Clough : Arthur Hugh (1819-61), English poet whose work reflects the perplexity & religious doubt of mid-19th century England. He was a friend of Matthew Arnold & the subject of Arnold’s commemorative elegy Thyrsis.
... their failure and find by that study a basis of comparison between the true and the false hexameter. There are here two elements to be considered, the metrical form and the characteristic rhythm; both Clough and Longfellow have failed for the most part to get into their form the true metrical movement and missed too by that failure to get the true inner rhythm, the something more that is the soul of the... Richard and Gilbert, Joined in the morning prayer and in the reading of Scripture. 1 And yet even the accentual (or perhaps one should say the stress) hexameter is capable of better things. Clough, aiming at this stronger efficiency, tries to escape from the treadmill motion, the sing-song, the monotone; but he does not altogether get away from it and arrives only at a familiar vigour or a capable... to call in the power of the great classical metre. There can be in such an atmosphere no room and no courage to dare to rise into any uplifting grandeur or break out into any extreme of beauty. Both Clough and Longfellow tell their stories well and it is more for the interest of the contents than for the beauty of the poetry that we read them. But the hexameter was made for nobler purposes; it has been ...
... the constituents of their genius. Thus, a medium technically full of rhythmic resources of beauty and power got lifted to climax after climax of epic and pastoral and satire. Where in Longfellow or Clough, the two most famous among the accentual hexametrists, is any burst of climaxes in an adequate medium? Even Kingsley who is better at construction and metre-management has mostly a tenuous rhythm:... never consciously admitted as part of the technique: hence, though employed here and there, it could not be utilised to the top of its potentialities. Even in the hands of a poet finer than Kingsley, Clough or Longfellow, the movement lacks ease and power except for a few almost accidental steps. Here is a translation from the Iliad by George Meredith: Now, as when fire voracious catches... crumbling plain. Page 41 has the true Homeric note in movement and rhythm and structural swing, another quantity-value than stress-length also claims our notice. In the quotation from Clough the first foot has the word "like" which is intrinsically long: in combination with the stressed "he" and the unstressed "a" it forms to the ear a quantitative anti-bacchius (- - ⌣). Similarly,in ...
... murder him ! Ferrers did not know how to get me out; so he had to leave without meeting me. It was he who at Cambridge had given me the clue to the genuine English hexameter. He read out a line from Clough which he thought the best in tone and this gave me the swing of the Homeric metre as it should be in English." What must have been the line? We do not know for sure, but Page 357 ... the form. Along with a sense of the genuine technique, there must be the hexametrical mood. And it is when Sri Aurobindo is dwelling on this desideratum that we get our hint. After noting how Clough once or twice rises above his limitations and after quoting some lines where the hexametrical rhythm and its animating mood have both been approximated, Sri Aurobindo tells us: "at another place he ...
... genius like Spenser, Tennyson or Swinburne has made it a main part of his work; but, more probably, there is a deeper cause inherent in the very principle and method of the endeavour. Two poets, Clough and Longfellow, have ventured on a Page 321 considerable attempt in this kind and have succeeded in creating something like an English hexameter; but this was only a half accomplishment... efficient English hexameter; it is only a great care and refinement or a great poetic force that can overcome the obstacles. Longfellow had his gift of a certain kind of small perfection on his own level; Clough had energy, some drive of language, often a vigorous if flawed and hasty force of self-expression. It cannot be said that their work in this line was a total failure; "The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich" ...
... in French, in Bengali and other tongues. Is this book, then, one of which "love's labour's lost" must be said? By no means. There is in it a great deal of illuminating criticism on Longfellow, Clough and Kingsley. There are some extremely wise remarks on poetry, of which these are samples: Page 755 It is evident that a crowding or sparseness of consonants will make a great difference ...
... meanwhile something may possibly be done by a careful attempt founded on a clear and definite conception of the difficulties to be solved and a consistent method in their solution. The poems of Clough and Longfellow are, I think, the only serious essays in the hexameter in English literature. Many have dallied with the problem, from the strange experiments of Spenser to the insufficient but carefully ...
... the hexameter. Sri Aurobindo mentioned that it was one of his Cambridge contemporaries, H.N. Ferrar, who had first given the clue to the hexameter in English by reading out a line from Arthur Hugh Clough - perhaps the line: "He like a god came leaving his ample Olympian chamber" - and this had led to the composition of llion at Pondicherry. Nirod records that Sri Aurobindo also recited four lines ...
... Chaudhari, Nirad C., 450 Chidanandam, Veluri, 531fn, 544,546fh Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 78 Chirol, Sir Valentine, 269 Chitrangada, 100, 106, 185 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 639 Colebrooke, Henry, 13 Confucius, 212 Continent of Circe, The, 450 Conversations of the Dead, 338 Cornville, 134,140 Cotton ...
... Page 137 making so difficult an innovation as the hexameter instinct and habit were not enough, a clear eye upon all these constituents was needed and it was not there. Longfellow, even Clough, went on the theory of accentual quantity alone and in spite of their talent as versifiers made a mess—producing something that discredited the very idea of the creation of an English hexameter. Other ...
... Virgilian line on the principles of Classical quantity without attention to the natural English stress, he accepts the accentual hexameter as practised by Sou-they, Lockhart, Longfellow, Kingsley and Clough but adds 1 : "most unfortunately, many of the advocates of the 'accentual* against the 'quantitative hexameter'..have made a fatal mistake in maintaining that quantity (length, weight) does not exist ...
... Sumatra or Singapore. He just saw me in the cage and was much concerned and did not know how to get me out. It was he who had given me the clue to the Hexameter in English. He read out a line from Clough which he thought was the best line and that gave me the swing of the metre." 162 162. Life of Sri Aurobindo — A.B. Purani. Page 298 "This reminds me of a compliment ...
... Chatterjec, Bankim Chandra 9 Chaucer, Geoffrey 9 Chetty, Shanker 14 Chitrangada 363,458 Clark, A.B. 9 Clemens, Prudentius 336 Clough, Arthur Hugh 53 Cocteaujean 268 Collected Poems and Plays 39 Collins, Douglas C. 455 Cotton, James S. 8 Coulton, G.G. 412 Cousins ...
... barrister in the Straits Settlement, who gave to Aurobindo, while at Cambridge, the clue to the discovery of the true quantitative hexameter in English. He was reading out a very Homeric line from Clough and his recitation of it gave Aurobindo the real swing (or "tilt") of the metre. Norman Ferrers passed through Calcutta on his way to Singapore in 1908 when the political prosecution against Sri Aurobindo ...
... should feel particularly attracted to the hexameter. It appears that one of his classmates at Cambridge, Hugh Norman Ferrar, once read out a line from Homer or a line from Arthur Hugh Clough that was typically Homeric which he thought was the most characteristic line, and that gave Sri Aurobindo the swing of the metre. 118 Beside developing his own theory of true quantity ...
... in the cage and was much concerned and couldn't conceive how to get me out. It was he who had given me the clue to the real hexametre in English." It was his recitation of a very Homeric line from Clough that gave Sri Aurobindo the real swing of the metre. 1 1. Hugh Norman Ferrers was admitted scholar at King's College on 4 October 1889, became a barrister and practised in Malaya States ...
... Station Director of All India Radio, Calcutta. 8 . Hashi left her body on January 22. 9 . This passage within brackets has been omitted from the published letter. 10 . Clough’s line: “Found amid granite dust on the frosty scalp of the Cairngorm.... “ Page 266 11 . M. S. Subbulakshmi the well-known singer was born in 1916 in Madurai, Tamil ...
... Appendixes Letters on Poetry and Art Appendix II: An Answer to a Criticism Milford accepts, (incidentally, with special regard to the word frosty in Clough's line about the Cairngorm 1 ), the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind this ...
... December 24, 1942 Kindly revise once more, especially page 3 where I have inserted a few... [incomplete] Milford accepts (incidentally, with special regard to the word frosty in Clough’s line about the Cairngorm 10 ), the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind ...
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