Musical Power

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Vigor and excellence of description are largely dependent upon phrasal power but another vital element in description is the musical quality of the words and phrases that are used. the course, a study was made of the framework of poetry and the student learned the principal facts of versification. The division by regularly recurring accents of verses into feet was noticed and the names of the most important meters were mastered. It was seen how much beauty was added to the poem by the regularity of its structure. Rhymes of various kinds were another element that appealed to the ear and gave so pleasing an effect to the lines that their significance became clearer. The duplication of similar consonant sounds at the beginning of words in the same line constituted alliteration and a succession of similar vowels, called assonance, was a fourth quality that gave pleasure to the ear. But were the meter, aided even as it is by rhyme, alliteration, and assonance, the only musical qualities possessed by verse it would become dull and monotonous indeed.

Meter forms a basis or foundation upon which is built a rhythmical structure that is difficult to analyze and the laws of which are impossible to determine but which is really the richest quality

in the composite melody. It is a difficult matter to describe this rhythm, as it may be called in distinction from meter, which consists of nothing but the regular accentuation of certain syllables.

Perhaps it may be understood by recurring to the Ode on a Grecian Urn. The meter is iambic pentameter and the first four lines would be scanned as follows:

"Thou still unrav | ished bride | of qui | et ness! Thou foster-child | of Si | lence and | slow Time,

Sylvan historian who | canst thus | express A flowery tale | more sweet | ly than | our rhyme : "

The first line is perfectly regular except that in speech the word quietness does not have on the last syllable the accent required for perfect meter. The next line is perfect except for the accent required by and which, as a conjunction, should in reading have no emphasis. But the third line is far from following the metrical plan. Sylvan, the first word, is a trochaic foot as the accent falls on the first syllable. The next foot is an iambus but in order that the third foot be iambic the last two syllables of historian must be pronounced as one, ryan, and who must be accented. In the fourth verse the second foot is made iambic by the elision of e so that the first two feet read A flow' | 'ry tale'. In the same line also the word than is not important

enough to justify an emphasis. From this it is evident that a rigid adherence to metrical rules would entirely destroy the music of these four beautiful verses.

The rise and fall of the skilled reader's voice and his management of pauses as he reads would bring to the ear the flowing cadences of the lines. The units of speech are recognized to be these:

Thou still unravished bride | of quietness! Thou foster-child of Silence | and slow Time, Sylvan historian | who canst thus | express

A flowery tale | more sweetly than our rhyme.

In each line there are one or two rhetorical pauses that coincide with the feet but most of them are wholly independent. The cadence which is the soul of rhythm is a lowering or falling of the voice quite different from the stress which marks an accent. In the third line the voice rises through Sylvan historian, is held in suspense for a fraction of a second; it moves along through the line with a slight pause after thus, and then passes lightly over the word tale, where there is a decided cadence not repeated till the word rhyme is uttered, though a slight cadence is noted with the word sweetly. This complicated system of inflections is the real rhythm of the verses and the distinctive feature of musical poetry.

When the cadences correspond with the met

rical divisions a very artificial style results and one is sensible of the disagreeable monotony that characterizes the poet who works by rule.

"A heap of dust alone remains of thee,

'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be!"

These two lines from Pope show how mechanical and lifeless perfectly metrical poetry can be if it lacks the beauty of an overlying rhythm.

This musical characteristic of verse is hard to define and difficult to explain and often it seems to defy analysis, for besides the cadences which are easily recognized there appear successive melodious combinations and sequences of sound that the words themselves have furnished and that seem to have been put into place by a skill little less than magical. It is a skill that is peculiar to the person, a trait of his own originality, one that can never be successfully imitated by another.

If the rhythm transcends the meter and overpowers it entirely, prose instead of poetry is the result. Prose may be rhythmical and musical and whenever the emotion of the speaker or writer increases, his utterance will become more musical and rhythmical. The peroration of Webster's Reply to Hayne which was studied in an earlier number furnishes an excellent example of most musical prose. The lines have a rhythm so pronounced as to equal that of poetry, though being freed from all trammels of perfect regularity it is