A STUDY OF VERSIFICATION

CHAPTER I

THE STUDY OF VERSE

As logic does not supply you with arguments, but only defines the mode in which they are to be expressed or used, so versification does not teach you how to write poetry, but how to construct verse. It may be a means to the end, but it does not pretend to assure its attainment. Versification and logic are to poetry and reason what a parapet is to a bridge: they do not convey you across, but prevent you from falling over.-TOM HOOD: The Rules of Rhyme.

THIS is not a handbook of poetics; and its aim is not to consider the several departments of poetry, - epic and lyric and dramatic. It does not deal with simile and metaphor, nor does it seek to open the mind of the student to the nobler beauties of poetry. It is intended to be an introduction to the study of versification, of the metrical mechanism which sustains poetry, and which differentiates poetry from prose.

It is devoted solely to the technic of the art of verse. It is an examination of the tools of the poet's trade. Although poets are said to be born and not made, there is no doubt that they have to be made after they are born. It is not a fact that the born poet warbles native wood-notes wild; he has to serve an apprenticeship to his craft; he has to acquire the art of verse; he has to master its technic and to spy out its secrets. The poet is like the painter, who, as Sir

Joshua Reynolds declared, "is a painter only as he can put in practice what he knows, and communicate those ideas by visible representation."

In his ignorance, the layman may be led to despise technic; but this is a blunder of which the true artist is never guilty. Indeed, the true artist cherishes technic; he is forever thinking about it and enlarging his knowledge of it. He delights in discussing its problems; and when he is moved to talk about his art, technic is ever the theme of his discourse. The treatises on painting, for example, written by painters, by Reynolds or by La Farge, are full of technical criticism; and so are the essays on poetry, written by the poets themselves. The processes of their art are considered with unfailing zest by Pope and Wordsworth, by Coleridge and Poe. In fact, the artists are all aware that technic is almost the only aspect of their art which can be discussed profitably; and every layman can see that it is the only aspect which the artists often care to talk about. The other part, no doubt the loftier part, the poet's message to humanity, this is too ethereal, perhaps too personal, too intimate, too sacred, to bear debate.

Every work of art can be considered from two points of view. It has its content and it has its form. We may prefer to pay attention to what the artist has to say, or we may examine rather how he says it. The content of his work, what he has to say to us, is the more important, of course, but this must depend on his native gift, on his endowment; and it is more or less beyond his control. He utters what he must utter; and he voices what he is inspired to deliver. But the form in which he clothes this message, how he says

what he has to say, - this is what he

make it, no more and no less. This depends on him and on him alone; it is not a gift but an acquisition; it is the result of his skill, of the trouble he is willing to take, of his artistic integrity, of his desire to do his best always, and never to quit his work until he has made it as perfect as he can.

This technical dexterity can be had for the asking; - or, at least, it can be bought with a price. It is the reward of intense interest, of incessant curiosity, of honest labor. And it is worth all that it costs, since we cannot really separate form and content, as we sometimes vainly imagine. What the poet has to say is inextricably intertwined with the way in which he says it, and our appreciation of his ultimate message is enhanced by our delight in his method of presenting it. In fact, our pleasure in his work is often due quite as much to the sheer artistry of his presentation as it is to the actual value of his thought and of his emotion. We might even go further and venture the assertion that it is by style alone that the poet survives, since his native gift profits him little unless he so presents his message that we cannot choose but hear. And, as Professor Bradley declared in one of his "Oxford Lectures on Poetry," "when poetry answers to its idea and is purely or almost purely poetic, we find the identity of form and content, and the degree of purity may be tested by the degree in which we feel it hopeless to convey the effect of a poem or passage in any form but its own."

There is benefit, therefore, for all of us in an endeavor to understand the mechanism of the poet's art, to gain an elementary acquaintance with its processes,