The dactyl is used with a very similar effect in Austin Dobson’s “Before Sedan” (p. [84]).
What a difference is expressed by the use of these same feet, with greater changes, and in longer lines, in Browning’s “The Lost Leader”! Restlessness is here expressed, arising not from pathos, but from indignation and disappointment. The rhythmic movement of the metre is totally different in this case. While the feet may be mechanically the same, the length of the lines and the rhythmic spirit differ greatly in the two poems. The feeling is different, the tone-color of the voice not the same, and the whole expression differs, though in a mechanical scanning they seem nearly alike.
THE LOST LEADER
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat,—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others, she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
We shall march prospering,—not thro’ his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire;
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more devil’s-triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life’s night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
Best fight on well, for we taught him—strike gallantly,
Menace our heart ere we master his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!
One aid in realizing metre as an element of expression is to examine a poem printed as prose and attempt to discover the peculiar value and force of the metric forms, length of lines, length of the stanzas, and even the rhymes. All these in a true poem are expressive. There is nothing really artificial or accidental in a true poetic or artistic form. (See p. [175] and p. [209].)
Many poems in this book and in the accompanying monologues for further study are printed as prose, not because metre and length of line are unimportant, but for the very opposite reason. The form of a printed poem is so apt to be disregarded or considered a mere matter of print that this unusual method of printing a poem is adopted to furnish opportunity for the reader to work out for himself the metre and other elements of the form. In reading over a poem thus printed, almost any one will become conscious of the metric movement, and in every case the metric structure and length of line should be indicated and felt by the reader.
There is never, in a fine poem, especially in a dramatic poem, a mere mechanical and regular succession of the same foot, though one foot may predominate and give the general spirit to the whole. True metre never interferes with thinking or with the processes of natural speech; on the contrary, it is an aid to thinking, feeling, and vocal expression.
If the student will think and feel intensely such a poem as “Rabbi Ben Ezra” (p. [36]), and will strongly accentuate the metre, he will find that he can read it easily, because, when true to its objective form, he is the better able to give its spirit.
Innumerable changes in the metric feet occur in Browning’s “Saul,” in “Abt Vogler,” or in any great poem. The more deeply we become imbued with the spirit of a poem, the more do we feel that these variations are necessary.
The reader must be slow to criticize a seeming discord in metre. An apparent fault may appear as a real excellence after one has genuinely seized the true spirit of the passage.