Text: James Davenport Whelpley (ed. J. Arthur Greenwood), “Appendix 3: The Art of Measuring Verses,” Edgar A. Poe: The Rationale of Verse, a Preliminary edition, 1968, pp. 186-205 (This material is protected by copyright)

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APPENDIX 3(1)

THE ART OF MEASURING VERSES.(2)

To compose good verses, may be placed among the elegant accomplishments of a thoroughly educated person. If it gives but little pleasure to others, it at least gratifies ourselves, nor can we find any idleness or mischief in a proper indulgence of so happy a taste as that of the versifier. Some historians aver, that in the first ages of the world, all writings were in metre, not even excepting laws and chronicles, and that the forms of prose were an invention of later date. A habit that is natural and harmless, is certainly not ridiculous, if one uses it with discretion; not to say that it may take the place of grosser, and more exceptionable, amusements. We have no scruple, therefore, in occupying a moderate space with a few remarks on the art of making verses in our language, more especially as it is a topic seldom touched by periodical writers, and treated by the learned in such a dry and profound way, the generality of readers are never the wiser for all that has been written on the subject.

As there are no established authorities in this art, and, indeed, no acknowledged principles — every rhymster being permitted to invent his own method, and write by instinct or imitation — the critic feels quite at liberty to say just what he pleases, and offer his private observations as though these were really of some moment.

The qualities of spoken words are twofold: they are both marks of ideas, — and in that usage quite arbitrary in their sound, — and expressions of feeling and sensation, being in the latter function no more arbitrary or irregular than the qualities of musical sounds. The same word may be spoken in many different ways, expressing many varieties of feelings, and conditions of thought: as of pain, fear, delight, surprise, amazement — and all these kinds of expressions may be given in rapid succession to the same word, by as many inflections of the voice; but the same word, represented by written marks, stands only for an idea, or a thing, and has no effect upon the passions or the senses.

Of no less consequence is the arrangement of words, — the order of their succession, — by which a series of emotions are made to [page 187:] succeed each other, and a harmony of passions created in the imagination, like a piece of music. The art of versification consists, therefore, in arranging words in such order, that when read by a full and flexible voice, they shall excite a musical movement in the sense of hearing, that shall agree in quality and effect with the melody — if we may so speak — of the train of passions and objects awakened in the mind by the order of the words themselves, as they are mere marks of ideas. As the ascending and descending scale in music, and the movements on different keys, awaken different musical emotions, as of sad, gay, uncertain, musing, boisterous, heroic; so in verse, certain movements of the sounds of words, excite corresponding emotions; and in a perfect poem, the sense and the sound act together irresistably.

Comic poets make use of a dancing, or even a trotting and stumbling, metre, full of odd combinations of sounds; while the heroic line rolls smoothly on, or makes grand pauses, like intervals in the echoes of artillery. In the blank verse of the drama, the thought sustains itself upon a lofty and slow moving line, but full of irregular turns and stops, to agree naturally with the rough gestures of passion. The lyrist, again, pours out passages of unbroken melody, like passionate airs. In this art, as in all of those which belong to imagination, the common and merely natural is avoided, and the beauty, power, and sweetness of discourse, given apart and by itself.

The composition of good verse demands, therefore, at least these two qualifications in the composer: first, the imaginative power, to give an harmonious order to images and passions, in their description; and lastly, an ear for the measure, fullness, and cadences of words. At present we propose only to consider this latter qualification, and to inquire by what means a naturally good ear may be led to a finer appreciation of the musical properties of speech.

Of every species of beauty, and more especially of the beauty of sounds, continuousness is the first element; a succession of pulses of sound becomes agreeable, only when the breaks, or intervals, cease to be heard; we say then of a note, in sound, that it [page 188:] is musical, when the pulses cannot be distinguished by the ear. The same is true of artificially colored surfaces; they are agreeable to the eye when we see them at such a distance as not to discern the numerous particles or specks of color which compose them. The same is true also of the human voice, in the expression of tender and agreeable emotions: the words require to be spoken with a certain smoothness and even monotony, as far as possible removed from the abrupt and curt style of business, or the rude and harsh tones of hatred or contempt. In a prosaic enunciation, as in counting, or naming a variety of disconnected objects, a sensible pause is made after each word, and the voice slides up and down upon each word, as if to separate and characterize each by itself. And this separation and distinctness of parts is, perhaps, the strongest characteristic of pure prose, and is constantly aimed at by the best writers of prose. Verse on the contrary demands a kind of fusion, or running together of the words, so that a line of verse may be spoken in one effort of the voice, as a bar of music is played by one movement of the hand. The line,

slips over the lip with a pouring softness, without break or pause. So in

or in this from Ovid:

or this of Dante:

or Shakspeare's

in the melodious lines of Milton's Lycidas or the flute-like strains of Burns, or of Theocritus, the words are melted and toned together, and the voice glides easily through the line.

These mellow lines not only characterize the best poems, but they are also the best adapted for the voice in singing; and the first line of the stanza agrees also with the first line of the musical notes. In the most perfect airs, the words and notes agree and move together. But as the lyric, or song, is the type of all poetry, — as the air which fits it, is of all music, — it is necessary to find a very perfect agreement between the two; as, for example, in the time, or duration, of each verse, agreeing with the time of the musical notes. The division of the musical air of a song into four parts of equal length, shows that the ear demands not only continuity of sound, but that it shall be divided into [page 189:] portions of equal length, as into verse,(8) staves, and stanzas. Poetry following the same law, is divided into feet and lines of equal length, succeeding each other with perfect regularity, or alternating with shorter equal lines, for the pleasure of variety.

Thus, in reading the lines,

While the landscape round it measures,(9) &c., [page 190:]

it is necessary to a perfect reading, to fill out each line with the voice to a full and equal quantity of sound, with as great care as if chanting or singing them, and this may be done best by keeping up a regular beat with the foot.(10)

Quantity, therefore, or the division into measures of time, is a second element of verse; each line must be stuffed out with sounds, to a certain fullness and plumpness, that will sustain the voice, and force it to dwell upon the sounds.

It is impossible to read these lines without feeling their fullness: they are an extreme and rare example of that quality.

When the most perfect mellowness and continuity is joined with the greatest fullness, as in the first line of the Iliad,

in which the most excellent musical quality of verse is perceived, it affects the ear with a sense of conjoined power and sweetness. But as the air in music is not only divided into parts, like the stanza which it accompanies, but also into bars, or lesser equal portions of time — three, four, or more equal bars going to fill out the lines, marked by accents, and separated by pauses of imn perceptible length in singing — so, the line of significant sounds, in a verse, is also marked by accents, or pulses, and divided into portions called feet. These are necessary and natural, for the very simple reason that continuity by itself is tedious; and the greatest pleasure arises from the union of continuity with variety.

In the line,

there are at least four accents or stresses of the voice, with faint pauses after them, just enough to separate the continuous stream of sound into these four parts, to be read thus —

by which new combinations of sound are produced, of a singularly musical character.

It is evident from the inspection of the above line, that the division of the feet of the accents is quite independent of the division of words by the sense. The sounds are melted into continuity, and re-divided again in a manner agreeable to the musical ear. By this kind of division a new feeling is given to the words, which almost overwhelms their meaning as prose, and the agreeable blending and running together of the words, doubtless gives rise to a similar blending and melody of images and emotions in the [page 191:] imagination, producing a kind of music of the mind. Lines of a good quality are always filled out with a due complement of sound: such verses as are not well filled out are characterized as “lean and flashy,” without body or strength. In criticising a poem, therefore, it is good to divide the lines by the ear, and observe whether the musical divisions, or feet, have the proper fullness.

And here again the law of variety, perfecting continuity, reappears, for if the feet of a line are all equally full, it will be heavy and dull. It is necessary — either, that one, two, or three of the feet, should be shorter than the others, and this, too, by a certain fixed quantity of sound, as in the line

which, when musically divided, reads thus,

the first and fourth musical or metrical divisions having a less quantity of sound than the second, third and fifth: — Or, that these divisions having all an equal quantity of sound, some of them should be broken up into lesser portions; just as a bar of two minims, in the air, is broken into a minim and two crotchets; or a crotchet, in a bar of two crotchets, is broken into a crotchet and two quavers.(15) [page 192:]

to be read thus,

in which the six divisions, or musical metres,(17) are of equal length, or require an equal stress and duration of the voice in speaking or chanting, but are differently divided; some into two heavy, or long syllables, and some into three, one heavy and two light; the two light requiring no more force of voice or time in uttering, than the one long.

This kind of verse, (the hexameter, in which the feet have all an equal quantity of sound,) is unknown in our language, either through want of cultivation, or want of capacity in the language itself. The pleasure of it consists greatly in the metrical divisions so falling as to break the words in two; so that in reading we are obliged, in order to keep sense and sound together, to fuse and blend them in a line. The rules for the structure of this verse are given in treatises of Latin and Greek prosody.

When it is observed that hexameter verse requires always that the metrical divisions between the first four feet in the line must divide the dissyllabic words, or if they be monosyllables, group them contrarily to the prosaic divisions; and that the feet must be all equal in quantity, so as to fill out an equal time in reading, without the aid of slurring long syllables, skipping harsh ones, or filling gaps with prosaic pauses, some notion of the difficulty of composing them may be attained; and it will be understood, why all the writers of pretended English hexameters have produced only a monotonous, prosaic kind of chant, instead of musical lines. Good verse requires to be read with the natural quantities of the syllables, but to read these English hexameters you must slur here and drawl there, to help your poet through his six equal feet. It is certainly possible, with great labor, to arrange the sounds of our language in hexametrical order, but whether it ever could become a habit of the ear and mind to compose in such divisions, the lines,

the hexametrical divisions and spelling the syllables thus,

in which the second and third feet are too heavy, having more sound than the fourth, in a natural reading; whereas, the law of the metre requires that with a full and easy reading the feet should be equal. [page 193:] In the line,

to be read thus,

the musical divisions not only break the words, but even the syllables; which is another difficulty in our language, the consonantal sounds being so constantly employed to begin words, and to end them.

English metres are sometimes of that kind in which the feet are all equal in quantity. Thus, in the lines,

to be read,

the verse is perceived to consist of six heavy syllables, each composed of a vowel followed by a group of consonantal sounds, the whole measured into four equal feet. The movement is what is called spondaic, a spondee being a foot of two heavy sounds. The absence of short syllables gives the line a peculiar weight and solemnity suited to the sentiment, and doubtless prompted by it.

But the more frequent English metres are of the kind that have one, two, or three of the metrical divisions, shorter than the others; as in the following from Burns:

to be read thus, [page 194:]

The first and third verses of this stanza have an iambus — that is to say, a foot consisting of one short or light, followed by a heavy, syllable; and the last, or detached, metrical syllable is long and heavy in its sound; thus,

which structure leaving the verse incomplete, the voice makes a natural pause at the end of the line, just equal in length to one long time or metre, thus, | — | .

By changing the place of the short syllable the character of the verse would also be changed, as it would also be, by the addition of another long syllable, in place of the pause at the end.

The second and fourth verses, on the other hand, consist of two spondees and two iambuses, thus,

and have an effect of their own, very different from that of the others. To give these delicate metres a lean and flashy effect, or to make them heavy and dull, we have only to substitute short quantities where there are long ones, and vice versa.

If any person who is accustomed to read verse critically, and is endowed by nature with a nice ear for quantity, well exercised in the classic metres, will read a piece of excellent verse by some master hand, he will probably find some of the lines more full and sonorous than others. On dividing these by their musical accents, as in Greek scanning, they will be found to consist of full and regular feet, spondees, and iambuses, for example, alternating variously. If the poem be a classic and regular lyric, like one of Horace's odes, the alternations will be the same throughout; and every departure from the model will be observed, as injurious to the musical or lyrical quantity of the poem. But if the verse be narrative or descriptive, didactic or heroic, or if it be the blank verse of epic or dramatic poetry, the places of the iambuses and spondees will be continually varied, so as to give the greatest possible variety to the verses. Take, for example, these lines of Pope: —

of which the quantities are thus represented, by the accents and the commencing vowels of the feet: — [page 195:]

In Pope's poetry the line is often weak and light — as in Milton it is sometimes too heavy — through the employment of false quantities; but it rarely or never happens, that they fall into monotony by repeating too frequently the same form of metrical arrangement. With a little practice, it becomes easy to detect the short syllables in Pope's verse, and his is perhaps the best to begin with, in cultivating the ear. A short vowel sound followed by a double consonantal sound, usually makes a long quantity; so also does a long vowel like y in beauty, before a consonant. The metrical accents, which often differ from the prosaic, mostly fall upon the heavy sounds; which must also be prolonged in reading, and never slurred or lightened, unless to help out a bad verse. In our language the groupings of the consonants furnish a great number of spondaic feet,(21) and give the language, especially [page 196:] its more ancient forms, as in the verse of Milton and the prose of Lord Bacon, a grand and solemn character.

One vowel followed by another, unless the first be naturally made long in the reading, makes a short quantity, as in the old. So, also, a short vowel followed by a single short consonant, gives a short time or quantity, as in to give. A great variety of rules for the detection of long and short quantities have yet to be invented, or applied from the Greek and Latin prosody. In all languages they are of course the same, making due allowance for difference of organization; but it is as absurd to suppose that the Greeks should have a system of prosody differing in principle from our own, as that their rules of musical harmony should be different from the modern. Both result from the nature of the ear(22) and of the organ of speech, and are consequently the same in all ages and nations.

The two elements of musical metre, namely, time and accent, both together constituting quantity, are equally elements of the metre of verse. Each iambic foot or metre, is marked by a swell of the voice, concluding abruptly in an accent, or interruption, on the last sound of the foot; or, in metres of the trochaic order, in such words as dandy, handy, bottle, favor, labor, it begins with a heavy accented sound, and declines to a faint or light one at the close. The line is thus composed of a series of swells or waves of sound, concluding and beginning alike. The accents, or points at which the voice is most forcibly exerted in the feet, being the divisions of time, by which a part of its musical character is given to the verse, are usually made to coincide, in our language, with the accents of the words as they are spoken; which diminished the musical character of our verse. In Greek hexameters and Latin hexameters, on the contrary, this coincidence is avoided, as tending to monotony and a prosaic character.

Thus in the line from Virgil: —

to be read metrically —

two of the accents are thrown out of their natural places by the breaking of the words into feet. But, in such cases, by reading [page 198:] the line with regard merely to time, and the joining of the syllables in feet, the prosaic accents may be introduced beside; but this can be done only by a person possessed of a very nice ear.

Although this interference of the word and verse accents is most noticeable in the Latin hexametrical metre, it is very frequent in Milton. Take, for example, the lines: —

to be read metrically thus:

But after all, it does not seem to be necessary to verse, that the time accents be marked: all that is required is to give time, and fullness, to the long metrical syllables, and not to give the prose accent so forcibly as to destroy their effect. Some languages, the French for example, seem to be without accent; and as the prosaic stress of voice is variable and arbitrary, good readers of verse make it as little conspicuous as possible.

As it frequently happens that word and verse accent fall differently, so is it with the division of the sounds by syllables: the verse syllables, like the verse feet, differ in the prosaic and metrical reading of the line. Thus, in the verse,

the metrical structure requires us to read,

That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make,(26) which it is necessary to read,

for, if we read it by the prosaic syllabication, there will be no possibility of measuring the quantities. The word the, for example, is short, standing by itself, and we should read,

but, remembering that in a line of verse the feet, and not the words, are to be separated, we write,

by which it appears that the first foot is a very heavy spondee, instead of being, as might appear, if we read it thus, That the, a trochee.

It seems, from an examination, by the ear, of the structure of Greek, Latin, and English verse, that the metrical are perfectly [page 199:] distinct from the prosaic properties of verse; the most melodious verse may be composed of sounds devoid of meaning; a line of meaningless sounds such as the following,

illustrates as perfectly the properties of the English iambic heroic line, as the most sublime verse of the Paradise Lost; and when we divide it metrically, it falls, not into words, of course, nor into prosaic syllables, for these are not in it at all, but into metrical syllables and feet: Thus,

Or, in the following,

of which we may imagine the following prosaic order,

which has as much meaning to the ear as a Greek hexameter to a [page 200:] tyro at the University, and illustrates as well the theory of metrical divisions.

Let us now, in the light of nature and experience, dissect a few lines of the blank verse of Sophocles, and observe, apart from all the rules of the scholiasts and metrical critics, in what particulars they differ from our own. It is unnecessary, then, to premise the least knowledge of Greek, for the question now is of metre and the ear, and not of meaning or the mind.

which read,

Another, which read,

Another, which read,

Another,

which reads metrically,

which read,

These lines, from the blank verse of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, are examples of the heroic verse of that drama, of the blank verse of Sophocles generally. They prove that metre, like musical harmony, is an affair of the senses only, and not of any ingenious predetermination by rule.

In each of the lines we observe six divisions, or feet; and of the syllables, five are short in quantity. The distribution of the short syllables is not the same in all; for in the first example the spondaic foot is the third, in the next it is the fourth, in the next, third, in the next, fifth, in order. Thus it is perceived, that the necessary variety is given to this verse, by varying the position of the one spondaic foot.

Again, in the last example given, a new arrangement appears, namely, the putting of two short syllables in the fourth foot of the verse, and inserting two spondaic feet. By this arrangement, the line is filled out with the requisite quantity of sounds, and [page 201:] a greater variety introduced. In a word, the lines have all the same quality, or metrical duration3 as in bars of music, but the short syllables are variously distributed.

If we measure the duration of time by one metrical short syllable,(28) taken as a unit of measurement, then the verse of Sophocles is just nineteen metrical units in length; which may be distributed in an infinite variety of ways, provided the iambic form be always preserved. Thus in the last example given, there are seven instead of five short metrical syllables, arranged thus,

giving but five feet, when the usual number is six; but in all cases preserving the iambic metrical accents. Not to dwell tediously upon the matter, and leaving such as may be interested in the inquiry to prove, or disprove, what is asserted, by farther examples, we venture to say, that the first principle of metrical, is the same with that of musical verse, namely, that the line taken for a rule, or model, though the number of its syllables may vary, will always be of the same metrical length, or in other words, will be equal to the same number of metrical units, or short times;(29) and if a line varies from this measure, it is [page 202:] either an alexandrine or a curt line, introduced for variety, or it is falsely measured and out of time. We intend, also, that if these principles, with the others previously expressed, are true in the given instances, they are equally true for all languages and all varieties of metre, even to the denial that any poetic metres, founded on other principles, can properly exist. And this, of course, is directly opposed to a favorite theory of some writers, that good verse may be composed in our language by accents alone, without regard to quantity.(30) It maintains that good English verse is as thoroughly quantitative as the Greek, though it be much more heavy and spondaic.(31)

We conclude with a few

EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH METRES.

In this line there are four short (metrical) syllables. The first foot, — , has the form of a hexametrical dactyl, but as the metrical accent of that dactyl falls on the first, but that of this upon the last (metrical) syllable, it may be called an iambic dactyl, formed by the substitution of two short for one long time in the last portion of the foot.(33) Iambic spondees and dactyls are to be distinguished by the metrical accent falling on the last syllable. The line consists of eleven syllables, although not longer in quantity than a spondaic one of nine, or an ordinary iambic line of ten; eleven syllables, four of which are short, being equal in quantity to nine long; or to ten, of which two are short.

is equal in quantity to the regular iambic, but has a peculiar character and accent.(34) Iambics of nine syllables are rare, though occasionally to be met with in the older dramatists; never, perhaps, in Milton.

In the line,

there are twelve syllables; but equal in metrical quantity to the more usual verse of ten syllables, two short. Six of the syllables being short and six long, the whole together equal two shorts and eight long, or eighteen times, or units; which is the invariable quantity of all English heroics of this form, except alexandrines. It does not often happen that more than two shorts are used in this line, and in good verse rarely more than four.

It is not unusual to find a heavy line in Milton, in which a double consonant is slurred, as in the third verse of the above passage, where for and, we read an” and make er before th as short as e alone. The formula of the Miltonic verse admits a vast variety: but, like the hexameters of Homer, retains something of the heaviness of the earlier ages. The lines just given may be scanned as follows: —

The first of these verses has a supernumerary syllable; an addition very usual in the heroic verse of Sophocles, Euripides, Shakspeare and Milton. The quantity of the blank verse of Milton and Shakspeare equals eighteen times, or metrical units, and, with the supernumerary, nineteen or twenty times. That of Sophocles, with even greater variety of structure, equals nineteen, and with the supernumerary, twenty, or twenty-one, short times, arranged in twelve, thirteen, or fourteen syllables, in every form that is consistent with the iambic accents.

Formula of the above:

A great part of the variety of the verse in Shaspeare and Milton is due to the various placing of the caesura, or dividing pause, in the time, indicated by the double mark in the above formula. When this breaks a word, it is most effective.

The foregoing examples may suffice to illustrate, at least, if not to establish, the views put forth in the above essay. At another time we propose to revert again to the subject; and if it be not regarded as too trifling or contemptible a matter to engage the serious consideration of critics, to develop farther what seem to [page 205:] us to be the principles and laws of English versification.

It is now a part of courtesy to thank the author of the work before us, for offering, at once, an apology and occasion for what has been said. The views supported in the work itself are not, indeed, such as we would subscribe to, nor can we admit the numerous analyses of English metres which it contains to be correct; yet, as it is as complete in design and execution as anything that has yet appeared on the subject, and well calculated to excite the attention, and direct the inquiries, of English scholars, to the study of our own metres, we shall even pass it by without a word of criticism. The book is a small, well printed volume, cheap enough, and well worth its price, if it were only for the numerous beautiful specimens of verse which it contains.

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