The short line does not merely accompany rapid movement. It appears a measure of severe economy in some prayers in which the Indian catalogs his daily needs for seventy or more lines! The formal invocations, however, commonly use the longer line and the slower movement. Long, slow, even lines breathe the lament of the Death of Taluta and the reflective cadences of Mount Koonak: A Song of Arsut.
The variation of the lyric line shows technical skill. The Dance-Song just quoted beats out only a simple alteration of long and short lines. The Song of the Coyote and the Locust begins with long flowing lines, but snaps off with a gay quick ending:
Tchumali, tchumali, shohkoya,
Tchumali, tchumali, shohkoya,
Yaamii heeshoo taatani tchupatchiute
Shohkoya,
Shohkoya!
When the shorter line falls within the stanza, there is greater play of mood and thought, with the elasticity of the outward swing and return in the rhythm of the thought as we feel it through the succession of stanzas in The Song of the Rain Chant. The line of verse sweeps outward and the thought recedes at the ebb, as clearly as a Hiroshige wave crest lifts and the waters return to their level.
Within the silhouette of the verse are indisputable metrical patterns, some structural, some decorative. These patterns frequently occur in phrases; and these phrases, in turn, fall into a larger pattern which may be repeated or may be interchanged with other patterns of corresponding values. They are sometimes of amazing complexity, yet form a compact unity of design.
Few correspondences appear in the versification of the white race; but the Indians’ use of pitch[1] for marking off rhythmic units is similar to such a use in Chinese poetry. For analysis, we must observe native singers and study phonographic records. The printed verse gives little opportunity for the study of meter except through musical accompaniment, when the phrases of the music and of the verse coincide, as few notable investigators have set down accent and quantity. Only phonographic records show the use of pitch in rhythm, an element most familiar to any one who has ever heard the Indians chant and sing. Two related arts explain the unique character of Indian lyric measures, the musical setting and the oral rendition of the poem.