The leaves they were crispèd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere.
But a frequent kind of repetition which is truly a prosodic phenomenon and which, though primarily an element of stanzaic form, has often an effect analogous to those just described, is the refrain. This may vary from the simple "My Mary" of Cowper's poem (see page 103, above) to the elaboration of such a stanza as Rossetti's Sister Helen:
"Why did you melt your waxen man,
Sister Helen?
To-day is the third since you began."
"The time was long, yet the time ran,
Little brother."
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)
in which the second, fifth, and sixth lines remain the same throughout the forty-two stanzas, and the second half of the last line as well.
Besides the prosodic variations and subtleties so far discussed, there are a great many peculiar rhythms, that is, unusual but harmonious changes from the set metrical pattern, modulations, adjustments and combinations of different melodies, which enormously en-rich the verse of a poem. As in music the ear at length tires of the familiar harmonies too often repeated, so the precise regularity of the metrical pattern too closely followed becomes tedious and almost demands variety. To be sure, a certain amount of variety results of necessity from the continual adaptation of ordinary language to the requirements of verse; but many of the examples of early heroic couplets and early blank verse are enough to show that this natural variety is too slight to satisfy the ear. The poet must exert a perpetual vigilance to prevent monotony. But on the other hand, only the highly cultivated ear appreciates the very unusual subtleties of rhythm, and the poet must therefore, unless he is willing to deprive himself of ordinary human comprehension and write esoterically for the "fit audience though few" (in Milton's proud phrase), limit himself to reasonably intelligible modulations. "It is very easy to see," says Mr. Robert Bridges, "how the far-sought effects of the greatest master in any art may lie beyond the general taste. In rhythm this is specially the case; while almost everybody has a natural liking for the common fundamental rhythms, it is only after long familiarity with them that the ear grows dissatisfied, and wishes them to be broken; and there are very few persons indeed who take such a natural delight in rhythm for its own sake that they can follow with pleasure a learned rhythm which is very rich in variety, and the beauty of which is its perpetual freedom to obey the sense and diction."[94] Some examples of these finer rhythms, in addition to the particular forms already given—rhythms not altogether 'learned,' but occasionally far-sought and peculiarly delicate—may be profitably examined. One should keep the metrical pattern constantly in mind as a test or touchstone of the variations. To classify or arrange these illustrations in special groups is difficult because so often the same line exemplifies more than one sort of variation, but the following more or less vague classes of modulation (substitution and syncopation) may be differentiated, and other peculiarities mentioned in passing.
The normal blank verse line calls for five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables; but when two light syllables are naturally and easily uttered in the time of one, trisyllabic feet occur, sometimes with and sometimes without special effect—
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, I, 95.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.
Wordsworth, Immortality Ode.