The Principles of English Versification Part 21

Clang battle-axe and clash brand.

TENNYSON, The Coming of Arthur, 492.

The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall In silence.

TENNYSON, Merlin and Vivien, 230 f.

Immingled with heaven's azure waveringly.

TENNYSON, Gareth, 914.

The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream, the stream ...

Ibid., 1020.

The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring.

TENNYSON, Milton.

And in the throbbing engine room Leap the long rods of polished steel.

OSCAR WILDE, La Mer.

Something has already been said above on the nature and effects of pitch in spoken rhythm (pages 35 ff.). It is a constant factor of language, but its usual function is special emphasis or intensification. By itself it rarely dominates or determines the rhythm. And since the regular determinants of spoken rhythm are time and stress, it follows of course that pitch serves usually to reinforce these determinants.[89] But not always; for not only does pitch sometimes clash with rhythmic stress, but also it is sometimes a subst.i.tute for it. All three of these functions--strengthening, opposing, and replacing stress--are operative in verse.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [89] It is not to be understood, however, that the higher the pitch the greater the emphasis; for the contrary is often the case. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

In Sh.e.l.ley's line

Laugh with an inextinguishable laughter,

a great deal of the effect is due to the combination of word accent and emphatic pitch in the syllable-_ting_-, so that not merely the one word but the one syllable dominates the whole verse. In such frequent conflicts of stress as "on the blue surface," where the prose rhythm is ?? ? ?? while the verse pattern has ?_??_??, the so-called hovering accent (as it is usually described, with the theory that somehow the normal quant.i.ty of stress is divided between _the_ and _blue_) is properly a circ.u.mflex accent, which in other words means pitch.

Similarly in "If I were a dead leaf," the peculiar rhythm is to be explained as a balance of pitch against stress. And in that metrically notorious line of Tennyson's--

Take your own time, Annie, take your own time.

TENNYSON, Enoch Arden, 463.

the chief irregularity or dissonance is the clash of pitch against stress in "own time." If the line read--

So you're on time, Annie, so you're on time,

there would be an unusual arrangement of stresses and unstressed syllables, a peculiar syncopation, but no great difficulty.[90] Much simpler and clearer is the conflict of stress and pitch in such pa.s.sages as

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let _them_ live upon _their_ praises.

WORDSWORTH, To the Small Celandine.[91]

_I_ only stirred in this black spot; _I_ only lived--_I_ only drew The accursed breath of dungeon-dew.

BYRON, Prisoner of Chillon.[92]

and Keats's

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard.

and Marvel's

Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.'

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [90] It is perhaps useless to debate about this line. Whether one divides thus: _? ? ? _? _? ? _? ? ? _? and says there is an 'inversion' in the first, third, and fourth feet, or preferably thus: ? _? ?['] _? ^ _? ? _? ?['] _? the rhythm is extraordinary; and the added complexity of 'own' puts it entirely _hors concours_. Compare with it, however, Milton's Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foil'd. Paradise Lost, I, 273. Not merely t.i.tular, since by degree. Ibid., V, 774. [91] The italics are not Wordsworth's. [92] Here the italics are the poet's. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The most interesting, and the rarest, effect of pitch in verse is its use as a subst.i.tute for stress. In the much-discussed first line of Paradise Lost--

Of man's first disobedience and the fruit,

there is a metrical stress on _dis_-of "disobedience." This is not so much, however, an intensification of an already existent secondary accent, as in, for example, Sh.e.l.ley's

The eager hours and _un_reluctant years.

Ode to Liberty, xi.

as the subst.i.tution of pitch for stress.[93] The adaptability of language to metre appears very clearly in such a line as Paradise Lost, III, 130--

Self-tempted, self-deprav'd: Man falls deceiv'd,

in which the first compound shows a conflict of pitch and stress ('self'

having a pitch-accent, but occurring in an unstressed part of the line), while the second shows pitch taking the place of stress. The whole line, and indeed the whole pa.s.sage, though not of high poetic value, is an admirable ill.u.s.tration of the Miltonic freedom of subst.i.tution and syncopation--pitch playing a very important role. One should read the lines first as prose, with full emphasis on the expressive contrasts; then merely as verse, beating out the metre regardless of the meaning; finally, with mutual sacrifice and compromise between the two readings, producing that exquisite adjustment which is the characteristic of good verse. There is a similar example of pitch and stress in the familiar

What recks it them? what need they? _They_ are sped.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [93] Some readers take the line thus: ? _? _? ? ? _? ?['] ? ? _ with emphasis or pitch-accent on 'first'; in which case the above explanation does not hold. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Repet.i.tion is a rhetorical not a metrical device, though it is employed with great effectiveness in verse as well as in prose:

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas ...

The leaves they were crisped and sere-- The leaves they were withering and sere.

But a frequent kind of repet.i.tion which is truly a prosodic phenomenon and which, though primarily an element of stanzaic form, has often an effect a.n.a.logous to those just described, is the refrain. This may vary from the simple "My Mary" of Cowper's poem (see page 103, above) to the elaboration of such a stanza as Rossetti's Sister Helen:

"Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen?

To-day is the third since you began."

"The time was long, yet the time ran, Little brother."

(_O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days to-day, between h.e.l.l and Heaven!_)

in which the second, fifth, and sixth lines remain the same throughout the forty-two stanzas, and the second half of the last line as well.

Besides the prosodic variations and subtleties so far discussed, there are a great many peculiar rhythms, that is, unusual but harmonious changes from the set metrical pattern, modulations, adjustments and combinations of different melodies, which enormously en-rich the verse of a poem. As in music the ear at length tires of the familiar harmonies too often repeated, so the precise regularity of the metrical pattern too closely followed becomes tedious and almost demands variety. To be sure, a certain amount of variety results of necessity from the continual adaptation of ordinary language to the requirements of verse; but many of the examples of early heroic couplets and early blank verse are enough to show that this natural variety is too slight to satisfy the ear. The poet must exert a perpetual vigilance to prevent monotony.

But on the other hand, only the highly cultivated ear appreciates the very unusual subtleties of rhythm, and the poet must therefore, unless he is willing to deprive himself of ordinary human comprehension and write esoterically for the "fit audience though few" (in Milton's proud phrase), limit himself to reasonably intelligible modulations. "It is very easy to see," says Mr. Robert Bridges, "how the far-sought effects of the greatest master in any art may lie beyond the general taste. In rhythm this is specially the case; while almost everybody has a natural liking for the common fundamental rhythms, it is only after long familiarity with them that the ear grows dissatisfied, and wishes them to be broken; and there are very few persons indeed who take such a natural delight in rhythm for its own sake that they can follow with pleasure a learned rhythm which is very rich in variety, and the beauty of which is its perpetual freedom to obey the sense and diction."[94]

Some examples of these finer rhythms, in addition to the particular forms already given--rhythms not altogether 'learned,' but occasionally far-sought and peculiarly delicate--may be profitably examined. One should keep the metrical pattern constantly in mind as a test or touchstone of the variations. To cla.s.sify or arrange these ill.u.s.trations in special groups is difficult because so often the same line exemplifies more than one sort of variation, but the following more or less vague cla.s.ses of modulation (subst.i.tution and syncopation) may be differentiated, and other peculiarities mentioned in pa.s.sing.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [94] Milton's Prosody, p. 30 (ed. 1901). +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The normal blank verse line calls for five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables; but when two light syllables are naturally and easily uttered in the time of one, trisyllabic feet occur, sometimes with and sometimes without special effect--

And pointed out those arduous paths they trod.