Chapter V: Melody, Harmony, and Modulation (2)

Bearing all down, in thy precipitancy.
TENNYSON, Gareth, 8.

First as in fear, step after step, she stole
Down the long tower stairs, hesitating.
TENNYSON, Lancelot and Elaine, 342 f.

This from Surrey's Æneid, because of its early date:

He with his hands strave to unloose the knots.

These two from Elizabethan drama--hundreds of interesting lines may be culled from this source, but the field is to be trodden with caution because of the uncertainties of the texts; though we quote 'Hamlet' we cannot be sure we are quoting Shakespeare, and in such a matter as this _certainty_ is indispensable--

Do more than this in sport.--Father, father.
King Lear, II, i.

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.
WEBSTER, Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii.

And finally, three examples from Samson Agonistes of interwoven tunes, a sort of counterpoint of two melodies sounding simultaneously--

My griefs not only pain me
As a lingering disease,
But, finding no redress, ferment and rage.
617 ff.

To boast
Again in safety what thou would'st have done
To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.
1127 ff.

Force with force
Is well ejected when the conqueror can.
1206 f.

He all their ammunition
And feats of war defeats,
With plain heroic magnitude of mind.
1277 ff.

Stevenson compared the writer of verse with a juggler who cleverly keeps several balls in the air at one time. The comparison is suggestive, but is true only so far as it indicates the difficulty of the operation for those who are not jugglers. The juggler does not devote conscious attention to each individual ball. He has learned to keep them all moving at once, and when he starts them they go _of their own accord_. Now and then, by conscious effort, he shoots one higher than the others--but there is no need to labor the illustration. The technique of versification is a mechanical thing to be learned like any mechanical thing. The poet learns it--in sundry different ways, to be sure--and when he has mastered it he is no more conscious of its complex details while he is composing than the pianist is conscious of his ten fingers while he is interpreting a Chopin concerto. There is a feeling, an idea, a poetic conception, which demands expression in words. The compound of direct intellectual activity and of automatic responses from a reservoir of intuitions long since filled by practice and experience no poet has ever been able to analyze--much less a psychologist who is not a poet. Often the best ideas, the best phrases, the perfect harmony of thought and expression _emerge_ spontaneously; sometimes they have to be sought, diligently and laboriously sought.

"When one studies a prosody or a metrical form," says M. Verrier, "one may well ask if these alliterations, these assonances, these consonances, these rimes, these rhythmic movements, these metres, which one coldly describes in technical terms--if they actually produce the designated effects and especially if the poet 'thought of all that.' So it is when an amateur opens a scientific treatise on music and learns by what series of chords one modulates from one key to another, or even how the chord of the dominant seventh is resolved to the tonic in its fundamental form.... That the poet has not 'thought of all that' is evident, but not in the ordinary sense. When the illiterate countryman makes use of the subjunctive, he is not aware that a subjunctive exists, still less that one uses it for historical and logical and also perhaps for emotional reasons. But the subjunctive exists nevertheless, and the reasons too."[99]

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| [99] Verrier, vol. i, p. 134. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

The analogy is helpful, though not altogether persuasive. There is the familiar story of Browning's reply to the puzzled admirer: "Madam, I have no idea what I meant when I wrote those lines." So much for warning to the oversedulous. But if I honestly find and feel a marvelous rhythmic effect where Robert Browning did not plan one, then such effect certainly exists--for me, at least, and for all whom I can persuade of its presence. On the other hand, there is a potent warning in the following exuberance:

But the thought of the king and his villainies stings him into rage
again, and the rhythm slowly rises on three secondary stresses--

or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal.

The last phrase twists and writhes through a series of secondary
stresses with an intensity of hatred and bitterness that takes
shape in a following series of peculiar falling rhythm waves, each
one of which has a foam-covered crest 'white as the bitten lip of
hate.' This rhythm, curling, hissing, tense, topful of venom,
Alecto's serpents coiling and twisting through it, makes one of the
most awful passages in all English poetry--

Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

and culminates in Hamlet's cry

O vengeance!

which, with its peculiar sustained falling close, vibrates through
the rest of the verse.[100]

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| [100] Mark H. Liddell, An Introduction to the Scientific |
| Study of English Poetry, New York, 1901, pp. 291 f. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

Professional prosodists doubt and dispute one another with the zeal and confidence of metaphysicians and editors of classical texts. They are all blind guides--perhaps even the present one!--if followed slavishly. There is only one means (a threefold unity) to the right understanding of the metrical element in poetry: a knowledge of the simple facts of metrical form, a careful scrutiny of the existent phenomena of ordinary language rhythms, and a study of the ways in which the best poets have fitted the one to the other with the most satisfying and most moving results.

GLOSSARIAL INDEX

A few terms not mentioned in the text are included here for the
sake of completeness.

ACCENT, the greater emphasis placed, in normal speech, on one syllable of a work as compared with the other syllables, 6, 34 f., 37 f. _See also_ STRESS; it is convenient to distinguish the two terms, but they are sometimes used interchangeably.

ACEPHALOUS, headless; used to describe a line which lacks the unstressed element of the first foot. _See_ TRUNCATION.

ALEXANDRINE, a 6-stress iambic line, 85 ff. 88.

ALLITERATION, repetition of the same or closely similar sounds at the beginning of neighboring words or accented syllables (occasionally also unaccented syllables); sometimes called _Initial Rime_, 166.

AMPHIBRACH, a classical foot, ◡--◡, 51.

ANACRUSIS, one or more extra syllables at the beginning of a line, 71.

ANAPEST, a foot consisting of two unstresses and a stress, ◡◡_̷, 38, 51, 70, 80 ff.

ANTISTROPHE, the counter-turn, or stanza answering to the first, of a Pindaric Ode, 131.

ARSIS, a confusing term sometimes borrowed from classical prosody for the stressed element of a foot; the unstressed element is called _Thesis_.

ASSONANCE, the repetition, in final syllables, of the same vowel sound followed by a different consonantal sound, 166 f. _See_ RIME.

BALLAD METRE (Common Measure, C. M. of the Hymnals), the stanza _a^{4}b^{3}a^{4}b^{3}_, but admitting certain variations, 87, 103.

BALLADE, a formal metrical scheme of three stanzas riming _ababbcbC_ with an Envoi _bcbC_, keeping the same rimes throughout, and the last line of each stanza (_C_) being the same. The lines are usually 5-stress, 163.

BLANK VERSE, unrimed 5-stress lines used continuously, 94, 133 ff., ch. V passim; the 'single-moulded' line, 135 f.; Marlow's, 137 f.; Shakespeare's, 138 ff., later dramatic, 140 f.; Milton's, 142 ff.; conversational, 147 ff.

CAESURA, the classical term for a pause, usually grammatical and extra-metrical (i. e. not reckoned in the time scheme). When it follows an accented syllable it is called _masculine_; when it follows an unaccented syllable it is _feminine_; when it occurs within a line it is called _medial_; when it occurs after an 'extra' unstressed syllable it is called _epic_ (though as frequent in drama as in epic), as--

And earth's base built on stubble. | But come, let's on.
MILTON, Comus, l. 509

CATALEXIS; _see_ TRUNCATION.

CHORIAMB, a classical foot, --◡◡--, 51.

COMMON MEASURE (C. M.), the regular _Ballad Metre_, 103 f.

CONSONANCE, specifically, in metrics, a form of incomplete rime in which the consonantal sounds agree but the vowel sounds differ, 166 f. _See_ RIME.

COÖRDINATION, the agreement or coincidence of the natural prose rhythm with the metrical (rhythmical) pattern; the process of making them agree, 17 f.

COUPLET, a group of two lines riming _aa_, 88; _closed_ couplet, one which contains an independent clause or sentence and does not run on into the next of the series, 91 f.; _heroic_ couplet, one of 5-stress lines, usually iambic (called also _pentameter_ couplet), 89, 93 ff.; _short_ couplet, one of 4-stress iambic or trochaic lines (also called _octosyllabic_ couplet), 89 ff.

DACTYL, a foot consisting of a stress followed by two unstresses, _̷◡◡, 38, 51, 70, 84.

DECASYLLABLE, a 5-stress (pentameter) line; a term used properly only of syllable-counting metres such as the French.

DISTICH, couplet; usually in classical prosody the elegiac couplet of a hexameter and a pentameter, 162.

DOGGEREL, any rough irregular metre.

DUPLE RHYTHM, a rhythm of two beats (though corresponding generally to ¾ time in music), one stress and one unstress, _̷◡ or ◡_̷.

DURATION, the length of time occupied by the enunciation of speech-sounds, and therefore an element in all language rhythm, 5. _See also_ TIME.

ELEGIAC STANZA, the quatrain _abab^{5}_, 103, 107 f.

ELISION, the omission or crowding out of unstressed words or unaccented syllables to make the metre smoother; a term belonging to classical prosody and inappropriate in English prosody except where syllable-counting verse is concerned. Various forms of Elision are called Syncope, Synizesis, and Synalœpha.

END-STOPPED LINE, one with a full or strong grammatical pause at the end.

ENJAMBEMENT, a French term ('long stride') for the continuation of the sense from one line (or couplet) to the next without a grammatical pause, 62, 92; opposite of End-stopping. _See_ OVERFLOW; RUN-ON LINE.

EPODE, the third (sixth, ninth) stanza of a Pindaric ode, 131.

FEMININE ENDING, an extra unstressed syllable at the end of an iambic or anapestic line, 71.

FOOT, the smallest metrical unit of rhythm, composed of a stressed element and one or more unstressed elements (or a pause), 49 ff.

FREE-VERSE, irregular rhythms, not conforming to a fixed metrical pattern, 150 ff.

HEADLESS LINE, acephalous; and _see_ TRUNCATION.

HENDECASYLLABLE, a 5-stress line with feminine ending, thus making ordinarily eleven syllables; usually referring to a special metre used by Catullus and others (as in Tennyson's imitation, 'O you chorus of indolent reviewers'), 162.

HEROIC LINE, a 5-stress iambic line.

HEXAMETER, _classical_ or _dactylic_, the standard line of Greek and Latin poetry, composed of six feet, the fifth of which is nearly always a dactyl, the sixth a spondee or trochee, the rest either dactyls or spondees; imitated in English with more or less success by substituting stress for quantity, 159 ff.

HIATUS, unexpected absence of elision.

HOLD, pause on a word or syllable, 62 f.

HOVERING ACCENT, a term sometimes used for the coordination of the metrical rhythm ◡_̷◡_̷ with the prose rhythm ◡◡_̷_̷ as in "and serene air" (Comus, l. 4); the accent is thought of as 'hovering' over the first syllable of _serene_, 182.

HYPERMETRIC, used of a syllable which is not reckoned or expected in the regular metrical pattern.

IAMB, _Iambus_, a foot consisting of an unstress and a stress, ◡_̷, 38, 51, 69, 84 ff.

IN MEMORIAM STANZA, a quatrain riming _abba^{4}_, 103, 105 ff.

INVERSION, the substitution of a trochee for an iamb or of a dactyl for an anapest (or vice versa), 51, 187 ff.; a misleading term; see SUBSTITUTION.

LENGTH, the comparative duration of the enunciation of syllables, 33 f. In classical prosody syllables were regarded by convention as either 'long' or 'short' (a 'long' being theoretically equal to two 'shorts'), and this usage has been sometimes (not successfully, and yet not entirely without reason) super-imposed upon English verse.

LINE, a metrical division composed of one or more feet and either used continuously or combined in stanzas, 52 f., 69 ff. _See_ VERSE (1).

LOUDNESS, the comparative strength or volume of a sound, 6.

LONG MEASURE (L. M. of the Hymnals) the quatrain riming _abab^{4}_ or _abcb^{4}_, 103.

METRE, a regular, artificial, rhythmic pattern, the formal basis of versification.

OCTOSYLLABLE, an 8-syllable or 4-stress line. _See_ DECASYLLABLE.

OCTAVE, a stanza of eight lines; especially the two quatrains of an Italian sonnet, 120.

ODE, a kind of exalted lyric poem, not strictly a metrical term but often used as such to describe the simple stanzaic structure of the 'Horatian' ode or the complex system of strophe, antistrophe and epode of the 'Pindaric' ode, 131 ff.

ONOMATOPOEIA, primarily a rhetorical figure but of much wider application, covering all cases from single words to phrases and lines of verse in which there is agreement, by echo or suggestions, between the sound of the words and their meaning; as a metrical term, the agreement of the verse rhythm with the idea expressed, 177 ff.

OTTAVA RIMA, the stanza (of Italian origin) riming _abababcc^{5}_, 111 f.

OVERFLOW, the running over of the parts of a sentence from one line to the next without a pause at the end of the line, 62. _See_ ENJAMBEMENT, RUN-ON.

PAEON, a classical foot, --◡◡◡, 51, 76 ff.

PAUSE, (1) _logical_ or _grammatical_, that which separates the formal parts of a sentence, 61, 63; (2) _rhythmical_, that which separates the breath-groups of spoken sentences, 61 ff.; (3) _metrical_, (_a_) that which separates the parts of a metrical pattern, as at the end of a line, 62, and also (_b_) that which takes the place of an unstressed element of a foot, being equivalent to the rest in music (indicated by the sign ‸), 62 ff.

PENTAMETER, a 5-stress line, 52. (This term is well established, but open to objection.)

PHRASE, a group of words held together either by their meaning (or content) or by their sound, 32 f; 37 ff.

PINDARIC, _see_ ODE.

PITCH, the characteristic of a sound dependent upon its number of vibrations per second; (usually indicated by its place in the musical scale; high or 'acute,' low or 'grave'); 5 f., 35 ff.; sometimes functions in verse for emphasis or for stress, 8, 35 ff., 181 ff.

POULTER'S MEASURE, an old-fashioned couplet, composed of an alexandrine and a septenary, _a^{6}a^{7}_, 88 f.

PROSE, _Characteristic_, prose with natural and varied rhythms, 23 ff.; _Cadenced_, prose with carefully sought rhythmic movements, 27 ff.; _Metrical_, a hybrid of prose and verse, 29 ff.

PYRRHIC, a classical foot, ◡◡, 51.

QUANTITY, the length of a syllable; established by convention in classical prosody; in English prosody very uncertain but always present. _See_ Length.

QUATRAIN, a stanza of four lines, 103 ff.

REFRAIN, a line or part of a line repeated according to the metrical pattern, 184 f.; the term _repetend_ is occasionally used.

REST, _see_ PAUSE (3, _b_).

RHYTHM, regular arrangement or repetition of varied parts, _see_ ch. I, ch. II, and passim; _objective_, having external concrete existence, 3 ff.; _subjective_, felt by the individual, 3, 12 ff.; _spatial_, in which the units are spaces, 4; _temporal_, in which the units are periods of time, 4 ff.; _rising_, beginning with the stressed element, 38; _falling_, beginning with the unstressed element, 38; _duple_, having a stress and one unstressed element (syllable), 38; _triple_, having a stress and two unstressed elements (syllables), 38.

RIME, repetition of the same sound (or sounds) usually at the end of the line, 165 ff.; _Masculine_, when the repeated sound consists of one stressed syllable; _Feminine_, when a stressed + one or more unstressed syllables; _Triple_, when a stressed + two unstressed syllables; _Echo_ or _Identical_, when the preceding consonantal sound also agrees; _Eye-rime_, when the words agree in spelling but not in pronunciation, 174. As distinct from end-rime, there is _Internal_ or _Leonine_ rime, which occurs within the line (sometimes merely a matter of printing). _See also_ ASSONANCE, CONSONANCE.

RIME COUÉE, _see_ TAIL-RIME STANZA.

RIME-ROYAL, a stanza borrowed by Chaucer from the French, _ababbcc^{5}_; also called _Troilus stanza_, _Chaucer stanza_, 109 f.

RONDEAU, RONDEL, French metrical forms characterized by the repetition of the first phrase or lines twice as a refrain, e. g. _aabba aabR aabbaR_ (R being the first phrase of the first line), or _ABba abAB abbaAB_ (the capitals indicating the whole lines repeated), 163.

RUN-ON LINE, one in which the sense runs over into the following line without a grammatical pause, 62, 92. _See_ ENJAMBEMENT; OVERFLOW.

SAPPHIC, a 4-line stanza used by Sappho (and Catullus and Horace) and often imitated in English; the pattern is --◡ | --◡ | --◡◡ | --◡ | --◡ thrice repeated, then --◡◡ | --◡, 161 f.

SEPTENARY, SEPTENARIUS (fourteener), the old 14-syllable or 7-stress iambic line, later split up into the Ballad metre, 87; and used also with the alexandrine in the Poulter's Measure.

SESTET, a group of six lines, especially the last six of an Italian sonnet, 120.

SESTINA, an elaborate metrical form consisting of six 6-line stanzas and a 3-line stanza with repetition of the same end-words in different order instead of rime, 164.

SHORT MEASURE (S. M. of the Hymnals), the Poulter's Measure broken into a quatrain: _ab^{3}a^{4}b^{3}, ab^{3}c^{4}b^{3}_, 89.

SONNET, 118 ff., (1) _Italian_, a 14-line stanza composed of two quatrains riming _abba_ and two tercets riming _cde cde_ (_cde dee_, etc.), 120 ff.; (2) _English_, 14-line stanza of three quatrains riming _abab cdcd efef_, and a closing couplet _gg_, 127 ff. There are also mixed forms and many variations.

SPENSERIAN STANZA, a 9-line stanza riming _ababbcbc^{5}c^{6}_; the final alexandrine is the characteristic feature, 85 f., 112 ff. Several variations were used in the seventeenth century consisting of shorter lines with a closing alexandrine, 117.

SPONDEE, a classical prosody a foot of two long syllables; in English prosody a foot of two 'long' or accented or stressed words or syllables, 51.

STANZA, a group of lines arranged according to a special pattern, usually marked by rimes, 53, 88 ff.; _see also_ Verse (3).

STRESS, the comparative emphasis which distinguishes a sound from others not so strongly or plainly emphasized, 34 f., 37 f., 56 f., 65 f. Then by UNSTRESS or no stress is meant absence or comparative weakness of emphasis. _Stress_ is used in this book for rhythmic and metrical emphasis; _see_ ACCENT.

STROPHE, same as Stanza, 53; in the Pindaric ode, the first (fourth, etc.) stanza, 131.

SUBSTITUTION (1) replacing one rhythmic unit by its temporal equivalent, as an iamb by an anapest or by a trochee, etc., 20; called also _Inversion_ (_q.v._) of the foot; (2) the use of pitch or duration (pause) for a stress or unstress, 20, 181 ff.

SYLLABLE, the smallest and simplest unit of speech-sound, 32 f.; sometimes used as a metrical unit, 49.

SYNCOPATION, the union, or perception of the union, of two or more rhythmic patterns, 18 ff.

TAIL-RIME STANZA, one usually of six lines riming _aa^{4}b^{3}cc^{4}b^{3}_, but with many variations (e. g. the Burns stanza, _aaa^{4}b^{2}a^{4}b^{2})_, the general type being a combination of long lines in groups with single short lines, 109.

TAILED SONNET, a sonnet with a tail (coda), or addition. About the only one in English is Milton's On the New Forcers of Conscience: the rimes are _abba abba cde dec^{5} c^{3}ff^{5}f^{3}gg^{5}_.

TERCET, a group of three lines, especially in the sestet of the Italian sonnet, 102, 120.

TERZA RIMA, an Italian rime scheme _aba bcb cdc_ ... _yzy zz_; rarely used in English, but triumphantly (in stanzas) in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, 164.

TETRAMETER, a classical term (four 'measures' or eight feet) incorrectly used for the English 4-stress line, 52.

THESIS, _see_ ARSIS.

TIME, an inevitable element in English verse (as well as prose), but not the sole basis, 56 ff.

TONE-COLOR, TONE QUALITY, 'timbre,' the characteristic of a sound determined by the number of partial tones (overtones), as richness, sweetness, thinness, stridency; hence sometimes applied to the musical quality of a verse or phrase, 6 and note, 177.

TRIBRACH, a classical foot, ◡◡◡, 51.

TRIMETER, a classical term (three 'measures' or six feet) incorrectly used for the English 3-stress line, 52.

TRIOLET, a French metrical form, mainly for light themes, riming _ABaAabAB_(the capitals indicating repeated lines) and usually with short lines, 163.

TRIPLET, _a_ group of three lines, especially when rimed _aaa_, 101 f. _See also_ TERCET.

TROCHEE, a foot consisting of a stress and an unstress, _̷◡, 38, 51, 70, 82 ff.

TRUNCATION, omission of the final unstressed element of a line, usually in the trochaic metres, 76; also called _Catalexis_ (the opposite of which, the non-omission of this element, is _Acatalexis_). _Initial Truncation_ is the omission of the first unstressed element of a line, usually in the iambic metres, thus making a _Headless_ verse.

UNSTRESS, the element of a rhythmic unit which is without emphasis or has a relatively weak emphasis.

VERSE, (1) a metrical line, 52; (2) collectively, for metre, metrical form; (3) commonly in England, and in America in the churches, used for Stanza.

VILLANELLE, a French verse form of nineteen lines on three rimes, certain lines being repeated at fixed intervals, 163 f.