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."