English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and HistoryAlden, Raymond MacDonald
General
English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History
Alden, Raymond MacDonald
English language -- Versification; English poetry
Aside from the vibratory mission of rhythm, its little staff of
adjuvants, by the very discipline and limitations which they impose,
take poetry out of the plane of common speech, and make it an art which
lifts the hearer to its own unusual key. Schiller writes to Goethe that
"rhythm, in a dramatic work, treats all characters and all situations
according to one law.... In this manner it forms the atmosphere for the
poetic creation. The more material part is left out, for only what is
spiritual can be borne by this thin element." In real, that is,
spontaneous minstrelsy, the fittest assonance, consonance, time, even
rime, ... come of themselves with the imaginative thought.... Such is
the test of genuineness, the underlying principle being that the
masterful words of all poetic tongues are for the most part in both
their open and consonantal sounds related to their meanings, so that
with the inarticulate rhythm of impassioned thought we have a
correspondent verbal rhythm for its vehicle. The whole range of poetry
which is vital, from the Hebrew psalms and prophecies, in their original
text and in our great English version, to the Georgian lyrics and
romances and the Victorian idyls, confirms the statement of Mill that
"the deeper the feeling, the more characteristic and decided the
rhythm." The rapture of the poet governs the tone and accent of his
"high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted."
(EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN: _The Nature and Elements of Poetry_, pp.
51-55.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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