Complete Tales & Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

  Blending is the plain English for synæresis—but there should be no blending; neither is an anapæst ever employed for an iambus, or a dactyl for a trochee. These feet differ in time; and no feet so differing can ever be legitimately used in the same line. An anapæst is equal to four short syllables—an iambus only to three. Dactyls and trochees hold the same relation. The principle of equality, in verse, admits, it is true, of variation at certain points, for the relief of monotone, as I have already shown, but the point of time is that point which, being the rudimental one, must never be tampered with at all.

  To explain:—In farther efforts for the relief of monotone than those to which I have alluded in the summary, men soon came to see that there was no absolute necessity for adhering to the precise number of syllables, provided the time required for the whole foot was preserved inviolate. They saw, for instance, that in such a line as

  the equalization of the three syllables elais’ ea with the two syllables composing any of the other feet, could be readily effected by pronouncing the two syllables elais’ in double quick time. By pronouncing each of the syllables e and lais’ twice as rapidly as the syllable sy, or the syllable in, or any other syllable, they could bring the two of them, taken together, to the length, that is to say, to the time, of any one short syllable. This consideration enabled them to effect the agreeable variation of three syllables in place of the uniform two. And variation was the object—variation to the ear. What sense is there, then, in supposing this object rendered null by the blending of the two syllables so as to render them, in absolute effect, one? Of course, there must be no blending. Each syllable must be pronounced as distinctly as possible (or the variation is lost), but with twice the rapidity in which the ordinary syllable is enunciated. That the syllables elais’ ea do not compose an anapæst is evident, and the signs (ăăā) of their accentuation are erroneous. The foot might be written thus (āăă), the inverted crescents expressing double quick time; and might be called a bastard iambus.

  Here is a trochaic line:

  The prosodies—that is to say, the most considerate of them—would here decide that “delicate” is a dactyl used in place of a trochee, and would refer to what they call their “rule,” for justification. Others, varying the stupidity, would insist upon a Procrustean adjustment thus (del-cate)— an adjustment recommended to all such words as silvery, murmuring, etc., which, it is said, should be not only pronounced, but written silv’ry, murm’ring, and so on, whenever they find themselves in trochaic predicament. I have only to say that “delicate,” when circumstanced as above, is neither a dactyl nor a dactyl’s equivalent; that I would suggest for it this (āăă) accentuation; that I think it as well to call it a bastard trochee; and that all words, at all events, should be written and pronounced in full, and as nearly as possible as nature intended them.

  About eleven years ago, there appeared in the American Monthly Magazine (then edited, I believe, by Messrs. Hoffman and Benjamin) a review of Mr. Willis’ Poems; the critic putting forth his strength or his weakness, in an endeavor to show that the poet was either absurdly affected, or grossly ignorant of the laws of verse; the accusation being based altogether on the fact that Mr. W. made occasional use of this very word “delicate,” and other similar words, in “the Heroic measure, which every one knew consisted of feet of two syllables.” Mr. W. has often, for example, such lines as

  That binds him to a woman’s delicate love—

  In the gay sunshine, reverent in the storm—

  With its invisible fingers my loose hair.

  Here, of course, the feet licate love, verent in, and sible fin, are bastard iambuses; are not anapæsts; and are not improperly used. Their employment, on the contrary, by Mr. Willis, is but one of the innumerable instances he has given of keen sensibility in all those matters of taste which may be classed under the general head of fanciful embellishment.

  It is also about eleven years ago, if I am not mistaken, since Mr. Horne (of England), the author of “Orion,” one of the noblest epics in any language, thought it necessary to preface his “Chaucer Modernized” by a very long and evidently a very elaborate essay, of which the greater portion was occupied in a discussion of the seemingly anomalous foot of which we have been speaking. Mr. Horne upholds Chaucer in its frequent use; maintains his superiority, on account of his so frequently using it, over all English versifiers; and, indignantly repelling the common idea of those who make verse on their fingers, that the superfluous syllable is a roughness and an error, very chivalrously makes battle for it as “a grace.” That a grace it is, there can be no doubt; and what I complain of is, that the author of the most happily versified long poem in existence, should have been under the necessity of discussing this grace merely as a grace, through forty or fifty vague pages, solely because of his inability to show how and why it is a grace—by which showing the question would have been settled in an instant.

  About the trochee used for an iambus, as we see in the beginning of the line,

  Whēthĕr thou choose Cervantes’ serious air,

  there is little that need be said. It brings me to the general proposition that in all rhythms, the prevalent or distinctive feet may be varied at will, and nearly at random, by the occasional introduction of equivalent feet—that is to say, feet the sum of whose syllabic times is equal to the sum of the syllabic times of the distinctive feet. Thus the trochee whēthĕr, is equal in the sum of the times of its syllables, to the iambus, thoŭ chōose, in the sum of the times of its syllables; each foot being, in time, equal to three short syllables. Good versifiers, who happen to be, also, good poets, contrive to relieve the monotone of a series of feet, by the use of equivalent feet only at rare intervals, and at such points of their subject as seem in accordance with the startling character of the variation. Nothing of this care is seen in the line quoted above—although Pope has some fine instances of the duplicate effect. Where vehemence is to be strongly expressed, I am not sure that we should be wrong in venturing on two consecutive equivalent feet—although I cannot say that I have ever known the adventure made, except in the following passage, which occurs in “Al Aaraaf,” a boyish poem, written by myself when a boy. I am referring to the sudden and rapid advent of a star:

  Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes

  Alone could see the phantom in the skies,

  Whĕn fīrst thĕ phāntŏm’s cōurse wăs foūnd tŏ bē

  Hēadlŏng hīthĕrward o’er the starry sea.

  In the “general proposition” above, I speak of the occasional introduction of equivalent feet. It sometimes happens that unskilful versifiers, without knowing what they do, or why they do it, introduce so many “variations” as to exceed in number the “distinctive” feet; when the ear becomes at once balked by the bouleversement of the rhythm. Too many trochees, for example, inserted in an iambic rhythm, would convert the latter to a trochaic. I may note here, that, in all cases, the rhythm designed should be commenced and continued, without variation, until the ear has had full time to comprehend what is the rhythm. In violation of a rule so obviously founded in common-sense, many even of our best poets, do not scruple to begin an iambic rhythm with a trochee, or the converse; or a dactylic with an anapæst, or the converse; and so on.

  A somewhat less objectionable error, although still a decided one, is that of commencing a rhythm, not with a different equivalent foot, but with a “bastard” foot of the rhythm intended. For example:

  Here many a is what I have explained to be a bastard trochee, and to be understood should be accented with inverted crescents. It is objectionable solely on account of its position as the opening foot of a trochaic rhythm. Memory, similarly accented, is also a bastard trochee, but unobjectionable, although by no means demanded.

  The farther illustration of this point will enable me to take an important step.

  One of the finest poets, Mr. Christopher Pease Cranch, begins a very beautiful poem thus:

  Many are the thoughts that come to m
e

  In my lonely musing;

  And they drift so strange and swift

  There’s no time for choosing

  Which to follow; for to leave

  Any, seems a losing.

  “A losing” to Mr. Cranch, of course—but this en passant. It will be seen here that the intention is trochaic, although we do not see this intention by the opening foot, as we should do—or even by the opening line. Reading the whole stanza, however, we perceive the trochaic rhythm as the general design, and so, after some reflection, we divide the first line thus:

  Thus scanned, the line will seem musical. It is—highly so. And it is because there is no end to instances of just such lines of apparently incomprehensible music, that Coleridge thought proper to invent his nonsensical system of what he calls “scanning by accents”—as if “scanning by accents” were any thing more than a phrase. Wherever “Christabel” is really not rough, it can be as readily scanned by the true laws (not the supposititious rules) of verse as can the simplest pentameter of Pope and where it is rough (passim), these same laws will enable any one of common-sense to show why it is rough, and to point out, instantaneously, the remedy for the roughness.

  A reads and re-reads a certain line, and pronounces it false in rhythm —unmusical. B, however, reads it to A, and A is at once struck with the perfection of the rhythm, and wonders at his dulness in not “catching” it before. Henceforward he admits the line to be musical. B, triumphant, asserts that, to be sure, the line is musical—for it is the work of Coleridge, —and that it is A who is not; the fault being in A’s false reading. Now here A is right and B wrong. That rhythm is erroneous (at some point or other more or less obvious) which any ordinary reader can, without design, read improperly. It is the business of the poet so to construct his line that the intention must be caught at once. Even when these men have precisely the same understanding of a sentence, they differ, and often widely, in their modes of enunciating it. Any one who has taken the trouble to examine the topic of emphasis (by which I here mean not accent of particular syllables, but the dwelling on entire words), must have seen that men emphasize in the most singularly arbitrary manner. There are certain large classes of people, for example, who persist in emphasizing their monosyllables. Little uniformity of emphasis prevails; because the thing itself—the idea, emphasis—is referable to no natural, at least to no well-comprehended and therefore uniform, law. Beyond a very narrow and vague limit, the whole matter is conventionality. And if we differ in emphasis even when we agree in comprehension, how much more so in the former when in the latter too! Apart, however, from the consideration of natural disagreement, is it not clear that, by tripping here and mouthing there, any sequence of words may be twisted into any species of rhythm? But are we thence to deduce that all sequences of words are rhythmical in a rational understanding of the term?—for this is the deduction, precisely to which the reductio ad absurdum will, in the end, bring all the propositions of Coleridge. Out of a hundred readers of “Christabel,” fifty will be able to make nothing of its rhythm, while forty-nine of the remaining fifty will, with some ado, fancy they comprehend it, after the fourth or fifth perusal. The one out of the whole hundred who shall both comprehend and admire it at first sight must be an unaccountably clever person—and I am by far too modest to assume, for a moment, that that very clever person is myself.

  In illustration of what is here advanced I cannot do better than quote a poem:

  Pease porridge hot—pease porridge cold—

  Pease porridge in the pot—nine days old.

  Now those of my readers who have never heard this poem pronounced according to the nursery conventionality, will find its rhythm as obscure as an explanatory note; while those who have heard it, will divide it thus, declare it musical, and wonder how there can be any doubt about it.

  The chief thing in the way of this species of rhythm, is the necessity which it imposes upon the poet of travelling in constant company with his compositions, so as to be ready, at a moment’s notice, to avail himself of a well understood poetical license—that of reading aloud one’s own doggerel.

  In Mr. Cranch’s line,

  the general error of which I speak is, of course, very partially exemplified, and the purpose for which, chiefly, I cite it, lies yet farther on in our topic.

  The two divisions (thoughts that) and (come to) are ordinary trochees. Of the last division (me) we will talk hereafter. The first division (many are the) would be thus accented by the Greek prosodies (māny ăre thĕ) and would be called by them . The Latin books would style the foot Pæon Primus, and both Greek and Latin would swear that it was composed of a trochee and what they term a pyrrhic—that is to say, a foot of two short syllables—a thing that cannot be, as I shall presently show.

  But now, there is an obvious difficulty. The astrologos, according to the prosodies’ own showing, is equal to five short syllables, and the trochee to three—yet, in the line quoted, these two feet are equal. They occupy precisely the same time. In fact, the whole music of the line depends upon their being made to occupy the same time. The prosodies then, have demonstrated what all mathematicians have stupidly failed in demonstrating—that three and five are one and the same thing.

  After what I have already said, however, about the bastard trochee and the bastard iambus, no one can have any trouble in understanding that many are the is of similar character. It is merely a bolder variation than usual from the routine of trochees, and introduces to the bastard trochee one additional syllable. But this syllable is not short. That is, it is not short in the sense of “short as applied to the final syllable of the ordinary trochee, where the word means merely the half of long.

  In this case (that of the additional syllable), “short,” if used at all, must be used in the sense of the sixth of long. And all the three final syllables can be called short only with the same understanding of the term. The three together are equal only to the one short syllable (whose place they supply) of the ordinary trochee. It follows that there is no sense in thus (˘) accenting these syllables. We must devise for them some new character which shall denote the sixth of long. Let it be (c)—the crescent placed with the curve to the left. The whole foot (māny ăre thĕ) might be called a quick trochee.

  We come now to the final division (me) of Mr. Cranch’s line. It is clear that this foot, short as it appears, is fully equal in time to each of the preceding. It is in fact the cæsura—the foot which, in the beginning of this paper, I called the most important in all verse. Its chief office is that of pause or termination; and here—at the end of a line—its use is easy, because there is no danger of misapprehending its value. We pause on it, by a seeming necessity, just as long as it has taken us to pronounce the preceding feet, whether iambuses, trochees, dactyls, or anapæsts. It is thus a variable foot, and, with some care, may be well introduced into the body of a line, as in a little poem of great beauty by Mrs. Welby:

  Here we dwell on the cæsura, son, just as long as it requires us to pronounce either of the preceding or succeeding, iambuses. Its value, therefore, in this line, is that of three short syllables. In the following dactylic line its value is that of four short syllables.

  I have accentuated the cæsura with a dotted line ( ) by way of expressing this variability of value.

  I observed just now that there could be no such foot as one of two short syllables. What we start from in the very beginning of all idea on the topic of verse, is quantity, length. Thus when we enunciate an independent syllable it is long, as a matter of course. If we enunciate two, dwelling on both equally, we express equality in the enumeration, or length, and have a right to call them two long syllables. If we dwell on one more than the other, we have also a right to call one short, because it is short in relation to the other. But if we dwell on both equally and with a tripping voice, saying to ourselves here are two short syllables, the query might well be asked of us—“in relation to what are they short?” Shortness is but the negation of leng
th. To say, then, that two syllables, placed independently of any other syllable, are short, is merely to say that they have no positive length, or enunciation—in other words that they are no syllables—that they do not exist at all. And if, persisting, we add any thing about their equality, we are merely floundering in the idea of an identical equation, where, x being equal to x, nothing is shown to be equal to zero. In a word, we can form no conception of a pyrrhic as of an independent foot. It is a mere chimera bred in the mad fancy of a pedant.

  From what I have said about the equalization of the several feet of a line, it must not be deduced that any necessity for equality in time exists between the rhythm of several lines. A poem, or even a stanza, may begin with iambuses, in the first line, and proceed with anapæsts in the second, or even with the less accordant dactyls, as in the opening of quite a pretty specimen of verse by Miss Mary A. S. Aldrich.

  Here azure is a spondee, equivalent to a dactyl; lake, a cæsura.

  I shall now best proceed in quoting the initial lines of Byron’s “Bride of Abydos”:

  Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

  Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime—

  Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle

  Now melt into softness, now madden to crime?

  Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,