But there are other serious
and gifted people, loyally trying to serve a great art, who hold this view,
and on their account consideration is due to it. But it is none the less a
fallacy, and doubly so. In the first place, the change of line-lengths and
rhythms in a short poem written in "free verse" is nearly always arbitrary,
and does not succeed in doing what is claimed for it in this direction,
while it often does succeed in distressing the ear and so obscuring the
sense, though that is by the way. It is not as though given rhythms and
line-lengths had any peculiar emotional significance attached to them.
A dirge may be in racing anapaests, laughter in the most sedate iambic
measure; a solemn invocation may move in rapid three-foot lines, while
grave heroic verse may contain the gayest of humours. In a long work,
indeed, variety of structure may be used to give variety of sensation to
the ear with delightful and sometimes even necessary effect, though--in
English, and I am always speaking of English--it cannot even then be used
with any certainty to express change of emotion. But in a lyric the ear
does not demand this kind of relief.
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