lyric +measures. The six-stress anapestic line which Tennyson preferred for his +later dramatic monologues like "Rizpah" is really a ballad measure, and is +seen as such to its best advantage in "The Revenge." But in his monologues +of the pure soliloquy type, like "St. Agnes" and "Sir Galahad," the metre +is brilliantly lyrical, and the lyric associations of the verse are +carried over into the mood of the poem. And the other fact to be +remembered is that the poignant self-analysis and self-betrayal of the +dramatic monologue, its "egoism" and its ultimate and appalling +sincerities, are a part of the very nature of the lyric impulse. These +revealers of their souls may use the speaking, rather than the singing +voice, but their tones have the deep, rich lyric intimacy. + + +4. _Lyric and Narrative_ + +In narrative poetry, no less than in drama, we must note the intrusion of +the lyric mood, as well as the influence of lyric forms. Theoretically, +narrative or "epic" poetry is based upon an objective experience. +Something has happened, and the poet tells us about it. He has heard or +read, or possibly taken part in, an event, and the event, rather than the +poet's thought or feeling about it, is the core of the poem. But as soon +as he begins to tell his tale, we find that he is apt to "set it out" with +vivid description. He is obliged to paint a picture as well as to spin a +yarn, and not even Homer and Virgil--"objective" as they are supposed to +be---can draw a picture without betraying something of their attitude and +feeling towards their material. Like the messenger in Greek drama, +their voices are shaken by what they have seen or heard. In the popular +epic like the Nibelungen story, there is more objectivity than in the epic +of art like _Jerusalem Delivered_ or _Paradise Lost_. We do not know who +put together in their present form such traditional tales as the _Lay of +the Nibelungs_ and _Beowulf_, and the personal element in the narrative is +only obscurely felt, whereas _Jerusalem Delivered_ is a constant +revelation of Tasso, and the personality of Milton colors every line in +_Paradise Lost_. When Matthew Arnold tells us that Homer is rapid, plain, +simple and noble, he is depicting the characteristics of a poet as well as +the impression made by the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Those general traits +of epic poetry which have been discussed ever since the Renaissance, like +"breadth," and "unity" and the sustained "grand" style, turn ultimately +upon the natural qualities of great story-tellers. They are not mere +rhetorical abstractions. + +The narrative poet sees man as accomplishing a deed, as a factor in an +event. His primary business is to report action, not to philosophize or to +dissect character or to paint landscape. Yet so sensitive is he to the +environing circumstances of action, and so bent upon displaying the +varieties of human motive and conduct, that he cannot help reflecting in +his verse his own mental attitude toward the situations which he depicts. +He may surround these situations, as we have seen, with all the beauties +and pomps and terrors of the visible world. In relating "God's ways to +man" he instinctively justifies or condemns. He cannot even tell a story +exactly as it was told to him: he must alter it, be it ever so slightly, +to make it fit his general conceptions of human nature and human fate. He +gives credence to one witness and not to another. His imagination plays +around the noble and base elements in his story until their original +proportions are altered to suit his mind and purpose. Study the Tristram +story, as told by Gottfried of Strassburg, by Malory, Tennyson, +Arnold, Swinburne and Wagner, and you will see how each teller betrays his +own personality through these instinctive processes of transformation of +his material. It is like the Roman murder story told so many times over in +Browning's _Ring and the Book_: the main facts are conceded by each +witness, and yet the inferences from the facts range from Heaven to Hell. + +Browning is of course an extreme instance of this irruption of the poet's +personality upon the stuff of his story. He cannot help lyricising and +dramatizing his narrative material, any more than he can help making all +his characters talk "Browningese." But Byron's tales in verse show the +same subjective tendency. He was so little of a dramatist that all of his +heroes, like Poe's, are images of himself. No matter what the raw material +of his narrative poems may be, they become uniformly "Byronic" as he +writes them down. And all this is "lyricism," however disguised. William +Morris, almost alone among modern English poets, seemed to stand gravely +aloof from the tales he told, as his master Chaucer stood smilingly aloof. +Yet the "tone" of Chaucer is perceived somehow upon every page, in spite +of his objectivity. + +The whole history of medieval verse Romances, indeed, illustrates this +lyrical tendency to rehandle inherited material. Tales of love, of +enchantment, of adventure, could not be held down to prosaic fact. Whether +they dealt with "matter of France," or "matter of Brittany," whether a +brief "lai" or a complicated cycle of stories like those about Charlemagne +or King Arthur, whether a merry "fabliau" or a beast-tale like "Reynard +the Fox," all the Romances allow to the author a margin of mystery, an +opportunity to weave his own web of brightly colored fancies. A specific +event or legend was there, of course, as a nucleus for the story, but the +sense of wonder, of strangeness in things, of individual delight in +brocading new patterns upon old material, dominated over the sense of +fact. "Time," said Shelley, "which destroys the beauty and the use of the +story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest +them, augments that of poetry, and forever develops new and wonderful +applications of the eternal truth which it contains.... A story of +particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which +should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which +is distorted." + +And in modern narrative verse, surely, the line between "epic" quality and +"lyric" quality is difficult to draw. Choose almost at random a half-dozen +story-telling poems from the _Oxford Book of English Verse_, say "The +Ancient Mariner," "The Burial of Sir John Moore," "La Belle Dame sans +Merci," "Porphyria's Lover," "The Forsaken Merman," "He Fell among +Thieves." Each of these poems narrates an event, but what purely lyric +quality is there which cannot be found in "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and +"The Ancient Mariner"? And does not each of the other poems release and +excite the lyric mood? + +We must admit, furthermore, that narrative measures and lyric measures are +frequently identical, and help to carry over into a story a singing +quality. Ballad measures are an obvious example. Walter Scott's facile +couplets were equally effective for story and for song. Many minor species +of narrative poetry, like verse satire and allegory, are often composed in +traditional lyric patterns. Even blank verse, admirably suited as it is +for story-telling purposes, yields in its varieties of cadence many a bar +of music long associated with lyric emotion. Certainly the blank verse of +Wordsworth's "Michael" is far different in its musical values from the +blank verse, say, of Tennyson's _Princess_--perhaps truly as different as +the metre of _Sigurd the Volsung_ is from that of _The Rape of the Lock_. +The perfect matching of metrical form to the nature of the narrative +material, whether that material be traditional or firsthand, simple or +complex, rude or delicate, demands the finest artistic instinct. Yet it +appears certain that many narrative measures affect us fully as +much through their intimate association with the moods of song as through +their specific adaptiveness to the purposes of narrative. + + +_5. The Ballad_ + +The supreme illustration of this blending of story and song is the ballad. +The word "ballad," like "ode" and "sonnet," is very ancient and has been +used in various senses. We think of it to-day as a song that tells a +story, usually of popular origin. Derived etymologically from _ballare_, +to dance, it means first of all, a "dance-song," and is the same word as +"ballet." Solomon's "Song of Songs" is called in the Bishops' Bible of +1568 "The Ballet of Ballets of King Solomon." But in Chaucer's time a +"ballad" meant primarily a French form of lyric verse,--not a narrative +lyric specifically. In the Elizabethan period the word was used loosely +for "song." Only after the revival of interest in English and Scottish +popular ballads in the eighteenth century has the word come gradually to +imply a special type of story-telling song, with no traces of individual +authorship, and handed down by oral tradition. Scholars differ as to +the precise part taken by the singing, dancing crowd in the composition +and perpetuation of these traditional ballads. Professor Child, +the greatest authority upon English and Scottish balladry, and +Professors Gummere, Kittredge and W. M. Hart have emphasized the +element of "communal" composition, and illustrated it by many types of +song-improvisation among savage races, by sailors' "chanties," and negro +"work-songs." It is easy to understand how a singing, dancing crowd +carries a refrain, and improvises, through some quick-tongued individual, +a new phrase, line or stanza of immediate popular effect; and it is also +easy to perceive, by a study of extant versions of various ballads, such +as Child printed in glorious abundance, to see how phrases, lines and +stanzas get altered as they are passed from lip to lip of unlettered +people during the course of centuries. But the actual historical +relationship of communal dance-songs to such narrative lyrics as were +collected by Bishop Percy, Ritson and Child is still under debate. +[Footnote: See Louise Pound, "The Ballad and the Dance," _Pub. Mod. Lang. +Ass._, vol. 34, No. 3 (September, 1919), and Andrew Lang's article on +"Ballads" in Chambers' _Cyclopedia of Eng. Lit._, ed. of 1902.] + +"All poetry," said Professor Gummere in reply to a critic of his theory of +communal composition of ballads, "springs from the same poetic impulse, +and is due to individuals; but the conditions under which it is made, +whether originally composed in a singing, dancing throng and submitted to +oral tradition, or set down on paper by the solitary and deliberate poet, +have given birth to that distinction of 'popular' and 'artistic,' or +whatever the terms may be, which has obtained in some form with nearly all +writers on poetry since Aristotle." Avoiding questions that are still in +controversy, let us look at some of the indubitable characteristics of the +"popular" ballads as they are shown in Child's collection. +[Footnote: Now reprinted in a single volume of the "Cambridge Poets" +(Houghton Mifflin Company), edited with an introduction by G. L. +Kittredge.] +They are impersonal. There is no trace whatever of individual authorship. +"This song was made by Billy Gashade," asserts the author of the immensely +popular American ballad of "Jesse James." But we do not know what "Billy +Gashade" it was who first made rhymes about Robin Hood or Johnny +Armstrong, or just how much help he had from the crowd in composing them. +In any case, the method of such ballads is purely objective. They do not +moralize or sentimentalize. There is little description, aside from the +use of set, conventional phrases. They do not "motivate" the story +carefully, or move logically from event to event. Rather do they "flash +the story at you" by fragments, and then leave you in the dark. They +leap over apparently essential points of exposition and plot structure; +they omit to assign dialogue to a specific person, leaving you to guess +who is talking. Over certain bits of action or situation they linger as if +they hated to leave that part of the story. They make shameless use of +"commonplaces," that is, stock phrases, lines or stanzas which are +conveniently held by the memory and which may appear in dozens of +different ballads. They are not afraid of repetition,--indeed the theory +of choral collaboration implies a constant use of repetition and refrain, +as in a sailor's "chanty." One of their chief ways of building a situation +or advancing a narrative is through "incremental repetition," as Gummere +termed it, i.e. the successive additions of some new bits of fact as the +bits already familiar are repeated. + + "'Christine, Christine, tread a measure for me! + A silken sark I will give to thee.' + + "'A silken sark I can get me here, + But I'll not dance with the Prince this year.' + + "'Christine, Christine, tread a measure for me, + Silver-clasped shoes I will give to thee!' + + "'Silver-clasped shoes,'" etc. + +American cowboy ballads show the same device: + + "I started up the trail October twenty-third, + I started up the trail _with the 2-U herd_." + +Strikingly as the ballads differ from consciously "artistic" narrative in +their broken movement and allusive method, the contrast is even more +different if we consider the naive quality of their refrains. Sometimes +the refrain is only a sort of musical accompaniment: + + "There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell, + (_Chorus of Whistlers_) + There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell + And he had a bad wife, as many knew well. + (_Chorus of Whistlers_)" + +Or, + + "The auld Deil cam to the man at the pleugh, + _Rumchy ae de aidie_." + +Sometimes the words of the choral refrain have a vaguely suggestive +meaning: + + "There were three ladies lived in a bower, + _Eh vow bonnie_ + And they went out to pull a flower, + _On the bonnie banks of Fordie_." + +Sometimes the place-name, illustrated in the last line quoted, is +definite: + + "There was twa sisters in a bower, + _Edinburgh, Edinburgh_, + There was twa sisters in a bower, + _Stirling for aye_ + There was twa sisters in a bower, + There came a knight to be their wooer, + _Bonny Saint Johnston stands upon Tay_." + +But often it is sheer faëry-land magic: + + "He's ta'en three locks o' her yellow hair, + _Binnorie, O Binnorie_! + And wi' them strung his harp sae rare + _By the bonnie milldams o' Binnorie_." + (_Oxford_, No.376.) + +It is through the choral refrains, in fact, that the student of lyric +poetry is chiefly fascinated as he reads the ballads. Students of epic +and drama find them peculiarly suggestive in their handling of narrative +and dramatic material, while to students of folklore and of primitive +society they are inexhaustible treasures. The mingling of dance-motives +and song-motives with the pure story-element may long remain obscure, but +the popular ballad reinforces, perhaps more persuasively than any type of +poetry, the conviction that the lyrical impulse is universal and +inevitable. As Andrew Lang, scholar and lover of balladry, wrote +long ago: "Ballads sprang from the very heart of the people and flit from +age to age, from lip to lip of shepherds, peasants, nurses, of all the +class that continues nearest to the state of natural man. The whole soul +of the peasant class breathes in their burdens, as the great sea resounds +in the shells cast up on the shores. Ballads are a voice from secret +places, from silent peoples and old times long dead; and as such they stir +us in a strangely intimate fashion to which artistic verse can never +attain." +[Footnote: _Encyclopaedia Brittanica_, article "Ballads."] + + +_6. The Ode_ + +If the ballad is thus an example of "popular" lyricism, with a narrative +intention, an example of "artistic" lyricism is found in the Ode. Here +there is no question of communal origins or of communal influence upon +structure. The ode is a product of a single artist, working not naively, +but consciously, and employing a highly developed technique. Derived from +the Greek verb meaning "to sing," the word "ode" has not changed its +meaning since the days of Pindar, except that, as in the case of the word +"lyric" itself, we have gradually come to grow unmindful of the original +musical accompaniment of the song. Edmund Gosse, in his collection of +_English Odes_, defines the ode as "any strain of enthusiastic and exalted +lyrical verse directed to a fixed purpose and dealing progressively with +one dignified theme." Spenser's "Epithalamium" or marriage ode, +Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," Tennyson's elegiac +and encomiastic "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," Lowell's +"Harvard Commemoration Ode," are among the most familiar examples of the +general type. + +English poetry has constantly employed, however, both of the two metrical +species of odes recognized by the ancients. The first, made up of uniform +stanzas, was called "Aeolian" or "Horatian,"--since Horace imitated the +simple, regular strophes of his Greek models. The other species of ode, +the "Dorian," is more complex, and is associated with the triumphal odes +of Pindar. It utilizes groups of voices, and its divisions into so-called +"strophe," "antistrophe" and "epode" (sometimes called fancifully "wave," +"answering wave" and "echo") were determined by the movements of the +groups of singers upon the Greek stage, the "singers moving to one side +during the strophe, retracing their steps during the antistrophe (which +was for that reason metrically identical with the strophe), and standing +still during the epode." +[Footnote: See Bronson's edition of the poems of Collins. Athenaeum +Press.] + +It must be observed, however, that the English odes written in strictly +uniform stanzas differ greatly in the simplicity of the stanzaic pattern. +Andrew Marvell's "Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland," +Collins's "Ode to Evening," Shelley's "To a Skylark," and Wordsworth's +"Ode to Duty" are all in very simple stanza forms. But Collins's "Ode on +the Superstitions of the Highlands," Shelley's "Ode to Liberty" and +Coleridge's "Ode to France" follow very complicated patterns, though all +the stanzas are alike. The English "Horatian" ode, then, while exhibiting +the greatest differences in complexity of stanzaic forms, is +"homostrophic." + +To understand the "Pindaric" English ode, we must remember that a few +scholars, like Ben Jonson, Congreve and Gray, took peculiar pleasure in +reproducing the general effect of the Greek strophic arrangement of +"turn," "counterturn" and "pause." Ben Jonson's "Ode to Sir Lucius Cary +and Sir H. Morison" (_Oxford_, No. 194) has been thought to be the first +strictly Pindaric ode in English, and Gray's "Bard" and "Progress of +Poesy" (_Oxford_, Nos. 454, 455) are still more familiar examples of this +type. But the great popularity of the so-called "Pindaric" ode in English +in the seventeenth century was due to Cowley, and to one of those periodic +loyalties to lawlessness which are characteristic of the English. For +Cowley, failing to perceive that Pindar's apparent lawlessness was +due to the corruption of the Greek text and to the modern ignorance of the +rules of Greek choral music, made his English "Pindaric" odes an outlet +for rebellion against all stanzaic law. The finer the poetic frenzy, the +freer the lyric pattern! But, alas, rhetoric soon triumphed over +imagination, and in the absence of metrical restraint the ode grew +declamatory, bombastic, and lowest stage of all, "official," the last +refuge of laureates who felt obliged to produce something sonorous in +honor of a royal birthday or wedding. This official ode persisted long +after the pseudo-Pindaric flag was lowered and Cowley had become +neglected. + +With the revival of Romantic imagination, however, came a new interest in +the "irregular" ode, whose strophic arrangement ebbs and flows without +apparent restraint, subject only to what Watts-Dunton termed "emotional +law." Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" moves in +obedience to its own rhythmic impulses only, like Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" +and Emerson's "Bacchus." Metrical variety can nowhere be shown more freely +and gloriously than in the irregular ode: there may be any number of lines +in each strophe, and often the strophe itself becomes dissolved into +something corresponding to the "movement" of a symphony. Masterpieces like +William Vaughn Moody's "Ode in Time of Hesitation" and Francis Thompson's +"Hound of Heaven" reveal of course a firm intellectual grasp upon the +underlying theme of the ode and upon the logical processes of its +development. But although we may follow with keen intellectual +delight these large, free handlings of a lyrical theme, there are few +readers of poetry whose susceptibility to complicated combinations of +rhyme-sound allows them to perceive the full verbal beauty of the great +irregular odes. Even in such regular strophes as those of Keats's "Grecian +Urn," who remembers that the rhyme scheme of the first stanza is unlike +that of the following stanzas? Or that the second stanza of the "Ode to a +Nightingale" runs on four sounds instead of five? Let the reader test his +ear by reading aloud the intricate sound-patterns employed in such elegies +as Arnold's "Scholar Gypsy" (_Oxford_, No. 751) or Swinburne's "Ave atque +Vale" (_Oxford_, No. 810), and then let him go back to "Lycidas" +(_Oxford_, No. 317), the final test of one's responsiveness to the +blending of the intellectual and the sensuous elements in poetic beauty. +If he is honest with himself, he will probably confess that neither his +ear nor his mind can keep full pace with the swift and subtle demands made +upon both by the masters of sustained lyric energy. But he will also +become freshly aware that the ode is a supreme example of that union of +excitement with a sense of order, of liberty with law, which gives Verse +its immortality. + + +_7. The Sonnet_ + +The sonnet, likewise, is a lyric form which illustrates the delicate +balance between freedom and restraint. Let us look first at its structure, +and then at its capacity for expressing thought and feeling. + +Both name and structure are Italian in origin, "sonetto" being the +diminutive of "suono," sound. Dante and Petrarch knew it as a special +lyric form intended for musical accompaniment. It must have fourteen +lines, neither more nor less, with five beats or "stresses" to the line. +Each line must end with a rhyme. In the arrangement of the rhymes the +sonnet is made up of two parts, or rhyme-systems: the first eight lines +forming the "octave," and the last six the "sestet." The octave is made up +of two quatrains and the sestet of two tercets. There is a main pause in +passing from the octave to the sestet, and frequently there are minor +pauses in passing from the first quatrain to the second, and from the +first tercet to the last. + +Almost all of Petrarch's sonnets follow this rhyme-scheme: for the octave, +_a b b a a b b a_; for the sestet, either _c d e c d e_ or _c d c d c d_. +This strict "Petrarchan" form has endured for six centuries. It has been +adopted by poets of every race and language, and it is used to-day as +widely or more widely than ever. While individual poets have constantly +experimented with different rhyme-schemes, particularly in the sestet, the +only really notable invention of a new sonnet form was made by the +Elizabethans. Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589) declares that +"Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and Henry Earl of Surrey, having travelled +into Italy and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of +the Italian poesie,... greatly polished our rude and homely manner of +vulgar poesie.... Their conceits were lofty, their style stately, their +conveyance cleanly, their terms proper, their metre sweet and +well-proportioned, in all imitating very naturally and studiously their +Master Francis Petrarch." + +This is charming, but as a matter of fact both Wyatt and Surrey, with +natural English independence, broke away from the strict Petrarchan rhyme +form. Wyatt liked a final couplet, and Surrey used a rhyme-scheme which +was later adopted by Shakspere and is known to-day as the "Shaksperean" +form of sonnet: namely, three quatrains made up of alternate rhymes--a +separate rhyme-scheme for each quatrain--and a closing couplet. The rhymes +consequently run thus: _a b a b c d c d e f e f g g_. To the Petrarchan +purist this is clearly no sonnet at all, in spite of its fourteen +five-beat, rhyming lines. For the distinction between octave and sestet +has disappeared, there is a threefold division of the first twelve lines, +and the final couplet gives an epigrammatic summary or "point" which +Petrarch took pains to avoid. + +The difference will be still more clearly manifest if we turn from a +comparison of rhyme-structure to the ordering of the thought in the +Petrarchan sonnet. Mark Pattison, a stout "Petrarchan," lays down these +rules in the Preface to his edition of Milton's Sonnets: +[Footnote: D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1883.] + + "a. A sonnet, like every other work of art, must have its unity. It must + be the expression of one, and only one, thought or feeling. + + "b. This thought or mood should be led up to, and opened in the early + lines of the sonnet; strictly, in the first quatrain; in the second + quatrain the hearer should be placed in full possession of it. + + "c. After the second quatrain there should be a pause, not full, nor + producing the effect of a break, as of one who had finished what he had + got to say, and not preparing a transition to a new subject, but as of + one who is turning over what has been said in the mind to enforce it + further. + + "d. The opening of the second system, strictly the first tercet, should + turn back upon the thought or sentiment, take it up and carry it forward + to the conclusion. + + "e. The conclusion should be a resultant, summing the total of the + suggestion in the preceding lines, as a lakelet in the hills gathers + into a still pool the running waters contributed by its narrow area of + gradients. + + "f. While the conclusion should leave a sense of finish and + completeness, it is necessary to avoid anything like epigrammatic point. + By this the sonnet is distinguished from the epigram. In the epigram the + conclusion is everything; all that goes before it is only there for the + sake of the surprise of the end, or _dénouement_, as in a logical + syllogism the premisses are nothing but as they necessitate the + conclusion. In the sonnet the emphasis is nearly, but not quite, equally + distributed, there being a slight swell, or rise, about its middle. The + sonnet must not advance by progressive climax, or end abruptly; it + should subside, and leave off quietly." + +Miss Lockwood, in the Introduction to her admirable collection of English +sonnets, +[Footnote: _Sonnets, English and American_, selected by Laura E. Lockwood. +Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916.] +makes a still briefer summary of the thought-scheme of the regular Italian +sonnet: it "should have a clear and unified theme, stated in the first +quatrain, developed or proved in the second, confirmed or regarded from a +new point of view in the first tercet, and concluded in the second tercet. +It had thus four parts, divided unevenly into two separate systems, eight +lines being devoted to placing the thought before the mind, and six to +deducing the conclusion from that thought." + +A surprisingly large number of sonnets are built upon simple formulas like +"As"--for the octave--and "So"--for the sestet--(see Andrew Lang's "The +Odyssey," _Oxford_, No. 841); or "When" and "Then" (see Keats's "When I +have fears that I may cease to be," _Oxford_, No. 635). A situation plus a +thought gives a mood; or a mood plus an event gives a mental resolve, etc. +The possible combinations are infinite, but the law of logical relation +between octave and sestet, premise and conclusion, is immutable. + +Let the reader now test these laws of sonnet form and thought by reading +aloud one of the most familiarly known of all English sonnets--Keats's "On +First Looking into Chapman's Homer": + + "Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, + And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; + Round many western islands have I been + Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. + Oft of one wide expanse had I been told + That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; + Yet did I never breathe its pure serene + Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: + Then felt I like some watcher of the skies + When a new planet swims into his ken; + Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes + He stared at the Pacific--and all his men + Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- + Silent, upon a peak in Darien." + +Read next another strictly Petrarchan sonnet, where the thought divisions +of quatrains and tercets are marked with exceptional clearness, Eugene +Lee-Hamilton's disillusioned "Sea-Shell Murmurs": + + "The hollow sea-shell that for years hath stood + On dusty shelves, when held against the ear + Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear + The faint far murmur of the breaking flood. + + "We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood + In our own veins, impetuous and near, + And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear + And with our feelings' every shifting mood. + + "Lo, in my heart I hear, as in a shell, + The murmur of a world beyond the grave, + Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. + + "Thou fool; this echo is a cheat as well,-- + The hum of earthly instincts; and we crave + A world unreal as the shell-heard sea." + +And now read aloud one of the best-known of Shakspere's sonnets, where he +follows his favorite device of a threefold statement of his central +thought, using a different image in each quatrain, and closing with a +personal application of the idea: + + "That time of year thou mayst in me behold + When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang + Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, + Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. + In me thou see'st the twilight of such day + As after sunset fadeth in the west; + Which by and by black night doth take away, + Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. + In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, + That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, + As the death-bed whereon it must expire, + Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. + This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, + To love that well which thou must leave ere long." + +Where there is beauty such as this, it is an impertinence to insist that +Shakspere has not conformed to the special type of beauty represented in +the Petrarchan sonnet. He chose not to conform. He won with other tactics. +If the reader will analyse the form and thought of the eighty sonnets in +the _Oxford Book_, or the two hundred collected by Miss Lockwood, he will +feel the charm of occasional irregularity in the handling of both the +Petrarchan and the Shaksperean sonnet. But he is more likely, I think, to +become increasingly aware that whatever restraints are involved in +adherence to typical forms are fully compensated by the rich verbal beauty +demanded by the traditional arrangement of rhymes. + +For the sonnet, an intricately wrought model of the reflective lyric, +requires a peculiarly intimate union of thinking and singing. It may be, +as it often was in the Elizabethan period, too full of thought to allow +free-winged song, and it may also be too full of uncontrolled, unbalanced +emotion to preserve fit unity of thought. Conversely, there may not be +enough thought and emotion to fill the fourteen lines: the idea not being +of "sonnet size." The difficult question as to whether there is such a +thing as an "average-sized" thought and lyrical reflection upon it has +been touched upon in an earlier chapter. The limit of a sentence, says +Mark Pattison, "is given by the average capacity of human apprehension.... +The limit of a sonnet is imposed by the average duration of an +emotional mood.... May we go so far as to say that fourteen lines is the +average number which a thought requires for its adequate embodiment before +attention must collapse?" + +The proper distribution of thought and emotion, that is, the balance of +the different parts of a sonnet, is also a very delicate affair. It is +like trimming a sailboat. Wordsworth defended Milton's frequent practice +of letting the thought of the octave overflow somewhat into the sestet, +believing it "to aid in giving that pervading sense of intense unity in +which the excellence of the sonnet has always seemed to me mainly to +consist." Most lovers of the sonnet would differ here with these masters +of the art. Whether the weight of thought and feeling can properly be +shifted to a final couplet is another debatable question, and critics will +always differ as to the artistic value of the "big" line or "big" word +which marks the culmination of emotion in many a sonnet. The strange or +violent or sonorous word, however splendid in itself, may not fit the +curve of the sonnet in which it appears: it may be like a big red apple +crowded into the toe of a Christmas stocking. + +Nor must the sonnet lean towards either obscurity--the vice of Elizabethan +sonnets, or obviousness--the vice of Wordsworth's sonnets after 1820. The +obscure sonnet, while it may tempt the reader's intellectual ingenuity, +affords no basis for his emotion, and the obvious sonnet provides no +stimulus for his thought. Conventionality of subject and treatment, +like the endless imitation of Italian and French sonnet-motives and +sonnet-sequences, sins against the law of lyric sincerity. In no lyric +form does mechanism so easily obtrude itself. A sonnet is either, like +Marlowe's raptures, "all air and fire," or else it is a wooden toy. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +RACE, EPOCH AND INDIVIDUAL + + "Unless there is a concurrence between the contemporary idioms and + rhythms of a period, with the individual idiom of the lyrist, half + the expressional force of his ideas will be lost." + ERNEST RHYS, Foreword to _Lyric Poetry_ + +We have been considering the typical qualities and forms of lyric poetry. +Let us now attempt a rapid survey of some of the conditions which have +given the lyric, in certain races and periods and in the hands of certain +individuals, its peculiar power. + + +_1. Questions that are involved_ + +A whole generation of so-called "scientific" criticism has come and gone +since Taine's brilliant experiments with his formula of "race, period and +environment" as applied to literature. Taine's _English Literature_ +remains a monument to the suggestiveness and to the dangers of his method. +Some of his countrymen, notably Brunetière in the _Evolution de la Poésie +Lyrique en France au XIX Siècle_, and Legouis in the _Défense de la Poésie +Française_, have discussed more cautiously and delicately than Taine +himself the racial and historic conditions affecting lyric poetry in +various periods. + +The tendency at present, among critics of poetry, is to distrust formulas +and to keep closely to ascertainable facts, and this tendency is surely +more scientific than the most captivating theorizing. For one thing, while +recognizing, as the World War has freshly compelled us to recognize, the +actuality of racial differences, we have grown sceptical of the old +endeavors to classify races in simple terms, as Madame de Staël attempted +to do, for instance, in her famous book on Germany. We endeavor to +distinguish, more accurately than of old, between ethnic, linguistic and +political divisions of men. We try to look behind the name at the thing +itself: we remember that "Spanish" architecture is Arabian, and a good +deal of "Gothic" is Northern French. We confess that we are only at the +beginning of a true science of ethnology. "It is only in their degree of +physical and mental evolution that the races of men are different," +says Professor W. Z. Ripley, author of _Races in Europe_. The late +Professor Josiah Royce admitted: "I am baffled to discover just what the +results of science are regarding the true psychological and moral meaning +of race differences.... All men in prehistoric times are surprisingly +alike in their minds, their morals and their arts.... We do not +scientifically know what the true racial varieties of mental type really +are." +[Footnote: See Royce's _Race-Questions_. New York, 1908.] + +I have often thought of these utterances of my colleagues, as I have +attempted to teach something about lyric poetry in Harvard classrooms +where Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Irish, French, German, Negro, Russian, +Italian and Armenian students appear in bewildering and stimulating +confusion. Precisely what is their racial reaction to a lyric of Sappho? +To an Anglo-Saxon war-song of the tenth century? To a Scotch ballad? To +one of Shakspere's songs? Some specific racial reaction there must be, +one imagines, but such capacity for self-expression as the student +commands is rarely capable of giving more than a hint of it. + +And what real response is there, among the majority of contemporary +lovers of poetry, to the delicate shades of feeling which color the +verse of specific periods in the various national literatures? We all use +catch-words, and I shall use them myself later in this chapter, in the +attempt to indicate the changes in lyric atmosphere as we pass, for +instance, from the Elizabethan to the Jacobean age, or from the "Augustan" +to the Romantic epoch in English literature. Is this sensitiveness to the +temper of various historic periods merely the possession of a few hundred +professional scholars, who have trained themselves, like Walter Pater, to +live in some well-chosen moment of the past and to find in their +hyper-sensitized responsiveness to its voices a sort of consolation prize +for their isolation from the present? Race-mindedness is common, no doubt, +but difficult to express in words: historic-mindedness, though more +capable of expression, is necessarily confined to a few. Is the response +to the poetry of past epochs, then, chiefly a response of the individual +reader to an individual poet, and do we cross the frontiers of race and +language and historic periods with the main purpose of finding a man after +our own heart? Or is the secret of our pleasure in the poetry of alien +races and far-off times simply this: that nothing human is really alien, +and that poetry through its generalizing, universalizing power, reveals to +us the essential oneness of mankind? + + +_2. Graphic Arts and the Lyric_ + +A specific illustration may suggest an answer. An American collector of +Japanese prints recognizes in these specimens of Oriental craftsmanship +that mastery of line and composition which are a part of the universal +language of the graphic arts. Any human being, in fact, who has developed +a sensitiveness to artistic beauty will receive a measure of delight from +the work of Japanese masters. A few strokes of the brush upon silk, a bit +of lacquer work, the decoration of a sword-hilt, are enough to set his eye +dancing. But the expert collector soon passes beyond this general +enthusiasm into a quite particular interest in the handicraft of special +artists,--a Motonobu, let us say, or a Sesshiu. The collector finds his +pleasure in their individual handling of artistic problems, their unique +faculties of eye and hand. He responds, in a word, both to the +cosmopolitan language employed by every practitioner of the fine arts, and +to the local idiom, the personal accent, of, let us say, a certain +Japanese draughtsman of the eighteenth century. + +And now take, by way of confirmation and also of contrast, the attitude of +an American lover of poetry toward those specimens of Japanese and Chinese +lyrics which have recently been presented to us in English translations. +The American's ignorance of the riental languages cuts him off from any +appreciation of the individual handling of diction and metre. A Lafcadio +Hearn may write delightfully about that special seventeen syllable form of +Japanese verse known as the _hokku_. Here is a _hokku_ by Basho, one of +the most skilled composers in that form. Hearn prints it with the +translation, +[Footnote: _Kwaidan_, p. 188. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904.] +and explains that the verses are intended to suggest the joyous feeling of +spring-time: + + "Oki, oki yo! + Waga tomo ni sen + Néru--kocho!" + +(Wake up! Wake up!--I will make thee my comrade, thou sleeping butterfly.) +An Occidental reader may recognize, through the translation, the charm of +the poetic image, and he may be interested in a technical lyric form +hitherto new to him, but beyond this, in his ignorance of Japanese, he +cannot go. Here is a lyric by Wang Ch'ang-Ling, a Chinese poet of the +eighth century: + + _Tears in the Spring_ +[Footnote: These Chinese lyrics are quoted from _The Lute of Jade_, +London, 1909. The translations are by L. Cranmer-Byng.] + + "Clad in blue silk and bright embroidery + At the first call of Spring the fair young bride, + On whom as yet Sorrow has laid no scar, + Climbs the Kingfisher's Tower. Suddenly + She sees the bloom of willows far and wide, + And grieves for him she lent to fame and war." + +And here is another spring lyric by Po Chü-I (A.D. 772-846), as clear and +simple as anything in the Greek Anthology: + + _The Grass_ +[Footnote: These Chinese lyrics are quoted from _The Lute of Jade_, +London, 1909. The translations are by L. Cranmer-Byng.] + + "How beautiful and fresh the grass returns! + When golden days decline, the meadow burns; + Yet autumn suns no hidden root have slain, + The spring winds blow, and there is grass again. + + "Green rioting on olden ways it falls: + The blue sky storms the ruined city walls; + Yet since Wang Sun departed long ago, + When the grass blooms both joy and fear I know." + +The Western reader, although wholly at the mercy of the translator, +recognizes the pathos and beauty of the scene and thought expressed by the +Chinese poet. But all that is specifically Chinese in lyric form is lost +to him. + +I have purposely chosen these Oriental types of lyric because they +represent so clearly the difference between the universal language of the +graphic arts and the more specialized language of poetry. The latter is +still able to convey, even through translation, a suggestion of the +emotions common to all men; and this is true of the verse which lies +wholly outside the line of that Hebrew-Greek-Roman tradition which has +affected so profoundly the development of modern European literature. Yet +to express "_ce que tout le monde pense_"--which was Boileau's version of +Horace's "_propria communia dicere_"--is only part of the function of +lyric poetry. To give the body of the time the form and pressure of +individual feeling, of individual artistic mastery of the language of +one's race and epoch;--this, no less than the other, is the task and the +opportunity of the lyric poet. + + +_3. Decay and Survival_ + +To appreciate the triumph of whatever lyrics have survived, even when +sheltered by the protection of common racial or cultural traditions, one +must remember that the overwhelming majority of lyrics, like the majority +of artistic products of all ages and races and stages of civilization, are +irretrievably lost. Weak-winged is song! A book like Gummere's _Beginnings +of Poetry_, glancing as it does at the origins of so many national +literatures and at the rudimentary poetic efforts of various races that +have never emerged from barbarism, gives one a poignant sense of the +prodigality of the song-impulse compared with the slenderness of the +actual survivals. Autumn leaves are not more fugitive. Even when preserved +by sacred ritual, like the Vedas and the Hebrew Psalter, what we possess +is only an infinitesimal fraction of what has perished. The Sibyl tears +leaf after leaf from her precious volume and scatters them to the winds. +How many glorious Hebrew war-songs of the type presented in the "Song of +Deborah" were chanted only to be forgotten! We have but a handful of the +lyrics of Sappho and of the odes of Pindar, while the fragments of lyric +verse gathered up in the _Greek Anthology_ tantalize us with their +reminder of what has been lost beyond recall. + +Yet if we keep to the line of Hebrew-Greek-Roman tradition, we are equally +impressed with the enduring influence of the few lyrics that have +survived. The Hebrew lyric, in its diction, its rhythmical patterns, and +above all in its flaming intensity of spirit, bears the marks of racial +purity, of mental vigor and moral elevation. It became something even more +significant, however, than the spiritual expression of a chosen race. The +East met the West when these ancient songs of the Hebrew Psalter were +adopted and sung by the Christian Church. They were translated, in the +fourth century, into the Latin of the Vulgate. Many an Anglo-Saxon gleeman +knew that Latin version. It moulded century after century the liturgy of +the European world. It influenced Tyndale's English version of the Psalms, +and this has in turn affected the whole vocabulary and style of the modern +English lyric. There is scarcely a page of the _Oxford Book of English +Verse_ which does not betray in word or phrase the influence of the +Hebrew Psalter. + +Or take that other marvelous example of the expression of emotion in terms +of bodily sensation, the lyric of the Greeks. Its clarity and unity, its +dislike of vagueness and excess, its finely artistic restraint, are +characteristic of the race. The simpler Greek lyrical measures were taken +over by Catullus, Horace and Ovid, and though there were subtle qualities +of the Greek models which escaped the Roman imitators, the Greco-Roman or +"classic" restraint of over-turbulent emotions became a European heritage. +It is doubtless true, as Dr. Henry Osborn Taylor has pointed out, +[Footnote: See his _Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_, chap. 9, and +particularly the passage quoted in the "Notes and Illustrations" to chap. +v of this volume.] +that the Greek and Roman classical metres became in time inadequate to +express the new Christian spirit "which knew neither clarity nor measure." +"The antique sense of form and proportion, the antique observance of the +mean and avoidance of extravagance and excess, the antique dislike for the +unlimited or the monstrous, the antique feeling for literary unity, and +abstention from irrelevancy, the frank love for all that is beautiful or +charming, for the beauty of the body and for everything connected with the +joy of mortal life, the antique reticence as to hopes or fears of what was +beyond the grave,--these qualities cease in medieval Latin poetry." + + +_4. Lyrics of Western Europe_ + +The racial characteristics of the peoples of Western Europe began to show +themselves even in their Latin poetry, but it is naturally in the rise of +the vernacular literatures, during the Middle Ages, that we trace the +signs of thnic differentiation. Teuton and Frank and Norseman, Spaniard or +Italian, betray their blood as soon as they begin to sing in their own +tongue. The scanty remains of Anglo-Saxon lyrical verse are colored with +the love of battle and of the sea, with the desolateness of lonely wolds, +with the passion of loyalty to a leader. Read "Deor's Lament," "Widsith," +"The Wanderer," "The Sea-farer," or the battle-songs of Brunanburh and +Maldon in the Anglo-Saxon _Chronicle_. +[Footnote: See Cook and Tinker, _Select Translations from Old English +Poetry_ (Boston, 1902), and Pancoast and Spaeth, _Early English Poems_ +(New York, 1911).] +The last strophe of "Deor's Lament," our oldest English lyric, ends with +the line: + + _"Thaes ofereode, thisses swa maeg"_ + _"That he surmounted, so this may I!"_ + +The wandering Ulysses says something like this, it is true, in a line of +the _Odyssey_, but to feel its English racial quality one has only to read +after it Masefield's "To-morrow": + + "Oh yesterday our little troop was ridden through and through, + Our swaying, tattered pennons fled, a broken beaten few, + And all a summer afternoon they hunted us and slew; + _But to-morrow, + By the living God, we 'II try the game again_!" + +When Taillefer, knight and minstrel, rode in front of the Norman line at +the battle of Hastings, "singing of Charlemagne and of Roland and of +Oliver and the vassals who fell at Roncevaux," he typified the coming +triumphs of French song in England. +[Footnote: See E. B. Reed, _English Lyrical Poetry_, chap. 2. 1912.] +French lyrical fashions would have won their way, no doubt, had there been +no battle of Hastings. The banners of William the Conqueror had been +blessed by Rome. They represented Europe, and the inevitable flooding of +the island outpost of "Germania" by the tide of European civilization. +_Chanson_ and _carole_, dance-songs, troubadour lyrics, the _ballade_, +_rondel_ and _Noël_, amorous songs of French courtiers, pious hymns of +French monks, began to sing themselves in England. The new grace and +delicacy is upon every page of Chaucer. What was first Provençal and then +French, became English when Chaucer touched it. From the shadow and +grimness and elegiac pathos of Old English poetry we come suddenly into +the light and color and gayety of Southern France. +[Footnote: See the passage from Legouis quoted in the "Notes and +Illustrations" for this chapter.] +In place of Caedmon's terrible picture of Hell--"ever fire or frost"--or +Dunbar's "Lament for the Makers" (_Oxford_, No. 21) with its refrain: + + "_Timor Mortis conturbat me,_" + +or the haunting burden of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" (_Oxford_, No. 381), + + "This ae nighte, this ae nighte, + _--Every nighte and alle,_ + Fire and sleet and candle-lighte, + _And Christe receive thy saule_," + +we now find English poets echoing _Aucassin and Nicolette_: + + "In Paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only + to have Nicolette, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into Paradise + go none but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same + old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower + continually before the altars and in the crypts; and such folk as wear + old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and + covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst and of cold, and of + little ease. These be they that go into Paradise; with them I have + naught to make. But into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the + goodly clerks, and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and great wars, + and stout men at arms, and all men noble. With these would I liefly go. + And thither pass the sweet ladies and courteous that have two lovers or + three, and their lords also thereto. Thither goes the gold and the + silver, the cloth of vair and cloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and + the prince of this world. With these I would gladly go, let me but have + with me Nicolette, my sweetest lady." + + +_5. The Elizabethan Lyric_ + +The European influence came afresh to England, as we have seen, with those +"courtly makers" who travelled into France and Italy and brought back the +new-found treasures of the Renaissance. Greece and Rome renewed, as they +are forever from time to time renewing, their hold upon the imagination +and the art of English verse. Sometimes this influence of the classics has +worked toward contraction, restraint, acceptance of human limitations and +of the "rules" of art. But in Elizabethan poetry the classical influence +was on the side of expansion. In that release of vital energy which +characterized the English Renaissance, the rediscovery of Greece and Rome +and the artistic contacts with France and Italy heightened the confidence +of Englishmen, revealed the continuity of history and gave new faith in +human nature. It spelled, for the moment at least, liberty rather than +authority. It stimulated intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm. Literary +criticism awoke to life in the trenchant discussions of the art of poetry +by Gascoigne and Sidney, by Puttenham, Campion and Daniel. The very titles +of the collections of lyrics which followed the famous _Tottel's +Miscellany_ of 1557 flash with the spirit of the epoch: _A Paradise of +Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, A Handfull +of Pleasant Delights, The Phoenix Nest, England's Helicon_, Davison's +_Poetical Rhapsody._ + +Bullen, Schelling, Rhys, Braithwaite, and other modern collectors of the +Elizabethan lyric have ravaged these volumes and many more, and have shown +how the imported Italian pastoral tallied with the English idyllic mood, +how the study of prosody yielded rich and various stanzaic effects, how +the diffusion of the passion for song through all classes of the community +gave a marvelous singing quality to otherwise thin and mere "dildido" +lines. Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch and his friends have revived the music of the +Elizabethan song-books, and John Erskine and other scholars have +investigated the relation of the song-books--especially the songs composed +by musicians such as Byrd, Dowland and Campion--to the form and quality of +the surviving lyric verse. But one does not need a knowledge of the +Elizabethan lute and viol, and of the precise difference between a +"madrigal" and a "catch" or "air" in order to perceive the tunefulness +of a typical Elizabethan song: + + "I care not for these ladies, + That must be woode and praide: + Give me kind Amarillis, + The wanton countrey maide. + Nature art disdaineth, + Here beautie is her owne. + Her when we court and kisse, + She cries, Forsooth, let go: + But when we come where comfort is, + She never will say No." + +It is not that the spirit of Elizabethan lyric verse is always care-free, +even when written by prodigals such as Peele and Greene and Marlowe. Its +childlike grasping after sensuous pleasure is often shadowed by the sword, +and by quick-coming thoughts of the brevity of mortal things. Yet it is +always spontaneous, swift, alive. Its individual voices caught the tempo +and cadence of the race and epoch, so that men as unlike personally as +Spenser, Marlowe and Donne are each truly "Elizabethan." Spenser's +"vine-like" luxuriance, Marlowe's soaring energy, Donne's grave realistic +subtleties, illustrate indeed that note of individualism which is never +lacking in the great poetic periods. This individualism betrays itself in +almost every song of Shakspere's plays. For here is English race, surely, +and the very echo and temper of the Renaissance, but with it all there is +the indescribable, inimitable _timbre_ of one man's singing voice. + + +_6. The Reaction_ + +If we turn, however, from the lyrics of Shakspere to those of Ben Jonson +and of the "sons of Ben" who sang in the reigns of James I and Charles I, +we become increasingly conscious of a change in atmosphere. The moment of +expansion has passed. The "first fine careless rapture" is over. Classical +"authority" resumes its silent, steady pressure. Scholars like to remember +that the opening lines of Ben Jonson's "Drink to me only with thine eyes" +are a transcript from the Greek. In his "Ode to Himself upon the Censure +of his _New Inn_" in 1620 Jonson, like Landor long afterward, takes +scornful refuge from the present in turning back to Greece and Rome: + + "Leave things so prostitute, + And take the Alcaic lute; + Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre; + Warm thee by Pindar's fire." + +The reaction in lyric form showed itself in the decay of sonnet, pastoral +and madrigal, in the neglect of blank verse, in the development of the +couplet. Milton, in such matters as these, was a solitary survival of the +Elizabethans. Metrical experimentation almost ceased, except in the hands +of ingenious recluses like George Herbert. The popular metre of the +Caroline poets was the rhymed eight and six syllable quatrain: + + "Yet this inconstancy is such + As thou too shalt adore; + I could not love thee, Dear, so much + Loved I not Honour more." + +The mystics like Crashaw, Vaughan and Traherne wished and secured a wider +metrical liberty, and it is, in truth, these complicated patterns of the +devotional lyric of the seventeenth century that are of greatest interest +to the poets of our own day. But contemporary taste, throughout the +greater portion of that swiftly changing epoch, preferred verse that +showed a conservative balance in thought and feeling, in diction and +versification. Waller, with his courtier-like instinct for what was +acceptable, took the middle of the road, letting Cowley and Quarles +experiment as fantastically as they pleased. Andrew Marvell, too, a +Puritan writing in the Restoration epoch, composed as "smoothly" +as Waller. Herrick, likewise, though fond of minor metrical experiments, +celebrated his quiet garden pleasures and his dalliance with amorous +fancies in verse of the true Horatian type. "Intensive rather than +expansive, fanciful rather than imaginative, and increasingly restrictive +in its range and appeal": that is Professor Schelling's expert summary of +the poetic tendencies of the age. + +And then the lyric impulse died away in England. Dryden could be +magnificently sonorous in declamation and satire, but he lacked the +singing voice. Pope likewise, though he "lisped in numbers," could never, +for all of his cleverness, learn to sing. The age of the Augustans, in the +first quarter of the eighteenth century, was an age of prose, of reason, +of good sense, of "correctness." The decasyllabic couplet, so resonant in +Dryden, so admirably turned and polished by Pope, was its favorite +measure. The poets played safe. They took no chances with "enthusiasm," +either in mood or metrical device. What could be said within the +restraining limits of the couplet they said with admirable point, vigor +and grace. But it was speech, not song. + + +7. _The Romantic Lyric_ + +The revolt came towards the middle of the century, first in the lyrics of +Collins, then in Gray. The lark began to soar and sing once more in +English skies. New windows were opened in the House of Life. Men looked +out again with curiosity, wonder and a sense of strangeness in the +presence of beauty. They saw Nature with new eyes; found a new richness in +the Past, a new picturesque and savor in the life of other races, +particularly in the wild Northern and Celtic strains of blood. Life grew +again something mysterious, not to be comprehended by the "good sense" of +the Augustans, or expressible in the terms of the rhymed couplet. Instead +of the normal, poets sought the exceptional, then the strange, the +far-away in time or place, or else the familiar set in some unusual +fantastic light. The mood of poetry changed from tranquil sentiment to +excited sentiment or "sensibility," and then to sheer passion. The forms +of poetry shifted from the conventional to the revival of old measures +like blank verse and the Spenserian stanza, then to the invention of new +and freer forms, growing ever more lyrical. Poetic diction rebelled +against the Augustan conventions, the stereotyped epithets, the frigid +personifications. It abandoned the abstract and general for the specific +and the picturesque. It turned to the language of real life, and then, +dissatisfied, to the heightened language of passion. If one reads Cowper, +Blake, Burns and Wordsworth, to say nothing of poets like Byron and +Shelley who wrote in the full Romantic tide of feeling, one finds that +this poetry has discovered new themes. It portrays the child, the peasant, +the villager, the outcast, the slave, the solitary person, even the idiot +and the lunatic. There is a new human feeling for the individual, and for +the endless, the poignant variety of "states of soul." Browning, by and +by, is to declare that "states of soul" are the only things worth a poet's +attention. + +Now this new individuality of themes, of language, of moods, assisted in +the free expression of lyricism, the release of the song-impulse of the +"single, separate person." The Romantic movement was revelatory, in a +double sense. "Creation widened in man's view"; and there was equally a +revelation of individual poetic energy which gave the Romantic lyric an +extraordinary variety and beauty of form. There was an exaggerated +individualism, no doubt, which marked the weak side of the whole movement: +a deliberate extravagance, a cultivated egoism. Vagueness has its +legitimate poetic charm, but in England no less than in Germany or France +lyric vagueness often became incoherence. Symbolism degenerated into +meaninglessness. But the fantastic and grotesque side of Romantic +individualism should not blind us to the central fact that a rich +personality may appear in a queer garb. Victor Hugo, like his young +friends of the 1830's, loved to make the gray-coated citizens of Paris +stare at his scarlet, but the personality which could create such lyric +marvels as the _Odes et Ballades_ may be forgiven for its eccentricities. +William Blake was eccentric to the verge of insanity, yet he opened, like +Whitman and Poe, new doors of ivory into the wonder-world. + +Yet a lyrist like Keats, it must be remembered, betrayed his personality +not so much through any external peculiarity of the Romantic temperament +as through the actual texture of his word and phrase and rhythm. Examine +his brush-work microscopically, as experts in Italian painting examine the +brushstrokes and pigments of some picture attributed to this or that +master: you will see that Keats, like all the supreme masters of poetic +diction, enciphered his lyric message in a language peculiarly his own. It +is for us to decipher it as we may. He used, of course, particularly in +his earlier work, some of the stock-epithets, the stock poetic +"properties" of the Romantic school, just as the young Tennyson, in his +volume of 1827, played with the "owl" and the "midnight" and the "solitary +mere," stock properties of eighteenth-century romance. Yet Tennyson, like +Keats, and for that matter like Shakspere, passed through this imitative +phase into an artistic maturity where without violence or extravagance or +eccentricity he compelled words to do his bidding. Each word bears the +finger-print of a personality. + +Now it is precisely this revelation of personality which gave zest, +throughout the Romantic period, to the curiosity about the poetry of alien +races. It will be remembered that Romanticism followed immediately upon a +period of cosmopolitanism, and that it preceded that era of intense +nationalism which came after the Napoleonic wars. Even in that +intellectual "United States of Europe," about 1750--when nationalistic +differences were minimized, "enlightenment" was supreme and "propria +communia dicere" was the literary motto--there was nevertheless a rapidly +growing curiosity about races and literatures outside the charmed circle +of Western Europe. It was the era of the Oriental tale, of Northern +mythology. Then the poets of England, France and Germany began their +fruitful interchange of inspiration. Walter Scott turned poet when he +translated Burger's "Lenore." Goethe read Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_. +Wordsworth and Coleridge visited Germany not in search of general +eighteenth-century "enlightenment," but rather in quest of some peculiar +revelation of truth and beauty. In the full tide of Romanticism, +Protestant Germany sought inspiration in Italy and Spain, as Catholic +France sought it in Germany and England. A new sense of race-values +was evident in poetry. It may be seen in Southey, Moore, and Byron, in +Hugo's _Les Orientales_ and in Leconte de Lisle's _Poèmes Barbares_. +Modern music has shown the same tendency: Strauss of Vienna writes waltzes +in Arab rhythms, Grieg composes a Scotch symphony, Dvorák writes an +American national anthem utilizing negro melodies. As communication +between races has grown easier, and the interest in race-characteristics +more intense, it would be strange indeed if lovers of lyric poetry did not +range far afield in their search for new complexities of lyric feeling. + + +_8. The Explorer's Pleasure_ + +This explorer's pleasure in discovering the lyrics of other races was +never more keen than it is to-day. Every additional language that one +learns, every new sojourn in a foreign country, enriches one's own +capacity for sharing the lyric mood. It is impossible, of course, that any +race or period should enter fully into the lyric impulses of another. +Educated Englishmen have known their Horace for centuries, but it can be +only a half-knowledge, delightful as it is. France and England, so near in +miles, are still so far away in instinctive comprehension of each other's +mode of poetical utterance! No two nations have minds of quite the same +"fringe." No man, however complete a linguist, has more than one real +mother tongue, and it is only in one's mother tongue that a lyric +sings with all its over-tones. And nevertheless, life offers few purer +pleasures than may be found in listening to the half-comprehended songs +uttered by alien lips indeed, but from hearts that we know are like our +own. + + "This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone, + It seems to me there are other men in other lands + yearning and thoughtful, + It seems to me I can look over and behold them in + Germany, Italy, France, Spain, + Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or Japan, + talking other dialects, + And it seems to me if I could know those men I + should become attached to them as I do to + men in my own lands, + O I know we should be brethren and lovers, + I know I should be happy with them." + + +9. _A Test_ + +If the reader is willing to test his own responsiveness, not to the alien +voices, but to singers of his own blood in other epochs, let him now read +aloud--or better, recite from memory--three of the best-known English +poems: Milton's "Lycidas," Gray's "Elegy" and Wordsworth's "Ode to +Immortality." The first was published in 1638, the second in 1751, and the +third in 1817. Each is a "central" utterance of a race, a period and an +individual. Each is an open-air poem, written by a young Englishman; each +is lyrical, elegiac--a song of mourning and of consolation. "Lycidas" is +the last flawless music of the English Renaissance, an epitome of +classical and pastoral convention, yet at once Christian, political and +personal. Beneath the quiet perfection of Gray's "Elegy" there is the +undertone of passionate sympathy for obscure lives: passionate, but +restrained. Wordsworth knows no restraint of form or feeling in +his great "Ode"; its germinal idea is absurd to logic, but not to the +imagination. This elegy, like the others, is a "lyric cry" of a man, an +age, and a race; "enciphered" like them, with all the cunning of which the +artist was capable; and decipherable only to those who know the language +of the English lyric. + +There may be readers who find these immortal elegies wearisome, staled by +repetition, spoiled by the critical glosses of generations of +commentators. In that case, one may test his sense of race, period +and personality by a single quatrain of Landor, who is surely not +over-commented upon to-day: + + "From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass + Like little ripples down a sunny river; + Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass, + Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever." + +Find the classicist, the aristocrat, the Englishman, and the lover in that +quatrain! + +Or, if Landor seems too remote, turn to Amherst, Massachusetts, and read +this amazing elegy in a country churchyard written by a New England +recluse, Emily Dickinson: + + "This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies, + And Lads and Girls; + Was laughter and ability and sighing, + And frocks and curls. + This passive place a Summer's nimble mansion, + Where Bloom and Bees + Fulfilled their Oriental Circuit, + Then ceased like these." + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE LYRIC + + + "And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other + affections, of desire and pain and pleasure which are held to be + inseparable from every action--in all of them poetry feeds and waters + the passions instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule + instead of ruling them as they ought to be ruled, with a view to the + happiness and virtue of mankind." + PLATO'S _Republic_, Book 10 + + "A man has no right to say to his own generation, turning quite away + from it, 'Be damned!' It is the whole Past and the whole Future, this + same cotton-spinning, dollar-hunting, canting and shrieking, very + wretched generation of ours." + CARLYLE _to_ EMERSON, _August 29, 1842_ + + +Let us turn finally to some phases of the contemporary lyric. We shall not +attempt the hazardous, not to say impossible venture of assessing the +artistic value of living poets. "Poets are not to be ranked like +collegians in a class list," wrote the wise John Morley long ago. +Certainly they cannot be ranked until their work is finished. Nor is it +possible within the limits of this chapter to attempt, upon a smaller +scale, anything like the task which has been performed so interestingly by +books like Miss Lowell's _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_, Mr. +Untermeyer's _New Era in American Poetry_, Miss Wilkinson's _New Voices_, +and Mr. Lowes's _Convention and Revolt_. I wish rather to remind the +reader, first, of the long-standing case against the lyric, a case +which has been under trial in the court of critical opinion from Plato's +day to our own; and then to indicate, even more briefly, the lines of +defence. It will be clear, as we proceed, that contemporary verse in +America and England is illustrating certain general tendencies which not +only sharpen the point of the old attack, but also hearten the spirit of +the defenders of lyric poetry. + + +1. _Plato's Moralistic Objection_ + +Nothing could be more timely, as a contribution to a critical battle which +is just now being waged, +[Footnote: See the Introduction and the closing chapter of Stuart P. +Sherman's _Contemporary Literature_. Holt, 1917.] +than the passage from Plato's _Republic_ which furnishes the motto for the +present chapter. It expresses one of those eternal verities which each +generation must face as best it may: "Poetry feeds and waters the passions +instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule instead of +ruling them." "Did we not imply," asks the Athenian Stranger in Plato's +_Laws_, "that the poets are not always quite capable of knowing what is +good or evil?" "There is also," says Socrates in the Phoedrus, "a third +kind of madness, which is the possession of the Muses; this enters into a +delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric and +all other members." This Platonic notion of lyric "inspiration" and +"possession" permeates the immortal passage of the _Ion_: + + "For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful + poems not as works of art, but because they are inspired and possessed. + And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right + mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are + composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of + music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens + who draw milk and honey from the rivers, when they are under the + influence of Dionysus, but not when they are in their right mind. And + the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves tell us; + for they tell us that they gather their strains from honied fountains + out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; thither, like the bees, they + wing their way. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and + holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired + and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has + not attained to this state, he is powerless and is to utter his oracles. + Many are the noble words in which poets speak of actions like your own + Words about Homer; but they do not speak of them by any rules of art: + only when they make that to which the Muse impels them are their + inventions inspired; and then one of them will make dithyrambs, another + hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic + verses--and he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of + verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he + learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one + theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, + and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy + prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of + themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of + unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them he + is conversing with us." +[Footnote: Plato's _Ion_, Jowett's translation.] + +The other Platonic notion about poetry being "imitation" colors the +well-known section of the third book of the _Republic_, which warns +against the influence of certain effeminate types of lyric harmony: + + "I answered: Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one + warlike, which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in + the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and + he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and + at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and + another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of + action, when there is no pressure of necessity--expressive of entreaty + or persuasion, of prayer to God, or instruction of man, or again, of + willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty and advice; and which + represents him when he has accomplished his aim, not carried away by + success, but acting moderately and wisely, and acquiescing in the event. + These two harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the + strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the + fortunate, the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance; these, + I say, leave." + +So runs the famous argument for "the natural rhythms of a manly life," and +conversely, the contention that "the absence of grace and rhythm and +harmony is closely allied to an evil character." While it is true that the +basis for this argument has been modified by our abandonment of the Greek +aesthetic theories of "inspiration" and "imitation," Plato's moralistic +objection to lyric effeminacy and lyric naturalism is widely shared by +many of our contemporaries. They do not find the "New Poetry," lovely as +it often is, altogether "manly." They find on the contrary that some of it +is what Plato calls "dissolute," i.e. dissolving or relaxing the fibres of +the will, like certain Russian dance-music. I asked an American composer +the other day: "Is there anything at all in the old distinction between +secular and sacred music?" "Certainly," he replied; "secular music +excites, sacred music exalts." If this distinction is sound, it is plain +that much of the New Poetry aims at excitement of the senses for its +own sake--or in Plato's words, at "letting them rule, instead of ruling +them as they ought to be ruled." Or, to use the severe words of a +contemporary critic: "They bid us be all eye, no mind; all sense, no +thought; all chance, all confusion, no order, no organization, no fabric +of the reason." + +However widely we may be inclined to differ with such moralistic judgments +as these, it remains true that plenty of idealists hold them, and it is +the idealists, rather than the followers of the senses, who have kept the +love of poetry alive in our modern world. + + +_2. A Rationalistic Objection_ + +But the Philistines, as well as the Platonists, have an indictment to +bring against modern verse, and particularly against the lyric. They find +it useless and out of date. Macaulay's essay on Milton (1825) is one of +the classic expressions of "Caledonian" rationalism: + + "We think that as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily + declines.... Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his + purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive + and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. + Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of + a half-civilized people is poetical.... In proportion as men know more + and think more, they look less at individuals, and more at classes. They + therefore make better theories and worse poems.... In an enlightened age + there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, + abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit + and eloquence, abundance of verses and even of good ones, but little + poetry." In the essay on Dryden (1828) Macaulay renews the charge: + "Poetry requires not an examining but a believing freedom of mind.... As + knowledge is extended and as the reason develops itself, the imitative + arts decay." + +Even Macaulay, however, is a less pungent and amusing advocate of +rationalism than Thomas Love Peacock in _The Four Ages of Poetry_. +[Footnote: Reprinted in A. S. Cook's edition of Shelley's _Defense of +Poetry_. Boston, 1891.] + +A few sentences must suffice: + + "A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He + lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, + associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and + exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a + crab, backward.... The highest inspirations of poetry are resolvable + into three ingredients: the rant of unregulated passion, the whining of + exaggerated feeling, and the cant of factitious sentiment; and can + therefore serve only to ripen a splendid lunatic like Alexander, a + puling driveler like Werter, or a morbid dreamer like Wordsworth. It can + never make a philosopher, nor a statesman, nor in any class of life a + useful or rational man. It cannot claim the slightest share in any one + of the comforts and utilities of life, of which we have witnessed so + many and so rapid advances.... We may easily conceive that the day is + not distant when the degraded state of every species of poetry will be + as generally recognized as that of dramatic poetry has long been; and + this not from any decrease either of intellectual power or intellectual + acquisition, but because intellectual power and intellectual acquisition + have turned themselves into other and better channels, and have + abandoned the cultivation and the fate of poetry to the degenerate fry + of modern rimesters, and their Olympic judges, the magazine critics, who + continue to debate and promulgate oracles about poetry as if it were + still what it was in the Homeric age, the all-in-all of intellectual + progression, and as if there were no such things in existence as + mathematicians, historians, politicians, and political economists, who + have built into the upper air of intelligence a pyramid, from the summit + of which they see the modern Parnassus far beneath them, and knowing how + small a place it occupies in the comprehensiveness of their prospect, + smile at the little ambition and the circumscribed perceptions with + which the drivelers and mountebanks upon it are contending for the + poetical palm and the critical chair." + +No one really knows whether Peacock was wholly serious in this diatribe, +but inasmuch as it produced Shelley's _Defense of Poetry_ "as an +antidote"--as Shelley said--we should be grateful for it. Both Peacock and +Macaulay wrote nearly a century ago, but their statements as to the +uselessness of poetry, as compared with the value of intellectual exertion +in other fields, is wholly in the spirit of twentieth-century rationalism. +Few readers of this book may hold that doctrine, but they will meet it on +every side; and they will need all they can remember of Sidney and Shelley +and George Woodberry "as an antidote." + + +3. _An Aesthetic Objection_ + +In Aristotle's well-known definition of Tragedy in the fifth section of +the _Poetics_, there is one clause, and perhaps only one, which has been +accepted without debate. "A Tragedy, then, is an artistic imitation of an +action that is serious, complete in itself, _and of an adequate +magnitude_." Does a lyric possess "an adequate magnitude?" As the +embodiment of a single aspect of feeling, and therefore necessarily brief, +the lyric certainly lacks "mass." As an object for aesthetic +contemplation, is the average lyric too small to afford the highest and +most permanent pleasure? "A long poem," remarks A. C. Bradley in his +_Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, +[Footnote: London, 1909. The passage cited is from the chapter on "The +Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth."] +"requires imaginative powers superfluous in a short one, and it would be +easy to show that it admits of strictly poetic effects of the highest +value which the mere brevity of a short one excludes." Surely the lyric, +like the short story, cannot see life steadily and whole. It reflects, as +we have seen, a single situation or desire. "Short swallow-flights of +song"; piping "as the linnet sings"; have not the lyric poets themselves +confessed this inherent shortcoming of their art in a thousand similes? +Does not a book of lyrics often seem like a plantation of carefully tended +little trees, rather than a forest? The most ardent collector of +butterflies is aware that he is hunting only butterflies and not big game. +Mr. John Gould Fletcher's _Japanese Prints_ is a collection of the +daintiest lyric fragments, lovely as a butterfly's wing. But do such +lyrics lack "adequate magnitude"? + +It seems to the present writer that this old objection is a real one, and +that it is illustrated afresh by contemporary poetry, but that it is not +so much an argument against the lyric as such, as it is an explanation of +the ineffectiveness of certain lyric poems. This defect is not primarily +that they lack "magnitude," but rather that they lack an adequate basis in +our emotional adjustment to the fact or situation upon which they turn. +The reader is not prepared for the effect which they convey. The art of +the drama was defined by the younger Dumas as the art of preparation. Now +the lyrics which are most effective in primarily dramatic compositions, +let us say the songs in "Pippa Passes" or Ariel's songs in _The Tempest_, +are those where the train of emotional association or contrast has been +carefully laid and is waiting to be touched off. So it is with the +markedly lyrical passages in narrative verse--say the close of "Sohrab and +Rustum." When a French actress sings the "Marseillaise" to a theatre +audience in war-time, or Sir Harry Lauder, dressed in kilts, sings +to a Scottish-born audience about "the bonny purple heather," or a +marching regiment strikes up "Dixie," the actual song is only the release +of a mood already stimulated. But when one comes upon an isolated lyric +printed as a "filler" at the bottom of a magazine page, there is no train +of emotional association whatever. There is no lyric mood waiting to +respond to a "lyric cry." To overcome this obstacle, Walter Page and other +magazine editors, a score of years ago, made the experiment of printing +all the verse together, instead of scattering it according to the +exigencies of the "make-up." Miss Monroe's _Poetry_, _Contemporary Verse_, +and the other periodicals devoted exclusively to poetry, easily avoid this +handicap of intruding prose. One turns their pages as he turns leaves of +music until he finds some composition in accordance with his mood of the +moment. The long poem or the drama creates an undertone of feeling +in which the lyrical mood may easily come to its own, based and reinforced +as it is by the larger poetical structure. The isolated magazine lyric, on +the other hand, is like one swallow trying to make a summer. Even the +lyrics collected in anthologies are often "mutually repellent particles," +requiring through their very brevity and lack of relation with one +another, a perpetual re-focussing of the attention, a constant re-creation +of lyric atmosphere. These conditions have been emphasized, during the +last decade, by that very variety of technical experimentation, that +increased range and individualism of lyric effort, which have renewed the +interest in American poetry. + + +4. _Subjectivity as a Curse_ + +I have often thought of a conversation with Samuel Asbury, a dozen years +ago, about a friend of ours, a young Southern poet of distinct promise, +who had just died. Like many Southern verse-writers of his generation, he +had lived and written under the inspiration of Poe. Asbury surprised me by +the almost bitter remark that Poe's influence had been a blight upon the +younger Southern poets, inasmuch as it had tended to over-subjectivity, to +morbid sensibility, and to a pre-occupation with purely personal emotions. +He argued, as he has since done so courageously in his _Texas Nativist_, +[Footnote: Published by the author at College Station, Texas.] +that more objective forms of poetry, particularly epic and dramatic +handling of local and historic American material, was far healthier stuff +for a poet to work with. + +This objection to the lyric as an encourager of subjective excitement, of +egoistic introspection, like the other objections already stated, is one +of old standing. Goethe remarked that the subjectivity of the smaller +poets was of no significance, but that they were interested in nothing +really objective. But though this indictment of over-individualism has +often been drawn, our own times are a fresh proof of its validity. If the +revelation of personality unites men, the stress upon mere individuality +separates them, and there are countless poets of the day who glory in +their eccentric individualism without remembering that it is only through +a richly developed personality that poetry gains any universal values. +"Nothing in literature is so perishable as eccentricity, with regard to +which each generation has its own requirements and its own standard of +taste; and the critic who urges contemporary poets to make their work as +individual as possible is deliberately inviting them to build their +structures on sand instead of rock." +[Footnote: Edmond Holmes, _What is Poetry_, p. 68.] +Every reader of contemporary poetry is aware that along with its +exhilarating freshness and force there has been a display of singularity +and of silly nudity both of body and mind. Too intimate confidences have +been betrayed in the lyric confessional. It is a fine thing to see a +Varsity eight take their dip in the river at the end of an afternoon's +spin. Those boys strip well. But there are middle-aged poets who strip +very badly. Nature never intended them to play the role of Narcissus. +Dickens wrote great novels in a room so hung with mirrors that he could +watch himself in the act of composition. But that is not the best sort of +writing-room for lyric poets, particularly in a decade when acute +self-consciousness, race-consciousness and even coterie-consciousness are +exploited for commercial purposes, and the "lutanists of October" are duly +photographed at their desks. + + +5. _Mere Technique_ + +There is one other count in the old indictment of the lyric which is sure +to be emphasized whenever any generation, like our own, shows a new +technical curiosity about lyric forms. It is this: that mere technique +will "carry" a lyric, even though thought, passion and imagination be +lacking. This charge will inevitably be made from time to time, and not +merely by the persons who naturally tend to stress the content-value of +poetry as compared with its form-value. It was Stedman, who was peculiarly +susceptible to the charm of varied lyric form, who remarked of some of +Poe's lyrics, "The libretto (i.e. the sense) is nothing, the score is all +in all." And it must be admitted that the "libretto" of "Ulalume," for +instance, is nearly or quite meaningless to many lovers of poetry who +value the "score" very highly. In a period marked by enthusiasm for new +experiments in versification, new feats of technique, the borderland +between real conquests of novel territory and sheer nonsense verse +becomes very hazy. The _Spectra_ hoax, perpetrated so cleverly in 1916 by +Mr. Ficke and Mr. Witter Bynner, fooled many of the elect. +[Footnote: See Untermeyer's _New Era_, etc., pp. 320-23.] +I have never believed that Emerson meant to decry Poe when he referred to +him as "the jingle-man." Emerson's memory for names was faulty, and he was +trying to indicate the author of the + + "tintinnabulation of the bells." + +That Poe was a prestidigitator with verse, and may be regarded solely with +a view to his professional expertness, is surely no ground for disparaging +him as a poet. But it is the kind of penalty which extraordinary technical +expertness has to pay in all the arts. Many persons remember Paganini only +as the violinist who could play upon a single string. Every "_amplificolor +imperii_"--every widener of the bounds of the empire of poetry, like +Vachel Lindsay with his experiments in chanted verse, Robert Frost with +his subtle renderings of the cadences of actual speech, Miss Amy Lowell +with her doctrine of "curves" and "returns" and polyphony--runs the risk +of being regarded for a while as a technician and nothing more. Ultimately +a finer balance is struck between the claims of form and content: the +ideas of a poet, his total vision of life, his contribution to the thought +as well as to the craftsmanship of his generation, are thrown into the +scale. Victor Hugo is now seen to be something far other than the mere +amazing lyric virtuoso of the _Odes et Ballades_ of 1826. Walt Whitman +ultimately gets judged as Walt Whitman, and not merely as the inventor +of a new type of free verse in 1855. A rough justice is done at last, no +doubt, but for a long time the cleverest and most original manipulators of +words and tunes are likely to be judged by their virtuosity alone. + + +_6. The Lines of Defence_ + +The objections to lyric poetry which have just been rehearsed are of +varying degrees of validity. They have been mentioned here because they +still affect, more or less, the judgment of the general public as it +endeavors to estimate the value of the contemporary lyric. I have little +confidence in the taste of professed admirers of poetry who can find no +pleasure in contemporary verse, and still less confidence in the taste of +our contemporaries whose delight in the "new era" has made them deaf to +the great poetic voices of the past. I am sorry for the traditionalist who +cannot enjoy Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edgar Lee +Masters and Carl Sandburg. He is, in my opinion, in a parlous state. But +the state of the young rebel who cannot enjoy "Lycidas" and "The Progress +of Poesy" and the "Ode to Dejection" is worse than parlous. It is +hopeless. + +It is not for him, therefore, that these final paragraphs are written, but +rather for those lovers of poetry who recognize that it transcends all +purely moralistic and utilitarian, as it does all historical and technical +considerations,--that it lifts the reader into a serene air where beauty +and truth abide, while the perplexed generations of men appear and +disappear. Sidney and Campion and Daniel pleaded its cause for the +Elizabethans, Coleridge and Wordsworth and Shelley defended it against the +Georgian Philistines, Carlyle, Newman and Arnold championed it through +every era of Victorian materialism. In the twentieth century, critics like +Mackail and A. C. Bradley and Rhys, poets like Newbolt and Drinkwater and +Masefield--to say nothing of living poets and critics among our own +countrymen--have spoken out for poetry with a knowledge, a sympathy and an +eloquence unsurpassed in any previous epoch. The direct "Defence of +Poetry" may safely be left to such men as these. + +I have chosen, rather, the line of indirect vindication of poetry, and +particularly of the lyric, which has been attempted in this book. We have +seen that the same laws are perpetually at work in poetry as in all the +other arts; that we have to do with the transmission of a certain kind of +feeling through a certain medium; that the imagination remoulds the +material proffered by the senses, and brings into order the confused and +broken thoughts of the mind, until it presents the eternal aspect of +things through words that dance to music. We have seen that the study of +poetry leads us back to the psychic life of primitive races, to the +origins of language and of society, and to the underlying spirit of +institutions and nationalities, so that even a fragment of surviving lyric +verse may be recognized as a part of those unifying and dividing +forces that make up the life of the world. We have found poetry, +furthermore, to be the great personal mode of literary expression, a +revelation of noble personality as well as base, and that this personal +mode of expression has continued to hold its own in the modern world. The +folk-epic is gone, the art-epic has been outstripped by prose fiction, and +the drama needs a theatre. But the lyric needs only a _poet_, who can +compose in any of its myriad forms. No one who knows contemporary +literature will deny that the lyric is now interpreting the finer spirit +of science, the drift of social progress, and above all, the instincts of +personal emotion. Through it to-day, as never before in the history of +civilization, the heart of a man can reach the heart of mankind. It is +inconceivable that the lyric will not grow still more significant +with time, freighted more and more deeply with thought and passion and +touched with a richer and more magical beauty. Some appreciation of it, no +matter how inadequate, should be a part of the spiritual possessions of +every civilized man.' + + "Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen; + Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt! + Auf! bade, Schüler, unverdrossen + Die ird'sche Brust im Morgenrothl" + + + + + NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS + + +I add here some suggestions to teachers who may wish to use this book in +the classroom. In connection with each chapter I have indicated the more +important discussions of the special topic. There is also some additional +illustrative material, and I have indicated a few hints for classroom +exercises, following methods which have proved helpful in my own +experience as a teacher. + +I have tried to keep in mind the needs of two kinds of college courses in +poetry. One of them is the general introductory course, which usually +begins with the lyric rather than with the epic or the drama, and which +utilizes some such collection as the _Golden Treasury_ or the _Oxford Book +of English Verse_. Any such collection of standard verse, or any of the +anthologies of recent poetry, like those selected by Miss Jessie B. +Rittenhouse or Mr. W. S. Braithwaite, should be constantly in use in the +classroom as furnishing concrete illustration of the principles discussed +in books like mine. + +The other kind of course which I have had in mind is the one dealing with +the works of a single poet. Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, +Browning, are among the poets most frequently chosen for this sort of +study. I have found it an advantage to carry on the discussion of the +general principles of poetic imagination and expression in connection with +the close textual study of the complete work of any one poet. It is hoped +that this book may prove helpful for such a purpose. + + +CHAPTER I + +This chapter aims to present, in as simple a form as possible, some of the +fundamental questions in aesthetic theory as far as they bear upon the +study of poetry. James Sully's article on "Aesthetics" in the +_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and Sidney Colvin's article on "The Fine +Arts," afford a good preliminary survey of the field. K. Gordon's +_Aesthetics_, E. D. Puffer's _Psychology of Beauty_, Santayana's _Sense of +Beauty_, Raymond's _Genesis of Art Form_, and Arthur Symons's _Seven +Arts_, are stimulating books. Bosanquet's _Three Lectures on Aesthetic_ is +commended to those advanced students who have not time to read his +voluminous _History of Aesthetic_, just as Lane Cooper's translation of +_Aristotle on the Art of Poetry_ may be read profitably before taking up +the more elaborate discussions in Butcher's _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry +and Fine Art_. In the same way, Spingarn's _Creative Criticism_ is a good +preparation for Croce's monumental _Aesthetics_. The student should +certainly make some acquaintance with Lessing's _Laokoon_, and he will +find Babbitt's _New Laokoon_ a brilliant and trenchant survey of the old +questions. + +It may be, however, that the teacher will prefer to pass rapidly over the +ground covered in this chapter, rather than to run the risk of confusing +his students with problems admittedly difficult. In that case the +classroom discussions may begin with chapter II. I have found, however, +that the new horizons which are opened to many students in connection with +the topics touched upon in chapter I more than make up for some temporary +bewilderment. + + +CHAPTER II + +The need here is to look at an old subject with fresh eyes. Teachers who +are fond of music or painting or sculpture can invent many illustrations +following the hint given in the Orpheus and Eurydice passage in the text. +Among recent books, Fairchild's _Making of Poetry_ and Max Eastman's +_Enjoyment of Poetry_ are particularly to be commended for their +unconventional point of view. See also Fairchild's pamphlet on _Teaching +of Poetry in the High School_, and John Erskine's paper on "The Teaching +of Poetry" (_Columbia University Quarterly_, December, 1915). Alfred +Hayes's "Relation of Music to Poetry" (_Atlantic_, January, 1914) is +pertinent to this chapter. But the student should certainly familiarize +himself with Theodore Watts-Dunton's famous article on "Poetry" in +the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, now reprinted with additions in his +_Renascence of Wonder_. He should also read A. C. Bradley's chapter on +"Poetry for its Own Sake" in the _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, Neilson's +_Essentials of Poetry_, Stedman's _Nature and Elements of Poetry_, as well +as the classic "Defences" of Poetry by Philip Sidney, Shelley, Leigh Hunt +and George E. Woodberry. For advanced students, R. P. Cowl's _Theory of +Poetry in England_ is a useful summary of critical opinions covering +almost every aspect of the art of poetry, as it has been understood by +successive generations of Englishmen. + + +CHAPTER III + +This chapter, like the first, will be difficult for some students. They +may profitably read, in connection with it, Professor Winchester's chapter +on "Imagination" in his _Literary Criticism_, Neilson's discussion of +"Imagination" in his _Essentials of Poetry_, the first four chapters of +Fairchild, chapters 4, 13, 14, and 15 of Coleridge's _Biographia +Literaria_, and Wordsworth's Preface to his volume of Poems of 1815. See +also Stedman's chapter on "Imagination" in his _Nature and Elements of +Poetry_. + +Under section 2, some readers may be interested in Sir William Rowan +Hamilton's account of his famous discovery of the quaternion analysis, one +of the greatest of all discoveries in pure mathematics: + + "Quaternions started into life, or light, full grown, + on Monday, the 16th of October, 1843, as I was walking + with Lady Hamilton to Dublin, and came up to + Brougham Bridge, which my boys have since called the + Quaternion Bridge. That is to say, I then and there + felt the galvanic circuit of thought _close_, and the sparks + which fell from it were the _fundamental equations between + i, j, k; exactly such_ as I have used them ever since. + I pulled out on the spot a pocket-book, which still exists, + and made an entry on which, _at the very moment_, I felt + that it might be worth my while to expend the labor of + at least ten (or it might be fifteen) years to come. But + then it is fair to say that this was because I felt a _problem_ + to have been at that moment _solved_--an intellectual + want relieved--which had _haunted_ me for at least + ifteen years before_. Less than an hour elapsed before I + had asked and obtained leave of the Council of the + Royal Irish Academy, of which Society I was, at that + time, the President--to _read_ at the _next General Meeting_ + a _Paper_ on Quaternions; which I accordingly _did_, on + November 13, 1843." + +The following quotation from Lascelles-Abercrombie's study of Thomas Hardy +presents in brief compass the essential problem dealt with in this +chapter. It is closely written, and should be read more than once. + + "Man's intercourse with the world is necessarily formative. His + experience of things outside his consciousness is in the manner of a + chemistry, wherein some energy of his nature is mated with the energy + brought in on his nerves from externals, the two combining into + something which exists only in, or perhaps we should say closely around, + man's consciousness. Thus what man knows of the world is what has been + _formed_ by the mixture of his own nature with the streaming in of the + external world. This formative energy of his, reducing the in-coming + world into some constant manner of appearance which may be appreciable + by consciousness, is most conveniently to be described, it seems, as an + unaltering imaginative desire: desire which accepts as its material, and + fashions itself forth upon, the many random powers sent by the world to + invade man's mind. That there is this formative energy in man may easily + be seen by thinking of certain dreams; those dreams, namely, in which + some disturbance outside the sleeping brain (such as a sound of knocking + or a bodily discomfort) is completely formed into vivid trains of + imagery, and in that form only is presented to the dreamer's + consciousness. This, however, merely shows the presence of the active + desire to shape sensation into what consciousness can accept; the dream + is like an experiment done in the isolation of a laboratory; there are + so many conflicting factors when we are awake that the events of sleep + must only serve as a symbol or diagram of the intercourse of mind with + that which is not mind--intercourse which only takes place in a region + where the outward radiations of man's nature combine with the + irradiations of the world. Perception itself is a formative act; and all + the construction of sensation into some orderly, coherent idea of the + world is a further activity of the central imaginative desire. Art is + created, and art is enjoyed, because in it man may himself completely + express and exercise those inmost desires which in ordinary experience + are by no means to be completely expressed. Life has at last been + perfectly formed and measured to man's requirements; and in art man + knows himself truly the master of his existence. It is this sense of + mastery which gives man that raised and delighted consciousness of self + which art provokes." + + +CHAPTER IV + +I regret that Professor Lowes's brilliant discussion of "Poetic Diction" +in his _Convention and Revolt_ did not appear until after this chapter was +written. There are stimulating remarks on Diction in Fairchild and +Eastman, in Raleigh's _Wordsworth_, in L. A. Sherman's _Analytics of +Literature_, chapter 6, in Raymond's _Poetry as a Representative Art_, and +in Hudson Maxim's _Science of Poetry_. Coleridge's description of +Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction in the _Biographia Literaria_ is +famous. Walt Whitman's _An American Primer_, first published in the +_Atlantic_ for April, 1904, is a highly interesting contribution to the +subject. + +No theoretical discussion, however, can supply the place of a close study, +word by word, of poems in the classroom. It is advisable, I think, to +follow such analyses of the diction of Milton, Keats and Tennyson by a +scrutiny of the diction employed by contemporary poets like Edgar Lee +Masters and Carl Sandburg. + +The following passages in prose and verse, printed without the authors' +names, are suggested as an exercise in the study of diction: + +1. "The falls were in plain view about a mile off, but very distinct, + and no roar--hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green and white, far + below me; the dark, high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze + cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense + materiality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, + spiritual, silent. Brief, and as quiet as brief, that picture--a + remembrance always afterward." + +2. "If there be fluids, as we know there are, which, conscious of a + coming wind, or rain, or frost, will shrink and strive to hide + themselves in their glass arteries; may not that subtle liquor of the + blood perceive, by properties within itself, that hands are raised to + waste and spill it; and in the veins of men run cold and dull as his + did, in that hour!" + +3. "On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner, + He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs, + He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs, + With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd." + +4. "The feverish heaven with a stitch in the side, + Of lightning." + +5. "Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are + the wine of the bloodshed of things." + +6. "Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves + And barren chasms, and all to left and right + The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based + His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang + Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels." + +7. "As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair + In leprosy; their dry blades pricked the mud + Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. + One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, + Stood stupefied, however he came there: + Thrust out past service from the devil's stud." + +8. "For the main criminal I have no hope + Except in such a suddenness of fate. + I stood at Naples once, a night so dark + I could have scarce conjectured there was earth + Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: + But the night's black was burst through by a + blaze-- + Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and + bore, + Through her whole length of mountain visible: + There lay the city thick and plain with spires, + And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. + So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, + And Guido see, one instant, and be saved." + + +CHAPTER V + +A fresh and clear discussion of the principles governing Rhythm and +Metre may be found in C. E. Andrews's _Writing and Reading of Verse_. +The well-known books by Alden, Corson, Gummere, Lewis, Mayor, Omond, +Raymond and Saintsbury are indicated in the Bibliography. Note also +the bibliographies given by Alden and Patterson. + +I have emphasized in this chapter the desirability of compromise in some +hotly contested disputes over terminology and methods of metrical +notation. Perhaps I have gone farther in this direction than some teachers +will wish to go. But all classroom discussion should be accompanied by +oral reading of verse, by the teacher and if possible by pupils, and the +moment oral interpretations begin, it will be evident that "a satisfied +ear" is more important than an exact agreement upon methods of notation. + +I venture to add here, for their suggestiveness, a few passages about +Rhythm and Metre, and finally, as an exercise in the study of the +prevalence of the "iambic roll" in sentimental oratory, an address by +Robert G. Ingersoll. + +1. "Suppose that we figure the nervous current which corresponds to +consciousness as proceeding, like so many other currents of nature, in +_waves_--then we do receive a new apprehension, if not an explanation, of +the strange power over us of successive strokes.... Whatever things occupy +our attention--events, objects, tones, combinations of tones, emotions, +pictures, images, ideas--our consciousness of them will be heightened by +the rhythm as though it consisted of waves." + EASTMAN, _The Enjoyment of Poetry_, p. 93. + +2. "Rhythm of pulse is the regular alternation of units made up of beat +and pause; rhythm in verse is a measured or standardized arrangement of +sound relations. The difference between rhythm of pulse and rhythm in +verse is that the one is known through touch, the other through hearing; +as rhythm, they are essentially the same kind of thing. Viewed generally +and externally, then, verse is language that is beaten into measured +rhythm, or that has some type of uniform or standard rhythmical +arrangement." + FAIRCHILD, _The Making of Poetry_, p. 117. + +3. "A Syllable is a body of sound brought out with an independent, single, +and unbroken breath (Sievers). This syllable may be _long_ or _short_, +according to the time it fills; compare the syllables in _merrily_ with +the syllables in _corkscrew_. Further, a syllable may be _heavy_ or +_light_ (also called _accented_ or _unaccented_) according as it receives +more or less force or _stress_ of tone: compare the two syllables of +_treamer_. Lastly, a syllable may have increased or diminished _height-_of +tone,--_pitch: cf._ the so-called 'rising inflection' at the end of a +question. Now, in spoken language, there are infinite degrees of length, +of stress, of pitch.... + +"It is a well-known property of human speech that it keeps up a ceaseless +change between accented and unaccented syllables. A long succession of +accented syllables becomes unbearably monotonous; a long succession of +unaccented syllables is, in effect, impossible. Now when the ear detects +at regular intervals a recurrence of accented syllables, varying with +unaccented, it perceives _Rhythm_. Measured intervals of time are the +basis of all verse, and their _regularity_ marks off poetry from prose; so +that Time is thus the chief element in Poetry, as it is in Music and in +Dancing. From the idea of measuring these time-intervals, we derive the +name Metre; Rhythm means pretty much the same thing,--'a flowing,' an +even, measured motion. This rhythm is found everywhere in nature: the beat +of the heart, the ebb and flow of the sea, the alternation of day and +night. Rhythm is not artificial, not an invention; it lies at the heart of +things, and in rhythm the noblest emotions find their noblest expression." + GUMMERE, _Handbook of Poetics_, p. 133. + +4. "It was said of Chopin that in playing his waltzes his left hand kept +absolutely perfect time, while his right hand constantly varied the rhythm +of the melody, according to what musicians call _tempo rubato_,'stolen' or +distorted time. Whether this is true in fact, or even physically possible, +has been doubted; but it represents a perfectly familiar possibility of +the mind. Two streams of sound pass constantly through the inner ear of +one who understands or appreciates the rhythm of our verse: one, never +actually found in the real sounds which are uttered, is the absolute +rhythm, its equal time-intervals moving on in infinitely perfect +progression; the other, represented by the actual movement of the verse, +is constantly shifting by quickening, retarding, strengthening or +weakening its sounds, yet always hovers along the line of the perfect +rhythm, and bids the ear refer to that perfect rhythm the succession of +its pulsations." + ALDEN, _An Introduction to Poetry_, p. 188. + +5. "Many lines in Swinburne cannot be scanned at all except by the Lanier +method, which reduces so-called feet to their purely musical equivalents +of time bars. What, for instance, can be made by the formerly accepted +systems of prosody of such hexameters as + + 'Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly forever asway?' + +The usual explanation of this line is that Mr. Swinburne, carelessly, +inadvertently, or for some occult purpose, interjected one line of five +feet among his hexameters and the scansion usually followed is by +arrangement into a pentameter, thus: + + 'Full-sailed | wide-winged | poised softly | forever | asway,' + +the first two feet being held to be spondees, and the third and fourth +amphibrachs. It has also been proposed to make the third foot a spondee or +an iambus, and the remaining feet anapaests, thus: + + 'Full-sailed | wide-winged | poised soft- | ly forev- | er asway.' + +"The confusion of these ideas is enough to mark them as unscientific and +worthless, to say nothing of the severe reflection they cast on the poet's +workmanship. We have not so known Mr. Swinburne, for, if there be anything +he has taught us about himself it is his strenuous and sometimes absurd +particularity about immaculate form. He would never overlook a line of +five feet in a poem of hexameters. But--as will, I think, appear later and +conclusively--the line is really of six feet, and is not iambic, trochaic, +anapaestic, the spurious spondaic that some writers have tried to +manufacture for English verse, or anything else recognized in Coleridge's +immortal stanza, or in text-books. It simply cannot be scanned by +classical rules; it cannot be weighed justly, and its full meaning +extracted, by any of the 'trip-time' or 'march-time' expedients of other +investigators. It is purely music; and when read by the method of music +appears perfectly designed and luminous with significance. Only a poet +that was at heart a composer could have made such a phrase, based +upon such intimate knowledge of music's rhythmical laws." + C. E. RUSSELL, "Swinburne and Music" _North American Review_, +November, 1907. + +6. Dr. Henry Osborn Taylor has kindly allowed me to quote this passage +from his _Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_, pp. 246, 247: + +"Classic metres expressed measured feelings. Hexameters had given voice to +many emotions beautifully, with unfailing modulation of calm or storm. +They had never revealed the infinite heart of God, or told the yearning of +the soul responding; nor were they ever to be the instrument of these +supreme disclosures in Christian times. Such unmeasured feelings could not +be held within the controlled harmonies of the hexameter nor within +sapphic or alcaic or Pindaric strophes. These antique forms of poetry +definitely expressed their contents, although sometimes suggesting further +unspoken feeling, which is so noticeable with Virgil. But characteristic +Christian poetry, like the Latin mediaeval hymn, was not to express its +meaning as definitely or contain its significance. Mediaeval hymns are +childlike, having often a narrow clearness in their literal sense; and +they may be childlike, too, in their expressed symbolism. Their +significance reaches far beyond their utterance; they suggest, they echo, +and they listen; around them rolls the voice of God, the infinitude of +His love and wrath, heaven's chorus and hell's agonies; _dies irae, dies +illa_--that line says little, but mountains of wrath press on it, from +which the soul shall not escape. + +"Christian emotion quivers differently from any movement of the spirit in +classic measures. The new quiver, the new shudder, the utter terror, and +the utter love appear in mediaeval rhymed accentual poetry: + + Desidero te millies, + Mê Jesu; quando venies? + Me laetum quando facies, + Ut vultu tuo saties? + + Quo dolore + Quo moerore + Deprimuntur miseri, + Qui abyssis + Pro commissis + Submergentur inferi. + + Recordare, Jesu pie, + Quod sum causa tuae viae; + Ne me perdas ilia die. + * * * * * + Lacrymosa dies illa + Qua resurget ex fa villa, + Judicandus homo reus; + Huic ergo parce, Deus! + Pie Jesu, Domine, + Dona eis requiem. + +"Let any one feel the emotion of these verses and then turn to some piece +of classic poetry, a passage from Homer or Virgil, an elegiac couplet or a +strophe from Sappho or Pindar or Catullus, and he will realize the +difference, and the impossibility of setting the emotion of a mediaeval +hymn in a classic metre." + +7. "_Friends_: I know how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I +wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life and +death are equal things, all should be brave enough to meet what all the +dead have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and polluted +by the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds and +blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth, the +patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. + +"Why should we fear that which will come to all that is? + +"We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing--life or +death. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the +door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else at dawn. +Neither can we tell which is the more fortunate--the child dying in its +mother's arms, before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who +journeys all the length of life's uneven road, painfully taking the last +slow steps with staff and crutch. + +"Every cradle asks us, 'Whence?' and every coffin, 'Whither?' The poor +barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as +intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful +ignorance of the one is just as consoling as the learned and unmeaning +words of the other. No man, standing where the horizon of a life has +touched a grave, has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and +tears. It may be that death gives all there is of worth to life. If those +we press and strain against our hearts could never die, perhaps that love +would wither from the earth. Maybe this common fate treads from out the +paths between our hearts the weeds of selfishness and hate, and I had +rather live and love where death is king, than have eternal life where +love is not. Another life is naught, unless we know and love again the +ones who love us here. + +"They who stand with aching hearts around this little grave need have no +fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is and is to be tells us +that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know that through +the common wants of life--the needs and duties of each hour--their griefs +will lessen day by day, until at last this grave will be to them a place +of rest and peace--almost of joy. There is for them this consolation. The +dead do not suffer. And if they live again, their lives will surely be as +good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and +the same fate awaits us all. + +"We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for +the dead." + ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, "Address over a Little Boy's Grave." + + + +CHAPTER VI + +I have not attempted in this chapter to give elaborate illustrations of +the varieties of rhyme and stanza in English poetry. Full illustrations +will be found in Alden's _English Verse_. A clear statement of the +fundamental principles involved is given in W. H. Carruth's _Verse +Writing_. + +Free verse is suggestively discussed by Lowes, _Convention and Revolt_, +chapters 6 and 7, and by Andrews, _Writing and Reading of Verse_, chapters +5 and 19. Miss Amy Lowell has written fully about it in the Prefaces to +_Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_ and _Can Grande's Castle_, in the final +chapter of _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_, in the Prefaces to +_Some Imagist Poets_, and in the _North American Review_ for January, +1917. Mr. Braithwaite's annual _Anthologies of American Verse_ give a full +bibliography of special articles upon this topic. + +An interesting classroom test of the difference between prose rhythm and +verse rhythm with strongly marked metre and rhyme may be found in +comparing Emerson's original prose draft of his "Two Rivers," as found in +volume 9 of his Journal, with three of the stanzas of the finished poem: + +"Thy voice is sweet, Musketaquid, and repeats the music of the ram, but +sweeter is the silent stream which flows even through thee, as thou +through the land. + +"Thou art shut in thy banks, but the stream I love flows in thy water, and +flows through rocks and through the air and through rays of light as well, +and through darkness, and through men and women. + +"I hear and see the inundation and the eternal spending of the stream in +winter and in summer, in men and animals, in passion and thought. Happy +are they who can hear it." + + "Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, + Repeats the music of the rain; + But sweeter rivers pulsing flit + Through thee, as thou through Concord plain. + + "Thou in thy narrow banks are pent; + The stream I love unbounded goes + Through flood and sea and firmament; + Through light, through life, it forward flows. + + "I see the inundation sweet, + I hear the spending of the stream + Through years, through men, through nature fleet, + Through love and thought, through power and dream." + +I also suggest for classroom discussion the following brief passages from +recent verse, printed without the authors' names: + +1. "The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one speaks to him; +the city is asleep when he is on his job; he puts a bottle on six hundred +porches and calls it a day's work; he climbs two hundred wooden stairways; +two horses are company for him; he never argues." + +2. "Sometimes I have nervous moments-- + there is a girl who looks at me strangely + as much as to say, + You are a young man, + and I am a young woman, + and what are you going to do about it? + And I look at her as much as to say, + I am going to keep the teacher's desk + between us, my dear, + as long as I can." + +3. "I hold her hands and press her to my breast. + +"I try to fill my arms with her loveliness, to plunder her sweet smile +with kisses, to drink her dark glances with my eyes. + +"Ah, but where is it? Who can strain the blue from the sky? + +"I try to grasp the beauty; it eludes me, leaving only the body in my +hands. + +"Baffled and weary, I came back. How can the body touch the flower which +only the spirit may touch?" + +4. "Child, I smelt the flowers, + The golden flowers ... hiding in crowds like fairies at my feet, + And as I smelt them the endless smile of the infinite broke over me, + and I knew that they and you and I were one. + They and you and I, the cowherds and the cows, the jewels and the + potter's wheel, the mothers and the light in baby's eyes. + For the sempstress when she takes one stitch may make nine unnecessary; + And the smooth and shining stone that rolls and rolls like the great + river may gain no moss, + And it is extraordinary what a lot you can do with a platitude when you + dress it up in Blank Prose. + Child, I smelt the flowers." + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Recent criticism has been rich in its discussions of the lyric. John +Drinkwater's little volume on _The Lyric_ is suggestive. See also C. E. +Whitmore's article in the _Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass._, December, 1918. Rhys's +_Lyric Poetry_, Schelling's _English Lyric_, Reed's _English Lyrical +Poetry_ cover the whole field of the historical English lyric. A few books +on special periods are indicated in the "Notes" to chapter ix. + +An appreciation of the lyric mood can be helped greatly by adequate oral +reading in the classroom. For teachers who need suggestions as to oral +interpretation, Professor Walter Barnes's edition of Palgrave's _Golden +Treasury_ (Row, Petersen & Co., Chicago) is to be commended. + +The student's ability to analyse a lyric poem should be tested by frequent +written exercises. The method of criticism may be worked out by the +individual teacher, but I have found it useful to ask students to test a +poem by some or all of the following questions: + +(a) What kind of experience, thought or emotion furnishes the basis for +this lyric? What kind or degree of sensitiveness to the facts of nature? +What sort of inner mood or passion? Is the "motive" of this lyric purely +personal? If not, what other relationships or associations are involved? + +(b) What sort of imaginative transformation of the material furnished by +the senses? What kind of imagery? Is it true poetry or only verse? + +(c) What degree of technical mastery of lyric structure? Subordination of +material to unity of "tone"? What devices of rhythm or sound to heighten +the intended effect? Noticeable words or phrases? Does the author's power +of artistic expression keep pace with his feeling and imagination? + + +CHAPTER VIII + +For a discussion of narrative verse in general, see Gummere's _Poetics_ +and _Oldest English Epic_, Hart's _Epic and Ballad_, Council's _Study of +Poetry_, and Matthew Arnold's essay "On Translating Homer." + +For the further study of ballads, note G. L. Kittredge's one volume +edition of Child's _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, Gummere's +_Popular Ballad_, G. H. Stempel's _Book of Ballads_, J. A. Lomax's _Cowboy +Songs and other Frontier Ballads_, and Hart's summary of Child's views in +_Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass._, vol. 21, 1906. The _Oxford Book of English Verse_, +Nos. 367-389, gives excellent specimens. + +All handbooks on _Poetics_ discuss the Ode. Gosse's _English Odes_ and +William Sharp's _Great Odes_ are good collections. + +For the sonnet, note Corson's chapter in his _Primer of English Verse_, +and the Introduction to Miss Lockwood's collection. There are other +well-known collections by Leigh Hunt, Hall Caine and William Sharp. +Special articles on the sonnet are noted in Poole's _Index_. + +The dramatic monologue is well discussed by Claude Howard, _The Dramatic +Monologue_, and by S. S. Curry, _The Dramatic Monologue in Tennyson and +Browning_. + + +CHAPTER IX + +The various periods of English lyric poetry are covered, as has been +already noted, by the general treatises of Rhys, Reed and Schelling. Old +English lyrics are well translated by Cook and Tinker, and by Pancoast and +Spaeth. W. P. Ker's _English Literature; Mediaeval_ is excellent, as is C. +S. Baldwin's _English Mediaeval Literature_. John Erskine's _Elizabethan +Lyric_ is a valuable study. Schelling's introduction to his Selections +from the Elizabethan Lyric should also be noted, as well as his similar +book on the Seventeenth-Century Lyric. Bernbaum's _English Poets of the +Eighteenth Century_ is a careful selection, with a scholarly introduction. +Studies of the English poetry of the Romantic period are very numerous: +Oliver Elton's _Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830_, is one of the +best. Courthope's _History of English Poetry_ and Saintsbury's _History of +Criticism_ are full of material bearing upon the questions discussed in +this chapter. + +Professor Legouis's account of the change in atmosphere as one passes from +Old English to Old French poetry is so delightful that I refrain from +spoiling it by a translation: + +"En quittant _Beowulf_ ou la _Bataille de Maldon_ pour le _Roland_, on a +l'impression de sortir d'un lieu sombre pour entrer dans la lumière. Cette +impression vous vient de tous les côtés à la fois, des lieux décrits, des +sujets, de la manière de raconter, de l'esprit qui anime, de +l'intelligence qui ordonne, mais, d'une façon encore plus immédiate et +plus diffuse, de la différence des deux langues. On reconnaît sans doute +généralement à nos vieux écrivains ce mérite d'être clairs, mais on est +trop habitué à ne voir dans ce don que ce qui découle des tendances +analytiques et des aptitudes logiques de leurs esprit. Aussi plusieurs +critiques, quelques-uns français, ont-ils fait de cet attribut une manière +de prétexte pour leur assigner en partage la prose et pour leur retirer +la faculté poétique. Il n'en est pas ainsi. Cette clarté n'est pas +purement abstraite. Elle est une véritable lumière qui rayonne même des +voyelles et dans laquelle les meilleurs vers des trouvères--les seuls qui +comptent--sont baignés. Comment dire l'éblouissement des yeux longtemps +retenus dans la pénombre du _Codex Exoniensis_ et devant qui passent +soudain avec leurs brillantes syllables 'Halte-Clerc,' l'épée d'Olivier, +'Joyeuse' celle de Charlemagne, 'Monjoie' l'étendard des Francs? Avant +toute description on est saisi comme par un brusque lever de soleil. Il +est tels vers de nos vieilles romances d'où la lumière ruisselle sans +même qu'on ait besoin de prendre garde à leur sens: + + "'Bele Erembors a la fenestre au jor + Sor ses genolz tient paile de color,' +[Footnote: "Fair Erembor at her window in daylight + Holds a coloured silk stuff on her knees."] + +ou bien + + "'Bele Yolanz en chambre coie + Sor ses genolz pailes desploie + Coust un fil d'or, l'autre de soie...." +[Footnote: "Fair Yoland in her quiet bower + Unfolds silk stuffs on her knees + Sewing now a thread of gold, now one of silk."] + +C'est plus que de la lumière qui s'échappe de ces mots, +c'est de la couleur et de la plus riche." +[Footnote: Emile Legouis, _Défense de la Poésie Française_, p. 44.] + + +CHAPTER X + +While this chapter does not attempt to comment upon the work of living +American authors, except as illustrating certain general tendencies of the +lyric, I think that teachers of poetry should avail themselves of the +present interest in contemporary verse. Students of a carefully chosen +volume of selections, like the _Oxford Book_, should be competent to pass +some judgment upon strictly contemporary poetry, and I have found them +keenly interested in criticizing the work that is appearing, month by +month, in the magazines. The temperament and taste of the individual +teacher must determine the relative amount of attention that can be given +to our generation, as compared with the many generations of the past. + + + +APPENDIX + +Believing as I do that a study of the complete work of some modern poet +should accompany, if possible, every course in the general theory of +poetry, I venture to print here an outline of topical work upon the poetry +of Tennyson. Tennyson's variety of poetic achievement is so great, and his +technical resources are so remarkable, that he rewards the closest study, +even on the part of those young Americans who cannot forget that he was a +"Victorian": + + +TOPICAL WORK UPON TENNYSON + + +I + +THE METHOD OF CRITICISM + +[The scheme here suggested for the study of poetry is based upon the +methods followed in this book. The student is advised to select some one +poem, and to analyse its content and form as carefully as possible, in +accordance with the outline printed below. The thought and feeling of the +poem should be thoroughly comprehended as a whole before the work of +analysis is begun; and after the analysis is completed, the student should +endeavor again to regard the poem synthetically, i. e., in its total +appeal to the aesthetic judgment, rather than mechanically and part by +part.] + + +FORM / CONTENT + +A "IMPRESSION" + +_Of Nature._ What sort of observation of natural phenomena is revealed +in this poem? Impressions of movement, form, color, sound, hours of the +day or night, seasons of the year; knowledge of scientific facts, etc.? + +_Of Man._ What evidence of the poet's direct knowledge of men? Of +knowledge of man gained through acquaintance with Biblical, classical, +foreign or English literature? Self-knowledge? + +_Of God._ Perception of spiritual laws? Religious attitude? Is this +poem consistent with his other poems? + +B "TRANSFORMING IMAGINATION" + +Does the "raw material" presented by "sense impressions" undergo a +real "change in kind" as it passes through the mind of the poet? + +Do you feel in this poem the presence of a creative personality? + +What evidence of poetic instinct in the selection of characteristic +traits? In power of representation through images? In idealization? + +C "EXPRESSION" + +What is to be said of the range and character of the poet's vocabulary? +Employment of figurative language? Selection of metre? Use of rhymes? +Modification of rhythm and sound to suggest the idea conveyed? Imitative +effects? + +In general, is there harmony between form and content, or is there +evidence of the artist's caring for one rather than the other? + + +II + +TENNYSON'S LYRIC POETRY + +[Write a criticism of the distinctively lyrical work of Tennyson, based +upon an investigation at first hand of the topics suggested below. Do not +deal with any poems in which the narrative or dramatic element seems to +you the predominant one, as those forms of expression will be made the +subject of subsequent papers.] + +A. "IMPRESSION" (i. e., experience, thought, emotion). + +_General Characteristics._ + +Does the freshness of the lyric mood seem in Tennyson's case dependent +upon any philosophical position? Upon sensitiveness to successive +experiences? + +Is his lyric egoism a noble one? How far does he identify himself with his +race? With humanity? + +Is his lyric passion always genuine? If not, give examples of lyrics that +are deficient in sincerity. Is the lyric passion sustained as the poet +grows old? + +_Of Nature._ + +What part does the observation of natural phenomena--such as form, color, +sound, hours of the day or night, seasons, the sky, the sea--play in these +poems? To what extent is the lyrical emotion called forth by the details +of nature? By her composite effects? Give instances of the poetic use of +scientific facts. + +_Of Man._ + +What human relationships furnish the themes for his lyrics? In the love- +lyrics, what different relationships of men and women? To what extent does +he find a lyric motive in friendship? In patriotism? How much of his lyric +poetry seems to spring from direct contact with men? From introspection? +From contact with men through the medium of books? How clearly do his +lyrics reflect the social problems of his own time? In his later lyrics +are there traces of deeper or shallower interest in men and women? Of +greater or less faith in the progress of society? + +_Of God._ + +Mention lyrics whose themes are based in such conceptions as freedom, +duty, moral responsibility. Does Tennyson's lyric poetry reveal a sense of +spiritual law? Is the poet's own attitude clearly evident? + +B. "TRANSFORMING IMAGINATION." + +What evidence of poetic instinct in the selection of characteristic +traits? In power of representation through images? Distinguish between +lyrics that owe their poetic quality to the Imagination, and those created +by the Fancy. (Note Alden's discussion of this point; "Introduction to +Poetry," pp. 102-112.) How far is Tennyson's personality indicated by +these instinctive processes through which his poetical material is +transformed? + +C. "EXPRESSION." + +What may be said in general of his handling of the lyric form: as to +unity, brevity, simplicity of structure? Occasional use of presentative +rather than representative language? Choice of metres? Use of rhymes? +Modification of rhythm and sound to suit the idea conveyed? Evidence of +the artist's caring for either form or content to the neglect of the +other? Note whatever differences may be traced, in all these respects, +between Tennyson's earlier and later lyrics. + + +III + +TENNYSON'S NARRATIVE POETRY + +[Write a criticism of the distinctively narrative work of Tennyson, based +upon the questions suggested below.] + +A. "IMPRESSION" (i. e., experience, thought, emotion). + +_General Characteristics._ + +After classifying Tennyson's narrative poetry, how many of his themes seem +to you to be of his own invention? Name those based, ostensibly at least, +upon the poet's own experience. To what extent do you find his narrative +work purely objective, i. e., without admixture of reflective or didactic +elements? What themes are of mythical or legendary origin? Of those having +a historical basis, how many are drawn from English sources? Does his use +of narrative material ever show a deficiency of emotion; i. e., could the +story have been better told in prose? Has he the story-telling gift? + +_Of Nature._ + +How far does the description of natural phenomena, as outlined in Topic +II, A, enter into Tennyson's narrative poetry? Does it always have a +subordinate place, as a part of the setting of the story? Does it overlay +the story with too ornate detail? Does it ever retard the movement unduly? + +_Of Man._ (Note that some of the points mentioned under _General +Characteristics_ apply here.) + +What can you say of Tennyson's power of observing character? Of conceiving +characters in complication and collision with one another or with +circumstances? Give illustrations of the range of human relationships +touched upon in these poems. Do the later narratives show an increased +proportion of tragic situations? Does Tennyson's narrative poetry throw +any light upon his attitude towards contemporary English society? + +_Of God._ (See Topic II, A.) + +B. "TRANSFORMING IMAGINATION." + +Adjust the questions already suggested under Topic II, B, to narrative +poetry. Note especially the revelation of Tennyson's personality through +the instinctive processes by which his narrative material is transformed. + +C. "EXPRESSION." + +What may be said in general of his handling of the narrative form, i. e., +his management of the setting, the characters and the plot in relation to +one another? Have his longer poems, like the "Idylls," and "The Princess," +the unity, breadth, and sustained elevation of style that are usually +associated with epic poetry? What can you say of Tennyson's mastery of +distinctly narrative metres? Of his technical skill in suiting rhythm and +sound to the requirements of his story? + + +IV + +TENNYSON'S DRAMAS + +[Reference books for the study of the technique of the drama are easily +available. As preparatory work it will be well to make a careful study of +Tennyson's dramatic monologues, both in the earlier and later periods. +These throw a good deal of light upon his skill in making characters +delineate themselves, and they reveal incidentally some of his methods of +dramatic narrative. For this paper, however, please confine your criticism +to "Queen Mary," "Harold," "Becket," "The Cup," "The Falcon," "The Promise +of May," and "The Foresters." In studying "Becket," compare Irving's stage +version of the play (Macmillan).] + +A. Classify the themes of Tennyson's dramas. Do you think that these +themes offer promising dramatic material? Do you regard Tennyson's +previous literary experience as a help or a hindrance to success in the +drama? + +_Nature._ Apply what is suggested under this head in Topics I, II, and +III, to drama. + +_Man._ Apply to the dramas what is suggested under this head in Topics II +and III, especially as regards the observation of character, the +conception of characters in collision, and the sense of the variety of +human relationships. Do these plays give evidence of a genuine comic +sense? What tragic forces seem to have made the most impression upon +Tennyson? Give illustrations, from the plays, of the conflict of the +individual with institutions. + +_God._ Comment upon Tennyson's doctrine of necessity and retribution. Does +his allotment of poetic justice show a sympathy with the moral order of +the world? Are these plays in harmony with Tennyson's theology, as +indicated elsewhere in his work? Do they contain any clear exposition of +the problems of the religious life? + +B. Compare Topic II, B. In the historical dramas, can you trace the +influence of the poet's own personality in giving color to historical +personages? Compare Tennyson's delineation of any of these personages with +that of other poets, novelists, or historians. Do you think he has the +power of creating a character, in the same sense as Shakespeare had it? +How much of his dramatic work do you consider purely objective, i. e., +untinged by what was called the lyric egoism? + +C. What may be said in general of Tennyson's handling of the dramatic +form? Has he "the dramatic sense"? Of his management of the web of +circumstance in which the characters are involved and brought into +conflict? Comment upon his technical skill as displayed in the different +"parts" and "moments" of his dramas. Does his exhibition of action fulfill +dramatic requirements? Is his vocabulary suited to stage purposes? Give +instances of his purely lyric and narrative gifts as incidentally +illustrated in his dramas. Instance passages that cannot in your opinion +be successfully acted. In your reading of these plays, or observation of +any of them that you have seen acted, are you conscious of the absence of +any quality or qualities that would heighten the pleasure they yield you? +Taken as a whole, is the form of the various plays artistically in +harmony with the themes employed? + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + +This list includes the more important books and articles in English which +have been discussed or referred to in the text. There is an excellent +bibliography in Alden's _Introduction to Poetry_, and Patterson's _Rhythm +in Prose_ contains a full list of the more technical articles dealing with +rhythms in prose and verse. + + +ALDEN, RAYMOND M. + _English Verse_. New York, 1903. + _An Introduction to Poetry_. New York, 1909. + "The Mental Side of Metrical Form," in _Mod. Lang. Review_, July, 1914. + +ALEXANDER, HARTLEY B. + _Poetry and the Individual_. New York, 1906. + +ANDREWS, C. E. + _The Writing and Reading of Verse_. New York, 1918. + +ARISTOTLE. + _Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, edited by S. H. Butcher. New York, +1902. + _On the Art of Poetry_, edited by Lane Cooper. Boston, 1913. + +BABBITT, IRVING. + _The New Laokoon_. Boston and New York, 1910. + +BERNBAUM, ERNEST, _editor_. + _English Poets of the 18th Century_. New York, 1918. + +BOSANQUET, BERNARD. + _A History of Aesthetic_. New York, 1892. + _Three Lectures on Aesthetic_. London, 1915. + +BRADLEY, A. C. + _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_. London, 1909. + +BRAITHWAITE, WILLIAM S., _editor_. + _The Book of Elizabethan Verse_. Boston, 1907. + _Anthology of Magazine Verse 1913-19_. New York, 1915. + +BRIDGES, ROBERT. + _Ibant Obscurae_. New York, 1917. + +BUTCHER, S. H. + (See Aristotle.) + +CHILD, F. G. + _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, 5 vols., 1882-1898. + +CLARK, A. C. + _Prose Rhythm in English_. Oxford, 1913. + +COLERIDGE, S. T. + _Biographia Literaria_. Everyman edition. + +CONNELL, F. M. + _A Text-Book for the Study of Poetry_. Boston, 1913. + +COOK, ALBERT S., _editor_. + _The Art of Poetry_. Boston, 1892. + +COOK, A. S., _and_ TINKER, C. B. + _Select Translations from Old English Poetry_. Boston, 1902. + +CORSON, HIRAM. + _A Primer of English Verse_. Boston, 1892. + +COURTHOPE, WILLIAM J. + _A History of English Poetry_. London, 1895. + _Life in Poetry: Law in Taste_. London, 1901. + +COWL, R. P. + _The Theory of Poetry in England_. London, 1914. + +CROCE, B. + _Aesthetics_. London, 1909. + +CROLL, MORRIS W. + "The Cadence of English Oratorical Prose," in _Studies in Philology_, + January, 1919. + See also Croll and Clemons, Preface to _Lyly's Euphues_. New York, 1916. + +DRINKWATER, JOHN. + _The Lyric_. New York (n.d.). + +EASTMAN, MAX. + _Enjoyment of Poetry_. New York, 1913. + +ELTON, OLIVER W. + "English Prose Numbers," in _Essays and Studies_, by members of the + English Association, 4th Series. Oxford, 1913. + +ERSKINE, JOHN. + _The Elizabethan Lyric_. New York, 1916. + +FAIRCHILD, ARTHUR H. R. + _The Making of Poetry_. New York, 1912. + +GARDINER, J. H. + _The Bible as English Literature_. New York, 1906. + +GATES, LEWIS E. + _Studies and Appreciations_. New York, 1900. + +GAYLEY, C. M., _and_ SCOTT, F. N. + _Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism_. Boston, 1899. + +GORDON, K. + _Aesthetics_. New York, 1909. + +GOSSE, EDMUND W. + _English Odes_. London, 1881. + +GUMMERE, FRANCIS B. + _A Handbook of Poetics_. Boston, 1885. + _The Beginnings of Poetry_. New York, 1901. + _The Popular Ballad_. Boston and New York, 1907. + _Democracy and Poetry_. Boston and New York, 1911. + +HART, WALTER M. + _Epic and Ballad_. Harvard Studies, etc., vol. 11, 1907. + See his summary of Child's views in _Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass._, 21, 1906. + +HAYES, ALFRED. + "Relation of Music to Poetry," in _Atlantic_, January, 1914. + +HEARN, LAFCADIO. + _Kwaidan_. Boston and New York, 1904. + +HOLMES, EDMOND. + _What is Poetry?_ New York, 1900. + +HUNT, LEIGH. + _What is Poetry?_ edited by Albert S. Cook. Boston, 1893. + +JAMES, WILLIAM. + _Psychology._ New York, 1909. + +KITTREDGE, G. L., _editor_. + _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_. Boston, 1904. + +LA FARGE, JOHN. + _Considerations on Painting_. New York, 1895. + +LANIER, SIDNEY. + _Science of English Verse_. New York, 1880. + _Poem Outlines_. New York, 1908. + +LEGOUIS, ÉMILE. + _Défense de la Poésie Française_. London, 1912. + +LEWIS, CHARLTON M. + _The Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification_, Halle, 1898. + _The Principles of English Verse_. New York, 1906. + +LIDDELL, M. H. + _Introduction to Scientific Study of English Poetry_. New York, 1912. + +LOCKWOOD, LAURA E., _editor_. + _English Sonnets_. Boston and New York, 1916. + +LOMAX, JOHN A. + _Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads_. New York, 1916. + +LOWELL, AMY. + _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_. New York, 1917. + _Men, Women and Ghosts_. New York, 1916. + _Can Grande's Castle_. New York, 1918. + +LOWES, JOHN L. + _Convention and Revolt in Poetry_. Boston and New York, 1919. + +LYLY, JOHN. + _Euphues_, edited by Croll, M. W., and Clemons, H. New York, 1916. + +MACKAIL, J. W. + _The Springs of Helicon_. New York, 1909. + +MARSHALL, HENRY R. + _Aesthetic Principles_. New York, 1895. + +MAYOR, J. B. + _Chapters on English Metre_. London, 1886. + +MILL, J. S. + "Thoughts on Poetry," in _Dissertations_, vol. 1. + +MOORE, J. ROBERT. + "The Songs in the English Drama" (Harvard Dissertation, unpublished). + +MORSE, LEWIS K., _editor_. + _Melodies of English Verse_. Boston and New York, 1910. + +NEILSON, WILLIAM A. + _Essentials of Poetry_. Boston and New York, 1912. + +NEWBOLT, SIR HENRY. + _A New Study of English Poetry_. New York, 1919. + +OMOND, T. S. + _A Study of Metre_. London, 1903. + +PALGRAVE, FRANCIS T. + _The Golden Treasury_. London, 1882. + +PANCOAST, H. S. and SPAETH, J. D. + _Early English Poems_. New York, 1911. + +PATTERSON, WILLIAM M. + _The Rhythm of Prose_. New York, 1916. + +PATTISON, MARK, _editor._ + _Milton's Sonnets_. New York, 1883. + +PHELPS, WILLIAM L. + _The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement_. Boston, 1893. + +POUND, LOUISE. + "The Ballad and the Dance," _Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass_., September, 1919. + +QUILLER-COUCH, A. T., _editor_. + _The Oxford Book of English Verse_. Oxford, 1907. + +RALEIGH, WALTER. + _Wordsworth_. London, 1903. + +RAYMOND, GEORGE L. + _Poetry as a Representative Art_. New York, 1886. + _The Genesis of Art-Form_. New York, 1893. + _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music_. New York, 1895. + +REED, EDWARD B. + _English Lyrical Poetry_. New Haven, 1912. + +RHYS, ERNEST. + _Lyric Poetry_. New York, 1913. + +RHYS, ERNEST, _editor_. + _The New Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics_. New York (n.d.). + +RIBOT, T. + _Essay on the Creative Imagination_. Chicago, 1906. + +RUSSELL, C. E. + "Swinburne and Music," in _North American Review_, November, 1907. + +SAINTSBURY, GEORGE. + _History of English Prosody_. London, 1906-10. + _History of English Prose Rhythm_. London, 1912. + +SANTAYANA, GEORGE. + _The Sense of Beauty_. New York, 1896. + _Interpretation of Poetry and Religion_. New York, 1900. + +SCHEMING, F. E., _editor_. + _A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics_. Boston, 1895. + _Seventeenth Century Lyrics_. Boston, 1899. + +SCHELLING, F. E. + _The English Lyric_. Boston and New York, 1913. + +SHACKFORD, MARTHA H. + _A First Book of Poetics_. Boston, 1906. + +SHELLEY, PERCY B. + _A Defense of Poetry_, edited by Albert S. Cook. Boston, 1891. + +SHERMAN, L. A. + _Analytics of Literature_. Boston, 1893. + +SHERMAN, STUART P. + _Contemporary Literature_. New York, 1917. + +SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP. + _The Defense of Poesy_, edited by Albert S. Cook. Boston, 1890. + +SNELL, ADA F. + "Syllabic Quantity in English Verse," in _Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass_., +September, 1918. + +SPINGARN, J. E. + _Creative Criticism_. New York, 1917. + +STEDMAN, EDMUND C. + _The Nature and Elements of Poetry_. Boston and New York, 1892. + +STEMPEL, G. H. + _A Book of Ballads_. New York, 1917. + +STEWART, J. A. + _The Myths of Plato_. London, 1905. + +SYMONS, ARTHUR. + _The Seven Arts_. London, 1906. + +TAYLOR, HENRY O. + _The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_. New York, 1901. + +TOLMAN, A. H. + _Hamlet and Other Essays_. Boston, 1904. + +TOLSTOY, L. + _What is Art_? New York (n.d.). + +UNTERMEYER, LOUIS. + _The New Era in American Poetry_. New York, 1919. + +WATTS-DUNTON, THEODORE. + _Poetry and the Renascence of Wonder_. New York, (n.d.). + +WELLS, CAROLYN. + _A Parody Anthology_. New York, 1904. + +WHITMORE, C. E. + Article on the Lyric in _Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass_., December, 1918. + +WHITNEY, W. D. + _Language and the Study of Language_. New York, 1867. + +WILKINSON, MARGUERITE. + _The New Voices_., New York, 1919. + + + +INDEX + +Abercrombie, Lascelles +Accent +Adams, F. P., free verse parody by +Aesthetics, and poetry +Alden, R. M. + _Introduction to Poetry_ +Aldington, Richard +Alexander, Hartley B. + _Poetry and the Individual_ +Alliteration +Andrews, C. E. + _Writing and Reading of Verse_ +Angellier, Auguste +Anglo-Saxon lyrical verse +Aristotle + _Poetics_ + definition of Tragedy +Arnold, Matthew + "The Strayed Reveller" +Artistic imagination +Artistic production + the impulse to +Asbury, Samuel +Assonance + +Babbitt, Irving + _New Laokoon_ +Ballad, the +Baumgarten, A. G. +Beauty +Beddoes, Thomas Lovell +Blake, William +Blunt, Wilfrid + sonnet on Gibraltar +Boethius + _De Consolatione Philosophiae_ +Bosanquet, Bernard + _History of AEsthetic_ +Bradley, A. C. +Bridges, Robert +Brooke, Stopford +Brownell, Baker +Browning, Robert + _The Ring and the Book_ +Bryant, F. E. +Burns, Robert +Butcher, S. H. + _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_ +Bynner, Witter +Byron + "ottava rima" + +Calverley, C. S. + parody of Browning +Campion, Thomas +Carlyle, Thomas +Chase, W. M. +Chaucer, Geoffrey +Chaucerian stanza, the +Child, F. J. + _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ +Chinese lyrics +Chopin, Frédéric +Church music +Clark, A. C. + _Prose Rhythm in English_ +Cleghorn, Sarah N. + "Come, Captain Age" +Colcord, Lincoln +Coleridge, S. T. + _Biographia Literaria_ + _Kubla Khan_ + _Christabel_ +Colvin, Sidney, "The Fine Arts," +Content and form +Coquelin, E. H. A. +Corson, Hiram +_Counsel upon the Reading of Books_ +Courthope, W. J., _History of English Poetry_ +Cowley, Abraham, Pindaric ode in English +Cranmer-Byng, L., _The Lute of Jade_ +Creative imagination +Croce, B. +Croll, Morris W. + +Dances and poetry +Daniel, Samuel +Debussy, Claude +Dickens, Charles +Dickinson, Emily +Dolmetsch, Arnold +Drama + lyrical element in + dramatic monologue +Drinkwater, John +Dryden, John +Duran, Carolus + +Ear, the, appeal to +Eastman, Max, _Enjoyment of Poetry_ +Elizabethan lyric, the +Elton, Oliver W. +Emerson, R. W. +Enjoyment of Verse +Erskine, John +Euphuism +"Eye-minded" or "ear-minded," + +Fairchild, A. H. R., _Making of Poetry_ +Feeling, and imagination + conveyed by words +Feet, in verse +Feminine rhymes +Figures of speech +Fine arts + "form" and "signficance" in + the man in +Firkins, O. W. +FitzGerald, Edward +Fletcher, John Gould +Form, in the arts +Fort, Paul +Free verse + four types of +French song in England +Fromentin, E. +Frost, Robert +Futurist poets + +Gardiner, J. H. +Gates, Lewis E. +Genius and inspiration +Giovanitti, Arturo +Gluck, C. W., opera +Goethe +Goodell, T. D. +Gosse, Edmund, definition of the ode +Graphic arts and the lyric +Gray, Thomas +Greek poetry +Gummere, F. B., _Handbook of Poetics_ + +Hamilton, Sir W. R., quaternions +Hamlet +Hardy, Thomas +Hawthorne, Nathaniel + _Wonder-Book_ + _Scarlet Letter_ +Hearn, Lafcadio +Hebrew lyric, the +Hebrew poetry +Henley, W. E. +Herford, C. H. +Hexameters + English +Holmes, Edmond, _What is Poetry?_ +Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell +Horace +Horatian ode, English +Hudson, W. H. +Hugo, Victor + +Images, verbal + selection and control of + visual + auditory + tactile + motor +Imagination, or imaginations + the poet's + and feeling + creative and artistic + poetic + lyric +Imagist poets +Imagist verse +_In Memoriam_ stanza, the +Individualism in poetry +Ingersoll, Robert G. +Inspiration + +James, Henry +James, William + an illustration from +Japanese lyrics +Japanese prints +Johnson, Samuel +Jonson, Ben + +Keats, John +Kipling, Rudyard + +La Farge, John, _Considerations on Painting_ +Lamb, Charles +Landor, Walter Savage +Lang, Andrew +Lanier, Sidney, musical theory of verse + _Poem Outlines_ +Latin poets +Lee-Hamilton, Eugene +Legouis, Emile, _Défense de la Poésie Française +Leighton, Sir Frederick +Lessing, _Laokoon_ +Lewis, C. M. +Lindsay, Vachel + "The Congo," +"Literary" language +Locke, John +Lockwood, Laura E. +Lopere, Frederic A. +Lowell, Amy +Lowes, J. L. +Lyric, the field of + classification + definitions + general characteristics + objects of the lyric vision + imagination + expression + relationships and types of + lyrical element in drama + and narrative + and graphic arts + Japanese and Chinese + decay and survival + Hebrew + Greek and Roman + of Western Europe + the Elizabethan + the Romantic + present status of + objections to +Macaulay, T. B. +Marinetti, F. T. +Marquis, Don +Masculine rhymes +Masefield, John +Masters, Edgar Lee +Matthews, Brander +Meredith, George +Metre, and rhythm +_Midsummer Night's Dream_ +Mill, John Stuart +Millet, J. F. +Milton, John +Monroe, Harriet +Moody, William Vaughn +Moore, J. Robert +Morris, William +Moving picture +Murray, Gilbert +Music and poetry + +Narrative poetry +Neilson, W. A. +Newbolt, Sir Henry +Nonsense-verse + +Ode, the +Omond, T. S. +Orpheus and Eurydice, myth of + +Page, Walter H. +Palgrave, F. T. +"Parallelogram of Forces, The" +Pattern-instinct, the +Patterson, W. M., _Rhythm of Prose_ +Pattison, Mark +Peacock, Thomas Love +Persian carpet theory of painting +Pindaric ode, English +Plato +Play-instinct, the +Poe, Edgar Allan +"Poet, the" + and other men + his imagination + his words +Poetry + some potencies of + nature of + and aesthetics + an art + the province of + imagist + Hebrew + Greek + and music + three main types + and dances + of alien races + _See also_ Lyric. +Polyphonic prose +Pope, Alexander +Pound, Louise +Prosody and enjoyment +Puttenham, George, _Arte of English Poesie_ + +Quantity + +Racial differences +Raleigh, Prof. Walter +Raymond, G. L. +Real effects +Reed, E. B., _English Lyrical Poetry_ +Renan, Ernest +Rhyme, as a form of rhythm +Rhys, Ernest +Rhythm, and metre + nature of + measurement of + of prose + rhyme and +Ribot, Th., _Essay on the Creative Imagination_ +Ripley, W. Z. +Robinson, Edwin Arlington +Romantic lyric, the +Royce, Josiah +Ruskin, John +Russell, C. E., "Swinburne and Music," + +Saintsbury, George, _History of English Prose Rhythm_ +Santayana, George +Schelling, F. E. +Scherer, Edmond +Scott, Sir Walter +Sea, a quiet, in the arts +Shackford, M. H. +Shakspere, William +Shelley, Percy Bysshe +Sherman, Stuart P. +Sidney, Sir Philip +Significance, in the arts +Size of poetic thoughts +Smith, L. W. +Snell, Ada F. +Sonnet, the + Petrarchan + Shaksperean +South, Robert +Space-arts +Spaced prose +Spectra hoax, the +Spencer, Herbert +Spenser, Edmund, the "poet's poet" +Spenserian stanza, the +Stanza +Stanzaic law +Stedman, E. C. +Stevenson, R. L. +Stewart, J. A., _The Myths of Plato_ +Story, W. W. +Stress, in verse +"Stressers," +Subjectivity and the lyric +Swinburne, A. S. +Syllabic principle of versification + +Taine, H. A. +Tasso +Taylor, Henry Osborn +Teasdale, Sara +Technique +Tennyson, Alfred +Thinking without words +Thompson, Francis +Thoreau, H. D. +Time-arts +"Timers" +Tolman, A. H. +Tolstoy +Tone-color +Tone-feeling +Tynan, Katharine, "Planting Bulbs" + +Verbal images +Voice-waves, photographs of + +Walton, Isaac +Watts, G. F. +Watts-Dunton, Theodore +Wells, Carolyn +Whistler, James +Whitefield, George +Whitman, Walt +Whitmore, C. E. +Whitney, W. D. +Whittling +Wilkinson, Florence, _New Voices_ +Words, the poet's + how they convey feeling + as current coin + an imperfect medium + unpoetic + embodiment of poetic feeling + sound-values and meaning-values +Wordsworth, William +Wyatt, Edith + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Study of Poetry, by Bliss Perry + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF POETRY *** + +This file should be named 8221-8.txt or 8221-8.zip + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Charles Bidwell +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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