No doubt the artificiality of the verse measure or the recurrent echoes of rhyme has the appearance of an unyielding[15] bond between spiritual ideas and the sensuous medium, more rigorous indeed than colour in painting. External objects and the human form are coloured in Nature, and the colourless is an arbitrary abstraction. The idea, on the contrary, in association with the sounds of human speech, which are employed in the wholly capricious symbols of their utterance, possess only a distant or no ideal thread of connection at all. This being so, the exacting demand of the prosodical rules will very readily appear as a fetter to the imagination, in virtue of which it is no longer possible for the poet to communicate his ideas in the precise form in which they float upon his phantasy. The inference is natural that although the stream of rhythm and the music of rhyme exercises upon us as an unquestionable fascination, it is nevertheless not unfrequently and too much so the demand of this very charm to our senses that the finest poetic feeling and idea should be sacrificed. But the objection for all that will not hold water. In other words it is not true that versification is simply an obstruction to spontaneous movement. A genuine artistic talent throughout moves in its sensuous material as in its native element, which so far from being oppressive or a hindrance acts as a stimulus and a support. And in fact we find that all really great poets move with freedom and confidence in the measure, rhythm or rhyme they have created; and it is only when they are translated that our artistic sense is frequently pained or shocked at the attempt to retrace their rhythm and melody. Moreover it is part of the liberality of the art that the very circumstances of the restraint, involving much change, concentration or expansion of the ideas expressed, should suggest to our poet new thoughts, incidents and creations, which, apart from such difficulties, had never crossed his mind. But in truth quite apart from this relative advantage this sensuous and determinate form of being—in the case of poetry the melodious chain of words—is once for all essential to art. It is absolutely necessary that the result should not remain in the formless and undefined stream that we have in the immediate contingency of ordinary conversation. It must appear in the vital design and elaboration of art. And although this form no doubt in the music of poetry may sound too as a purely external instrument, it has nevertheless to be treated as an end on its own account, and as such as an essentially harmonious self-defined whole. This attention, which is due to the medium of sense, contributes, as in Art universally, and in the interest of seriousness,[16] yet another point of view where we find this very austerity vanishes; both poet and listener feel it no more. They are lifted into a region of exhilarating charm and grace.
In painting and sculpture the artist is given the form in its material and spatial limitations for the portrayal and colouring of human limbs, rocks, trees, clouds and flowers. In architecture also the requirements and objects of the buildings proposed dictate more or less the defined shape given to walls, towers and roofs. In the same-way music already possesses stable definition in the fundamental laws of harmony. In the art of poetry, however, the sound of language to our aural sense is, in the first instance, unbridled;[17] the poet has consequently to regulate such absence of rule within objective limits, and to outline a more stable conture, a more definite framework of sound for his conceptions, their structure and their objective beauty.
Just as in musical declamation the rhythm and melody should accept and adapt itself to the nature of the content, versification is also a kind of music, which, at its own distance, is capable of essentially re-echoing the mysterious, but none the less definite, course and character of the ideas. Agreeably with this the verse-measure ought to reflect the general tone and, as it were, the spiritual perfume of an entire poem, and it is by no means a question of no consequence whether the external form is one of iambics, trochaics, stanzas, alcaics or any other metre.
In the heads of discussion we propose to follow of most importance are two systems, whose distinction from each other we shall endeavour to explain. The first is rhythmical versification, which depends upon the actual length or shortness of the verbal syllables, whether we regard such in the association of varied figures of speech, or under the relation of their time-movement.
The second is that which is responsible for tonal quality as such, not merely in the case of isolated letters, consonants or vowels, but also in that of entire syllables and words, the configuration of which is in part regulated by the laws of the uniform repetition of identical or similar sounds, and in part by those of symmetrical change. It is to this system that we refer the alliteration, assonance and rhyme.
Both systems stand in intimate connection with the prosody of speech. This is so whether such systems are rather based throughout on the actual length or shortness of syllables, or on the accent which the mind requires,[18] as attached to the obvious importance of such syllables.
And, finally, we have also to unite together this general rhythmical movement with the music of the independent formal structure as rhyme.[19] And in this effort, inasmuch as the repeated echo of the rhyme strikes the ear with a marked emphasis, which asserts itself predominantly over the purely temporal condition of duration and advance, the rhythmical aspect will, in such a conjunction, tend to fall back, and arrest our attention with less force.
(a) Rhythmical Versification.
In discussing the rhythmical system which is without rhyme the following points are of the most importance:
First, we have the firm and fast time-measure of syllables in their plain distinction of long and shorty as well as their manifold association with definite conditions and metres of poetry.