'More pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical compositions than in prose.' The reason of this seems to be that the bright beams forever raying from the Divine Sun of unity and order, shine through the measured beat of the rhythm, and are always felt as life and peace, even when their golden light is broken by the wild and drifting clouds of human woe, or seen athwart the surging and blinding mists of mortal anguish. Rhythm lurks in the inmost heart of language, accenting our words that their enunciation may be clear and distinct; lengthening and shortening the time of our syllables that they may be expressive, emotional, and musical. Let the orator as well as the poet study its capabilities; it has more power over the sympathies of the masses than the most labored thought. Although through the quantitive arrangement and determinate accentuation of syllabic sound, rhythm may be exquisitely manifested through language, yet in music alone does it attain its full power and wonderful complexity. For the _tones_ are not _thoughts_, but _feelings_, and yield themselves implicitly to the loving hand which would reunite them and form them into higher unities. These passionate tones, always seeking for and surging into each other, are plastic pearls on the string of rhythm, whose proportions may be indefinitely varied at the will of the fond hand which would wreathe them into strands of symmetrical beauty; while _words_, the vehicles of antagonistic thought, frequently refuse to conform to the requisitions of feeling, are often obstinate and wilful, will not be remodelled, and hard, in their self-sufficiency, refuse to bear any stamp save that of their known and fixed value. Like irregular beads of uncut coral, they protrude their individualities in jagged spikes and unsightly thorns, breaking often the unity of the whole, and painfully wounding the sense of order. The true poet overcomes these difficulties. When, in the hands of a master, they are forced to bend under the onward and impetuous sweep of the passionate rhythm, compelled to sing the tune of the overpowering emotions--the chords of the spirit quiver in response. The heart recognizes the organic law of its own life: _the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising again in ever-renewed exertion, to sink again in ever-new repose_; feeling seems clothing itself with living form, while the divine attribute, Order, marks for the ear, as it links in mystic Unity, the flying footsteps of that forever invisible element by which all mortal being is conditioned and limited: TIME! 'There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan. 'She lays her beams in music, In music every one, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances round the sun.