I cannot rest, I cannot stay,
I cannot linger anywhere.
Ibid.
Much they saw and far they went,
and many homes they visited,
but always with a happy end.
Dickens, Christmas Carol.
But above the curved soft elbow,
where no room was for one cross word
(according to our proverb)
three sad gashes
edged with crimson
spoiled the flow of the pearly flesh.
Blackmore, Lorna Doone, ch. 38.
A peculiar instance of metrical prose, avowedly an experiment and fortunately (as most will think) not repeated, is the passage near the end of Kingsley's Westward Ho! Kingsley called it 'prose shaped into song.' The objection is simply that in such a situation song is out of place. Let prose do the legitimate work of prose; and when the intensity of feeling justifies song, let there be song. No hybrids, no cross-breeding—unless, as here, for purposes of experiment. Here is a part of the passage:
Then he took a locket from his bosom; and I heard him speak, Will, and he said: "Here's the picture of my fair and true lady; drink to her, Señors, all." Then he spoke to me, Will, and called me, right up through the oar-weed and the sea: "We have had a fair quarrel, Señor; it is time to be friends once more. My wife and your brother have forgiven me; so your honour takes no stain."
Elements of Prose Rhythm. Thus far the discussion of language rhythm has been confined to a general perception of rhythmic movement. When an attempt is made to carry the investigation into greater detail, more difficult and from a prosodic point of view really crucial problems present themselves. The essential thing in any perception of rhythm is the experience of groups; but what are the nature and determining qualities of these groups? In music there are bars—the primary rhythmic group, comprising a single rhythmic wave, that is, covering the time-distance from one point of division to another—phrases, cadences, etc. The dual nature of language, however, its union of sound elements and thought elements, gives the question another aspect. Corresponding to the musical bar there is the metrical foot; to the musical phrase, the logical phrase; to the musical cadence, a similar melodious flow of word-sounds. But there are also in prose what are called breath-groups and attention-groups, series of words bound together by the physiological requirements of utterance and the mental requirements of perception and understanding.[13] The first step towards clearness will be a closer distinction between prose and metrical rhythms.
Syllable. The simplest and smallest unit of speech-sound is the syllable; then follow, in increasing magnitude, the word, the phrase (that is, words held together by their meaning or by their sound), the clause, the sentence, the paragraph. These units exist in verse as well as in prose, but while verse has other units (which are arbitrary and artificial), prose rhythm has only these. The rhythm of a paragraph is determined by the length, structure, content, and arrangement of the sentences; that of a sentence by the length, structure, content, and arrangement of the phrases; that of the phrase by the length, structure, content, and arrangement of the words; that of a word by the character of the syllables. Now syllables, as has been explained above, have the sound attributes of duration, intensity (or lack of intensity), and pitch—called, however, in the terminology of phonetics, length or quantity, accent (or no accent), and pitch. These must be studied individually before their combined effects can be understood.
Length. Length is of course comparative. Some vowels require a longer time to enunciate than others: the e in penal than the i in pin, the o in coat than the o in cot, etc. Again, some consonants are shorter by nature than others: the explosives, p, t, k, etc., than the continuants s, z, th, f, m, n, l, etc. When vowels and consonants are combined into syllables the comparative length is still more apparent: thus form is longer than god, stole than poke, curl than cut, etc. Moreover, it is not alone the natural quantity of vowels and consonants that affects or determines their length, but also their position in a word and in a sentence. Thus, for example, the same sounds are uttered more rapidly when closely followed by one or more syllables than when alone: as bit, bitter, bitterly; hard, hardy, hardily. This elasticity of syllabic quantity is clearly shown in Verrier's examples:[14]