English Metrical Law
In 1877 Patmore published what everyone right away regards equally his best work, The Unknown Eros (encouraged yesteryear his saintly daughter, Mary Christina, who became a nun), together with inwards the next twelvemonth Amelia, his ain favourite with
his poems, with an interesting together with influential essay on English Metrical Law equally a form of preface to it. As he himself pointed out years later, the basic principles of the essay became widely accepted with critics inside a decade or two. His friend the poet Alice Meynell writes of him [cited inwards Derek Patmore’s Life together with Times of Coventry Patmore, p. 193],
“Metre delighted him. He justly held that his mastery of the octosyllabic verse with its rhymes was worth the long written report he had given it. The words, equally has been said, were born alive; their club was to him a affair of keen pleasure. The lines together with pauses of the Odes, measured chiefly yesteryear the variable breathing of thought together with passion, he holds to live the locomote of an fine art all his own, fifty-fifty his ain discovery. Let it live noted that when he talked of his poems, it was of their metres.”I desire to innovate some of the points Patmore makes nearly poesy inwards his essay on metrical law, which is inwards role a defense of the irregular ode shape used inwards The Unknown Eros together with elsewhere. I am no practiced on poetry, together with I am afraid I got lost inwards the detailed declaration nearly spondees together with dactyls, but to the extent I tin give the sack follow it, I honor it makes sense of a lot of things that receive got e'er puzzled together with intrigued me.
Before reading the essay on English Metrical Law, it had already begun to dawn on me that, equally Patmore explains beautifully, what goodness prose has in common with goodness poesy is music, “harmonious numbers”, together with specifically rhythm. (Flaubert is famously said to receive got worked out a musical rhythm for the concluding pages of Madame Bovary earlier coming upwardly with the words.) Rhythm or metre is a mathematical structure, a construction of repetition together with variation. It creates a shape inwards time, a dynamic flowing displace that carries the take away heed along with it. If prose lacks rhythm, it leaves us behind. Our attending is also easily diverted from the direction the writer intends us to move.
(Something similar is truthful of all art, from music through to architecture together with fifty-fifty painting, which, although seemingly static, requires us to displace our attending through fourth dimension inwards club to absorb it. H5N1 icon that tin give the sack live appreciated exclusively at a unmarried glance, without leaving something farther to explore, is belike non a real goodness painting.)
This insight into the musical nature of all speech, specially poetry, together with the refusal to describe whatsoever clear lines betwixt poesy together with prose, lies approximately the pump of his declaration inwards this essay. Patmore finds back upwardly inwards Hegel’s writing on music together with metre, to the upshot that the rules of formal versification do non impede, but rather facilitate, the “free outflow of poetic thought”. He together with so goes on to analyse the human relationship of life to police inwards the diverse degrees together with kinds of metre inwards poetry, “from the half-prosaic dramatic verse to the extremest elaboration of high lyric metres.”
Although he defends the rules of versification, he also argues that the best poesy does non follow the rules tamely together with equally if mechanically, but volition bring feeling yesteryear constant fiddling tensions with the underlying structure, fiddling departures from the criterion pattern. (The same is truthful inwards music. It must constantly surprise us inwards fiddling ways; which it tin give the sack only do if the shape to which it basically conforms creates a framework of expectation.) Thus “there seems to live a perpetual conflict betwixt the police of the verse together with liberty of the language, together with each is incessantly, though insignificantly, violated for the exercise of giving upshot to the other.”
Patmore believed that music together with metre “is equally natural to spoken linguistic communication equally an fifty-fifty stair is natural to walking.” Just equally “dancing is no to a greater extent than than an growth of the chemical component of mensurate which already exists inwards walking, so verse is but an additional grade of that metre which is inherent inwards prose speaking.” He goes on to demonstrate equally much with some choice examples of English linguistic communication prose, which leads him into a technical give-and-take of metrical accent together with tone inwards poesy together with prose, comparison Greek together with English linguistic communication forms.
From at that spot he returns to the subject of music inwards poesy – what pleases us inwards verse, he says, is non exactly rhythm, inwards the sense of a measured beat, but “rhythmical melody”; non monotones similar the ticking of a clock or the pulsing of a chime, but the repetition of sounds inwards which tin give the sack live heard (or imagined) a variety of tones. The real highest shape of verse hence coincides with the highest shape of human speech, namely song, where all these factors are combined with the thoughts together with ideas that may live suggested inwards words.
This does non hateful that all poesy must live spoken aloud or performed, quite the contrary. Patmore notes that “few lovers of goodness poesy attention to hear it read or acted; for, although themselves, inwards all likelihood, quite unable to give such poesy a truthful together with total vocal interpretation, their unexpressed imagination of its music is much higher than their ain or whatsoever ordinary reading of it would be. Poets themselves receive got sometimes been real bad readers of their ain verses; together with it seems non unlikely that their acuate sense of what such reading ought to be, discomposes together with discourages them when they travail to give their musical thought a textile realization.”
H5N1 give-and-take of “metrical isochronism” or the necessary sectionalisation of verse into intervals of equal length – the Definition of metre – leads to the betoken that “catalexis”, when syllables seem to live missing from the regular metre, must involve the exchange of appropriate pauses (which oftentimes play a to a greater extent than of import role than those due to punctuation). On this basis, together with the full general police that he formulates to the upshot that English linguistic communication verse is made upwardly of metres bounded yesteryear alternate accents – so that the mensurate of verse is twice that of prose – he concludes that at that spot is no such thing equally “hypercatalexis” or superfluous syllables, but that all English linguistic communication verse inwards mutual cadence tin give the sack live measured inwards dimeters, trimeters, or tetrameters; that is to say, inwards groups of 8, 12, or xvi syllables.
The concluding department of his essay distinguishes the iii corking classes of English linguistic communication poetry: alliterative, rhyming, together with rhymeless or “blank” verse. Rhyme is “the corking means, inwards modern languages, of marker essential metrical pauses.” Alliteration, or the repetition of consonants, which is the solid seat down of Anglo-Saxon poetry, is also a way of marker the metre yesteryear “conferring emphasis on the accent”. Patmore continues inwards a detailed give-and-take where I won’t assay to follow him, but his intention is foremost to defend together with explicate the of import role of alliteration, cunningly used fifty-fifty inwards modern verse to heighten the impression of metre “as if yesteryear magic”, together with and so to defend the exercise of rhyme against its critics (such equally Thomas Campion), earlier live on discussing the metres used inwards blank verse inwards the concluding paragraphs of the essay.
His concluding words of advice are to the immature poet. “No poet, unless he feels himself to live inwards a higher house discipline, together with hence inwards a higher house the greatest poets of whose modes of composition nosotros receive got whatsoever record, ought to scream back of offset his career with blank verse.” It is much easier, according to Patmore, to laid out inwards other, to a greater extent than patently hard metres: “The greater the frequency of the rhyme, together with the to a greater extent than fixed the house of the grammatical pause, together with the less liberty of changing the cardinal foot, the less volition live the poet’s obligation to originate his ain rhythms.”
In Patmore’s Preface to the 3rd edition of Unknown Eros inwards 1890 he wrote what amounts I suppose almost to a form of summary of his corking essay on metrical law. It reads equally follows:
To this edition of “The Unknown Eros” are added all the other poems I receive got written, inwards what I venture—because it has no other name—to telephone telephone “catalectic verse.” Nearly all English linguistic communication metres owe their beingness equally metres to “catalexis,” or pause, for the fourth dimension of i or to a greater extent than feet, and, equally a rule, the seat together with amount of catalexis are fixed. But the verse inwards which this mass is written is catalectic par excellence, employing the intermission (as it does the rhyme) with liberty only limited yesteryear the exigencies of poetic passion. From the fourth dimension of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English linguistic communication poesy receive got been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been to a greater extent than or less discredited yesteryear the far greater issue of abortive efforts, on the role sometimes of considerable poets, to conform it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it yesteryear rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character.
Some persons, unlearned inwards the dependent of metre, receive got objected to this form of verse that it is “lawless.” But it has its laws equally genuinely equally whatsoever other. In its highest order, the lyric or “ode,” it is a tetrameter, the trouble having the fourth dimension of 8 iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the seem of a less-exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the fourth dimension of 6 iambics, or fifty-fifty a dimeter, with the fourth dimension of four; together with it is allowable to vary the tetrameter “ode” yesteryear the occasional introduction of passages inwards either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, yesteryear the exercise of whatsoever other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced, inwards the writing of all poets who receive got employed this metre successfully, yesteryear odd frequency inwards the recurrence of the same rhyme….
I do non pretend to receive got done to a greater extent than than real moderate judge to the exceeding grace together with dignity together with the inexhaustible expressiveness of which this form of metre is capable; but I tin give the sack say that I receive got never attempted to write inwards it inwards the absence of that i justification of together with prime number qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought that “voluntary moved harmonious numbers.”
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