The Principles of English Versification | Page 5

here the
matter is comparatively simple; for in reading the following sentence
from Walter Pater, note the manifold variations in your own utterance
of it at different times and imagine how it would be read by a person of
dull sensibilities, by one of keen poetic feeling, and finally by one who
recalled its context and on that account could enjoy its fullest richness:
"It is the landscape, not of dreams or of fancy, but of places far
withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand with a miracle of
finesse."[3]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [3] Walter
Pater, "Leonardo da Vinci," in The Renaissance. | | For an account of
scientific experiments on the time and | | stress rhythm of this sentence,
see W. M. Patterson, The | | Rhythm of Prose, New York, 1916, ch. iv.
An idea of the | | complexity may be obtained from Patterson's attempt
to | | indicate it by musical notation: | | | | [Illustration: Metrical pattern
expressed in musical | | notation] |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
The last step of the complication, which can only be indicated here, and
will be developed in a later chapter, comes with the mutual adjustment
of the natural prose rhythm and the metrical pattern of the verse. Such a
sentence as the following has its own peculiar rhythms: "And, as
imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a
name." Now read it as verse, and the rhythms are different; both the
meaning and the music are enhanced.

And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the
poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local
habitation and a name. SHAKESPEARE, Midsummer Night's Dream,
V, i.
These then are the problems and the difficulties. The solutions can be
only partial and tentative, but they are the best we are able to obtain
with our present knowledge and our present capabilities of analysis. As
science today has advanced in accuracy of knowledge and
understanding of the facts of nature far beyond the powers of our
ancestors to imagine, so in the future psychologists may, and let us
hope will, enable us to comprehend the subtleties of metrical rhythm
beyond our present power. Yet there will always remain, since the
ever-inexplicable element of genius is a necessary part of all art, a
portion which no science can describe or analyze.
* * * * *
The Psychology of Rhythm. That nearly all persons have a definite
sense of rhythm, though sometimes latent because of defective
education, is a familiar fact. The origin and source of this sense is a
matter of uncertainty and dispute. The regular beating of the heart, the
regular alternation of inhaling and exhaling, the regular motions of
walking, all these unconscious or semi-conscious activities of the body
have been suggested; and they doubtless have a concomitant if not a
direct influence on the rhythmic sense. Certainly there is an intimate
relation between the heart action and breath rate and the external
stimulus of certain rhythmic forces, as is shown by the tendency of the
pulse and breath to adapt their tempo to the beat of fast or slow music.
But this can hardly be the whole explanation. More important, from the
psychological point of view, is doubtless the alternation of effort and
fatigue which characterizes our mental as well as physical actions. A
period of concentrated attention is at once followed by a period of
indifference; the attention flags, wearies, and must be recuperated by a
pause, just as the muscular effort of hand or arm. In truth, the muscles
of the eye play a real part in the alternations of effort and rest in reading.
The immediate application of this psychological fact to the temporal

rhythms has been clearly phrased by the French metrist, M. Verrier:
I hear the first beat of a piece of music or of a verse, and, my attention
immediately awakened, I await the second. At the end of a certain
time--that is, when the expense of energy demanded has reached a
certain degree--this second beat strikes my ear. Then I expect to hear
the third when the dynamic sense of attention shall indicate an equal
expense of energy, that is, at the end of an equal interval of time. Thus,
by means of sensation and of memory of the amount of energy
expended in the attention each time, I can perceive the equality of
time-interval of the rhythmic units. Once this effort of attention
becomes definite and fixed, it repeats itself instinctively and
mechanically--by reflex action, so to say, like that of walking when we
are accustomed to a stride of a given length and rapidity. Here we have
truly a