Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins | Page 2

from
rule to give variety, and especially when the natural

rhythm is rising, as in the common ten-syllable or
five-foot verse,
rhymed or blank. These irregularities
are chiefly Reversed Feet and
Reversed or Counterpoint
Rhythm, which two things are two steps or
degrees
of licence in the same kind. By a reversed foot
I mean the
putting the stress where, to judge by
the rest of the measure, the slack
should be and the
slack where the stress, and this is done freely at the

beginning of a line and, in the course of a line, after
a pause; only
scarcely ever in the second foot or
place and never in the last, unless
when the poet
designs some extraordinary effect; for these places are

characteristic and sensitive and cannot well be touched.
But the
reversal of the first foot and of some middle
(3) foot after a strong
pause is a thing so natural that
our poets have generally done it, from
Chaucer down,
without remark and it commonly passes unnoticed
and
cannot be said to amount to a formal change of rhythm,
but
rather is that irregularity which all natural growth
and motion shews.
If however the reversal is repeated
in two feet running, especially so
as to include the
sensitive second foot, it must be due either to great

want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the superinducing
or
mounting of a new rhythm upon the old;
and since the new or
mounted rhythm is actually heard
and at the same time the mind
naturally supplies the
natural or standard foregoing rhythm, for we do
not
forget what the rhythm is that by rights we should be
hearing,
two rhythms are in some manner running at
once and we have
something answerable to counterpoint
in music, which is two or more
strains of tune
going on together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm.


Of this kind of verse Milton is the great master and
the choruses of
_Samson Agonistes_ are written throughout
in it--but with the
disadvantage that he does not let
the reader clearly know what the
ground-rhythm is
meant to be and so they have struck most readers as

merely irregular. And in fact if you counterpoint
throughout, since
one only of the counter rhythms is
actually heard, the other is really
destroyed or cannot
come to exist, and what is written is one rhythm
only
and probably Sprung Rhythm, of which I now speak.
Sprung Rhythm, as used in this book, is measured
by feet of from one
to four syllables, regularly, and for
(4) particular effects any number
of weak or slack syllables may be used. It has one stress, which falls on
the
only syllable, if there is only one, or, if there are more, then
scanning as above, on the first, and so gives rise to
four sorts of feet,
a monosyllable and the so-called
accentual Trochee, Dactyl, and the
First Paeon. And
there will be four corresponding natural rhythms;
but
nominally the feet are mixed and any one may follow
any other.
And hence Sprung Rhythm differs from
Running Rhythm in having
or being only one nominal
rhythm, a mixed or 'logaoedic' one, instead
of three,
but on the other hand in having twice the flexibility of
foot,
so that any two stresses may either follow one
another running or be
divided by one, two, or three
slack syllables. But strict Sprung
Rhythm cannot be
counterpointed. In Sprung Rhythm, as in logaoedic

rhythm generally, the feet are assumed to be equally
long or strong
and their seeming inequality is made up
by pause or stressing.
Remark also that it is natural in Sprung Rhythm for
the lines to be
_rove over_, that is for the scanning of
each line immediately to take
up that of the one before,
so that if the first has one or more syllables
at its end
the other must have so many the less at its beginning;
and
in fact the scanning runs on without break from
the beginning, say, of
a stanza to the end and all the
stanza is one long strain, though written
in lines asunder.

Two licences are natural to Sprung Rhythm. The
one is rests, as in
music; but of this an example is
scarcely to be found in this book,
unless in the _Echos_,
(5) second line. The other is _hangers_ or
_outrides_ that
is one, two, or three slack syllables added to a foot
and
not counting in the nominal scanning. They are so
called
because they seem to hang below the line or
ride forward or
backward from it in another dimension
than the line itself, according
to a principle needless to
explain here. These outriding half feet or
hangers are
marked by a loop underneath them, and plenty of them

will be found.
The other marks are easily understood, namely
accents, where the
reader might be in doubt which
syllable should have the stress; slurs,
that is loops
_over_ syllables, to tie them together into the time of

one; little loops at the end of a line to shew that the
rhyme goes on to
the first letter of the next line;
what in music are called pauses, to
shew that the
syllable should be dwelt on; and twirls, to mark

reversed or