The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-03-05

| III ou bouquets and ribbon Wreaths,
Ior you the shores a-croWding;
hor you they call, the swaying mass,
thelr eager faces turning.
IN all these cases-Lovelace's Poe's
Whltman s-we find that the principle
OF economy Of attention has been vio-
lated, with resulting shock which di-
IhlhisheS somewhat our pleasure in the
poems, delightful as they are, each in
its several way. We have been called
TO oestow a momentary consideration
on the mechanism of the poem, when
we should have preferred to reserve all
spirit.
1t may be doubted whether any pro-
nunciation, however violently dislo-
Gated, can justify Whittiers joining of
bruised" and Crusade" in his ITO
england, OF Browning's conjunction
OF windows" and "Hindoos'' in his
Youth and Art In "Cristina' Brown
ing tries to combine moments" and
endoWments"; in his Another Way
OF Love he conjoins spider and con-
slider. and in his "Soliloquy in a Span
ish Cloister' he binds tog, =. + horse
! halrs' and ''corsail's." Perhaps one
reason why Browning has made his
way so slowly with the broad pub
| lie-Whem every poet must conquer
at last or in the end confess defeat
IS that his rhyms are sometimes vio-
lent and awkward, and sonnet times
complicated and arbitrary. The poet
| has revelled in his own ingenuity in
compromising them, and so he iour-
| lshes them in the face of the reader.
The principle of economy Of attention
| demands that in serious verse the
rhyme must be not only SO accurate as
to escape remark, but also wholly I'M
| strained. 1t must seem natural, neces-
sary, obvious, even inevitable, or else
our minds are wrested from a rapt
contemplation of the theme to disil-
lusjoning consideration of the sounds
by which it is bodied forth.
Really the metre of some OF the
modern poems L have read,' said
Coleridge, bears about the same rela-
ton to metre, properly understood, that
dumb-bells do to music; both are for
exercise, and pretty severe, too, 1
think. A master of metre Browning
proved himself again and again, very
inventive in the new rhgthms he intro
dueed, and almost unfailingly felici-
tous; and yet there are poems of his in
which the rhythms impose on the
reader a. steady muscular exercise. In
THE Glove" for example, there not
only abound manufactured rhymes
each of which in turn arrests the atten-
ton, and each of which demands a
most conscientious articulation before
the ear can apprehend it; but with a
persistent perversity the poet puts the
abnormal combination first, and puts
last the normal word with which it
is to be united in wedlock Thus
"aghast I'm" precedes "pastime,' and
~
where" This is like presenting us
with the answer before propounding
the riddle.
gayly vanquished may be a part of the
joke, and an adroit and unexpected
rhyme may be a. witticism in itself
But in the "Ingoldsby Legends and in
the Fable for Critics" it is generally
the uncommon combination the alert
rhymster devises to accompany 1t.
When a line of Barham's eTds with
''Mephistopheles'' we wonder how he
is going to solve the difficulty, and our
expectation is swiftly .gratified with
coffee lees' and when Lowell in
forms us that Poe
talks like a book of lambs and
pentameterS,
we bristle our ears while he adds
In way to make people CT common
sense damn metres.
But 1.-The Glove" is not comic in in
tent; the core of 1t is tragic, and the
shell is at least romantic. Perhaps a
| hard and brilliant playfulness of treat
ment might not be out of keeping with
the psychologist subtlety of its catas-
trophe; but not a few readers resent
fully reject the misplaced ingenuity of
the wilfully artificial double rhymes.
The incongruity between the natter of
the poem and the manner Of II attracts
attention to the form, and leaves us
the less for the fact.
1t would be interesting to know just
why Browning chose to do what he did
in The Glove" and in more than one
other poem. He had his reasons,
doubtless, for he was no unconscious
warbler of unprecedented lays. IL he
refused to be loyal to the principle of
economy of attention, he knew what
he was doing. 1t was not from any
heedlessness-like that of Emerson
when he recklessly rhymed wood
pecker' with bear" or like that of
Lowell when he boldly Insisted on
rhyming the same ''Woodpecker' with
hear" Emerson and Lowell-and
Whittier also-it may be noted were
none of them enamored Of technique;
and when a couplet or a quatrain or a
stanza of theirs happened to attain
perfection, as these do not infre-
ouently, we cannot but feel it 20 be
only a fortunate accident. They were
not untiring students of versification,
forever seeking to spy out its mys-
terieS and to master is secrets, as
Milton was, and Tennyson md Poe.
So long as the poet gives MS rhymes
exact to the ear and completely salts
factory to the sense to when they ap-
peal, he has solid ground beneath his
feet; but If once he leaves this, then is
chaos come again. Admit given" and
heaven" and you cannot deny cham
ber'' and remember" Having relin-
uuished the principle of uniformity of
sound, you land yourself logically in
the widest anarchy. Allow Shadow"
and meadow to be legitimate, and
how can you put the bar sinister on
hear and "woodpecker?" Indeed, l
fail to see how you can h2lp feeling
that John Phoenix was unduly harsh
when he rejected the poem of a Young
Astronomer beginning, 20 would | had
a telescope with fourteen slidesi' on
account of the atrocious attempt in the
second line to rhyme "Pleiades' with
Slides"
Just as every instance OF bad gram
mar interferes with the force of prose,
so in verse every needless inversion
and every defective rhyme interrupts
the impression which the poet wishes
TO produce The greatest poets have
accepted the obligation, and there Is
scarcely an imperfect rhyme in al
Shaksperes works and in all NIL
toms. And there are resfly very FEW
in Popes poems, although there may
saem to be many, for since Queen
Anne's day our language has modified
-h-t--- - -. l.l...e- thnrn Lon