ey had a twin birth in song, and although they have grown far apart, they come together again in song. In many ways, music is the standard for verse. Yet, despite these resemblances, the differe

and narrative, probably grew out of speech by regularizing its natural rhythm, independent of m

Poetry, on the other hand, is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"; its purpose is to express life for the sake of the values which expression itself may create, and to communicate them to others. [Footnote: Compare F. N. Scott, "The Most Fundamental Differentia of Poetry and Prose," in Modern Language Association Publications, V. 19, pp. 2

n audience which is really universal. Except in the first moment of creative fervor, the friend invoked is never intended to be the sole recipient of the poet's words. Oftentimes the poet appeals to the dead or to natural objects which cannot hear him. One might perhaps infer from this that there is no genuine impulse to communication in poetry; that i

heme-the way man reacts to his environment and his thought. Poetry is never purely descriptive or dialectical. And this difference in the substance of the expression determines a difference in the direction of interest within the expression. In scientific expression, words lead us away to things-pure description, or to their meanings-mathematics and d

meaning. The meaning is either an idea of a concrete thing or situation, or an abstraction. This is the irreducible minimum of a word, but is seldom all. For, in poetry, some emotional response to the object meant by the word impels to its utterance, and this is embodied in it when it is uttered, and a similar feeling is awakened in the auditor when it is heard or read. A word not only mirrors a situation through its meaning, but preserves something of the mind's response; it communicates the total experience,-the self as well as the object. Finally, the meaning of a word may not remain a mere idea, but may grow out in

ons, although felt, have only a shadowy existence in "the fringe of inattention." But in poetry, which is speech made beautiful, the mere sound of the words has value. In hearing poetry, we not only understand, but listen; we appreciate not only the ideas and emotions conveyed, but the word-sounds and their rhythms as well. Even in silent reading, poetry is a voice which we delight to hear. [Footnote: A

If I ask a man the way and he tells me, the quality of his voice, the interest which he takes in telling me, and the images which float across his mind are of no importance to me, so long as I can follow his directions. But in poetry the situation alters once more. For there, since expression itself has become the end, and all action upon it is inhibited, the feeling which prompts it becomes a significant part of what I appreciate. In poetr

nsable. Originally, no doubt, every word had an emotional coloring, if only that of a child's curiosity; and some words have meanings too deeply rooted in feeling ever to lose it. No amount of familiarity can deprive such words as "death" and "love" and "God" of their emotional value. Words like these must forever recur in the vocabulary

known, and f

cy ceas

in her gr

ference

yet, taken together with the last, and in connection with the whole stanza, and

shed that the meaning of words is something more than the images, visual or other, which they arouse. Probably the meaning is always carried by some sort of imagery, differing with the mental make-up of the reader, but the meaning cannot be equated to the imagery. For example, you and I both understand the word "ocean"; but when I read the word, I get a visual image of green water and sunlight, while you perhaps get an auditory image of the sound of the waves as they break upon the shore. Sound, meaning, feeling, these are the essential constituents of discourse; imagery is variable and accidental. It is impossible, therefore,

eeze, thou

t not bi

efits

images are very dim, they serve none the less to establish the feeling of intense disagreeableness which the poet w

ion of poetry, and apply our results to some of its newer and more clamant forms. Let us begin with sound. In our first chapter we observed that the medium of an art tends to become expressive in itself,-that in poetry the mere sound and articulatio

n a pattern, consonance in chord and melody. If the repetition of the same color or line in painting, the same tone in music, can delight us, why not the repetition of the same word-sound? In all cases a like feeling of harmony is produced. And the same general principle applies to explain it. All word-sounds as we utter or hear them leave memory traces in the mind, which are not pure images (no memory traces are), but also motor sets, tendencies or impulses to the remaking of the sounds. The doing of any deed-a word is also a deed-creates a will to its doing again; hence the satisfaction when that will is fulfilled in the repea

re the hea

rious wint

orldly tas

ne and ta'e

s and girl

sweepers, c

"ta'en"; the "g"-sound in "golden," its match in "girls"; "sun" and "done," "rages" and "wages," illustrate a balance of ha

the sound and how much to some lingering bit of meaning which we have failed to separate in our analysis. For example, because of its initial "s"-sound and its hard consonants, the word "struggle" seems to express, in the effort required to pronounce it, something of the emotional tone of struggle itself; but how do we know that this is not due to the association with its meaning, which we have been unable to abstract from? Even true onomatopoetic words like "bang" or "crack" derive, I suspect, most of their specific quality from their meaning. They do have, to be sure, a certain mimetic impressiveness as mere sounds; but that is very vague; the meaning makes it specific. The sheer length of the word "multitudinous" in Shakespeare's line, "the multitudinous seas incarnadine," seems to express something of the vastness and

ressive in themselves, not sufficiently separable from their meanings, to have anything except the slightest value as mere sounds. In collocation,

ed alarms of st

nt armies cr

strengthening that of the meaning of the words. Or in Tennyson's oft-quoted line, "the murmuring of innumerable bees," th

sion, the mood of the thoughts. The sound-values are too lacking in independence to be purely ornamental. Poetry does indeed permit of embellishment-the pleasurable elaboration of sensation-yet should never

medium is imparted to verse. But here again we shall find sound and

English verse is not difficult to perceive. Such a scheme presupposes that syllables have a fixed quantity of duration, as either long or short, and that rhythm consists in the regularity of their distribution. But, although there are differences in the duration of syllables, some being longer than others, there are no fixed rules to determine whether a syllable is short o

w, thou w

t not s

s ingra

ive scansion is pe

-

U

U

t of the three lines, and no correspondence, except in that line, between the quantitative scansion and the rhythmical movement of the verses. And whenever such a correspondence exists, it is due either to the fact that the inciden

cent; hence, in a succession of such syllables, the accent must be determined by some other factor; and, granting this, there is the further fact to be reckoned with, that poetic accent is relative-the supposedly unaccented syllable is often very highly accented, more highly in fact than some of the so-called accented ones. Consider, for example, the line, "From sullen earth sings hymns at

but greater in some than in others; in iambic rhythm, usually greater in the even than in the preceding odd syllable; in trochaic, greater in the odd than in the immediately preceding even one. The rhythm is rather an undulation of stresses than an alternation of stress and lack of stress, something, therefore, far more complex and variegated than the old scheme would imply. And of this undulation, not the foot, but the line is the unit. The character of the undulation of the whole line determines the type of the rhythm, which may be very different in the case of lines of precisely the same kind of "feet." For example, the line quoted abov

We have just seen that the line is one unit of the rhythm (this is true even when there are run-over lines, because we make a slight pause after the ends of such lines too); but within the line itself there are sub-units. These sub-units are units of thought. Every piece of written or spoken language is a continuous flow of thought. But the movement is not perfectly fluid; for it is broken up into elementary pulses of ideas, following discontinuously upon each other. In prose the successio

een the subject-idea and the predicate-idea acquire sufficient importance, or whenever the one or the other of the two becomes sufficiently comple

s endeared |

king | have su

love, | and all l

iends | which I

are marked by pa

try, and a rhythm which, coming from within, finds outward expression in sound. Cutting across the rhythm

on and the condition, the pitch rises and falls in the first, and then rises again in the second. Doubt, expectation, tension, excitement-all the forward looking moods of incompleteness-tend to find expression in a rising melody; while assurance, repose, relaxation, fulfillment, are embodied in a falling melody. The high tones are dynamic and stimulating; the low tones, static and peaceful. Now in ordinary speech and prose, the change from one tone to another is constant and irregular, following the variation of mood in the substance of the discourse. How is it wit

of verse is confused and chaotic; and this condemns to failure any attempt to identify the laws of the two arts. Still, we are not yet at the end of the analogy. Those who interpret verse in terms of music believe that, underlying or supplanting the rhythm of stress, there is another rhythm, similar to time in music, and capable of expression in musical language. There is, it is claimed, an equality of duration between

ustr

a | mid-nig

onnection between verse and song, nor by the frequency with which some verses are set to music. Our poetry must be understood as we experience it to-day, not as it was experienced in its origins. And there is surely much poetry which no one wants to sing. No one

ion of the thought-divisions equal. Our time-sense is so fallible, we do not notice the departures from exactness; and when the durations of processes are nearly equal and the values which we attach to them are equal, then we are conscious of them as equal. Attention-value and ti

lyric poetry closely allied to song, it is clear and strong; while in the more reflect

buns, hot

ghters don'

m to yo

nny, two

ross

hree monosyllabic words being lengthened out into equality with the others. The variety in the rhythm is secured through the unequal number of syllables in the same stretch of duration, the more rapi

break,

| grey ston

that my tongue

s | That ar

the approximate temporal equality of the thought-moments. These verses are, however, rather songs than poems. The failure to distinguish betwe

, therefore, recurrence of theme: the thought is repeated again and again; in new forms, perhaps, yet still the same in essence, successive lines or stanzas taking up the same burden; sometimes there is exact recurrence of thought, as in the refrain. And this repetition in the thought is embodied in a repetition of the elements of the sound-pattern; the wave type is repeated from verse to verse or recurs again and again; there is recurrence of melodic form or parallelism between contrasted melodies in different stanzas; there is tonality of vowel an

osition to inquire into what can be expressed through it,

me rhythms are better vehicles for certain kinds of thought than others are. Yet it often happens that, just as, in song or opera, the same melody is used to express joy or grief, love or religious emotion, so approximately the same rhythmic form is employed in the expression of apparently antagonistic emotions. Nevertheless, this fact is not fatal to expression; for, in the first place, there is much variety of rhythm within a given metrical form, so that what superficially may seem to be the same rhythm is really a different one

etween the two kinds, because a falling rhythm is still a rhythm, and that means a movement which necessarily contains something of instability and unrest. The contrast is sharpest in the anapestic and dactylic, less sharp in the trochaic and iambic. Many a trochaic rhythm becomes in effect iambic when the division of the thought moments and th

types of feeling in the mind; it is swift or slow, gliding or abrupt, retarded or accelerated. Compare the slow and retarded rhythm of "When I have fears that I may cease to be," so well adapted to express the gravity of the thought, with the rapid and acc

eself than when read aloud; for then the sound and the sense are more intimate; the attention is not drawn off to the former away from the latter. Moreover, try as he will, the poet can never make his word-sounds fully harmonious; some roughness and dissonance will remain; but in silent reading these qualities disappear. However, although by itself of small significance, the musical element in verse makes all the difference between poetry and prose. Through its own vague expressiveness it fortifies the emotional meaning of the poetic langua

n. Poetry may desert the royal themes of long ago-arma virumque cano, maenin aeide thea-and relate the lowly life of common folk, even the sordid life of the poor and miserable, but when doing so throws over it the musical glamour of verse and arouses the heat of sympathy and passion. Although, since it makes use of words, poetry should always have a meaning, it need not have the definiteness of meaning of logical thought; it may suggest rather than explicate; its music is compatible with vagueness. But vagueness is

s time and many tones to convey. Poetry wins beauty by concentration, whereas music gains by expansion. There is also a similar relation between prose and poetry in this respect; the severity of the form imposes upon poetry a simplicity which contrasts with the breadth and complexity of prose. As Schopenhauer remarked, every good poem is short; long poems always contain stretches either of

for a word is not a mere embodiment of an experience, but a communication also, and only its public and universal content can pass from a speaker to a hearer. Now, this socialized content of a word is a thought. Even passion the most spontaneous and lyrical has to be translated into thought,-not the abstract thought of scientific expression, but the emotionally toned thought of art, thought which, while condensing experience, still keeps its values. Emotional thought is the substance of poetry. However, albeit an image of the inner life, poetry does not volatilize it into pure feeling as music does, but distinguishes its objects and assigns its causes. Poetry is conc

yet there is no image. The thought formulates a mood and finds a sensuous embodiment in musical language, and that suffices for beauty. And yet in poetry, as has been observed, thought tends to descend into imagery. By being connected with a sensuous material, a thought acquires a firmer support f

w, thou w

t not s

s ingra

h is not

thou art

thy breat

eeze, thou

t not bi

efits

ou the wa

g is not

d rememb

sharp; of taste-bitter. How vividly they convey the ache of desolation! Only in words whi

uting for a more abstract, conceptual mode of expression a more sensuous and ima

n the

world I st

Fame to nothin

same. Incidentally the poet unifies our world for us through his metaphors; not as the scientist does by pointing out causal and class relations, but by exhibiting the emotional affinities of things. He increases the value of single things by giving them the values of other things. Every metaphor should serve this purpose of emotional expression and unification, should be part of an emotional thought; otherwise it is a mere tour de force of cleverness, unrelated to the poetic interest and intrinsically absurd,-the world has no shore and the wind is not bitter; feeling alone can justify

ssible for the poet to represent nature through the images which words evoke in the mind, and these images may have significance for feeling. Their very evocation in musical language is bound to lend them some warmth of mood. Yet-as Lessing showed in his Laocoon, despite all the crabbed narrowness of his treatment-it is hopeless for the poet to enter into rivalry with the painter or sculptor. The colors and forms of things which the poet paints for the eye o

passent sou

hermine e

sses, fril

ussi l'abi

us Ana

elisse a

e la bris

mains dans

saison, l

vox et d

eures echa

oas autou

ll. If the poet works in the domain of the painter, we tend to judge him by the alien standards of another art, where he is bound to

care; it was clearly the first thing in his mind; the interpretation is an afterthought. The poem therefore falls into two parts-a picture and an interpretation, with little organic relati

COLO

, la-bas ou s

er, comme un

e, ou le soir

er et se mett

elles quittent

er qui s'egren

ns Fair bleu, t

lus loin sur

re ou tous les so

ssaims de f

eux, en palpit

r des les pre

but in poetry the emotion is still the primary thing, springing from inner strivings, and not from objects, as in painting and sculpture. It is therefore no accident that the contemporary imagists tend to abandon the forms of verse; their poetry has little or no regular rhythm; it approximates to prose. For in proportion as poetry becomes free, it ceases to be tied to musical expressiveness, and may become objective, without prejudice to its own nature. Prose poetry, and prose too, of course, may be highly emotional and subjective, for words can expre

ceases to be a bond; and the expression, by taking on regularity of rhythm, acquires a concentration and mnemonic value which free verse cannot achieve. In comparison with free verbal expressions, verse forms are, indeed, artifices; yet they are not artificial, in the bad sense of functionless,

ty that is poetical. We do not ask their makers not to produce them, nor do we condemn the pleasures which they afford us, but we cannot commend them without reservation. For the best poems achieve a synthesis of the elements of words,-they are at once musical and imaginative and thoughtful. Yet with difficulty; for there is an antagonism among the elements: when the music is insistent, the thought is obscured; when the images are elaborate, their meaning is lost to sight; when the thought is subtle or profound, it rejects the image and is careless of sound. Swinburne's poetry is full of philosophy, but is so sensuous and musical that we miss its thoughts; Browning is too subtle a thinker to be a musician. The complexity of poetry is the source of its strength, lending it something of the inwardness

the poem is the "I" who read. This is especially true when the setting and causes of the emotion are without name or place or date; the poem then shares the timelessness and universality of music. In such a lyric there is complete symmetry in the relation between speaker and hearer; the poet unburdens his heart to us, and we in receiving his message tell it back to him. When, on the other hand, in explaining his feelings, the poet

tterance, while in lyric poetry, utterance is complete in itself. The one is social, the other personal: in the appreciation of the lyric, the reader is just himself; in the appreciation of dramatic poetry, he is a whole society, becoming now this man and now that. The unity of the one is the unity of a single mood; the unity of the other is the interaction of the dramatis person as it works itself out in the mind of the reader. And th

ntelligence-are part of what he expresses. He himself is partly theme. No matter how hard he may try to do so, he cannot exclude himself; through his choice of words, through his illustrations, through his style, "which is the man," he will reveal himself. [Footnote: See Lipps: Aesthetik, Bd. 1, s. 495 et seq.] We inevitably apprehend, not merely his thoughts, but him thinking. In the epic

ack the vivid reality of things present. Moreover, since the past is finished, unlike the present which is ever moving and creating itself anew, the epic, in comparison with the drama, comes to us with its parts as it were coexisting and complete, more after the manner of space than of time. And just as a spatial thing allows us to survey its parts by turn, since they are all there before we look;

llows, but with his environment. Fate, in the sense of the non-human determinants of man's career, can show its hand. In the Odyssey, for example, shipwreck and the interference of the gods are factors as decisive as Odysseus' courage and cunning. By contrast, in lyric poetry, nature is merely a reflection of moods; in dramatic poetry, it is simply the passive, causal