With many of us, at least, it accepts
and even demands an unbroken external symmetry. The symmetry may be
externally simple, as in, say, the stanzas of _Heraclitus_:
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake,
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take,
or intricate, as in:
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy,
Sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised phantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure content,
Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne
To Him that sits thereon
With saintly shout and solemn jubilee;
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud-uplifted angel-trumpets blow;
And the Cherubic host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly:
in either case there is a formal and easily perceptible relation between
one part of the structure and another, and this relation is a positive help
to us in understanding the plain sense of the words, while its presence
does not involve any loss of emotional significance which its absence would
supply.
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