318 Mr. Laurence Binyon [May 31, 



meaning a strict adherence to a metrical scheme, and a regu- 

 larity in the scheme itself. They have in their minds such things 

 as the scheme of the sonnet, with its octave and sestet and its 

 strict arrangement of rhymes. And it is true that such forms 

 as the sonnet yield a certain pleasure in themselves tipart from 

 what they contain. They are like a fine contour or outline. But 

 though such a given outline may help a poor writer to produce 

 something that gives pleasure, it is not of itself living form ; it 

 is imposed from -without, not shaped from within. In a good 

 sonnet there is a vital correspondence between the matter of the 

 poem and the shape it assumes ; and this is true of all good poems 

 of whatever form. There is what we might call an interior form in 

 every poem which does not depend on the metrical outline so much 

 as on the organic relation of the parts to the whole. In the perfect 

 poem there is a complete and glowing fusion ; not a syllable can 

 be removed or changed without injuring its life. Thought, emotion, 

 imagery, rhythm, metre are fused into an indissoluble unity. The 

 body cannot be separated from the soul which it expresses. But the 

 poems which attain this absolute fusion are comparatively rare. And 

 in work which is wrought at a lesser intensity we are conscious of a 

 certain imperfection in the relation of matter to form ; and we say 

 the matter is superior to the form, or the form to the matter. But 

 what I want to bring out is this : that regularity of metrical struc- 

 ture may disguise a poor internal form, while an apparent looseness 

 and raggedness may blind us to the solid and organic shape beneath. 

 To take an example : Swinburne's " Ode to Victor Hugo " is com- 

 posed in sonorous stanzas of a fine pattern, faultless in metrical 

 structure. Walt Whitman's " Song of the Broad Axe " is also an 

 ode ; but it is not metricnl, its rhythms are irregular ; it shows no 

 apparent system ; and at first blush it would seem reasonable to say 

 that in point of form Swinburne's ode has every superiority over it. 

 But read these two poems over, and aloud ; forget the printed page ; 

 think only of what impression has been left on your mind. I shall 

 be surprised if you do not find that Whitman's poem, which has 

 after all a rhythmical recurrence of imaginative motives, does not 

 seem to have much the more organic vigour of structure and richness 

 of interior form. It is true that probably this impression will be 

 stronger when you no longer retain the actual words of either poem 

 in your mind ; and that indicates the defect of Whitman's poem, 

 which is encumbered by roughnesses and superfluities of language. 

 On the other hand, Keats's " Nightingale," which is a case of that 

 absolute fusion I spoke of a moment ago, loses something with every 

 word of it that the memory fails to hold. 



The impulse that makes a poem ought to find its own predestined 

 form, rather than- be like molten met;il run into any mould that lies 

 handy. And if the language is to obey the impulse liehind it, 

 changing with each turn of mood, why should not the form it takes 



