Classic Poem

Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially different
from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre--Its necessary
consequences, and the conditions thereby imposed on the metrical writer
in the choice of his diction.


I conclude, therefore, that the attempt is impracticable; and that, were
it not impracticable, it would still be useless. For the very power of
making the selection implies the previous possession of the language
selected. Or where can the poet have lived? And by what rules could
he direct his choice, which would not have enabled him to select and
arrange his words by the light of his own judgment? We do not adopt the
language of a class by the mere adoption of such words exclusively, as
that class would use, or at least understand; but likewise by following
the order, in which the words of such men are wont to succeed each
other. Now this order, in the intercourse of uneducated men, is
distinguished from the diction of their superiors in knowledge and
power, by the greater disjunction and separation in the component parts
of that, whatever it be, which they wish to communicate. There is a want
of that prospectiveness of mind, that surview, which enables a man
to foresee the whole of what he is to convey, appertaining to any one
point; and by this means so to subordinate and arrange the different
parts according to their relative importance, as to convey it at once,
and as an organized whole.

Now I will take the first stanza, on which I have chanced to open, in
the Lyrical Ballads. It is one the most simple and the least peculiar in
its language.

"In distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
Weep in the public roads, alone.
But such a one, on English ground,
And in the broad highway, I met;
Along the broad highway he came,
His cheeks with tears were wet
Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;
And in his arms a lamb he had."

The words here are doubtless such as are current in all ranks of life;
and of course not less so in the hamlet and cottage than in the shop,
manufactory, college, or palace. But is this the order, in which the
rustic would have placed the words? I am grievously deceived, if the
following less compact mode of commencing the same tale be not a far
more faithful copy. "I have been in a many parts, far and near, and I
don't know that I ever saw before a man crying by himself in the public
road; a grown man I mean, that was neither sick nor hurt," etc., etc.
But when I turn to the following stanza in The Thorn:

"At all times of the day and night
This wretched woman thither goes;
And she is known to every star,
And every wind that blows
And there, beside the Thorn, she sits,
When the blue day-light's in the skies,
And when the whirlwind's on the hill,
Or frosty air is keen and still,
And to herself she cries,
Oh misery! Oh misery!
Oh woe is me! Oh misery!"

and compare this with the language of ordinary men; or with that which
I can conceive at all likely to proceed, in real life, from such a
narrator, as is supposed in the note to the poem; compare it either in
the succession of the images or of the sentences; I am reminded of the
sublime prayer and hymn of praise, which Milton, in opposition to an
established liturgy, presents as a fair specimen of common extemporary
devotion, and such as we might expect to hear from every self-inspired
minister of a conventicle! And I reflect with delight, how little a mere
theory, though of his own workmanship, interferes with the processes of
genuine imagination in a man of true poetic genius, who possesses, as
Mr. Wordsworth, if ever man did, most assuredly does possess,

"The Vision and the Faculty divine."

One point then alone remains, but that the most important; its
examination having been, indeed, my chief inducement for the preceding
inquisition. "There neither is nor can be any essential difference
between the language of prose and metrical composition." Such is Mr.
Wordsworth's assertion. Now prose itself, at least in all argumentative
and consecutive works, differs, and ought to differ, from the language
of conversation; even as reading ought to differ from talking.
Unless therefore the difference denied be that of the mere words, as
materials common to all styles of writing, and not of the style itself
in the universally admitted sense of the term, it might be naturally
presumed that there must exist a still greater between the ordonnance
of poetic composition and that of prose, than is expected to distinguish
prose from ordinary conversation.

There are not, indeed, examples wanting in the history of literature,
of apparent paradoxes that have summoned the public wonder as new and
startling truths, but which, on examination, have shrunk into tame and
harmless truisms; as the eyes of a cat, seen in the dark, have been
mistaken for flames of fire. But Mr. Wordsworth is among the last men,
to whom a delusion of this kind would be attributed by anyone, who
had enjoyed the slightest opportunity of understanding his mind and
character. Where an objection has been anticipated by such an author as
natural, his answer to it must needs be interpreted in some sense which
either is, or has been, or is capable of being controverted. My object
then must be to discover some other meaning for the term "essential
difference" in this place, exclusive of the indistinction and community
of the words themselves. For whether there ought to exist a class of
words in the English, in any degree resembling the poetic dialect of
the Greek and Italian, is a question of very subordinate importance. The
number of such words would be small indeed, in our language; and even in
the Italian and Greek, they consist not so much of different words, as
of slight differences in the forms of declining and conjugating the same
words; forms, doubtless, which having been, at some period more or less
remote, the common grammatic flexions of some tribe or province, had
been accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general admiration of
certain master intellects, the first established lights of inspiration,
to whom that dialect happened to be native.

Essence, in its primary signification, means the principle of
individuation, the inmost principle of the possibility of any thing, as
that particular thing. It is equivalent to the idea of a thing, whenever
we use the word, idea, with philosophic precision. Existence, on the
other hand, is distinguished from essence, by the superinduction of
reality. Thus we speak of the essence, and essential properties of a
circle; but we do not therefore assert, that any thing, which really
exists, is mathematically circular. Thus too, without any tautology we
contend for the existence of the Supreme Being; that is, for a reality
correspondent to the idea. There is, next, a secondary use of the word
essence, in which it signifies the point or ground of contra-distinction
between two modifications of the same substance or subject. Thus we
should be allowed to say, that the style of architecture of Westminster
Abbey is essentially different from that of St. Paul, even though both
had been built with blocks cut into the same form, and from the same
quarry. Only in this latter sense of the term must it have been denied
by Mr. Wordsworth (for in this sense alone is it affirmed by the general
opinion) that the language of poetry (that is the formal construction,
or architecture, of the words and phrases) is essentially different from
that of prose. Now the burden of the proof lies with the oppugner,
not with the supporters of the common belief. Mr. Wordsworth, in
consequence, assigns as the proof of his position, "that not only
the language of a large portion of every good poem, even of the most
elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the
metre, in no respect differ from that of good prose, but likewise that
some of the most interesting parts of the best poems will be found to be
strictly the language of prose, when prose is well written. The truth of
this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost
all the poetical writings, even of Milton himself." He then quotes
Gray's sonnet--

"In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain:
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more, because I weep in vain."

and adds the following remark:--"It will easily be perceived, that the
only part of this Sonnet which is of any value, is the lines printed in
italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the
use of the single word `fruitless' for fruitlessly, which is so far a
defect, the language of these lines does in no respect differ from that
of prose."

An idealist defending his system by the fact, that when asleep we often
believe ourselves awake, was well answered by his plain neighbour, "Ah,
but when awake do we ever believe ourselves asleep?" Things identical
must be convertible. The preceding passage seems to rest on a similar
sophism. For the question is not, whether there may not occur in prose
an order of words, which would be equally proper in a poem; nor whether
there are not beautiful lines and sentences of frequent occurrence in
good poems, which would be equally becoming as well as beautiful in good
prose; for neither the one nor the other has ever been either denied
or doubted by any one. The true question must be, whether there are not
modes of expression, a construction, and an order of sentences, which
are in their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but
would be disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and,
vice versa, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be
an arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection
of (what are called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their
frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would
be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that in both
cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will
and ought to exist.

And first from the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance
in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to hold in
check the workings of passion. It might be easily explained likewise
in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the very state,
which it counteracts; and how this balance of antagonists became
organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term), by a
supervening act of the will and judgment, consciously and for the
foreseen purpose of pleasure. Assuming these principles, as the data of
our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate conditions, which the
critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First, that, as
the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased
excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural
language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are formed
into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and for
the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of present
volition should throughout the metrical language be proportionately
discernible. Now these two conditions must be reconciled and co-
present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an
interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and
of voluntary purpose. Again, this union can be manifested only in a
frequency of forms and figures of speech, (originally the offspring of
passion, but now the adopted children of power), greater than would be
desired or endured, where the emotion is not voluntarily encouraged and
kept up for the sake of that pleasure, which such emotion, so tempered
and mastered by the will, is found capable of communicating. It not only
dictates, but of itself tends to produce a more frequent employment of
picturesque and vivifying language, than would be natural in any other
case, in which there did not exist, as there does in the present, a
previous and well understood, though tacit, compact between the poet and
his reader, that the latter is entitled to expect, and the former bound
to supply this species and degree of pleasurable excitement. We may
in some measure apply to this union the answer of Polixenes, in the
Winter's Tale, to Perdita's neglect of the streaked gilliflowers,
because she had heard it said,

"There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
POL. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art,
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art,
Which does mend nature,--change it rather; but
The art itself is nature."

Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. As far as metre acts in and
for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both
of the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces by
the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick reciprocations
of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, which are too slight
indeed to be at any one moment objects of distinct consciousness,
yet become considerable in their aggregate influence. As a medicated
atmosphere, or as wine during animated conversation, they act
powerfully, though themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, correspondent
food and appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and
feelings thus roused there must needs be a disappointment felt; like
that of leaping in the dark from the last step of a stair-case, when we
had prepared our muscles for a leap of three or four.

The discussion on the powers of metre in the preface is highly ingenious
and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any statement of
its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the contrary Mr.
Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers, which it exerts
during, (and, as I think, in consequence of) its combination with other
elements of poetry. Thus the previous difficulty is left unanswered,
what the elements are, with which it must be combined, in order
to produce its own effects to any pleasurable purpose. Double and
tri-syllable rhymes, indeed, form a lower species of wit, and, attended
to exclusively for their own sake, may become a source of momentary
amusement; as in poor Smart's distich to the Welsh Squire who had
promised him a hare:

"Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader!
Hast sent the hare? or hast thou swallow'd her?"

But for any poetic purposes, metre resembles, (if the aptness of the
simile may excuse its meanness), yeast, worthless or disagreeable by
itself, but giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is
proportionally combined.

The reference to THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD by no means satisfies my
judgment. We all willingly throw ourselves back for awhile into the
feelings of our childhood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such
recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equally endear to
us poems, which Mr. Wordsworth himself would regard as faulty in the
opposite extreme of gaudy and technical ornament. Before the invention
of printing, and in a still greater degree, before the introducti