It thus appears that the minimal pause which is satisfactory, is less when rhyme is present than when it is not present. Similar determinations were made for the maximal satisfactory verse pauses, as follows:
| Without Rhyme. | With Rhyme. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject. | L. | 9-10 | 11 |
| " | J. | 8 | 9 |
| " | Mc. | 9 | 9 |
| " | R. | 10-11 | 10-11 |
| " | B. | 9 | 9 |
| " | G. | 11-12 | 11 |
| " | Mi. | 10 | 10 |
(A few experiments were tried with verse pauses of different length in the same stanza. A difference of one fourth the value of the pause is not detected, and unless attention is called to them, the pauses may vary widely from one another.)
This shows that the rhyme reduces the necessary pause in verse to the mere foot pause; while at the same time as great a pause is possible with rhyme as without it. Aside from the table above, a large number of the records made for other purposes support this statement: whenever rhyme was introduced, the verse pause was made equal to the foot pause, or even slightly less than it, and was always found satisfactory.
Numerous cases of introduction of lags into the verses of rhymed stanzas go to show that irregularities in such verses do not affect the length of the pauses.
Two hypotheses suggest themselves in explanation of the striking fact that the verse pause becomes unnecessary at the close of a rhymed verse.
The unity is now a new kind of verse unity; the rhyme is a regular recurrent factor like the accent of a foot, and the series of rhymes generates a new rhythm. In the rhymed stanza we are to see not a set of verses, like the verse of blank verse, but a new and enlarged verse unity.
There are several decided objections to this conception. First, the verse pause may be eliminated, but its elimination is not essential to the rhyme effect; the verse pause may still be as long, if not longer, with rhyme. Secondly, the larger unity into which the verses enter is not in many cases a unity made up exclusively of rhymed verses. Verses without rhyme alternate with rhymed verses, and have the usual verse pause. Thirdly, the rhyme is not merely a regularly recurring element: it is essentially a recurring element of which one may say what has been said falsely of the rhythm elements, that each rhyme is either a repetition of something gone before to which it refers, or the anticipation of something to which it looks forward. In most cases, rhymes function in pairs. Such peculiarities distinguish the rhyme from the accent of the foot. Lastly, the freedom of the whole stanza structure into which rhyme is introduced is much greater than that of the single verse; pauses much larger than the admissible lags of a single verse are possible between the verses, and there is no tension which persists throughout. There is no feeling of strain if the series halts at the verse ends.
A second hypothesis is that there is some definite process at the end of the verse which marks the close of the verse and which takes more time in the case of blank verse than in the case of rhymed verse. If we conceive the end of the verse as a point where a dying out of the tension occurs, we may imagine that the rhyme brings an emphasis, and becomes a qualitative signal for this release. The slight increase of intensity on the rhyme contributes to the breaking up of the coördination, and at the same time exhausts and satisfies the feeling of tension which the verse embodies. It is at the point for finishing and releasing the set of strains which constitute the motor image of the verse. A qualitative change may be supposed to produce the effect more rapidly than the simple dying out of the tensions, which occurs in blank verse without a differentiated end accent.