Alliterative verse

“ Besides, one word so as it were begetting another, as be it in rime or measured verse, by the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower.... So that, verse being in itself sweet and orderly, and being best for memory, the only handle of knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can speak against it.
(Sir Philip Sidney: An Apologie for Poetrie.)
Versification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indispensably necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the understanding is enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose. ”

“ Language, which in prose does little more than transmit thought, like clear glass, becomes—even as that becomes—by art's adjustments and the moulding of measured form, a lens, where the thought takes fire as it passes. The poet speaks through a medium which seems to intensify the point and to extend the range of what he would tell us by some power outside his own volition. Such a power, in fact, a rhythmic order, in its fundamental appeal to human nerves, literally is.... The ictus of the verse comes upon us as the operative force which shocks the words into their unwonted life. ”

“ It is to common language what springs [Pg 425] are to a carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by the modulations of the voice; in poetry the same thing is done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose.... An excuse might be made for rime in the same manner. ”

“ Fitness and unfitness for song, or metrical excitement, just make all the difference between a poetical and prosaical subject; and the reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry is that the perfection of poetical spirit demands it—that the circle of its enthusiasm, beauty, and power is incomplete without it. I do not mean that a poet can never show himself a poet in prose; but that being one, his desire and necessity will be to write in verse ”

“ Those who are acquainted with writing, know that our language runs almost naturally into blank verse. The writers of our novels, romances, and all of this class, who have no notion of stile, naturally hobble into this unharmonious measure. If rhymes, therefore, be more difficult, for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme. Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and encreases the vehemence of every sentiment; for fancy, like a fountain, plays highest by diminishing the aperture. ”

“ Alliteration, which is nearly allied to rhyme, is another of the helps whereof the proverb largely avails itself. Alliteration was at one time an important element in our early English versification; it almost promised to contend with rhyme itself, which should be the most important; and perhaps, if some great master in the art had arisen, might have retained a far greater hold on English poetry than it now possesses. ”

“ Every poet, then, is a versifier; every fine poet an excellent one; and he is the best whose verse exhibits the greatest amount of strength, sweetness, straightforwardness, unsuperfluousness, variety, and oneness;—oneness, that is to say, consistency in the general impression, metrical and moral; and variety, or every pertinent diversity of tone and rhythm, in the process.... It is thus that versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem, and vindicates the pains that have been taken to show its importance. I know of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry ”

“ I might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the verse must be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the music. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but in poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, the expression mounts. ”

“ To approach ideal perfection, nothing less than implicit obedience to all the rules is the first element of success; but the task is by no means finished there. Every quality that poetry demands, whether clearness of thought, elegance of expression, harmonious sound, or faultless rhythm, is needed as much in these shapes as in unfettered verse.... It may be said, without fear of exaggeration, that all the qualities required to form a perfect lyric in poetry are equally needful here, plus a great many special ones the forms themselves demand. ”

“ Poetry, in its complete sympathy with beauty, must of necessity leave no sense of the beautiful, and no power over its forms, unmanifested; and verse flows as inevitably from this condition of its integrity as other laws of proportion do from any other kind of embodiment of beauty.... ”

“ Alliteration is a natural and obvious method of emphasis in English—and often difficult to avoid rather than to obtain. Popular sayings—wind and weather, time and tide, kith and kin, ever and aye, to have and to hold—are fond of it for its own sake. ”

“ Every man conversant with verse-writing knows, and knows by painful experience, that the familiar style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To make verse speak the language of prose, without being prosaic, to marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake. ”

“ Hence every line forms a unity by itself, and the chief pause falls at the end, not, as was frequently the case in Old English times, after the caesura.
§ 54. Alliteration. On the whole, the same laws regarding the position of the alliterative sounds are still in force as before; it is indeed remarkable that they are sometimes even more strictly observed. ”

“ While then it might be admissible to speak of progressive neglect of alliteration and of increasing predilection for end-rhyme on the part of the poet, as he advances with his work, it is not in accordance with the facts to assert that ‘alliteration had ceased to play its former part, and had been reduced to the level of a mere ornament of the verse’. On the contrary, in the first part of the Chronicle alliteration is the predominant form, and, as the work advances, it is still used to a considerable extent as a means to connect the two hemistichs or short lines so as to form one long line. ”

“ One has but to test by self-examination the living force of words in a specimen of verse and of poetical prose which may respectively seem to oneself first-rate of their kind. For such typical passages may often be regarded as fairly on a par in respect of the ideas and emotions which they reasonably express; and the prose may unquestionably further resemble the poetry in a certain subtle individuality of life in its more prominent words, so far as this life can be quickened in them by the idea itself, aided by such qualities of sound-arrangement as are possible apart from metre. ”

“ A great Parisian critic has just told us that each poet is read only by the other poets, and he gives as the reason that the art of verse has become so refined and so elaborate that it passes over the heads of the multitude. ”

“ There is nothing to tell you the writer has made "prose"—as the spacing and the capital letters invite you to look for poetry. He has to depend only upon himself. This is why blank verse—which approaches prose most nearly—is so much more difficult to write than rhymed verse, though it looks so much easier and more tempting to the amateur. ”

“ The accidents of form, such as rhyme, stanza, alliteration, etc., we find worthily and advantageously used in much true poetry, as well as worthlessly used in the tawdry puppet-shows of mere mechanicians;—those persons who, having nothing to say, yet attempting to say something, mistake rhyme for sense, a tickling jingle for meaning, their desire to create for the creative power. ”

“ His next work is the translation of the Art of Poetry; which has received, in my opinion, not less praise than it deserves. Blank verse, left merely to its numbers, has little operation on the ear or mind: it can hardly support itself without bold figures and striking images. A poem frigidly didactick, without rhyme, is so near to prose, that the reader only scorns it for pretending to be verse. ”

“ The diction of poetry is governed by different laws, and the reduplication of sound is a recognized and not infrequent ornament of verse used to a degree which would not be tolerated in prose. In the latter it is important that alliteration shall appear to be rather the consequence of the subject than an extraneous ornament. Once a writer introduces into prose a word which is evidently or even apparently chosen for its initial, he has given the reader a suspicion of artificiality which is fatal to the best effect. ”

“ The question is as old as Aristotle, whether metre, that is, regularized rhythm, is an inalienable and necessary concomitant of poetry. The answer rests on a precise understanding of terms; for the right antithesis, so far as there is one, is not between prose and poetry, but between prose and verse. High and passionate thoughts, true poetical feeling and expression may and do exist in prose, but their most natural and characteristic expression is in verse. ”

“ Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Do not write verse until you fail to express yourself in prose. Verse should glide full-winged over the surface of the waters where the spirit of God lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things like prepositions and pronouns. They are but the spray-bubbles beaten back by its wings. Your smaller words are staffs falling as regularly and heavily as a tread on a board walk. Your phrases march; they do not fly. ”

“ The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem. ”

“ It is allowed that rime assists the memory.... But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy?
(William Hazlitt: On Poetry in General.)
With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by which verses ought to be modulated, and oneness of impression diversely produced, it has been contended by some that poetry need not be written in verse at all; that prose is as good a medium, provided poetry be conveyed through it, and that to think otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or form with essence. ”

“ But these letters in verse, although perfect in quality, vivacious and eloquent as only the writings of a man who speaks of things that concern himself can be, yet are letters, confessions, autobiography: they are not pure poetry; their metrical form is to them something of a delicate pleasing whim, in harmony with such a definition of the soul. ”

“ The slow, sad sound pervades the land—one calls to another, and he sighs to his neighbor, and the Nile is shored with sound no less than sand.’
Alliteration is a mark of youth. Employed to excess it has a cloying effect, like that of diminished sevenths in music. ”

“ Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed.
(Shelley: A Defence of Poetry.)
Poetry, in its matter and form, is natural imagery or feeling, combined with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question of long standing in what the essence of poetry consists, or what it is that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, another in verse. ”

“ The more material part is left out, for only what is spiritual can be borne by this thin element." In real, that is, spontaneous minstrelsy, the fittest assonance, consonance, time, even rime, ... come of themselves with the imaginative thought.... Such is the test of genuineness, the underlying principle being that the masterful words of all poetic tongues are for the most part in both their open and consonantal sounds related to their meanings, so that with the inarticulate rhythm of impassioned thought we have a correspondent verbal rhythm for its vehicle. ”

“ It is the distinction of verse to follow a chosen pattern, with due regard to the artistic principles of variety and uniformity; it is the distinction of prose to accomplish its object, whether artistic or utilitarian, without encroaching on the boundaries of its neighbor. Prose may be as 'poetic,' as charged with powerful emotion, as possible, but it remains true prose only when it refuses to borrow aids from the characteristic excellences of verse. ”

“ It will be seen, that he combined with his rhymes much of the freedom and force of blank verse. He never allows the absence of good strong sense nor the presence of unmeaning or useless words in order to make out the rhyme. ”

“ The practice of many first-rate writers, however, both ancient and modern, who have thought that alliteration adorned their compositions, entitles it to attention. Although eminent critics have argued against this literary ornament, that its success is but a trivial excellence, I cannot but remark that it is allowed on all sides that great labour, care, and patience, are requisite, to succeed in alliteration ”