Even after wide observation and the close study of years, many questions will still remain to baffle us. To reconcile many apparent inconsistencies of Indian lyric verse forms, we must first understand the thought-movement of this body of poetry before we approach the whole subject of thought-rhythm, with the questions of repetition and of stanzaic and metrical structure.
In the mood of the poet, to be sure, lies the chief influence which shapes the poem and marks its larger formal characteristics of thought-movement and rhythm. There are the graceful, lilting verses that go swiftly to the golden melodies of some of the shorter lyrics, as in the Song of the Coyote and Locust; others which move in slow processional to stately chants, as in the odes of The Night Chant.
But the thought-movement is the more immediate influence upon the structure of a poem. The pre-eminently characteristic movement of the Indian lyric is recessional.[1] It perceptibly intensifies the haunting, melancholy effect in which the lyric usually finds voice. The motif appears at the opening of the song, with the emotional intensity or emphasis gradually dying away toward the close. This movement commonly occurs in the shorter songs which are entirely repeated several times. This recessional movement is effective with its musical accompaniment, repeating the melody in a descending scale, and ending on a low note. Thus pitch and accent, as well as varying quantity, mark the repetitions and lessen their monotony.
As a modification of the recessional movement, there is the poem which opens with the motif and repeats it at regularly recurring points throughout, concluding abruptly without the refrain. There are some stanzaic units in this group. Whatever may be the gain in emphasis and in organization, there is a distinct loss in atmosphere. This type is interesting as a transitional stage.
The second type of thought-movement has influenced a third group of songs which shows wide divergence from the first. In this last group the major emphasis always opens and closes the song, though it recurs at intervals, as at the opening or close of each stanza. This is the most finished lyric in design, the most completely thought out, with stanzaic units distinct. Mood and idea join to create a beautiful form.
To a less extent, the processional, or forward, thought-movement appears in lyric form. It may progress toward an emotional climax at the end of a song or a sequence. In the songs before sunrise, as the Daylight Song in The Hako, the intensity increases toward the close as dawn appears. The forward movement finds its most natural place in the ballads and in those ritualistic poems which anticipate dramatic gesture or action. This dramatic relationship, whether in formal ceremony or in vocational songs, shapes the thought-movement in direct contrast to the characteristic order.
There are other poems which carry the thought forward to the close, rounding with an effective summary, sustaining the heightened interest, yet showing the fine intellectual perception of form in relation to thought which appears in Mount Koonak: A Song of Arsut. In characteristics, this type approaches the lyric which Doctor Moulton has classified as the free sonnet.
Whatever variations appear in the sequence of thought, it must be remembered that the use of the recessional movement is a primary law of Indian lyric art.
There is within the lyric a sense of symmetry, of poetic consistency, which cannot be measured by Anglo-Saxon rules of prosody. The Indian poet achieves this symmetry in structure by using varied patterns of thought-rhythm; that is, by means of infinitely modified forms of repetition which are as distinctively characteristic of his genius as parallelism was of the ancient Hebrew or as the variations of rhyme and of stanzaic pattern are of the English lyric genius of the last four centuries. The subtle relationship of patterns of thought-rhythm to the whole movement of a poem is often so fugitive as to escape analysis. One origin of these patterns is the most obvious dramatic association which may also determine the direction of the entire thought-movement. Although the dramatic motif shapes both aspects of thought, there is no apparent connection between the progression of an idea and, let us say, the alternating rhythm, except when the alternation becomes incremental. The determining values of pitch and of melodic repetition are also important external factors. Where these influences end, it is difficult to say.
So far as this study has proceeded, five characteristic patterns of thought-rhythm appear in Indian lyric poetry. The iterative rhythm appears in the simpler poems, of which the Navaho Mountain Song and The Omaha Tribal Prayer are particularly fine in spirit. The iteration is not always pleasing, sometimes beating with the steady monotony of a kettle drum; but, contrary to reasonable supposition, it does not necessarily indicate a dance song.