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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Verse is nothing more than cold, rational prose, a species of superior conversation measured off into lengths, and fringed with rhyme; the form predominates over the matter; the ostentatious exterior is the mask to impoverished, colourless ideas. ”

“ In its original and simplest form, before she had interpolated a verse to express some of her theological ideas, it is the perfect interpretation of a sweet, solemn, and simple thought, the tenderest and purest emotion, breathed in an equally simple, but absolutely perfect melody, that is like the flowing of limpid water, crystal clear and unbroken to the end. The heart of the world has responded, and it has a place like none other in the tongue of song. ”

“ When a poem has carried him out of himself and the material present which we call the real, then the verse has been for him as a chariot of fire in which he has been swirled upward to the very heart of the divine. ”

“ To marre the subiect that before was well,
For to no other passe my verses tend,
Then of your graces and your gifts to tell.
And more, much more then in my verse can sit,
Your owne glasse showes you, when you looke in it. ”

“ Stamp'd with thy verse he knows th' are sacred then,
He knows them by that character to be
Predestinate and set apart for immortality.
IV.
If native lustre in thy themes appear,
Improv'd by thee it shines more clear:
Or if thy subject's void of native light,
Thy Fancy need but dart a beam
To gild thy theme,
50And make the rude mass beautiful and bright.
Thou vary'st oft thy strains, but still
Success attends each strain:
Thy verse is always lofty as the hill,
Or pleasant as the plain.
How well thy Muse the Pastoral Song improves! ”

“ You had the power of song, and you have always used it on behalf of the strong against the weak. You have smitten with all your might at creatures who are frail on earth but mighty in the heavens, at generosity, at truth, at justice, and heaven has withheld vision and power and beauty from you, for this your verse is but a shallow newspaper article made to rhyme. ”

“ Nor if a man shall write, like me, things nigh to prose akin, Shall he, however well he write, the name of poet win? To genius, to the man-whose soul is touched with fire divine, Whose voice speaks like a trumpet-note, that honoured name assign. 'Tis not enough that you compose your verse In diction irreproachable, pure, scholarly, and terse, Which, dislocate its cadence, by anybody may Be spoken like the language of the father in the play. ”

“ Now, if these lines were written in prose, the words would stand in the following order: "O my God! when my rising soul surveys all thy mercies, I'm transported with the view of them, and lost in wonder, love and praise."
16. And now that I have explained to you a few of the points in which verse differs from prose, I will only add, that when you read verse, you must not stop at the end of every line, unless there is a pause or mark there; and that you must avoid reading it as if you were singing it to a tune. [Pg 121]
LESSON XXXII. God Present Everywhere. ”

“ Although it is in verse that the most consummate skill in composition is to be looked for, and all the artifices of language displayed, yet it is in verse only that we throw off the yoke of the world, and are, as it were, privileged to utter our deepest and holiest feelings. ”

“ LESSON XXXI. Verse, or Poetry.
1. All the lessons in this book which you have thus far read have been in prose. I intend to give you some lessons in verse, or, as it is sometimes, but improperly called, poetry.
2. There is a great deal of difference [Pg 117] between verse and poetry; but as this book is intended for those who are not quite old enough to understand all these differences, I shall not attempt at present to point them out to you. ”

“ In the eighteenth century tradition is the very preference for blank verse as the instrument for large and serious thought, and the lifelong preference itself for large and serious thought on Death, History, Destiny. ”

“ BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters -- the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind. ”

“ Is there not more of that reverence and that relish which constitute the classical taste to be derived from the concentration of thought and feelings which the perusal of the simple unmarred and unoverlaid text produces; when you can ponder on a verse, can linger over a word, can repeat mentally and even orally with your own deliberation and your own emphasis, whenever dignity, beauty, or wisdom invite you to pause, or compel you to ruminate? ”

“ Verse is simply an ordering of words so that the modulation by the voice especially attracts the ear by the regularity of stress. We have stories, dramas and essays in different measures of verse just as we have them in prose. Description, narration, exposition, even argument and exclamation, appear in verse as well as in prose. ”

“ Indeed, but apparelied verse, being but an ornament, and no cause to poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets. ”

“ Whatever is rhythmical and metrical, whether it has any of the accidents of form or not, is verse. Hence, all poetry is verse, but not all verse is poetry. Indeed, not one ten-thousandth part of verse is poetry; for the requisite of verse is simply form,—the body into which the spirit must enter ere it becomes poetry. ”

“ Blank verse, said an ingenious critick, seems to be verse only to the eye. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Poetry is most just to its own divine origin when it administers the comforts and breathes the spirit of religion, they who have learned to perceive this truth, and who betake themselves to reading verse for sacred purposes, must be preserved from numerous illusions to which the two Classes of Readers, whom we have been considering, are liable. ”

“ We have now writings in several departments of literature, and in both prose and verse, which are characterized by a breadth and largeness of suggestion, by a spirituality and a prophetic adherence to the moral sentiment, which justify all that has here been affirmed or reasoned. And our deepest thought finds a popular reception which proves it not foreign or exceptional. ”

“ The old formula of verse, “variety in unity,” holds good in all languages, countries and times; the delicate rapture involved in a brilliant combination of rhyme and metre is a matter which is regulated; indeed, on a consideration of the laws of prosody, but depends on other and wider qualities of a moral and an aesthetic order. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ TO write a verse or two, is all the praise, ”

“ One of the peculiarities of the stanza is the increased emphasis which the rime of the third verse receives from its proximity to that of the second; and this is noticeable both when there is a logical pause after the third verse and when there is none:
'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he.... ”

“ Walk through the world with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public want to read. ”

“ If there is poetry and verse, there is also verse and verse. Poetry may be said to be a fixed quality; but that is not so with the inferior article. There are many different [Pg 30] sorts of verse. There is that which is strongly sentimental, there is that which is broadly comic, and there is that which is something between the two—neither over-sentimental nor over-comic, but altogether light in tone, and marked in the main by wit and humour. Now, to this last class of verse has been given, in general, the name of vers de société or vers d’occasion—verse of society or for the moment. ”

“ the canons of criticism underlying them being that no verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess; ”

“ Again an advance may be observed, not only in the conduct of the plot, which moves artistically on an altogether different level, and even succeeds in arousing some dramatic interest, but likewise in the verse, which has a freer movement, and is on the whole less marred by the over-emphatic repetition of words and phrases in consecutive lines, a particularly irritating trick of the author's pastoral style, or by the monotonous cadence and painful padding of the blank verse. ”

“ There is something in your verses as distinguished as your air.—They are as strong as truth, as deep as reason, as clear as innocence, and as smooth as beauty.—They contain a nameless and peculiar mixture of force and grace, which is at once so movingly serene, and so majestically lovely, that it is too amiable to appear any where but in your eyes and in your writings. ”

“ And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose. ”

“ As most of these are frequently no more than harmonious expletives of the verse, often serve only as a ceremonious introduction to his speakers, we are of opinion, that he might at least have sometimes varied them with advantage to his verse, and for the greater gratification of his reader. ”

“ The broader problems that interest thinking minds of a late and reflective age, the profounder feelings and more ambitious aspirations of manhood and maturity, are writ large in every verse of the poem. The lyre gives out true, full notes, which there is no mistaking. ”

“ But then it is verse which describes the joys, sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments common to the whole human race, and which every sensitive nature experiences at some time or another, in the course of chequered life, and which are peculiar to no particular age or generation, but the pathetic possession of all men, and all epochs. ”

“ This literature proper was likely to take the form of verse in the eleventh century. A practical matter would be put in prose; but the effervescence of the soul, or the intended literary effort, would fall into rhyme or resort to metre. ”

“ To exhibit by single verses and songs the wonderful beauty of the language, particularly in the lyrical portions, would seem to us as superfluous as the effort to prove the existence of a divine Providence by anecdotes of strange coincidences. ”

“ The rudiment of verse may possibly be found in the spondee. ”

“ He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe; ”

“ The Sentences
are 11 verses, chosen, 5 from the Psalms, 4 from the Prophets, 2 from the Gospels, 1 from the Epistles. They represent either man's cry to God (Nos. 2, 3, 7, 9, 10) or God's call to man (Nos. 1, 4, 5, 8, 11) or both (No. 6) .
{30}
The Exhortation. ”

“ Your verses, for which I sincerely thank you, are an additional proof of the truth which forced from me, many years ago, the exclamation, 'O, many are the poets that are sown by nature!' ”

“ How many chapters have been written about love verses—and how many more might be written!—might, would, could, should, or ought to be written!—I will venture to say, will be written! ”

“ Whenever he touches a historical or literary theme his whole being seems to undergo a transformation. The real nature flashes out through his twinkling eyes. While he muses the fire burns, and, like the Psalmist, he speaks with his tongue. Dates and details, facts and traditions, cantos and poetry, reams of prose, English and Latin and Greek and French, come tumbling out in headlong but not disorderly array. ”

“ He has told, in his graphic manner, how the voice of the preacher 'rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' how he launched into his subject, after giving out the text, 'like an eagle dallying with the wind;' and how his young hearer seemed to be listening to the music of the spheres, to see the union of poetry and philosophy; and behold truth and genius embracing under the eye of religion. ”

“ The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders; as if the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains of obstruction, and deigns to draw a truer line, which the mind knows and owns. ”