Once the poem is written we
may feel indeed, if it be a good one, that any change in the form is
impossible, but when the poet was about to write it we may be sure that
he quite deliberately weighed one form against another before making his
choice. It may even be true that he will sometimes find the shape of his
poem running to his tongue as it were unbidden, but this certainty of
selection is really in itself the result of long and, perhaps, subconscious
deliberation. The point is that the chosen form must in any case express
the poetic emotion, but that its particular election is a personal whim,
wholly satisfactory in its result, rather than a divine necessity. _The
Ode to the West Wind_ and the _Stanzas written in Dejection_ are
both superb poems, but who shall say that Shelley might not have written
the former in the short-measured nine-line stanzas and the latter in his
_terza-rima_, and yet have embodied his poetic emotion as completely
as he has done? It need hardly be added that it does not follow that,
because a simple metrical outline may easily and justly be chosen, it can
easily be used. So plain a measure as the six-line octo-syllabic stanza may
be the merest unintelligent jog-trot, or it may be:
I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
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