48 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



of the best writers on llie subject of poetry has thought so strongly 

 on the importance of rhythmic expression that he asks : " Unless the 

 rhythm of any metrical passage is so vigorous, so natural and so 

 free that it seems as though it could live, if need were, by its rhythm 

 alone, has that passage any right to exist? ' He goes on to say: 

 " Are we not driven to admit that certain poems whose strength is 

 rhythm, and certain other poems whose strength is color, while devoid 

 of any excellence of thought, may be as fruitful of thought and emo- 

 tions too deep for words as a shaken prism is fruitful of tinted lights ? 

 Sometimes in prose even we find the language which expresses 

 some deep pathos assuming the rhythmical flow of verse. In 

 ' The Mill on the P'loss ' we find a striking and well-known example 

 of this: "The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone 

 down in an embrace never to be parted, living over again, in that one 

 supreme moment, the days ivhen they had clasped their little hands in 

 love and roamed the daisied fields together T In what else does Portia's 

 speech on the quality of mercy differ from prose but in its rhythmi- 

 cal flow? The order of words is not different from that of prose, 

 but it is a proof of the poetic genius of the author, that he has chosen 

 words which do not require manipulation for the purposes of rhythm. 

 Any sign of artificial arrangement for rhythm is always distasteful. 

 To conclude this discussion of the importance of poetic form, it is a 

 most instructive and educative pursuit to compare the verses of some 

 of the old artificial schools where rhyme and rhythm were the whole 

 aim and poetic thought almost entirely unconsidered, with the loftier 

 efforts of some of our later poets, such as Wordsworth, Shelley or 

 Tennyson, where there is more attention paid to the thought, but 

 where the form is almost perfect too. It will be enough to give one 

 quotation from one of Wordsworth's sonnets on ' King's College 

 Chapel,' where he describes : 



' " That branching roof 

 Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, 

 Where light and shade repose, where music dwells, 

 Lingering — and wandering on as loth to die, 

 lAke thoughts whose very sweetness yield the proof 

 That they were horn for immortality.^^ 



This brings us to the second and more important part of the 

 subject : What is Poetic Thought ? 



