The Future Poetry

Comments on some Experiments in Metre

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - I

I think you failed [in your experiment in the classical metre]... because you had no unwritten rhythm behind your mind when you started writing and none came through by accident—or what seems one—as sometimes happens. There is an inspiration of language and there is an inspiration of rhythm and the two must fuse together for poetic perfection to come. As it is, you set out to manufacture your rhythm and piece together its parts—that must be the cause of this result. Your failure does not predestine you to eventual failure. Most people fail at first when they try this kind of departure from the established norms—this rejuvenation of the old in the new. I do not remember my own previous attempts in the classical metres but I feel sure they were failures of the kind I stigmatise. If I succeed now, it will be by the grace of God, in other words the established Yoga consciousness, for in that consciousness things come through from behind the veil with ease,—so long as a veil exists at all. Of course with genius too in its moments of inspiration—surer than the layman imagines; but genius also is a kind of accidental Yoga, a contact, an opening into an occult Power.

25.11.1933

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - II

This liability to be read as an iambic pentameter is the pitfall of this metre¹—everything else is easy, this is the critical point in the movement. All the same, it seems to me that it is only the standing convention which imposes the iambic movement here. The reason why it can do so at all is that in both the lines you

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keep up what one accustomed to the ordinary rhythms would take to be three successive trochees and would be irresistibly tempted to go on on the same lines. In order to get the right pace, the reader in dealing with these transplanted classic metres must be prepared to make the most of quantities and stresses (true ones) and then, if the verse is well executed, there should be no difficulty. One can help him sometimes by a crowding of stresses in the first part of the line and a refusal of all but the lightest sounds in the close with of course a strong stress at the end.

22.10.1933

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - III

I think the principle of this metre² should be to say a few very clear-cut things in a little space. At least it looks so to me at present—though a more free handling of the metre might show that the restriction was not justifiable.

I had chosen this metre—or rather it came to me and I accepted it—because it seemed to me both brief and easy, so suitable for an experiment. But I find now that it was only seemingly easy and in fact very difficult. The ease with which I wrote it only came from the fact that by a happy inspiration the right rhythm for it came into my consciousness and wrote itself out by virtue of the rhythm being there. If I had consciously experimented I might have stumbled over the same difficulties as have come in your way.

The Bird of Fire³ was written on two consecutive days and afterwards revised. The Trance⁴ at one sitting—it took only a few minutes. You may have the date as they were both completed on the same day and sent to you the next.

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - IV

⁵These are things decided by the habit or training of the ear.

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The intervention of a dactylic (or, if you like, anapaestic) line followed by an Alexandrine would to the ear of a former generation have sounded abrupt and inadmissible. But, I suppose, it would not to an ear accustomed to the greater liberty—or even licence—of latter-day movements.

I do not find that the rhythm of the first three lines is well-worn, though that of the first and third are familiar in type. The second seems to me not only not familiar, but unusual and very effective.

The canter of anapaests can, I suppose, be only relieved by variation or alternation with another metre, as you have done here—or by a very powerful music which would turn the canter into a torrent rush or an oceanic sweep or surge. But the proper medium for the latter up till now has been a large dactylic movement like the Greek or Latin hexameter; Swinburne has tried to get it into the anapaest, but with only occasional success because of his excessive facility and looseness, which makes the sound empty owing to want of spiritual substance. But this third line seems to be naturally dactylic and not anapaestic. Can one speak of catalectic and acatalectic hexameters? If so, this is a very beautiful catalectic hexameter.

I may say that the four lines seem to be in their variation very remarkably appropriate and effective, each exactly expressing by the rhythm the spirit and movement of the thing inwardly

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seen. I am speaking of each line by itself; the only objection that could be made is to the coming together of so many variations in so brief a whole (if it had been longer, I imagine it would not have mattered) as disturbing to the habit of the ear; but I am inclined to think that this objection would rest less on a reality than a prejudice. The habit of the ear is not fundamental, it can change. What is fundamental in the inner hearing is not, I think, disturbed by the swiftness of the change from the controlled flow of the first line to the wave dance and shimmer of the second, the rapid drift of the third and then the deliberate subtlety of the last line.

Is there in recent poetry an unconscious push towards a new metrical basis altogether for English poetry—shown by the outbreak of free verse, which fails because it is most often not verse at all—and the seeking sometimes for irregularity, sometimes for greater plasticity of verse-movement? Originally, Anglo-Saxon verse depended, if I remember right, on alliteration and rhythm, not on measured feet; Greece and Rome through France and Italy imposed the foot measure on English; perhaps the hidden seeking for freedom, for elbow-room, for the possibility of a varied rhythmic expression necessitated by the complexity of the inner consciousness might find some vent in a measure which would depend not on feet but on lengths and stresses. I have sometimes thought that and it recurred to me while looking at your second line, for on that principle it might be read

One could imagine a measure made of lines in a given number of lengths like that and each length allowed a given number of stresses; there would be many combinations and variations possible. For example (not of good poetry, but of the form),

A far sail on the unchangeable monotone of
    a slow slumbering sea,
A world of power hushed into symbols of hue,
    silent unendingly;

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Over its head like a gold ball the sun tossed
    by the gods in their play
Follows its curve,—a blazing eye of Time
    watching the motionless day.

Perhaps it is only a curious imagination, too difficult and complex to realise, but it came on me strongly, so I put it down on paper.

I have written two more stanzas of the stress-scansion poem so as to complete it and send them to you. In this scansion as I conceive it, the lines may be analysed into feet, as you say all good rhythm can, but in that case the foot measures must be regarded as a quite subsidiary element without any fixed regularity—just as the (true) quantitative element is treated in ordinary verse. The whole indispensable structure of the lines depends upon stress and they must be read on a different principle from the current view—full value must be given to the true stresses and no fictitious stresses, no weight laid on naturally unstressed syllables should be allowed—that is the most important point. Thus:

IN HORIS AETERNUM

A far sail on the unchangeable monotone of
    a slow slumbering sea,
A world of power hushed into symbols of hue,
    silent unendingly;
Over its head like a gold ball the sun tossed
    by the gods in their play
Follows its curve,—a blazing eye of Time
    watching the motionless day.

Here or otherwhere,—poised on the unreachable
    abrupt snow-solitary ascent
Earth aspiring lifts to the illimitable Light,
    then ceases broken and spent,
Or in the glowing expanse, arid, fiery and
    austere, of the desert's hungry soul,—

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A breath, a cry, a glimmer from Eternity's
    face, in a fragment the mystic Whole.

Moment-mere, yet with all eternity packed,
    lone, fixed, intense,
Out of the ring of these hours that dance and
    die, caught by the spirit in sense,
In the greatness of a man, in music's outspread
    wings, in a touch, in a smile, in a sound,
Something that waits, something that wanders and settles
    not, a once Nothing that was all and is found.

It is an experiment and I shall have to do more before I can be sure that I have caught the whole spirit or sense of this movement; nor do I mean to say that stress-scansion cannot be built on any other principle,—say, on one with more concessions to the old music or with less, breaking more away in the direction of free verse; but the essential, I think, is there.

19.4.1932

P.S. It is with some hesitation that I write "a once Nothing", because I am far from sure that the "once" does not overweight the rhythm and make the expression too difficult and compact; but on the other hand without it the sense appears ambiguous and incomplete,—for "a Nothing that was all" might be taken in a too metaphysical light and my object is not to thrust in a metaphysical subtlety but to express the burden of an experience. In the final form I shall probably risk the ambiguity and reject the intruding "once".

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - V

I certainly think feet longer than the three syllable maximum can be brought in and ought to be. I do not see for instance why a foot like this should not be as legitimate as the anapaest. Only, of course, if frequently used, they would mean the institution of another principle of harmony not provided for

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by the essentially melodic basis of English prosody in the past; as

Or,

I agree that this freedom would be more pressingly needed in longer metres than in short ones, but they need not be excluded from the short ones either.

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - VI

I have to admit that I am beaten by your metre. I have written something, but I am afraid it is a fake. I will first produce the fake:

A gold moon/-raft floats / and swings / slowly
And it casts / a fire / of pale / holy / blue light
On the dra/gon tail / aglow / of the / faint night
    That glim/mers far,—/ swimming,
The illu/mined shoals / of stars / skimming,
Overspread/ing earth / and drown/ing the / heart in sight
With the / ocean-depths / and breadths / of the / Infinite.

That is the official scansion, and except in the last foot of the two last lines it professes to follow very closely the metre of N's poem. But in fact it is full of sins and the appearance is a counterfeit. In the first line the first foot is really an anti-bacchius: "A gold moon/-raft floats...", and quantitatively, though not accentually, the second is a spondee which also disturbs the true rhythmic movement. "Slowly" and "holy" are in truth trochees disguised

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as pyrrhics, and if "slowly" can pass off the deceit a little, "holy" is quite unholy in the brazenness of its pretences. If I could have got a compound adjective like "god-holy", it would have been all right and saved the situation, but I could find none that was appropriate. The next three lines are, I think, on the true model and have an honest metre. But the closing cretic of my last two lines is nothing but a cowardly flight from the difficulty of the spondee. I console myself by remembering that even Hector ran when he found himself in difficulties with Achilles and that the Bhagavat lays down palāyanam (flight) as one of the ordinary occupations of the Avatar. But the evasion is a fact and I am afraid it spoils the correspondence of the metres. I have some idea of adding a second stanza,—this one will look less guilty perhaps if it has a companion in sin,—but if you wish to use this, you need not wait for the other as it may never take birth at all.

MOON OF TWO HEMISPHERES

A gold moon-raft floats and swings slowly
And it casts a fire of pale holy blue light
On the dragon tail aglow of the faint night
    That glimmers far,—swimming,
The illumined shoals of stars skimming,
Overspreading earth and drowning the heart in sight
With the ocean depths and breadths of the Infinite.

A gold moon-ship sails or drifts ever
In our spirit's skies and halts never, blue-keeled,
And it throws its white-blue fire on this grey field,
    Night's dragon loop,—speeding,
The illumined star-thought sloops leading
To the Dawn, their harbour home, to the Light unsealed,
To the sun-face Infinite, the Untimed revealed.

Comments on some Experiments in Metre - VII

Lines from Ilion, an unfinished poem in English hexameter (quantitative):

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Triumph and agony changing hands in a desperate measure
Faced and turned as a man and a maiden trampling the grasses
Face and turn and they laugh for their joy in the dance and each other.
These were gods and they trampled lives. But though Time is immortal,
Mortal his works are and ways and the anguish ends like the rapture.
Artisans satisfied now with their works in the plan of the transience,
Beautiful, wordless, august, the Olympians turned from the carnage.
Vast and unmoved they rose up mighty as eagles ascending,
Fanning the world with their wings. In the bliss of a sorrowless ether
Calm they reposed from their deeds and their hearts were inclined to the Stillness.
Less now the burden laid on our race by their star-white presence,
There was a respite from height; the winds breathed freer, delivered.
But their immortal content from the struggle titanic departed.
Vacant the noise of the battle roared like a sea on the shingles;
Wearily hunted the spears their quarry, strength was disheartened;
Silence increased with the march of the months on the tents of the leaguer.⁶

The principle is a line of six feet, preponderantly dactylic, but anywhere the dactyl can be replaced by a spondee; but in English hexameter a trochee can be substituted, as the spondee

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comes in rarely in English rhythm. The line is divided by a caesura, and the variations of the caesura are essential to the harmony of the verse.

An example of Alcaics from the Jivanmukta (Alcaics is a Greek metre invented by the poet Alcaeus):

In the Latin it is:

But in English, variations (modulations) are allowed, only one has to keep to the general plan.

Swinburne's Sapphics are to be scanned thus:

Two trochees at the beginning, two trochees at the end, a dactyl separating the two trochaic parts of the line—that is the Sapphics in its first three lines, then a fourth line composed of a dactyl and a trochee.

May, 1934