Doth long, with fragrant moan, to meet To greet the bee, at evening light, Tennyson held it essential that the poet should have a fine ear for vowel-sounds and an ability to kick “the geese out of the boat," that is, to avoid sibilations. He declared that he "never put two s's together in any verse of mine. My line is not, as often quoted, but And freedom broadens slowly down, And freedom slowly broadens down." In laying down this rule, Tennyson was refining upon the practice of Shakspere, who unhesitatingly ends one word with an s and begins the next with the same sound: The multitudinous seas incarnadine. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. But that our loves and comforts should increase. I am thy father's spirit. This liberty of Shakspere's is the more significant, because these quotations are all taken from his plays, where every line was intended to be spoken. Yet Tennyson's insistence upon the high standard of avoiding the succession of s's is evidence that he kept in mind always the effect of his lines upon the ear. Tennyson lacks the large affluence of Shakspere; his art is more timid; but it is ever worthy of the most careful study. He was what he called Catullus, a "consummate metrist," avid of experiment and untiring in search of ultimate perfection. Consider, for another example, how skilfully he colliterates the short i sound with thin t's and k's to gain an effect of insignificance: The little rift within the lover's lute, Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit, in which there are eight varied t's and seven i's. The precept and the practice of Tennyson have left a deep impress upon the technic of all the later versewriters of our language. His influence was beneficial in raising the level of technical accomplishment. It has made the average versifier ashamed of negligent work. The lyrists of to-day may have only a few burning words to utter and the torch of poesy may be dimmer than a generation ago, because our bards have now no message tipped with flame; but they see clearly while the lamp holds out to burn. They know how to say what little they may have to say. As Tennyson himself asserted late in life, All can grow the flower now, For all have got the seed. Of course, there is an ever-present danger that manner may come to be more highly esteemed than matter. Stedman was not overstating the case when he asserted that certain "non-creative writers lavish all their ingenuity upon decoration until it becomes a vice. You cannot long disguise a lack of native vigor by ornament and novel effects. Over-decoration of late is the symptom of over-prolonged devotion to the technical side of poetry. All of the countless effects of technic are nothing without that psychical beauty imparted by the true vitality—are of less value than faith and works without love. The vox humana must be heard. That alone can give quality to a poem ; the most refined and artistic verse is cold and forceless without it. A soulless poem is a stained glass window with the light shining on and not through it." Yet it is well to have the instruments of the art kept fit for the service of the truly creative poet when he shall come. The bugle will be ready to his hand, when he arrives to blow a mighty blast. No artist can have too great technical dexterity; and every artist must serve his apprenticeship in the workshop, learning his trade. In default of the major poet, with his message for all men, we can find delight in the dexterity of the minor poets and in the skill with which they carve their cameos. We can take a keen pleasure in the measured movement of this stanza of Aldrich's "Voice of the Sea," with its certainty of touch, its effective repetitions, and its perfect adjustment of sound to sense: In the hush of the autumn night I hear the voice of the sea, It seems to say to me Mine are the winds above, And the dead of long ago. We can enjoy also the skilful interweaving of rimes, the delicate play of alliteration and of colliteration, the artful selection of thin vowel-sounds and thin consonants, in these quatrains of Riley's : When chirping crickets fainter cry, And pale stars blossom in the sky, And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom When locust-blossoms fleck the walk, And up the tiger-lily stalk, The glow-worm crawls and clings and falls And it is well now and then to study a masterpiece of poetry, like Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar," and examine its workmanship, if we wish to convince ourselves anew that content and form are Siamese twins, after all, and that one cannot exist without the other, born at the same moment: Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. It would be difficult to set a more profitable task before any student than to ask him to take this lovely lyric apart and to discover how much of its ineffable and intangible beauty is due to the poet's artistry, to his mastery of alliteration and colliteration, to his exquisite feeling for vowel-sounds, to his firm control over contrasting consonants, to his intuitive sense of rhythm, and to his perfect understanding of the value of an adroitly varied refrain, to the antithesis of "Sunset and evening star" with "Twilight and evening bell," and to the final recurrence of the figure of the bar to be crossed which is suggested in the first quatrain. Perhaps the refrain is not fairly to be classed under tone-color; and yet it may as well be considered here as later. The refrain may be defined as a phrase, often filling a whole line, which recurs again and again at intervals, sometimes absolutely unchanged and sometimes artfully modified in meaning. This device, which we use now for sustaining and reawakening the interest of the hearer, is of very high antiquity; and it is frequent in the folksongs of various peoples. Macaulay employed it in the stirring stanzas in which he sought to recapture the swiftness of the primitive ballad; and in the "Battle of Ivry" he ends off again and again with "King Henry of Navarre." Tennyson chose to set his refrain at the beginning of every stanza of his "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." Kipling makes us feel its stark power in his gruesome "Danny Deever" and he forced it to lend weight to his lofty "Recessional." Walt Whitman seized it for once in his noble lament for Lincoln, where every stanza begins with and O Captain, my Captain! every stanza ends with Fallen cold and dead. |