Whether or not Spencer’s principle of Economy of Attention adequately explains our delight in rhythm, there is no doubt that it can easily be utilized to construct a theory of rime. Indeed, it is the one principle which provides a satisfactory solution to the problem propounded by Mrs. Browning. No one can deny that more or less of our enjoyment of rimed verse is due to the skill with which the poet satisfies with the second rime the expectation he has aroused with the first. When he ends a line with gray, or grow, or grand, we do not know which of the twoscore or more of possible rimes to each of these the lyrist will select, and we await his choice with happy anticipation. If he should balk us of our pleasure, if he should omit the rime we had confidently counted upon, we are rudely awakened from our dream of delight, and we ask ourselves abruptly what has happened. It is as tho the train of thought had run off the track. Spencer notes how we are put out by halting versification; “much as at the bottom of a flight of stairs a step more or less than we counted upon gives us a shock, so too does a misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable.”
So, too, does an inaccurate or an arbitrary rime give us a shock. If verse is something to be said or sung, if its appeal is to the ear primarily, if rime is a terminal identity of sound, then any theory of “allowable” rimes is impossible, since an “allowable” rime is necessarily inexact, and thus may tend to withdraw attention from the matter of the poem to its manner. No doubt there are readers who do not notice the incompatibility of these matings, and there are others who notice yet do not care. But the more accurately trained the ear is, the more likely these alliances are to annoy; and the less exact the rime, the more likely the ear is to discover the discrepancy. The only safety for the rimester who wishes to be void of all offense is to risk no union of sounds against whose marriage anybody knows any just cause of impediment. Perhaps a wedding within the prohibited degrees may be allowed to pass without protest now and again; but sooner or later somebody will surely forbid the banns.
Just as a misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable gives us a shock, so does the attempt of Mrs. Browning to pair off remember and chamber; so may also the attempt of Poe to link together valleys and palace. The lapse from the perfect ideal may be but a trifle, but a lapse it is nevertheless. A certain percentage of our available attention may thus be wasted, and worse than wasted; it may be called away from the poem itself, and absorbed suddenly by the mere versification. For a brief moment we may be forced to consider a defect of form, when we ought to have our minds absolutely free to receive the poet’s meaning. Whenever a poet cheats us of our expectancy of perfect rime, he forces us to pay exorbitant freight charges on the gift he has presented to us.
It is to be noted, however, that as rime is a matching of sounds, certain pairs of words whose union is not beyond reproach can hardly be rejected without pedantry, since the ordinary pronunciation of cultivated men takes no account of the slight differences of sound audible if the words are uttered with absolute precision. Thus Tennyson in the ‘Revenge’ rimes Devon and Heaven; and thus Lowell in the ‘Fable for Critics’ rimes irresistible and untwistable. In ‘Elsie Venner’ Dr. Holmes held up to derision “the inevitable rime of cockney and Yankee beginners, morn and dawn”; but, at the risk of revealing myself as a Yankee of New York, I must confess that any pronunciation of this pair of words seems to me stilted that does not make them quite impeccable as a rime.
We are warned, however, to be on our guard against pushing any principle to an absurd extreme. If certain pairs of words have been sent forth into the world by English poets from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, then perhaps they may now plead prescription whenever any cold-hearted commentator is disposed to doubt the legitimacy of their conjunction. Altho the union is forbidden by the strict letter of the law,—like marriage with a deceased wife’s sister in England,—only the censorious are disposed to take the matter into court. In time certain rimes—falsely so called—“are legitimated by custom,” one British critic has declared, citing love and prove, for example, and asserting that “river has just got to rime with ever or the game cannot be played.” You must have forgiven or you will never get to heaven. “We expect these licenses and do not resent them, as we do resent Poe’s valleys and palace and the eccentricities of Mrs. Browning.” That there is force in this contention cannot be denied; but it must be remembered that those who urge it are necessarily lovers of poetry, or at least fairly familiar with a large body of English verse, or else they would not be aware of the fact that love and prove, heaven and given, have often been tied together. But even if these critics, who have been sophisticated by over-familiarity with poetic license, do not resent this pairing of unequal sounds, it does not follow that those who for the first time hear dove linked with Jove are equally forgiving or negligent. Even if these licenses are pardoned by some as venial offenses, there are others whose ears are annoyed by them and whose attention is distracted. In other words, we are here face to face with the personal equation; and the only way for a writer of verse to be certain that one or another of his rimes will not be resented by this reader or that is to make sure that all his marriages are flawless.
Thus and thus only can he avoid offense with absolute certainty. If his rimes are perfect to the ear when read aloud or recited, then they will never divert the attention of the auditor from the matter of the poem to the mere manner. On the other hand, it is only fair to confess that there are some lovers of poetry who find a charm in lawlessness and in eccentricity. A series of perfect rimes pleases them; but so also does an occasional rime in which the vowel is slightly varied. And the poet’s consolation for the loss of these must lie in the knowledge that he cannot hope to satisfy everybody. Consolation may lie also in the belief that any lapse from the perfect rime is dangerous, for even if there are some who enjoy the divergence when it is delicate,—that is, when the vowel sound, even if not absolutely identical, is sympathetically akin,—there are very few who are not annoyed when the difference becomes as obvious as in the attempt to link together dial and ball or water and clear.
And as it is only a sophisticated ear which enjoys the mating of valleys with palace, for example, so the attempted rime of this type is to be found chiefly in the more labored poets—in those who are consciously literary. The primitive lyrist, the unconscious singer who makes a ballad of a May morning or rimes a jingle for the nursery or puts together a couplet to give point to a fragment of proverbial wisdom, is nearly always exact in the repetition of his vowel. Where he is careless is in the accompanying consonants. As is remarked by the British critic from whom quotation has already been made, “we may observe that in all early European poetry, from the ‘Song of Roland’ to the popular ballads, the ear was satisfied with assonance, that is, the harmony of the vowel sounds; hat is assonant to tag, and that was good enough.” So in the proverbial couplet,
See a pin and pick it up,
All day long you’ll have good luck.
So again more than once in the unaffected lyrics of the laureate of the nursery, Mother Goose:
Goosy, goosy gander,
Where do you wander?
Upstairs and downstairs,
And in my lady’s chamber.