Again the scholastic critic finds the chief value of Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” in the religious argument, and would not be interested to be told that the poet is being disturbed by a melancholy contradiction between his own happy childhood, idealistic boyhood and disappointed age. But if he were to go into the psychological question and become doubtful whether as a matter of fact, children have not as many recollections of Hell as of Heaven, whether indeed the grown mind does not purposely forget early misery and see childhood in a deceptive haze of romance; and if he therefore suspected Wordsworth of reasoning from a wrong premise he would have serious doubts as to whether it was a good poem after all. At which conclusion even the most pagan and revolutionary of modern bards would raise a furious protest; if the poem holds together, if the poet has said what he means honestly, convincingly and with passion—as Wordsworth did—the glory and the beauty of the dream are permanently fixed beyond reach of the scientific lecturer’s pointer.
XV
VERS LIBRE
THE limitation of Vers Libre, which I regard as only our old friend, Prose Poetry, broken up in convenient lengths, seems to be that the poet has not the continual hold over his reader’s attention that a regulated (this does not mean altogether “regular”) scheme of verse properly used would give him. The temporary loss of control must be set off against the freedom which vers libre-ists claim from irrelevant or stereotyped images suggested by the necessity of rhyme or a difficult metre.
This is not to say that a poet shouldn’t start his race from what appears to hardened traditionalists as about ten yards behind scratch; indeed, if he feels that this is the natural place for him, he would be unwise to do otherwise. But my contention is that vers libre has a serious limitation which regulated verse has not. In vers libre there is no natural indication as to how the lines are to be stressed. There are thousands of lines of Walt Whitman’s, over the pointing of which, and the intended cadence, elocutionists would disagree; and this seems to be leaving too much to chance.
I met in a modern vers libre poem the line spoken by a fallen angel, “I am outcast of Paradise”; but how was I to say it? What clue had I to the intended rhythm, in a poem without any guiding signs? In regulated verse the reader is compelled to accentuate as the poet determines. Here is the same line introduced into three nonsensical examples of rhyming:—
Satan to the garden came
And found his Lordship walking lame,
“Give me manna, figs and spice,
I am outcast of Paradise.”
or quite differently:—
“Beryls and porphyries,
Pomegranate juice!
I am outcast of Paradise
(What was the use?)
or one can even make the reader accept a third alternative, impressively dragging at the last important word:—
He came to his Lordship then
For manna, figs and spice,
“I am chief of the Fallen Ten,
I am outcast of Paradise.”