These two systems of syllabic and stress prosody, though descended from the same parent, the rhymed couplet of Chaucer, have now grown to be very different from each other. I would suggest that, just as stress prosody had its origin in Shakespeare’s need for increased energy and emphasis in verse that was intended to be declaimed on the stage, so it may still be found to be the more expressive instrument for dramatic poetry, or for lyrics that require a free rhythmical structure; whereas syllabic prosody, of which Milton was the supreme master, is more suitable for undramatic verse of a deliberate and even movement, or for meditative lyrical poetry, like that of Donne and Keats. In a recently published poem, written in alexandrines, Mr. Bridges has carried the syllabic principle to its logical conclusion, and relying upon the rigid observance of his rule of twelve syllables to each line, has ventured upon a far more extensive use of difficult displacements of accent than even Milton thought possible. It may be that, as often happens with experimental artists, Mr. Bridges has demanded more effort from some of his readers than they will be able to give. But if so, it is to be hoped that he will write more poetry on the same method, so that the counting of syllables may become as natural and instinctive a process with us as it evidently is with him. He has already had the courage to explore the possibilities of English quantitative verse; yet though some of the poetry he wrote according to that system was of remarkable beauty, the experiment was perhaps too alien to the rhythmical genius of our language to be altogether satisfactory. But his new syllabic experiment, being no mere leap in the dark, but a natural development of the medium we have inherited from Chaucer and Milton, deserves our welcome, and is all the more likely to achieve lasting success.
In discussing the structure of English metre, I have taken my examples from blank verse, because that is the oldest and most highly elaborated of our verse-forms. But besides blank verse there are three other fundamental rhythms, each with a history and future possibilities of its own. If a musical analogy be permissible, rhythms of the blank verse kind (with or without rime, and whatever may be the number of feet to the line) may be said to be in duple time. But there is another rhythmical variety, which is sometimes not easy to distinguish from duple time, yet is essentially different.
And mony was the feather bed
That flatter’d on the faem;
And mony was the gude lord’s son
That never mair came hame.
This seven-stressed couplet, in which so many of our ballads are written, may be said to be in common time. The first, third, fifth and seventh stresses are generally stronger than the three intervening stresses, thus producing a kind of rhythmical undulation, which gives the line swiftness and lightness. The Elizabethans used this metre frequently in the form of rimed couplets. Chapman’s translation of the Iliad, for example, is written in it. Blake in his prophetic books was the first, so far as I know, to dispense with rime, and to give the line variety by frequently changing the position of the cæsura, which normally follows the fourth stress. The following lines are from the Book of Thel.
The daughters of the Seraphim led round their sunny flocks—
All but the youngest: she in paleness sought the secret air,
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day.