H. P. Lovecraft

Name: The Allowable Rhyme
Author: H. P. Lovecraft

The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

Summary

“The Allowable Rhyme”, published in 1915, is a work by H. P. Lovecraft. It explores elements such as rhyming, allowable rhymes and vowel.

Quotes from The Allowable Rhyme (H. P. Lovecraft)

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ Well may their predilection for imperfect rhyming be discouraged to a limited extent, but to chain them wholly to modern rules would be barbarous. Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ —Horace The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ The best critics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demand perfect rhyming, and no aspirant for fame can afford to depart from a standard so universal. It is evidently the true goal of the English, as well as of the French bard; the goal from which we are but temporarily deflected during the preceding age.
But exceptions should and must be made in the case of a few who have somehow absorbed the atmosphere of other days, and who long in their hearts for the stately sound of the old classic cadences. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ Another advantage is the greater latitude allowed for the expression of thought. How numerous are the writers who, from restriction to perfect rhyming, are frequently compelled to abandon a neat epigram, or brilliant antithesis, which allowable rhyme would easily permit, or else to introduce a dull expletive merely to supply a desired rhyme! ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ Every argument by which English blank verse or Spanish assonant verse is sustained, may with greater force be applied to the allowable rhyme. Metre is the real essential of poetical technique, and when two sounds of substantial resemblance are so placed that one follows the other in a certain measured relation, the normal ear cannot without cavilling find fault with a slight want of identity in the respective dominant vowels. The rhyming of a long vowel with a short one is common in all the Georgian poets, and when well recited cannot but be overlooked amidst the general flow of the verse ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ In unvaried exactitude run the couplets of "The Traveler" and of "The Deserted Village," and none can deny to them a certain urbanity which pleases the critical ear. With but little less precision are molded the simple rhymes of Cowper, whilst the pompous Erasmus Darwin likewise shows more attention to identity of sound than do the Queen Anne Bards. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ That allowable rhymes have real advantages of a positive sort is an opinion by no means lightly to be denied. The monotony of a long heroic poem may often be pleasantly relieved by judicious interruptions in the perfect successions of rhymes, just as the metre may sometimes be adorned with occasional triplets and Alexandrines. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. P. Lovecraft, The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

“ His faithful dog shall bear him company. Of like nature is the rhyming of actually different vowels whose sounds are, when pronounced in animated oration, by no means dissimilar. Out of verse, such words as "join" and "line" are quite unlike, but Pope well rhymes them when he writes:
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
and ten low words oft creep in one dull line. It is the final consonantal sound in rhyming which can never vary. ”

H. P. Lovecraft

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