Text: Edgar Allan Poe (ed. J. Arthur Greenwood), “Notes Upon English Verse,” Edgar A. Poe: The Rationale of Verse, a Preliminary edition, 1968, pp. 45-83 (This material is protected by copyright)


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[page 45:]

NOTES UPON ENGLISH VERSE,(1)

While much has been written upon the structure of the Greek and Latin rhythms, and even of the Hebrew, little attempt has been made at examining that of any of the modern tongues. As regards the English, comparatively nothing has been done. It may be said, indeed, that we are without a treatise upon our own versification. In our ordinary grammars, and in our works upon rhetoric in general, may be found occasional chapters, it is true, which have the heading, “versification;” but these chapters are, in all instances, exceedingly meagre. They pretend to nothing like analysis; they propose nothing resembling system; they make no effort even at rule, properly so called; every thing depends upon “authority.” They are confined, in fact, to mere exemplification of the supposed varieties of English feet and English lines; although in no work within my knowledge are these feet correctly given, or these lines detailed in their proper extent. Yet what has been mentioned, is all — if we except the occasional introduction of some inessential pedagogue-ism, such as this, borrowed from the Greek prosodies:

“When a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic; when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable, it forms hypermeter.”(2)

Whether a line be termed catalectic or acatalectic,x is really a point of secondary importance; and it is even possible that the student may be able to decide, promptly, when the a should be employed and when omitted, yet be incognizant, at the same time, of much that is worth knowing, in respect to the structure of verse.

But, in fact, few questions of equal importance, have received [page 46:] as little attention to the rationale(3) of rhythm in general. The Greek and the Latin prosodies have their rules, but nothing more. The philosophy of these rules, is untouched. No one has thought of reducing rule, in general, to its lowest terms — to its ultimate expression — in law. I have long thought that it is only by an analysis such as is here suggested, with disregard, for the time, of the mere conventionalities and unwarranted assumptions which disgrace our treatises on the ancient rhythms, that we shall be able to arrive, if ever, at any intelligible view of these rhythms, themselves. Quantity is a point in the investigation of which the lumber of mere learning may be dispensed with, if ever in any. Its appreciation is universal. It appertains to no region, nor race, nor aera in especial. To melody and to harmony the Greeks hearkened with ears precisely similar to those which we employ, for similar purposes, at present; and a pendulum at Athens would have vibrated much after the same fashion as does a pendulum in the city of Penn.

But while a full and unpedantic discussion of metre in general, is much needed, the purpose of this article extends no farther than to some practical observations on the English rhythms; and I am led to these observations solely by the hope of supplying, to some extent, the singular deficiency of our ordinary treatises on the topic.

A leading defect in each of these treatises is the confining of the subject to mere versification, while metre, or rhythm, in general, is the real question at issue. Nor am I aware of a single one of our grammars which even rightly defines the term “versification” itself. “Versification,” says a work now before me,(4) perhaps the very best of its kind, and of which the accuracy is far more than usual, “is the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alter’ nation of syllables differing in quantity.” The commencement of this definition might apply, indeed, to the art of versification, but not to versification itself. Versification is not the art of arranging, &c., but the actual arranging — a distinction too obvious to need comment. The error, here, is exactly analogous with one which has been too long permitted to disgrace the initial page of every one of our school grammars. I allude to the definition of English grammar itself. “English Grammar,” it is said “is the art of speaking and writing the English language correctly.” This phraseology, or something essentially similar, is employed, I believe, by Bacon,(5) Miller,(6) Fisk,(7) Greenleaf,(8) Ingersoll,(9) [page 48:] Kirkland,(10) Cooper,(11) Flint,(12) Pue,(13) Comly,(14) and many others.(15) These gentlemen, it is presumed, adopted it without examination from Murray,(16) who derived it from Lily(17) (whose work was “quam(18) solam Regia Majestas in omnibus scholis docendam praecepit”) and who appropriated it, without acknowledgement, but with some unimportant modification, from the Latin grammar of Leonicenus.(19) But it may be readily demonstrated that this definition, so complacently received, is not, and cannot be, a proper definition of English grammar. A definition is that which so describes its Object, as to distinguish it from all others. It is no definition of any one thing, if its terms are applicable to any one other. But if it be demanded — “What is the design, the end, the aim, of English grammar?” our obvious and sole answer must be, “the art of [page 50:] speaking and writing the English language correctly;” and this answer embodies the precise words which are employed as the definition of grammar itself. But the object to be obtained by any means, is, assuredly, not the means. English grammar, and the end contemplated by English grammar, are two matters very distinct; nor can the one be any more reasonably regarded as the other, than a fishing-hook as a fish.(20) The definition, therefore, which is applicable in the latter instance, cannot, in the former, be true. Grammar, in general, is the analysis of language; English grammar of the English.

But to return to versification, as defined in our extract above. “It is the art,” says this extract, “of arranging words into lines of correspondent length.” But not so. A single moment's reflection will suffice to assure us that a correspondence in the length of lines is by no means essential. Pindaric odes are, surely, instances of versification; yet these compositions are noted for extreme diversity(21) in the length of their lines.

The arrangement is, moreover, said to be for the purpose of producing ^harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity.” But harmony is not the sole aim. In the construction of a verse its melody(22) should not be left out of view; and this is a point which all our prosodies have most unaccountably forborne to touch. A few concise reasoned rules upon this topic should form a portion of all systems of rhythm.

“So as to produce harmony by the regular alternation,” &c. Here again I must dissent. A regular alternation, as described, forms no part of the principle of metre. The arrangement of spondees and dactyls, for example, in the Greek hexameter, is an arrangement which may be termed at random. At least it is arbitrary. Without interference with the line as a whole, a dactyl may be substituted for a spondee, or a spondee for a dactyl, at any point other than the ultimate and penultimate feet, of which the former is always a spondee, the latter nearly always a dactyl. Here it is evident that we have no “regular alternation of long and short syllables.” But, not to dwell upon the hexameter, instances from other metres may be adduced without number, in which an admixture of various kinds of feet is the law of the verse, and not merely a license or variation of the law. Such instances I shall take occasion to quote in the course of this article.

“So as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity.” In other words, by the alternation of long and short syllables; for, in rhythm, all syllables are necessarily either short or long. But our grammarian is, undoubtedly, wrong again. Not only do I deny the necessity of any regularity [page 51:] in the succession of feet, and by consequence, of syllables, but dispute the essentiality of any alternation, regular or irregular, of syllables long and short. Our author, be it observed, is now engaged in a definition of versification in general, not of English versification in especial. But the Greek and Latin metres abound in the spondee and the pyrrhic; the former consisting of two long syllables, the latter of two short: and there are innumerable instances of the immediate succession of many spondees, or of many pyrrhics. The mere existence of either of these feet, however, is sufficient to overthrow the definition; for there is no difference in the syllables of either the one or the other. But among some hexameters attempted by Professor Longfellow,(23) in a translation of Tegnér's(24) “Children of the Lord's Supper,”(25) we find the following verses: [page 52:]

Clear was the Heaven and blue, and May with her cap crowned with roses,

Stood in her holiday dress in the fields, and the wind and the brooklet

Murmured gladness and peace, God's peace, with lips rosy tinted.(26)

By scanning, these lines are thus divided:

Clear was the | heaven and | blue and | May with her | cap crown’d with | roses,

Stood in her | holiday | dress in the | fields and the | wind and the | brooklet

Murmur’d | gladness and | peace God's | peace with | lips rosy | tinted.

In the last of these examples, we perceive that five long syllables meet. Here, again, is a passage from Silius Italicus:(27)

Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem

Tot bellis quaesita viro, tot caedibus armat

Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora

Cannas et Trebium ante oculos Trasymenaque busta,

Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram.

These Hexameters, with the proper elisions, are thus scanned:

Fallis | te men- | sas In- | ter quod | credis in- | ermem

Tot bel- | lls(28) quae- | slta vi- | ro tot | caedibus(29) armat

Majes- | tas e- | terna du- | cem s’ ad- | moveris | ora

Cannas | et Tre- | b’ ant’ octf29 los Trasy- | menaque | busta

Et Pau- | II sta- | r’ Ingen- | tern ml- | raberis | umbram.

It will be seen that, in the first and last of these lines, we have only two short syllables in thirteen, with an immediate or uninterrupted usecession [[sucession]] of no less than nine long syllables. But how are we to reconcile all this with a definition of versification, which describes it as “the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity?

It might be urged, however, that our prosodist's intention was to speak of the English metres alone, and that by omitting all mention of the spondee and pyrrhic, he has virtually avowed their exclusion from our rhythms. A grammarian is never excusable on the ground of “good intentions.” We demand from him, if from any one, rigorous precision of style. But let us grant the design. Let us admit that our author, and that all writers(30) upon English [page 54:] prosody, have, in defining versification at large, intended merely a definition of the English. All reject the pyrrhic and the spondee. All admit the iambus, which consists of a short syllable followed by a long; the trochee, which is the converse of the iambus; the dactyl, which is formed of one long syllable followed by two short; and the anapaest,(31) two short syllables succeeded by a long. The pyrrhic is properly rejected; and it may well be questioned, whether any foot so equivocal as one consisting of two short syllables, had ever more than a chimerical existence, even in the ancient rhythms; but I shall show, hereafter, that there is no cause for dismissal of the spondee. In the meantime, the acknowledged dactyl and anapaest are sufficient to establish our proposition in regard to the “alternation,” &c., without reference to feet which are assumed to exist in the Greek and Latin metres alone: for an anapaest and a dactyl may meet in the same line; when, of course, we shall have an uninterrupted succession, either of four long,(32) or of four short syllables. The meeting of these two feet, to be sure, is an accident not contemplated in the definition now discussed: for this definition, in insisting upon “a regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity,” insists upon a regular succession of feet; but an example will fully sustain our hypothesis.

Sing to me | Isabelle!

is the opening line of a little ballad, now before me, which proceeds in the same rhythm — a peculiarly beautiful one. The meeting of four short syllables is the consequence of a dactyl succeeded by an anapaest. But more than this: there can be no difficulty in specifying English lines composed entirely of a regular succession of syllables all of the same quantity. “The March” of Arthur Cleveland Coxe,(33) for example, thus commences:

March! march! march!

Making sounds as they tread,

Ho! ho! how they step

Going down to the dead.(34)

The line italicised is formed of three caesuras. The caesura is a perfect foot, consisting of a single long syllable, and has been causelessly neglected by all writers upon English prosody.

It has thus been made evident that there is not a single point [page 56:] of the definition in question, which does not involve an error. And for anything more intelligible or more satisfactory than this definition, we shall look in vain in any published treatise upon the subject. But so general and so total a failure can be referred only to some radical misconception. That by the term “versification” our prosodists intend rhythm, or metre, in general, cannot be doubted; for the making of a single verse, is versification; yet from no single verse of a poem can be gathered any idea of its general rhythm. For the full appreciation of this rhythm, there is required a collation of each verse, if not with every one other in the poem, at least with every one of its immediate predecessors. No line is independent. It was a keen sense of this principle which enabled Pope so far to surpass his contemporaries, many of whom he properly styled “couplet-makers;”(35) alluding, no doubt, to their practice of breaking up poems into distinct yet monotonous musical impressions of two lines each; and it was a keener sense of this principle than even Pope possessed, which enabled Milton to surpass even Pope in the adjusting or balancing of his ham monies through paragraphs of greater length than the latter ever ventured to attempt.

The word “verse” is derived (through versus) from the Latin verto, I turn, and has reference to the turning at the end of the line and commencing anew with a capital letter. It can be nothing but this derivation which has led to the error of our writers upon prosody. It is this which has seduced them into regarding the line itself — the versus or turning — as an essential, or principle, of metre; and hence the term “versification” has been employed as sufficiently general, or inclusive, for treatises upon rhythm in general. Hence, also, the precise catalogue of a few varieties of English lines, when these varieties are, in fact, almost without limit.

I shallx dismiss entirely, from the consideration of the principle of rhythm, the idea of versification, or the construction of verse. In so doing we shall avoid a world of confusion. Verse is, indeed, an afterthought, or an embellishment, or an improvement, rather than an element of rhythm; and this is the fact which, perhaps, more than any thing else, has induced the easy admission, into the realms of poesy, of such works as the x”Télémaque”(36) of Fénélon. In the elaborate modulation of their sentences they fulfil the idea of metre; and their arrangement, or rather their division, into lines (which could be readily effected)x would do little more than present this idea in a popularly intelligible dress.

Holdingx these things in view, the prosodist who rightly examines that which constitutes the external, or most immediately [page 57:] recognizable,x form of Poetry, will commence with the definition of Rhythm. Now rhythm, from the Greek αριθμος, number,(37) is a term which, in its present application, very nearly conveys its own idea. No more proper word could be employed to present the concept tion intended; for rhythm, in prosody, is, in its last analysis, identical with time(38) in music. For this reason I have used, throughout this article, as synonymous with rhythm, the word metre from μετρον, measure. Either the one or the other may be defined as the arrangement of words into two or more consecutive, equal, pulsations of time. These pulsations are feet. Two feet, at least, are requisite to constitute a rhythm;x just as, in mathematics, two [page 58:] units are necessary to form number.(39) The syllables of which the foot consists, when the foot is not a syllable in itself, are subdivisions of the pulsations. No equality is demanded in these subdivisions. It is only required that, so far as regards two consecutive feet at least, the sum of the times of the syllables in one, shall be equal to the sum of the times of the syllables in the other. Beyond two pulsations there is no necessity for equality of time. All beyond is arbitrary or conventional. A third and fourth pulsation may embody half, or double, or any proportion of the time occupied in the two first.

I have already said that all syllables, in metre, are either long or short. Our usual prosodies maintain that a long syllable is equal, in its time, to two short;(40) this, however, is but an approach to the truth. It should be here observed that the quantity of an English syllable has no dependence upon the sound of its vowel or dipthong,(41) but chiefly upon accentuation. Monosyllables are exceedingly variable, and, for the most part, may be either long or short, to suit the demand of the rhythm. In polysyllables, the accented ones(42) are always long, while those which immediately precede or succeed them, are always short. Emphasis will render any short syllable long.(43)

Rhythm being thus understood, the prosodist should proceed to define versification as the making of verses, and verse as the arbitrary or conventional isolation of rhythms into masses of greater or less extent.

Let us now exemplify what has been said. We will take the words,

I am monarch,

with the accentuation which belongs to them in the well known line

I am monarch of all I survey.(44)

Of the three first words, by themselves, with the accentuation as here given, we can form no metre or rhythm. We cannot divide them into “two or more equal pulsations of time” — that is to say, into two metrical feet. If we divide them thus:

xI am | monarch

the time of the latter division is to that of the former as three to two; and a glance will suffice to show that no nearer approach to equal division, is practicable. The words as they stand, therefore, are purely prose. But, by placing an emphasis upon the pronoun, we double its length, and the whole is resolved into rhythm; for

I am monarch

is readily divided into two equal pulsations, thus: [page 59:]

These equal pulsations are trochaic feet; and, from the appreciation of such equality as we recognise in them, arises the gratification of rhythm. With less than two feet there can be no [page 60:] comparison — thus no equality — thus no rhythm. “But no equality is demanded” (here I quote my previous words) “in the subdivisions of the rhythm. It is only required that the sum of the times of the syllables in the one, shall be equal to the sum of the times of the syllables in the other” — as we see it above. The entire line,

I am monarch of all I survey,

is thus scanned:

I am mon- | arch of all | I survey.

Here are three anapaests. The two first suffice to establish a rhythm; but the third confirms it. Had the words run thus:

I am monarch of all I see,

no ear would have been materially offended: but it is evident that, in this case, we should have thus scanned the verse:

I am mon- | arch of all | I see;

and the last foot, being a pure spondee, (two long syllables — equal to the one long and two short syllables of the preceding anapaests) is, of itself, sufficient demonstration that the spon^ dee has been improperly rejected from the English rhythms.

The two anapaests,(45)

I am mon- | arch of all,

do not demand that, if a third foot succeed, this third foot be an anapaest, or even the equivalent in time of an anapaest. The requisitions of rhythm are fulfilled in the two; and a novel mood of metre may now arise. A conventionality, however, founded in reason, has decided that the new metre should, in general, form the commencement of a new line, that the ear may thus, by means of the eye, be prepared for the change. The caesura, whose peculiarities have never been discussed, and which I have already described as a foot consisting of a single long syllable, is frequently found interposed (especially in the ancient metres) between various rhythms in the same line. Its object, in such situations, is to allow time, or opportunity, for the lapse from one rhythm to another, or, more ordinarily, from a rhythm to a variation of the same; as, for example, in the verses:

Maecenas, atavis edite regibus,

O et praesidium et dulce decus meum!

Sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum

Collegisse juvat, metaque fervidis

Evitata rotis, palmaque nobilis

Terrarum Dominos, evehit ad Deos,46

which are thus scanned:

Maece- | nas ata- | vis | edite | regibus

O et | praesidi | ‘et | dulce de- | cus meum

Sunt quos | curricu- | lo | pulver’ 6- | lympicum [page 61:]

Colle’- | gisse ju- | vat | metaque | fervidis

Evi- | tata ro- | tis | palmaquae47 | nobilis

Terra- | rum Domi- | nos | evehit | ad Deos.

The general rhythm of these lines will be at once recognised as dactylic, or equivalent to dactylic. The two first pulsations, or feet, consist of a spondee and a dactyl; each amounting to four short syllables. This order is now interrupted by a single long syllable; (the caesura foot;) and in the two succeeding, although the general rhythm remains undisturbed, two dactyls supply the place of the original spondee and dactyl. The caesura effects the lapse from the initial rhythm to a variation of it. We should be taught to look upon the caesura as a variable foot which accommodates itself to any rhythm whatever. I have designated it “as a single long syllable”,x because this is, apparently, its abstract force or value; but, in its application, it has the force of any foot whatever. In the lines quoted just above, it has the value of a spondee,x or dactyl; occupying precisely equal time. In the first verse above, we dwell upon the “vis” just so long as it would take us to pronounce the “nas ata” preceding.(48) With this understanding of the caesura (the most important foot in the English, or in any metre, and most blindly rejected by our prosodists) we can now proceed to an exemplification of what has been said respecting the arbitrary or conventional nature of mere versification, or the division of rhythms into verse. For this purpose let us quote the commencement of Lord Byron's “Bride of Abydos”.

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime —

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,

Now melt into softness, now madden to crime?

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,

And the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,

Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom?

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute? [page 62:]

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,

And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?

'Tis the land of the East — 'tisx the clime of the Sun —

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?

Oh, wild as the accents of lovers' farewell,

Are the hearts that they bearx and the tales that they tell.(49)

The flow of these remarkable lines has been the theme of universal admiration; and not more of admiration than of surprise and embarrassment. While no one could deny their harmony, it has been found impossible to reconcile this harmony with their evident irregularity, when scanned in accordance with the rules of our Prosodies; for these Prosodies, insisting upon their bald and incomprehensive dogmas about mere verse, have neglected to afford a true conception of rhythm;x and this conception alone can furnish the key to the riddle. Of, perhaps, a hundred persons whom I have heard discussing the passage; not one seemed to have the faintest comprehension of its true scanning. The division into lines forced them into continual blunders. No one thought of looking beyond the line, or of referring onex to another. Each verse was scanned individually and independently. Thus, the puzzle was, that, while the flow was perfect, while no harshness or break could be discovered in the harmony, the lines differed so remarkably among themselves. The Grammars had spoken of dactylic lines, and it was easily seen that these must be dactylic. The first verse was therefore thus divided:

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle.

The concluding foot, however, was still a mystery; but the Grammars said something about the dactylic measure's calling for a double or triple rhyme, occasionally;(50) and the enquirer was content to rest in the “double rhyme,” without exactly perceiving what a “double rhyme” had to do with the question of an irregular foot. Quitting the first verse, the second was thus scanned:

Are emblems | of deedsx that | are done in | their clime.

But it was immediately seen that this would not do. It was at war with the whole emphasis of the reading. It was certainly never intended by Lord Byron, or by any one in his senses, that stress should be placed upon such monosyllables as “are”,x “of” and “their”;x nor could “their clime” * when compared with “to crime” in the corresponding line below, be tortured into anything like “a double rhyme”,X so as to come within the category of the Grammars. But these Grammars were now silent. Farther they said not. The inquirer fell back, therefore, (in spite of his appreciation of the harmony of the verses, when read without scanning) upon the idea that the “Are” in the beginning was a blunder, or excess, and, discarding it, scanned the remainder as follows: [page 63:]

— xemblems of | deedsx that are | done in their | clime.

This would have been satisfactory, but for the forced elision of the “are” and the difficulty of accounting for the odd syllable “clime”. The Grammars admitted no such foot as one of a single syllable, and besides the metre was dactylic. In despair, our inquirer turns over the pages of his Prosody, and at length is blessed by a full solution of the riddle, in the learned “xobservation” quoted in the commencement of this paper — “When a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic;x when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic;x when there is a redundant syllable, it forms hypermeter.” This is enough. The verse in question is pronounced to “form hypermeter” at the tail, and to be “catalectic” at the head. A slight difficulty still remains, to be sure. Upon continuing the examination of the lines, it is discovered that what flows so harmoniously in perusal, is,X upon subjection to the scanning process of the Grammars, a mere jumble, throughout,x of catalecticism, acatalecticism, and hypermeter.(51)

By discarding, however, our clumsy conventional notions of mere verse, we shall see, at once, that the lines are perfect in [page 64:] flow only because perfect in scansion — perfect in practice only because perfect in theory. They are, in fact, a regular succession of dactylic rhythms, varied only at three points by equivalent spondees, and separated into two distinct divisions by equivalent, terminating caesuras. I must here beg the reader to notice that termination, or pause, is one of the chief offices, if not indeed the sole office of the caesura. In taking upon itself the force, or time, of the pulsations which have preceded it, it produces a fulness of close not to be so well brought about by other means. But let us scan the passage under discussion.

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle are | emblems of | deeds that are | done in their | clime whSre the | rage of thex | vulture the | love of the | turtle now | melt into | softness now | madden to | crime.X

Know ye the | land of the | cedar and | vine where the | flow’rs ever | blossom the | beams ever | shine where the | light wings of | Zephyrx dp- | press’d with per-wax | faint o’er the | gardens of | Gul in their | bloomx where the | citron and | xolive are | fairest of | fruit and the | voice of the | nightingale | never is | mute where the | virgins are | soft as the | roses they | twine and | all save the | spirit of | man is di- | vine 'tis the | land of the | xEast 'tis the | clime of the | Sun can he | smile on such | deeds as his | children have | done oh\ wild as the | accentsx of | lovers’ fare- | well are the | hearts that they | bear and the | tales that they | tell*.

By all who have ears — not over long — this will be acknowledged as the true and the sole true scansion. The harmony is perfect, and with the melody but a single fault can be found, and that of minor importance. In the dactyl formed by the words, “smile on such”,X nsuch” is too obviously a long syllable, that is to say, it too necessarily demands a long accentuation in common parlance, to justify its use as a short syllable in verse.

Can he smile on the deeds that his children have done,

would be an improvement of the melody; at the expense, however, of the sense.

Can he smile on the deeds which his children have done,

although more rigorously grammatical,(52) than our line first suggested, is objectionable on the very ground which caused objection to the use of “such.” The difficulty of pronouncing “which” has brought about its exclusion from poetry, among those who have keen musical perceptions: — see the last line of those just quoted. [page 65:]

I have italicized(53) the caesuras and spondees introduced. The force and office of the caesura have been already sufficiently explained; but it may be demanded — “Why is the continuous flow of [page 66:] the dactylic succession interrupted by spondees? Why were not dactyls here also employed?” The answer which most readily suggests itself is, that the variation is for the purpose of relieving the monotony; but however plausible this reply, it is by no means the true one. For, in fact, there is no relief of the monotone effected. The spondees used are to all intents and purposes (except with mere reference to the eye) equivalent to dactyls. The cause of their introduction is to be found in the admission of unusually long syllables at certain points. In the spondee “fume wax”,x for example, the “wax”,x which is composed of two(54) of the most difficult consonants in the language, could not have been tortured into brevity by any mode of accentuation. Pronounce it as trippingly as we please, it will still occupy such portion of time as will render it equal to two short syllables. If employed at all, therefore, it could not have been employed otherwise, in its present location, than as the final syllable of a spondee. The emphasis demanded upon the “oh” in “done oh” forces it, in the same manner, into length.”(55)

That the division of the dactylic rhythms into verses, or lines, is a point purely arbitrary, or conventional, will be rendered evident by a glance at these rhythms as we have run them together, above. We might form what is termed versification(56) thus:

Know ye the | land where the

Cypress and | myrtle are

Emblems of | deeds that are

Done in their | clime where the &;cx

xor thus:

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle are

Emblems of | deeds that are | done in their | clime where the &cx

xor thus:

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle are | emblems of

Deeds that are | done in their | time [[clime]] where the | the &cx

xor thus:

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle are | emblems of

Deeds that are | done in their | clime where the | rage of the | vulture the &cx

In short the lines may be of any length which shall include a full rhythm, or two pulsations. Beyond doubt, we often see such lines as

Know ye the

Land where the &c,x

and our Grammars admit such; but most improperly; for common sense would dictate that every so obvious division of a poem, as is made by verse, should include within itself all that is necessary for its own comprehension or appreciation; but here we can have no appreciation of the rhythm;x which depends upon the idea of equality [page 67:] between two pulsations. These pseudo-verses, and those which are met in mock Pindaric Odes, and consist sometimes of but a single long syllable, can be considered as rhythmical, only in connexion with what immediately precedes; and it is this want of independent rhythm, which adapts them to the purposes of burlesque, and of this alone. Their effect is that of incongruity — the principle of mirth; for they intrudex the blankness of prose amid the harmony of verse.

One word here in regard to rhyme. Its employment is quite as arbitrary as that of verse itself. Our books speak of it as “a similarity of sound between the last syllables of different lines.”(57) But how absurd such definition, in the very teeth of the admitted facts,(58) that rhymes are often used in the middle of verses, and that mere similarity in sound is insufficient to constitute them in perfection! Rhyme may be defined as identity of sound occurring among rhythms, between syllables or portions of syllables of equal length, at equal intervals, or at interspaces the multiples of these intervals.(59)

The Iambic, the Trochaic, the Anapaestic, and the Dactylic, are the usually admitted divisions of English verse. These varieties, in their purity, or perfection, are to be understood as mere indefinite successions of the feet or pulsations, [page 68:] respectively, from which are derived their names. Our Prosodies cite examples of only the most common divisions of the respective rhythms into lines; but profess to cite instances of all the varieties of English verse. These varieties are, nevertheless, unlimited, as will be readily seen from what has been said; but thex books have done much, by their dogmas, in the way of prohibiting invention. A wide field is open for its display, inx novel combinations of metre. The immenseness of the effect derivable from the [page 70:] harmonious combination of various rhythms, is a point strangely neglected or misunderstood. We have, in America, some few versifiers of fine ear, who succeed to admiration in the building of the ordinary established lines — the Iambic Pentameters(60) of Sprague,(61) for example, surpass even those of Pope — but we have had few evidences of originality in the division of the old rhythms, or in the combination of their varieties. In general, the grossest ignorance prevails, even among our finest poets, and even in respect to the common-place harmonies upon which they are most habitually employed. If we regard at the same time accuracy of rhythm, melody, and invention, or novel combination, of metre, I should have no hesitation in saying that a young true poetess of Kentucky,(62) Mrsx Amelia Welby,(63) has done more in the way of [page 72:] really good verse than any individual among us. I shall be pardoned, nevertheless, for quoting and commenting upon an excellently well conceived and well managed specimen of versification, which will aid in developing some of the propositions already expressed. It is the “Last Leaf” of Oliver W. Holmes.(64)

I saw him once before

As he pass’d by the door,

And again

The pavement stones resound

As he totters o’er the ground

With his cane.

—— x

They say that in his prime,

Ere the pruning-knife of Time

Cut him down,

Not a better man was found

By the crier on his round

Through the town.

—— x

But now he walks the streetsx

And he looks at all he meets

So forlorn;

And he shakes his feeble head

That it seems as if he saidx

They are gone.

—— x

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb.

—— x

My grandmamax has said, —

Poor old lady! she is dead

Long ago — x

That he had a Roman nosex

And his cheek was like a rose

In the snow.

—— x

But now his nose is thinx

And it rests upon his chin

Like a staffx

And a crook is in his backx

And a melancholy crack

In his laugh.

—— x

I know it is a sin

For me to sit and grin

At him herex

But the old three-corner'd hatx

And the breechesx and all thatx

Are so queer!

—— x

And if I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree

In the spring — x

Let them smilex as I do nowx

At the old forsaken bough

Where I cling. [page 73:]

Every one will acknowledge the effective harmony of these lines; yet the attempt to scan them, by any reference to the rules of our Prosodies, will be vain. Indeed, I am at a loss to imagine what these books could say upon the subject, that would not immediately contradict all that has been said by them upon others. Let us scan the first stanza.

I saw | him once | before

As he | passed | by the | door And a- | gain

The pave- | ment stones | resound As he | totters | o’er the | ground

With his | cane.

This is the general scansion of the poem. We have first three iambuses. The second line shifts the rhythm into the trochaic,(65) giving us three trochees, with a caesura equivalent, in this case, to a trochee. The third line is a trochee and equivalent caesura. But it must be observed, that although the caesura is variable in value, and can thus be understood as equivalent to any pulsation which precedes it, it is insufficient to form, with any single pulsation, a perfect rhythm. The rhythm of the line “and again” is referrible, therefore, to the line preceding, and dependent thereupon. The whole would have been, more properly, written thus:

I saw | him once | before

As he | passed | by the | door | and a | gain [page 74:]

The pave- | ment stones | resound

As he | totters | o’er the | ground | with his | cane.

The pausing or terminating force of the caesura is here clearly seen. In the second line, as just remodelled, we make a pause in the trochaical rhythms, by means of “door.” The “and again” has the air of a resumption; which in fact it is. The word “passed” in the volume from which we extract the poem [Mr. Griswold's “Poets and Poetry of America”](66) has been printed, with an elision, “pass’d,” and thus made one syllable; but improperly: for each syllable requires full accentuation to form the trochee.(67)

If we now look at the second stanza, we shall perceive that in the line,

Not a | better | man was | found,

which, according to the construction of the first stanza, should be iambical, the author has merely continued the trochees of the preceding verse. The third stanza is constructed as the second. So also the fourth — with a variation in the line,

Have been carved for many a year;

which is thus scanned:

Have been | carv’d for | many a | year.

Here, in place of the expected trochee, we have a dactyl. Referring to the Prosodies, we learn that “by a synaeresis [blending] of the two short syllables, an anapaest may sometimes be employed for an iambus, or a dactyl for a trochee”(68) : — all which is true, but excessively unsatisfactory. The rationale of the matter is untouched. I was perhaps wrong in admitting even the truth of the rule. The fact is, that in cases such as this, the synaeresis of the syllables is erroneously urged. There should be no blending of the two short syllables into one; and, unquestionably, if blended, the result would be one long, to which they are equivalent; thus the blending would be far from producing a trochee, inasmuch as it would produce more. The idea of the versifier here is discord for the relief of monotone. The time of the pulsation is purposely increased, that the ear may not be palled by the too continuous harmony. As in music, so in the rhythm of words, this principle of discord is one of the most important, and, when effectively managed, surprizes and delights by its vigorous effects. It seems to be an essential, in these variations, that they be never, of diminution. A decrease in the ordinary time of the pulsations should never be attempted; but a fine discord is often effected by mere change of the order of syllables, without increase. [page 75:] In iambic rhythms this change is most usually seen. For example:

Oh thou, | whatev- | er tT- | tle please | thine ear,

Dean, Dra- | pTer, Bick- | erstaff, | or Gul- | liver,

Whether | thou choose | Cervan- | tes’ se- | rious air,

Or laugh | and shake | in Ra- | belais’ ea- | sy chair.(69)

Here a trochee forms the first foot of the third line. Discords of excess are observed in the concluding foot of the third verse, and in the penultimate of the fourth; where anapaests take place of iambuses.

These various discords, it will be understood, are efforts for the relief of monotone. These efforts produce fluctuations in the metre; and it often happens that these fluctuations, if not subsequently counterbalanced, affect the ear displeasingly, as do unresolved discords in music. Very generally, one discord requires a counterbalance at no great interval. This is a point, however, which only a very nice ear can appreciate. Pope felt its importance, and more especially Milton. I quote an example from the latter:

But say, if our Deliverer up to Heaven

Must re-ascend, what will betide the few

His faithful, left among the unfaithful herd

The enemies of truth? who then shall guide

His people, who defend? will they not deal

More with his followers than with him they dealt?

Be sure they will, said the Angel.(70)

Said the angel” is here used as a single foot, and counterbalances the two previous discords of excess, italicized. To this practice, on the part of Milton, I especially alluded, when speaking of this poet as surpassing Pope “in the adjusting of his harmonies through paragraphs of greater length than the latter ever ventured to attempt.” [page 76:]

Discords of excess are also employed (and even more than one in a line) with the view of equalizing the time of a verse with the real time of a preceding one, when the apparent time of this preceding does not exceed the ordinary rhythm.(71) For example:

But such | a bulk | as no | twelve bards | could raise.

Twelve starveling bards of these degenerate days.(72)

If we scan the first of these lines, we find only the ordinary iambuses; but, by the use of unusually long syllables, the verse is made to labor, in accordance with the author's favorite whim, of “making the sound an echo to the sense.”(73) It will be found impossible to read aloud

But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise in the usual time of five iambuses. The drag of the line, therefore, is properly counterbalanced by two anapaests in the succeeding; which is thus scanned:

Twelve star- | veling bards \ in these | degen- | erate days.

Some editions of Pope read, with elision, thus:

Twelve starv’ling bards of these degen’rate days;

but this is, of course, improper. Our books, in general, are full of false elisions.

But to return to our scansion of “The Last Leaf.” The fifth and sixthx stanzas exactly resemble the second. The seventh differs from all the others. The second line, as well as the first, is iambic. The whole should be thus divided:

I know | it Is | a sin | for me | to sit | and grin

At him | here | but the | old three- | corner’d | hat |

and the(75) breeches | and all | that | are so | queer.

In saying that the whole should be thus divided, I mean only to say that this is the true grouping of the pulsations; and have no reference to the rhymes. I speak as if these latter had no existence.

The last stanza embraces still another variation. It is entirely trochaic; and involves the only absolute error to be seen in the whole versification. The rhythm requires that the first syllable of the second line should be long; but “the” is a monosyllable which can never be forced, by any accentuation, into length.(76)

As I am now speaking of American verse, and of the dearth of invention which, in general, it betrays, some remarks on Professor Longfellow's late attempts at introducing the Greek Hexameter, will not be considered out of place. The Greek or Latin Hexameter line, consists, as its title implies, of six pulsations. These, in [page 77:] the four first instances, may be either dactyls or spondees, or dactyls and spondees arbitrarily intermingled. The penultimate foot, however, is always (at least nearly always) a dactyl; the ultimate always a spondee. The lines already quoted from Silius Italicus are Latin Hexameters. The first two of these lines run thus:

Fallis | te men- | sas In | ter quod | credis in | ermem.

Tot bel- | lis quae | sita vi- | ro tot | caedibus | armat.

The first point which will arrest the attention of the merely English reader, is the discrepancy between this scansion and the flow of the lines in perusal. In attempting, himself, a division, he, no doubt, would have thus arranged it:

Fallis te | mensas | inter quod | credis in | ermem,

and, not until he had counted the feet, would he have been aware of the deficiency of one. Now the discrepancy in question is not [page 78:] observable in English metres; where the scansion coincides with the reading, so far as the rhythm is concerned — that is to say, if we pay no attention to the sense of the passage. But these facts indicate a radical difference in the genius of the two languages, as regards their capacities for modulation. In truth, from the character of its terminations (most frequently in urn, am, i, o, os, &c.) as well as from the paucity of the monosyllabic articles and pronouns so prevalent in the Saxon, the Latin is a far more stately tongue than our own. It is essentially spondaic; the English is as essentially dactylic.(77) The long syllable is the spirit of the Roman (and Greek) verse; the short syllable is the essence of ours. In casting the eye, for example, over the lines of Silius here quoted, we will not fail to perceive the great preponderance of the spondee;(78) and, in examining the so- called Hexameters, just above, by Professor Longfellow, we shall, in the same manner, see the predominance of the dactyl. English Hexameters are always about one-third longer to the eye than Latin or Greek ones.(79) Now it follows from what has been here explained, that English Hexameters are radically different from Latin ones;x for it is the predominant foot, or pulsation, which gives the tone to the verse, or establishes its rhythm. Latin Hexameters are spondaic rhythms, varied by equivalent dactyls. English Hexameters are dactylic rhythms varied, rarely ‘ by equivalent spondees.80 Not that we cannot have English Hexameter, in every respect correspond dent to the Latin; but that such can be constructed only by a minuteness of labor, and with a forced or far-fetched appearance, which are at war with their employment to any extent. In building them we must search for spondaic words, which, in English, are rare indeed; or, in their default, we must construct spondees of long monosyllables, although the majority of our monosyllables are short. I quote, here, an unintentional instance of a perfect English Hexameter formed upon the model of the Greek:

Man is a complex, compound, compost, yet is he God-born, [page 80:]

This line is thus scanned:

Man is a | complex | compound | compost | yet ¥s he | God-born.

I say that this is “a perfect English Hexameter formed upon the model of the Greek,” because, while its rhythm is plainly spondaic varied by dactyls, and thus is essentially Greek, (or Latin,) it yet preserves, as all English verse should preserve, a concordance between its scansion and reading-flow. Such lines, of course, cannot be composed without a degree of difficulty which must effect their exclusion, for all practical purposes, from our tongue.

But let us examine some of the supposed Hexameters of Professor Longfellow.

Also the | church with | in was a- | dorn’d for | this was the | season

In which the | young their | parents’ | hope and the | lov’d ones of | heaven

Should at the | foot of the | altar re- | new the | vows of their | baptism.

Therefore each | nook and | corner was | swept and | clean’d and the | dust was

Blown from the | walls and | ceiling and | from the | oil-painted | benches.(82)

We here find that, although the preponderance of the dactyl is not great, apparently, yet this preponderance would be excessive, were it not for the forced lengthening of syllables too unimportant to sustain an accent in ordinary perusal. In the first line, the “for,” in “dorn'd for,” and the “son” in “season,” have no right to be long.(83) In the second, the same objection applies to “their” in “young their,” and the “en” in “heaven.” In the third, it applies to the “the” in “new the”; in the fourth to the “and” in “swept and,” and the “was” in “dust was”; in the fifth to the “and” in “walls and,” the “from” and “the” in “from the,” and the “es” in “benches.” “Baptism(84) is the only admissible spondee in the whole composition.

The truth is, that nothing less than the deservedly high reputation of Professor Longfellow, could have sufficed to give currency to his lines as to Greek Hexameters. In general, they are neither one thing nor another. Some few of them are dactylic lines — English dactylics. But do away with the division into lines, and the most astute critic would never have suspected them of anything more than prose. Let us try the experiment upon the extract just above:

“Also, the church within was adorned; for this was the season in which the young, their parents’ hope, and the loved ones of heaven, should, at the feet(85) of the altar, renew the vows of their baptism. Therefore, each nook and corner was swept and cleaned, and the dust was blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches.” [page 82:]

This is excellent prose; but no species of manipulation can torture it into anything better than very indifferent verse.

Whatever defects may be found in the harmony of our poets, their errors of melody are still more conspicuous. Here the field is, comparatively, one of little extent. The versifier, who is at all aware of the nature of the rhythms with which he is engaged, can scarcely err, in melody, unless through carelessness, or affectation. The rules for his guidance are simple and few. He should employ his syllables, as nearly as possible, with the accentuation due in prose reading. His short syllables should never be encumbered with many consonants, and especially, never with those difficult of pronunciation. His long syllables should depend as much as possible upon full vowels or dipthongal(86) sounds for length. His periods, or equivalent pauses, should not be so placed as to interrupt a rhythm. It is, therefore, justly matter for surprise, when we meet, amid the iambics of so fine a versifier as Mr. Bryant, for example, such lines as

Languished in the damp shade and died afar from men,(87)

or, still worse, as

Kind influence. Lo their orbs burn more bright:(88)

in the latter of which we can preserve the metre only by drawing out “influence” into three strongly-marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable “Lo, “ and lengthening the short one “their.”

In turning over a poem by Alfred B. Street, my attention is arrested by these lines:

(89) His sin- | uous path, | by bla- | zes, wound |

Among | trunks group’d | in my- | riads(90) round.(89)

Every reader will here perceive the impossibility of pronouncing “trunks” as a short syllable. The difficulty arises from the number of harsh consonants by which the vowel, u, is surrounded. There is a rule, in Latin prosody, that a vowel before two consonants is long.(91) We moderns have not only no such rule, but profess inability to comprehend its rationale. If, nevertheless, from the natural limit to man's power of syllabification, a vowel before two consonants is inevitably long, how shall we properly understand as short, one which is embedded among nine? Yet Mr. Street is one of our finest versifiers, and his error is but one of a class in which all his brethren most pertinaciously indulge.

But I must bring this paper to a close. It will not be supposed that my object has been a treatise upon verse. A world more than I have room to say might be said.(92) I have endeavored to deal with principles while seeming busy with details. A right application [page 83:] of these principles will clear up much obscurity in our common acceptation of rhythm; but, throughout, it has been my design not so much thoroughly to investigate the topic, as to dwell upon those salient points of it which have been either totally neglected,(93) or inefficiently discussed.


[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 45:]

1 The Pioneer, March 1843, pp. 102-112.

2 Goold Brown, Institutes of English grammar, p. 236. Throughout this essay and Rationale, the views which Poe attributes to prosodies and grammars at large are recognizable quotations from Brown; accordingly we have reprinted Brown's chapter on versification (Institutes, pp. 235-239) as Appendix 2.

[The following footnotes appear on page 47:]

3 We can give no clear account of the meaning that Poe has attached to rationale, in this essay and in Rationale. Fundamental reason is perhaps the closest dictionary sense. But the law informing the rules of metre can pass muster only as the rationale of metre; the not as the rationale of rhythm. Different philosophers may seek the fundamental reason of rhythm in the music of the spheres, or in the heartbeat, or in the motions of the athlete, or even in the vibrations of the pendulum (although the Athenians are not known to have used this instrument): to seek it in the laws, even scientifically excogitated laws, of metrical composition were hysteron proteron. Having misconstrued the rationale of metre as the rationale of rhythm, it was an easy but illogical slip for Poe to speak of the rationale of verse: but this title promises an essay on the subject of what makes verse verse.

4 The “English Grammar” of Goold Brown. — POE. See note 2, above, and Appendix 2.

5 Roorbach, Bibliotheca Americana . . . 1820-1852, p. 382, lists Lindley Murray's English Grammar, by Bacon, New York: S. Raynor. This work, priced at 10 cents, we presume to have been a pamphlet abridgement of Murray; we have not seen a copy.

6 Alexander Miller, A concise grammar of the English language. With an appendix chiefly extracted from Dr. Lowth's critical notes. New-York: T. & J. Swords, 1795, p. 9:

Grammar is the art of speaking and writing a language properly. Propriety of language consists in its conformity to the custom of the nation in general, and especially of its approved speakers and writers. For this reason, many words not agreeable to analogy, when established by such authority, must be accounted proper.

7 Allen Fisk, Murray's English grammar simplified; designed to facilitate the study of the English language; comprehending the principles and rules of English grammar, illustrated by appropriate exercises; to which is added a series of questions for examination: Abridged for the use of schools. Troy, N.Y.: Z. Clark, 1822, p. [9]: ‘ENGLISH GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety.’

8 Jeremiah Greenleaf, Grammar simplified; or, an ocular analysis of the English language, 10. ed., New York: C. Starr, 1824, p. 18: ‘GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing correctly.’

9 Charles M. Ingersoll, Conversations on English grammar, explaining the principles and rules of the language, illustrated by appropriate exercises; abridged and adapted to the use of schools, 4. ed., Portland [Maine]: C. Green, 1824. This book contains no definition of grammar.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 48:]

10 Samuel Kirkham, English grammar in familiar lectures: Embracing a new systematic order of parsing, a nee [sic] system of punctuation, exercises in false syntax, and a system of philosophical grammar. To which are added, a compendium, an appendix, and a key to the exercises designed for the use of schools and private learners, 53. ed., Rochester: W. Alling, 1841, p. 18: ‘ENGLISH GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety.’

11 Joab Goldsmith Cooper, An abridgement of Murray's English grammar, and exercises, with improvements, designed as a text book for the use of schools in the United States, Philadelphia, J. Dobson, 1828, p. [5]: (ENGLISH GRAMMAR treats of the principles, and construction of the English language. . . . Or, English Grammar treats of the letters of the English alphabet in their various combinations and arrangements.’

12 Abel Flint, Murray ‘s English grammar abridged; to which is added, under the head of prosody, an abridgment of Sheridan's lectures on elocution. Also, Murray's treatise on punctuation at large. Together with a system of exercises, adapted to the several rules of syntax and punctuation. Designed for the use of schools. Hartford: Peter B. Gleason, 1810, p. [5]:

Question. WHAT is ENGLISH GRAMMAR?

Answer. English Grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 48, running to page 49:]

13 Hugh A. Pue, A grammar of the English language, in a series of letters, addressed to every American youth, Philadelphia, 1841, p. 3:

Nearly all writers on English Grammar, say in the commencement of their books, that “English Grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety.”

Poe criticizes Pue harshly: Harrison 10:167-171. The amazing passage [page 49:] quoted by Poe (10:170) is actually from Pue, p. 100:

Mr. Cobbett, in his English Grammar, talks about “good grammar,” and “bad grammar.” Why, what is bad grammar? Nearly all grammarians in the commencement of their books tell us that “grammar is the writing and speaking of the English language correctly.” What, then, is bad grammar? Why, bad grammar must be “the BAD writing and speaking of the English language CORRECTLY!!”

The words complained of are found in William Cobbett, A grammar of the English language, in a series of letters, &c., New York: John Doyle, 1833, p. 140:

What, then, can learning have to do with any particular tongue? Good grammar, for instance, written in Welsh, or in the language of the Chipewaw savages, is more learned than bad grammar written in Greek.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 49:]

14 John Comly, English grammar, made easy to the teacher and pupil, &c., 15. ed., Philadelphia: Kimber & Sharpless, 1826, p. 5:

‘ENGLISH GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety.’

15 The idea of a catalogue of grammarians, but not the detailed list, owes something to Goold Brown, Institutes, p. xiii:

Who will pretend that Flint, Alden, Comly, Jaudon, Russell, Bacon, Lyon, Miller, Alger, Maltby, Ingersoll, Fisk, Greenleaf, Merchant, Kirkham, Cooper, Greene, Woodworth, Smith, or Frost, has exhibited greater skill [than Lindley Murray]?

16 Lindley Murray, An English grammar: Comprehending the principles and rules of the language, illustrated by appropriate exercises, and a key to the exercises. 6. Amer. ed. New York: Collins, &c., 1829, 1:[1]: ‘ENGLISH GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety.’

17 William Lily, Brevissima institutio, seu ratio grammatices cognoscendae, ad omnium puerorum utilitatem perscripta; quam solam regia majestas in omnibus scholis docendam pracecpit, London, 1776, p. [1]: ‘GRAMMATICA est recte scribendi, atque loquendi ars.’ The royal injunction appeared on title pages as early as 1566.

18 To provide a complement for was, the easiest remedy is to insert ista before the quotation. For the difficulties of constructing macaronies that shall parse, see Henry Watson Fowler & Francis G. Fowler, The King's English, 3. ed., Oxford Univ. Press, 1931, p. 43; and Montague Rhodes James, ‘The treasure of Abbot Thomas’, Collected ghost stories, London: E. Arnold, 1931, p. 168. For the burlesque macaroni (which need not parse) see Poe, ‘A predicament’ Harrison 2:283-295, particularly p. 289.

19 Omnibonus Leonicenus, De octo partibus orationis, Venice, 1473. This book contains no definition of grammar. For a short history of the canard that Lily drew on Leonicenus, see Appendix 6.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 51:]

20 Cf. Phoebe Cary, The poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, ed. Bates, New York: Thos. Crowell, 1903, p. 463:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not like being sick,

And resembles sorrow only

As a brick-bat resembles a brick.

21 The diversity between adjacent lines in Pindaric odes has obscured the exact equality between homologous lines in the strophe and the antistrophe.

22 The exact denotation that Poe intends to give to melody and harmony, here and in Rationale, is not obvious. That the contrast customary in music seems inapplicable in verse composition was noted by Henry Home, lord Kames, Elements of criticism, 6. ed., Edinburgh: John Bell et al., 1785, 2:101 n:

Music, properly so called, is analysed into melody and harmony. A succession of sounds so as to be agreeable to the ear, constitutes melody: harmony arises from co-existing sounds. Verse therefore can only reach melody, and not harmony.

We conjecture that Poe found the terms in antithesis, and assigned peculiar meanings to them, preserving the antithesis at the expence of the established musical denotations: melody to fitting combinations of sound within a foot, harmony to fitting agreement between feet.

23 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ballads and other poems, 3. ed. ‘ Cambridge [Mass.]: John Owen, 1842. For Poe's opinion of Longfellow, see Harrison 10:71, 11:64, 68, 12:41 ff.

24 Esias Tegner, bishop of Wexid.

25 So entitled by Longfellow, Ballads, p. 59. The title is a literal but romantic translation of Tegner's ‘Nattvardsbarnen’; a prosaic translation is ‘The confirmation class’.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 52:]

26 Longfellow, Ballads, p. 60:

Clear was the heaven and blue, and May, with her cap crowned with roses,

Stood in her holiday dress in the fields, and the wind and the brooklet

Murmured gladness and peace, God's-peace! with lips rosy-tinted

Whispered the race of the flowers, and merry on balancing branches

Birds were singing their carol, a jubilant hymn to the Highest.

Tegner, Samlade skrifter, Stockholm: C. E. Fritee [1847], 2:51:

Klar var himlen och blH, och Maj, med rosor i hatten.,

Stod i sin helgdagsskrud pR landet, och vinden och backen [page 53:]

Susade gladje och frid. Gudsfrid! med rosiga lappar

Hviskade blommornas folk, och muntert pa gungande grenar

Faglarna sjongo sin sang, en jublande hymn till den Hogste.

It is a pity that the exclamation point after Gudsfrid cannot be taken as a factorial, a scarcely extravagant notation for omnipotence; so Dethlevus Cluverus, fQuadratura circuli infinitis modis demonstrata” Acta Eruditorum, 1686, p. 371:

Eritque quadrare circulum hoc quidem sensu, nihil aliud, quam EX DATA.LINEA construere MUNDUM, DIVINAE MENU ANALOGUM; sive geo’ metrice exhibere productum infinitum omnium numerorum, in natu’ rali serie J in 2 in 3 in 4 in 5 in 6 in 7 &c; hoc est, omnes Transpositiones, Generationes ac Conjugationes rerum, quae per naturam fieri possunt, universali quadam Idea includere.

The use of the sign ! to denote a continued product appears due to Christian Kramp, Elemens d’ arithmetique universelie, Cologne, 1808, pp. [v]-vi:

Je me sers de la notation tres [sic] simple n! pour designer le produit des nombres decroissans depuis n jusqu’a l’unit6, savoir n(n — 1)(n — 2).3.2.1.

27 Silius Italicus, Punica 11.342-346:

fallit te, mensas inter quod credis inermem.

tot bellis quaesita viro, tot caedibus armat

maiestas aeterna ducem. si admoveris ora,

Cannas et Trebiam ante oculos Thrasymenaque busta

et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram.

Poe, “Pinakidia” Harrison 14:59:

There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet.

Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem,

Tot bellis quaesita viro, tot caedibus armat

Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora,

Cannas et Trebium ante oculos, Trasymenaque busta,

Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram.

For the somewhat affected title Pinakidia, cf. Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of literature5 Boston: Lilly, Wait, Colman, & Holden, 1834, 2:11:

Affected title-pages were not peculiar to the orientalists: the Greeks and the Romans have shown a finer taste. They had their Cornucopias or horns of abundance, — Limones or meadows — Pinakidions or tablets — Pancarpes or all sorts of fruits; titles not unhappily adapted for the miscellanists.

28 The macron stands over the u, notwithstanding that u after is effectively a consonant. We can understand that the printers of The Pioneer were not furnished with a macron over ligated ae: but why was the syllable not left unmarked on the principle that diphthongs are invariably long?

29 Sic no foot division.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 53, running to the bottom of page 55:]

30 Although all writers simply means Goold Brown (for whom see Appendix 2) exalted into a general rule, we cite below the [page 54:] podologies of several writers on English metre. Edward Bysshe, The art of English poetry, &c., 8. ed., 2 vols., London: F. Clay [et al.], 1737, knows none of the Greek names of feet.

Edward Manwaring, Of harmony and numbers, in Latin and English prose and in English poetry3 London: M. Cooper, 1744, admits the spondee, p. 35; and rejects the pyrrhic, p. 36. [page 55:]

Samuel Say, ‘On the harmony, variety, and power of numbers, whether in prose or verse” Poems on several occasions, &c., London, 1745 (what we have seen is the 1956 reprint, no. 55 of the Augustan reprint society) admits the Spondee and Tribrachus, p. 104; and admits the Pyrrichius as a subsidiary foot, p. 105.

[John Mason], An essay on the power of numbers, and the principles of harmony in poetical compositions, London: M. Cooper, 1749, admits the spondee and pyrrhic, p. 45: ‘To begin the [mixt Iambic] line with a Spondee, succeeded immediately by a Pyrrhic and Iambic, is a mighty agreeable Measure.’

William Crowe, A treatise on English versification, London: J. Murray, 1827, pp. 62-63, admits the spondee and pyrrhic with reservations:

Dismissing, therefore, this foot, the Amphibrachys, as intrusive and useless, we have in our prosody these six; the Iambic, the Trochee, the Spondee, the Pyrrhic, the Dactyle, and the Anapest. But as no verse, nor even language, can wholly consist of syllables, which are all accented, or which have not any, the Spondee, and the Pyrrhic, are to be reckoned as feet, that occasionally, and by license, enter into verse; and not, like the remaining four, as being essentially necessary [sic], and giving a character to the lines which they respectively constitute.

Edwin Guest, A history of English rhythms, London: W. Pickering, 1838, 2 vols., knows none of the Greek names of feet.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 55:]

31 For the spelling of anapaest cf. p. 25, note 13.

32 Something has gone wrong with Poe's arithmetic. Four successive short syllables can indeed arise from the combination of a dactyl and an anapaest, as in the ballad excerpted: but four successive long syllables can not so arise. They can be compounded of two spondees (common in Latin hexameters, but not in English); of a spondee between an anapaest and a dactyl; or of a palimbacchius and a bacchius. We assert that, whatever German Greek prosody Poe had looked these last two feet out in, he would have condemned them as chimerical.

33 Arthur Cleveland Coxe, “March” in Rufus W. Griswold, The poets and poetry of America, Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1842, p. 427. For Poe's opinion of Coxe see Harrison 12:243 and 16:154. ‘The mammoth squash” a lampoon on Coxe, printed as Poe's by Harrison (7:236), is called spurious by Killis Campbell, ‘The Poe canon’, The mind of Poe and other studies, Harvard Univ. Press, 1933, pp. 193-194.

34 Griswold, p. 427:

March — march — march!

Making sounds as they tread,

Ho-ho! how they step,

Going down to the dead!

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 57:]

35 Cf. p. 4, line 34.

36 [Jacob] Bielfeld, The elements of universal erudition, containing an analytical abridgment of the sciences, polite arts and belles lettres, tr. W. Hooper, London: J. Robson & B. Law, 1770, 2:195:

An ingenious fable, a romance that is short and full of vivacity, a comedy, the sublime narrative of the actions of a hero, such as the Telemachus of M. Fenelon, though wrote in prose, but in measured prose, is therefore a work of poetry: because the foundation and the superstructure are the productions of genius, as the whole proceeds from fiction; and truth itself appears to have employed an innocent and agreeable deception to instruct with efficacy.

James Montgomery, Lectures on general literature, poetry &c., delivered at the Royal Institution in 1830 and 1831, New-York: Harper & Bros., 1840, p. 72:

In French, indeed, from the absolute want of a genuine poetical diction, — neither the rhythm, the rhyme, nor the reason, it may be said of the language, allowing “thoughts that breathe” to vent themselves in “words that burn,” — a florid prose style has been adopted with signal effect in the Telemaque of Fenelon, which no mastery of his native tongue could have made tolerable in French verse, any more than the most consummate mastery of our own could make tolerable to a good ear in English prose.

Leigh Hunt, Imagination and fancy, or selections from the English poets, illustrative of those first requisites of their art; with markings of the best passages, critical notices of the writers, and an essay in answer to the question “what is poetry?”, New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1845, p. 26:

The author of Telemachus had a soul full of beauty and tenderness. He was not a man who, if he had had a wife and children, would have run away from them, as Bunyan's hero did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was “a little lower than the angels,” like our own Bishop Jewells and Berkeleys; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of the seraphic choir.

37 Skeat derives rhythm from ρυθμος.

38 Analogies between metrical feet and musical times are hazardous: see George Saintsbury, Historical manual of English prosody, New York: Schocken, 1966, pp. 245, 261.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 59:]

39 Euclid, book 7, definitions 1, 2: μονασ εστιν, καθ' ην εκαστον των οντων εν λεγεται. αριθμος δε το εκ μοναδων συγκειμενον πληθος. So Boethius, Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boetii de institutione libri duo, &c., ed. Friedlein, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1867, lib. 1, cap. 3, p. 13: ‘umerus est unitatum collectio, vel quantitatis acervus ex unitatibus profusus.’

David Eugene Smith, History of mathematics, New York: Dover, 1958, 2:29, cites the distinction between unit and number to arithmetic books published so late as 1771; for Poe to have used it in 1843 is surprising.

40 See Appendix 2.

41 sic

42 The accented syllables. We cannot understand syllables out of a preceding polysyllables; although the same licence occurs in Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels 1726, ed. Herbert Davis, Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1959, part 3, cap. 5, p. 185:

The first Project [for improving the language of Balnibarbi] was to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles; because in Reality all things imaginable are but Nouns.

43 Emphasis will not serve to lengthen the articles a and the: see pages 12 and 14 and Appendix 4.

44 William Cowper, ‘Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk, during his solitary abode in the island of Juan Fernandez’, Poetical works, ed. H. S. Milford, 3. ed., Oxford Univ. Press, 1926, p. 311:

I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute;

From the centre all round to the sea,

I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

For Goold Brown's use of these lines as a metrical example, see Appendix 2.

Erastus Everett, A system of English versification, containing rules for the structure of the different kinds of verse; illustrated by numerous examples from the best poets, New York: D. Appleton, 1848, p. 97:

The Anapest is the vehicle of gayety and joy. . . . COWPER, in his Alexander Selkirk, and CAMPBELL, in his Soldier's Dream, have improperly chosen this measure. In both of these pieces there is an air of despondency, and we feel that there is a want of sympathy between the subject and the measure.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 61:]

45 Three inadvertent decasyllables.

46 Horace, Carmina 1.1:

Maecenas atavis edite regibus,

o et praesidium et dulce decus meum,

sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum

collegisse iuvat metaque fervidis

terrarum dominos evehit ad deos;

hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium

certat tergeminis tollere honoribus;

ilium, si proprio condidit horreo,

quicquid de Libycis verritur areis.

48 Poe returns to the scansion of this ode in Rationale, p. 139.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 63:]

49 George Gordon Byron, ‘The bride of Abydos’, Works, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, London: John Murray, 1900, 3:[157]-158:

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;

Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,

Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom;

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;

Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,

In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,

And the purple of Ocean is deepest in dye;

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,

And all, save the spirit of man, is divine —

'Tis the clime of the East — 'tis the land of the Sun —

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?

Oh! wild as the accents of lovers' farewell

Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell.

For parallel passages from Goethe and others, see Appendix 7.

50 Goold Brown, p. 239; see Appendix 2.

51 We defer scanning the first four lines until we have criticized Poe's definition of rhyme, note 59 below. The natural scansion from line 5 to the end of the extract is a series of anapaestic dimeters, sometimes acephalous. If asked why Poe persisted in attempting to scan these verses in dactyls, we can only conjecture that he had been flogged left-handedly.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 65:]

52 Before replacing the text by an equivalent verse, it is necessary to determine what the text signifies. Byron asks not whether the personified Sun can smile on his children — he does this qua luminary — but whether he can smile on deeds, presumably as a metaphor for approving the deeds. Byron, writing such deeds as, solicits the Sun's approval of all deeds similar to those of his children — if we accept Coleridge's gloss, deeds of vengeance: Poe, writing the deeds that, solicits approval of only the deeds already done. After this misreading, the question between that and which is anticlimax.

We have not traced the origin of Poe's statement that the deeds that is grammatically inferior to the deeds which. It is not derived from Goold Brown, who specifies (p. 141, note 6.5) that that is preferable to which in restrictive clauses. It is only fair to add that Otto Jespersen, A modern English grammar on historical principles, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1914, 2:418, suspects that that cannot be termed a relative pronoun.

If the whistling noises accompanying the enunciation of which unfit this pronoun for serious poetry, they enhance its utility in burlesque. So Guy Wetmore Carryl, ‘The sycophantic fox and the gullible raven’, in William Cole, The fireside book of humorous poetry, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959, p. 29, vv. 13-18:

Two things there are, no doubt you know,

To which a fox is used:

A rooster that is bound to crow,

A crow that's bound to roost,

And whichsoever he espies

He tells the most unblushing lies.

53 For this proleptic use of italicize see p. 43, note 6. The caesuras crime and tell were both underscored and overscored in Poe's ms.: the printer interpreted the underscores as instruction to set in italics, and the overscores as underscores to the line above — producing the irrelevant italics of the and accents. Poe may have wanted italics plus an overscore the length of the word, an effect unobtainable with the unleaded type used for extracts in The Pioneer. Anastatic printing alone afforded Poe any hope of seeing his prosody printed as he wrote it.

Since the typewriter here used prints overscores unpleasantly close to the word affected, we have regarded the spirit rather than the letter of Poe's emphatics, and have set the caesuras in italics with a double underscore.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 67:]

54 w and x? or x simpliciter? x is two consonants when applying the rule (note 91, below) that a vowel before two consonants is long; w is scarcely difficult of enunciation.

55 sic (printer's misreading of interlineation in ms.)

56 What Poe has termed versification, p. 58, above, urging that the prosodists follow him.

57 Goold Brown, p. 235; see Appendix 2.

58 Two inadvertent decasyllables.

59 Poe's attempted definition succeeds so far that he has referred rhyme to the correct genus: neither assonance nor homoioteleuton, but partial identity of sound. Further, of equal length may stand, as correctly but obscurely stating that a short syllable will not rhyme with a long syllable, however identical their sounds. Poe's other differentiae are less apt. It is clearly his intent to confine the definition to rhyme as an ornament in verse: but the differentia among rhythms cuts off too much. Even Bryant, alert to the beauties of trochaic and anapaestic substitution, composed occasional stanzas of unrelieved iambi. So ‘The ages” Poems, 1836, p. 25, stanza 31: [page 68:]

Not unavenged — the foeman, from the wood,

Beheld the deed, and when the midnight shade

Was stillest, gorged his battle-axe with blood;

All died — the wailing babe — the shrieking maid —

And in the flood of fire that scathed the glade,

The roofs went down; but deep the silence grew,

When on the dewy woods the day-beam played;

No more the cabin smokes rose wreathed and blue,

And ever, by their lake, lay moored the light canoe.

Who will deny the name rhyme to the terminations of verses 2, 4, 5, & 7, or of 6, 8, & 9 — all composed in a single rhythm?

The word portions is equivocal, and should have been disallowed in a definition: is it to be construed parts of syllables, or parcels of two or more (presumably consecutive) syllables? The first construction is not a sufficient differentia: a single consonant, or a single vowel, is a part of a syllable; yet alliteration, although an agreeable ornament, is not the partial identity that makes lawful rhyme in English verse; no more is assonance this partial identity. Without asking Poe to write eighty years ahead of his time and introduce phonemes, we demand that an adequate definition of rhyme distinguish the identities of sound that amount to rhyme from the identities that fall short. The second construction is otiose: any identity between parcels of syllables entails identities between single syllables.

The last differentia, quite aside from the echo of Johnson, is logically deficient for want of a unit wherewithal to measure the equal intervals. These equal intervals are, on the first option, the interspaces between rhymes; and on the second, suitable submultiples of the interspaces: are these interspaces to be counted, or submultiples to be computed, in feet, in syllables, in morae, or otherwise? Take the first twelve verses of “The last leaf’ with Poe's scansion, and reckon a short syllable as one mora, a long syllable as two, a caesura (i.e. a monosyllabic foot) as three; then each iambus and each trochee contains three morae. The table opposite counts feet, syllables, and morae: first, from the start of the verses to each rhyme; second, between pairs of corresponding rhymes, including the possibly unintentional pairs -sound/ found and ground/round. [page 69:]

feet syllables morae

-fore 3 6 8 door 7 13 19 -gain 9 1 6 25 -sound 12 22 35 ground 16 29 46 cane 18 32 52 prime 21 38 62 Time 25 45 73 down 27 48 79 found 31 55 91 round 35 62 103 town 37 65 109

On the first option, are we to conclude that here are three rhymes., two n:on-rhymes, and three bastard identities of sound that are rhymes if we reckon by feet or syllables, and non-rhymes if we reckon by morae? Or do we retreat to the second option, only to find no equal intervals among the submultiples of the interspaces — no greatest common measure of those interspaces — except the trivial measures: one foot, one syllable, one mora?

Poe's definition moreover ignores that which he elsewhere properly emphasizes — that English verse is made up of feet. The definition as it stands is as satisfactory an account of rhyme in French verse as in English. We hold that a principal purpose of rhyme, in English verse, is to mark the feet; that the orthodox place for rhyming syllables is at the ends of feet; that rhyme is confined to pairs of like feet. Accordingly we define:

Rhyme is identity in sound, or, by licence, in the alphabetical characters used to write such sound, between syllables or parts of syllables: more particularly, such identity used as an ornament in verse: specifically, in English verse composed of feet, such identity between parts of like feet, comprising, in each such foot, the vowel or diphthong in the long syllable, the consonant or cluster of consonants, if any, following such vowel or diphthong in such long syllable, and the short syllable or syllables, if any, following the long syllable; excluding, by implication from the foregoing, identity confined to the vowels or diphthongs (which is assonance), and identity confined to the consonants in whole or in part (which is alliteration); and expressly excluding identity extending to the consonant or cluster of consonants, if any, preceding the vowel or diphthong in the long syllable of each [page 70:] foot so as to make such long syllables identical (which is identical rhyme), and identity extending beyond such long syllables to all or part of the short syllable or syllables preceding each long syllable (which is rime riche).

This definition contemplates monosyllabic rhyme between monon syllabic feet, between iambi, between an iambus and a bastard iambus (p. 115, below), between anapaests, and between an anapaest and a bastard anapaest (p. 132); disyllabic rhyme between trochees, between spondees (if this combination arises; shadow/Eldorado, when drawled, approximates it), between iambi with an added syllable each, and between anapaests with an added syllable each; trisyllabic rhyme between dactyls. In burlesque we may add three loci of trisyllabic rhymes: between trochees with an added syllable each, between iambi with two added syllables each, and between anapaests with two added syllables each. These three can be illustrated from W. S. Gilbert:

Here's a first-rate opportunity

To get married with impunity,

And indulge in the felicity

Of unbounded domesticity. — The pirates of Penzance

When all night long a chap remains

On sentry-go, to chase monotony

He exercises of his brains,

That is, assuming that he's got any. — Iolanthe

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache,

and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,

I conceive you may use any language you choose

to indulge in, without impropriety; &c. — Iolanthe

Poe's scansion of verses 1-4 of The bride of Abydos in continuous dactyls is contradicted by the rhymes: myrtle are will not rhyme with turtle now, nor clime where with the monosyllabic foot crime. We scan, accordingly, these verses in anapaests: verses 1, [page 71:] 2, & 4 acephalous; verses 1 & 3 with an added syllable each, forming disyllabic rhyme.

Verses can be constructed with Byron's rhymes that will admit a dactylic scansion:

Know ye the land of the cypress and myrtle,

Emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?

Know ye the land where the voice of the turtle

Whispers of sadness or maddens to crime?

60 See p. 3, note 9.

61 Charles Sprague, Writings, now first collected, 2. ed., New York: C. S. Francis, 1843, We quote from ‘The funeral’, Writings, p. 82, vv. 9-16:

Years, years had vanished — where was she whose face

Still from that canvass smiled in girlhood's grace?

A coffin stood beside — I raised the lid —

Alas I another picture there was hid;

What hard, stern hand those pallid features drew?

That cheek, that brow — so false, and yet so true?

'Twas she — the same — there in her maiden bloom,

Here cold in death, and waiting for the tomb.

For Poe's opinion of Sprague, see Harrison 10:139-142.

62 Cf. Stephen Leacock, ‘Literature and education in America’, Essays and literary studies, New York: John Lane, 1916, p. 67.

63 [Amelia B. Welby], Poems by Amelia, Boston: A. Tompkins, 1845. The 1858 edition of this collection (New York: D. Appleton) is announced as ‘thirteenth thousand’. Amelia's book appeared for the Xmas trade in 1844; Poe reviewed it in tMarginalia” Democratic Review 18:590-592, 1844. Poe's notice began in the middle of a column of Marginalia, unadorned by a headline; but was plucked from context by Griswold and printed as one of the miscellaneous reviews appended without distinction to The Literati. Harrison prints the notice twice: 11:275-281 (separate) and 16:54-59 (embedded in Marginalia). The student of editing, who wishes to sharpen his appreciation of Caxton's injunction to follow copy, should collate Harrison's two texts. The notice consists mostly of quotation and discussion of the poem tThe bereaved” Poems by Amelia, 1845, pp. 255-257; Poe quotes Amelia's words correctly, and punctuates them to suit himself.

Poe, and those of his readers in 1843 who were not subscribers to Louisville newspapers, will have known Amelia's works from two anthologies by R. W. Griswold: The poets and poetry of America, 1842, pp. 431-433; and Gems from American female poets, with brief biographical notices, Philadelphia: H. Hooker, 1842, pp. 103-111. The latter collection contains four poems in four different iambic [page 73:] metres. The former contains five poems, versified as follows: ‘The presence of God’ iambic dimeters, in stanzas of twelve lines, rhymed ababcdcdeeff; ‘To the memory of a friend’ (the same poem as ‘On the death of a friend’ in Gems, and as ‘When shines the star’ in Amelia's Poems), long measure, in stanzas of twelve lines; ‘To a sea-shell” 6.10.10.6 in iambics (like Bryant's ‘ To a waters fowl” p. 36, above, but rhymed aabb)” ‘My sisters” iambic dimei* ters with disyllabic rhymes, 9.8.9.8, in stanzas of twelve lines; ‘I know that thy spirit” a specimen of anapaestic thanatography, to which Poe was highly susceptible. We quote the third stanza (Poets & poetry, p. 433):

But, now o'er thy breast in the hush of the tomb

Are folded thy pale graceful arms,

While the midnight of death, like a garment of gloom,

Hangs over that bosom's young charms;

And pale, pale, alas! is thy rosy lip now,

Its melody broken and gone;

And cold is the young heart whose sweet dreams below

Were of summer, of summer alone.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 73:]

64 See Appendix 5.

65 Two inadvertent decasyllables.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 75:]

66 See note 33 above.

67 Reference to Appendix 5 will show that Holmes printed passed (but never passéd). But why (barring the suggestion at the end of note 51, above) wrench Holmes's line of an iambus, a spondee, and another iambus, which corresponds to the line

I saw him once before

if the necessary sense-stress is placed on him, into three trochees and a half?

68 Goold Brown, p. 237; see Appendix 2.

69 See p. 6, note 25.

70 See p. 12, note 55.75

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 77:]

71 Three inadvertent decasyllables.

72 See p. 7, note 33.

73 See p. 8, note 35.

74 sic

75 The printer, by omitting the foot mark, has made and the breeches a fourth epitrite; a foot which we hasten to join Poe in condemning as chimerical.

76 Even on Poe's remarkable scansion this is no error: the last will pass as an iambus; substitution of an iambus in trochaic verse is as legitimate as, although less common than, substitution of a trochee in iambic verse.

Unlike Poe, who admittedly scanned ‘The last leaf’ as if the rhymes had no existence, we offer a scansion consistent with those rhymes and with the definition of rhyme in note 59 above. Type stanza: lines 1, 2, 4, & 5, three iambi; lines 386, one anapaest; rhymed aabccb, with monosyllabic rhymes throughout. Substitutions: anapaest in the first foot of lines 5, 8, 11, 14, 16, 17, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 35, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47; spondee in the second foot of lines 1, 2, 4, 22; bastard iambus in the third foot of line 23. The single anapaest in line 3 cannot form metre by itself, as Poe has correctly noted; the reader holds this foot in suspense until he meets its complement in line 6. With any German prosodist who, noting that the first foot of long lines is twenty times an anapaest and twelve times an iambus, scans the former as the type and the latter as the substitution, we shall not quarrel.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 78:]

77 Poe, ‘Bon-Bon” Harrison 2:126: ‘Bon-Bon was Ionic — Bon-Bon was equally Italic.’

78 Even the regular dactyl in the penultimate foot is often displaced by a spondee, in Latin Hexameters. — POE.

Charles Anthon, A system of Latin prosody and metre, from the best authorities, ancient and modern, New York: Harper and Bros., 1841 (what we have seen is the 1856 printing), p. 158:

Sometimes, however, in a solemn, majestic, or mournful description, or in expressing astonishment, consternation, vastness of size, &c., a spondee is admitted in the fifth foot, and the line is thence denominated Spondaic; as, [four examples omitted]. [page 80:]

79 In notes 25 and 26, above, and 82, below, are ten English hexameters, of average length 66.5 characters; ten Swedish, 54.5; and five Latin, 43.8. For a specimen of Greek hexameters we may take the first twenty-one verses of the Iliad, of average length 41.6 characters.

80 Poe, ‘Pinakidia’, Harrison 14:54:

The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the reason why we cannot tolerate an English hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:

So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace:

Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar;

But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.

James Montgomery, Lectures on general literature, p. 91:

Not having a modern example at hand, — though the enterprise has been effected with as much good speed as our slippery tongue would allow, by Dr. Southey, — I shall offer a few lines of Sir Philip Sidney's, from a pastoral in his Arcadia; a book once celebrated by all the wits and beauties of an age of gallantry, though probably not read through by six of either class during the last half century:

“Lady, reserved by the heavens, to do pastors’ companie honour,

Joyning your sweete voice to the rurall Muse of a desart,

Here you fully do finde this strange operation of Love,

How to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace;

Neither he beares reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar,

But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse;

All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him.”

These lines are not amiss; but who could survive an Iliad of them? One great defect in our English tongue (heart of oak as it is in strength and toughness), is the paucity of spondees in its vocabulary. Without these, no hexameter can close well, or be well balanced in its progress. Under such a disability, our language becomes supple and languid in ancient metres, in’ stead of elastic and rebounding to its natural tone, after the utmost flexure or tension which the laws of such labours require.

[Cornelius Conway Felton], ‘Longfellow's Ballads and other poems’, North American Review 55:114-144, 1842, p. 144:

We may construct lines out of accented trochees and dactyles, — with now and then, but at very long intervals, a spondee, — which will sound musically; and we may call them hexameters, if we choose, but they are not the thing; and what is more, it is impossible to continue them to any great extent, without some wheel or spring in the elaborate machinery getting out of order, and throwing the unlucky poet off the track.

We picture this delicate mechanism as a sort of motorized Pegasus — perhaps a pink horse, with green wings, that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key.

[The following footnote appears on page 80, running to the bottom of page 81:]

81 Poe, ‘Marginalia” Harrison 16:72-73:

I have never yet seen an English heroic verse on the proper model of the Greek — although there have been innumerable attempts, among which those of Coleridge are, perhaps, the most absurd, next to those of Sir Philip Sidney and Longfellow. The author of “The Vision of Rubeta” has done better, and Percival better yet; but no one has seemed to suspect that the natural [page 81:] preponderance of spondaic words in the Latin and Greek must, in the English, be supplied by art — that is to say, by a careful culling of the few spondaic words which the language affords — as, for example, here:

Man is a | complex, | compound, | compost, | yet is he | God-born.

This, to all intents, is a Greek hexameter, but then its spondees are spondees, and not mere trochees. The verses of Coleridge and others are dissonant, for the simple reason that there is no equality in time between a trochee and a dactyl. When Sir Philip Sidney writes,

So to the | woods Love | runnes as | well as | rides to the | palace,

he makes an heroic verse only to the eye; for “woods Love” is the only true spondee, “runs as,” “well as,” and “palace,” have each the first syllable long and the second short — that is to say, they are all trochees, and occupy less time than the dactyls or spondees — hence the halting. Now, all this seems to be the simplest thing in the world, and the only wonder is how men professing to be scholars should attempt to engraft a verse, of which the spondee is an element, upon a stock which repels the spondee as antagonistical.

82 Longfellow, ‘The children of the Lord's supper” Ballads and other poems, p. 61, vv. 6-10:

Also the church within was adorned, for this was the season

In which the young, their parents' hope, and the loved-ones of heaven,

Should at the foot of the altar renew the vows of their baptism.

Therefore each nook and corner was swept and cleaned, and the dust was

Blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches.

Tegnér, ‘Nattvardsbarnen” Samlade skrifter 2:52-53:

Innantill var kyrkan ock prydd; ty i dag var den dagen,

Da de unga, foraldrarnas hopp och himmelens karlek,

Skulle vid altarets fot fgrnya sitt dopelselofte.

Derfor hvar vinkel och vra var fejad och putsad, och dammet

Blast frRn vaggar och hvalf och frSn oljemlade bankar.

83 The comma Longfellow printed before for would tend to lengthen that syllable; the semicolon Poe printed, when he turned the passage into prose below, certainly lengthens for enough to form a spondee.

84 Bysshe, Art of English poetry 1:14-15:

The termination ISM is always us'd but as one syllable, as,

Where grisly Schism and raging Strife appear. Cowl[ey]

And Rheumatisms I send to rack the Joints. Dryd[en]

And indeed, considering that it has but one Vowel, it may seem absurd to assert that it ought to be reckon’d two Syllables; yet in my Opinion those Verses seem to have a Syllable more than their due Measure, and would run better if we took one from them, as,

Where grisly Schism, raging Strife appear,

I Rheumatisms send to rack the Joynts [sic].

Yet this Opinion being contrary to the constant Practice of our Poets, I shall not presume to advance it as a Rule for others to follow, but leave it to be decided by such as are better Judges of poetical Numbers.

85 sic

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 83:]

86 sic

87 See p. 13, note 59.

88 See Appendix 3.

89 Alfred B. Street, ‘The lost hunter’, in Griswold, Poets & Poetry, p. 401:

His sinuous path, by blazes, wound

Among trunks group'd in myriads round;

Through naked boughs, between

Whose tangled architecture, fraught

With many a shape grotesquely wrought,

The hemlock's spire was seen.

90 The macron on the a, while probably a printer's error, may be pursuant to the rule that a vowel before two consonants is long. If the distich quoted in the text is to be scanned conformably to the definition of rhyme in note 59 above, riads round must be taken as a bastard iambus rhyming with the iambus zes wound.

91 Charles Anthon, Elements of Latin prosody and metre, compiled from the best authorities; together with a synopsis of poetic licenses occurring in the versification of Virgil, a metrical index to the lyric compositions of Horace, and the scanning of the mixed dimeter and trimeter iambics of the latter poet, New York: T. & J. Swords, 1824, pp. 7-8:

A vowel is long by position, when followed immediately by two consonants, either in the same or different words, or by one double consonant (X or Z); it is long also when followed by the letter J; as Terra, Araxes, gaza, majora, Troja, hujus, cujus.

The principle on which this rule depends is, that in consequence of the mora or delay, which the one double or the two single consonants oppose to the progress of the verse, the vowel is necessarily lengthened.

92 John 21.25.

93 Two inadvertent decasyllables.


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Notes:

Although Greenwood's use of capitaliztion in titles is quite idiosyncratic, it has been retained without editorial correction.

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[S:0 - JAG68, 1968] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - EAP: The Rationale of Verse — a preliminary edition (Greenwood)