A Study of Poetry

by Bliss Perry

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.