This rhythm has now become, in various forms and disguises, one of our commonest lyrical metres, easily modulating into duple time, and adaptable to lines of various lengths.
There is also another slower triple time, quite different to the usual form. Byron used it, probably without knowing what he was doing, in several of his lyrics, such as the Song of the Third Spirit in Manfred, and “There be none of Beauty’s daughters”: but the only instance I know where it has been consciously and deliberately used, is Professor Murray’s translation of an Ionic a minore ode in the Hippolytus:
Could I take me to some cavern for mine hiding,
In the hill-tops where the Sun scarce hath trod.
It is unlikely that this difficult rhythm will ever become common; but in lyric poetry, by way of occasional contrast, very beautiful effects might well be obtained by it.
So far as I can see, these four are the only fundamental rhythms in English poetry. Their true nature, their various disguises, and their difference and relationship with one another, are not always sufficiently understood, and the result has frequently been confused and clumsy workmanship, and a failure to exploit their latent possibilities to the full.
There is one further aspect of the poetic craft which I must now mention. The Greek lyrical poets, whose metre was quantitative, and was emphasised by music and dancing movements, were able to build up far more elaborately organised rhythmical structures than we are accustomed to, with our simpler lyrical forms. Structure, with us, is generally delineated and emphasised by rime, rather than by internal variations and contrasts of rhythm. Even in the unrimed choruses of Samson Agonistes the rhythm is far more uniform than in the simplest Greek lyrical poems. I do not suggest that it would be possible or desirable artificially to change the nature of English poetical rhythm from an accentual to a quantitative basis, as Ennius did with Latin prosody. But although no doubt purely quantitative English verse will always remain somewhat of an exotic curiosity, I feel sure that if more conscious attention were paid to the quantity of English syllables, not only would our normal verse-forms, such as blank verse, gain in subtlety and expressive force, but all sorts of new possibilities of lyrical structure could be discovered and explored. Rime need not necessarily be dispensed with; but it would no longer be the only effective instrument for binding together a complicated lyrical stanza. Stress would still indicate and govern internal rhythm; but careful attention to the length and shortness of syllables would make it possible to build up far more elaborate and varied metrical structures than have hitherto been attempted. The result might be a verse that was genuinely free, yet did not degenerate into prose, based upon irregular but easily comprehensible metrical patterns, that could mould and dominate language as effectively as the older, more rigid verse-forms.
CHAPTER IV
Poetic Material
Difficult as it must be to foresee the evolution of technical methods, it would be still more hazardous to attempt any prediction as to the new subject-matter which poets will have to discover, if their art is to continue as a living growth. The mind of even the most detached artist is a part of the world into which he was born, and his matter must to a large extent be a reflection of his environment. But the material and spiritual world changes far more swiftly than the language and the rhythmical artifices which constitute the poetic medium. And so, although I have suggested elsewhere that technique is the mistress of invention, and that changes in the medium make possible the discovery of new themes, yet an opposite theory might as easily be maintained, with perhaps equal truth, that social and intellectual changes create demands, in satisfying which an intelligent artist will find his most genial inspiration, and will modify his technique until it becomes a fit instrument for expressing his new material. But though for these reasons it would be unwise to indulge in prophecy, we may at least take a survey of the main possibilities.
To begin with, the innumerable and infinite output of personal lyrics, good, bad and indifferent, is certain to continue, so long as human beings are subject to passions and sentimentalities, and can enjoy the varying moods of nature, and the pleasures of poetic pastiche. However capriciously the winds of literary fashion may blow, the countless flock of minor lyricists will always be with us, while the truly great will be few and far between. One danger indeed we have little reason to fear. I mean the sterilising tyranny of some dominant lyrical form, such as the Greek elegiac couplet, or the late-classical Chinese stanza. Our poetry is already so abundantly rich in types, and so fertile in breeding new varieties, that neither the spirit of a new Age, nor genius however individual need be at a loss for appropriate forms of lyrical self-expression. A twentieth-century Catullus or Heine would have no cause for complaint if he were to be born an Englishman.