the open sounds increase in frequency and dominance as the thought gathers force. This may be called the crescendo. The repetition of closed vowels and shorter sounds increasing in frequency produces of course a crescendo of the converse kind. As when the poet speaks of "The burthen of the mystery

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened."

I know no example of the monotone more expressive of the weary round than the lines in Tennyson's Lotos Eaters,

"Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam," etc.

where even the rhymes, instead of interweaving sounds of appropriate dissimilarity, fall into assonance.

The second kind of vowel sequence depends upon alternation, as in

While the still morn went out with sandals gray,"

where the regular variation of short, or of closed, syllables (like 'still ') with long, and open (like 'morn'), conveys an effect of self-restrained but sweeping and graceful motion.

The third, depending upon a pivotal vowel, is much affected by Milton. Sometimes for five or ten lines together the ascent to, and descent from, a central vowel sound, seems to be the guiding principle of quality or tone. In the following from Il Penseroso such a vowel obtains about the middle of each verse; it stands forth unique in sound and importance:—

"And let some strange mysterious dream,
Wave at his wings in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed."

I should call this the jewelled line. The note struck by the central vowel is not repeated on either side. The next line of this passage, however, reverts to the sequence of alternation: one sequence overdone would lose its savor.

In the fourth of these vowel systems, one sound-series is balanced or echoed by another, like in quality, but opposed in sense and separated in position, as in Byron's description of the Dying Gladiator,

"his manly brow

Consents to death, but conquers agony."

66 Agony" recalls the sound of "manly brow," but yields an opposite sense; just as "conquers" repeats in sound and parries in meaning the force of "consents."

From what has been said it will, I think, be evident that poets avoid the repetition of the same vowel tone in successive syllables unless the repetition has some end to subserve, — because an ordered variety of component sounds enriches the music of verse. Allowing for a somewhat wider latitude, the principle holds true also of consonants. assonance of the i sounds, and the alliteration of the 's in

"Softly on my eyelids laid,"

The

are not agreeable because the component parts in each case are almost one in position as well as in sound.

Pitch. The dependence of poetic effect upon the proper sequence of vowel sounds is to some extent accounted for by the fact that vowels differ in pitch as well as in length and quality. That 'feet' takes longer to say than fit,' is evident, and that 'man' is broader and richer in tone than 'men'; but we do not often stop to think that each vowel sound is more easily and naturally uttered upon a certain appropriate musical note than upon any other note higher or lower; that, in other words, the widening or contraction of the cords of the throat to produce a vowel sound will, if the sound is prolonged, determine the note on which that vowel can most readily be sung. So that the notes appropriate to the whole series of vowels would form a gamut. Every arrangement of vowels, then, produces a sequence of impressions upon the ear corresponding in a faint degree to that of melody in music. Science has not yet conclusively registered the subtle melody of vowel sounds; but that distinctive properties of pitch exist for the several vowels is a fact, and upon it depends, in part, what we call the modulation of speech. Close i as in 'fit' is said. for instance, to have the highest pitch and clearest sound; a, as in ‘father,' to be most readily uttered halfway down the gamut, and u, as in 'full,' to be the lowest of the vowel sounds. The sensitive ear cannot but note the modulation produced by the ups and downs of the voice when such lines as

"To walk the studious cloisters pale

And love the high embowèd roof"

are read with respect for the natural pitch of the vowels. Such modulation, or inflection, is of course instinctive. To the subtle and delicate sequence of pitch by vowel sounds there is also added in the reading of verse the elocutionary element of intonation. That also is, or should be, instinctive. The rising tone with which we conclude an interrogation or a warning, the depression of the voice at the end of an answer, and the combination of rise and fall in exclamations of surprise or contempt, are, of course, natural auxiliaries to the sense; but they and

numerous others of their kind when introduced into verse demand continuous variation of pitch, and so contribute to the melody of the poem.

9. TONALITY IN VERSE: HARMONY; RHYME

Harmony. As melody in verse depends upon the sequence of vowel and consonant sounds, their quality or tone, their musical pitch, and the modulations of the voice that naturally distinguish impressive and emotive utterance, so harmony in verse is produced by the correspondence of sounds; that is to say, by rhyme. As harmony in music results from coördinating melodies, or subordinating two or more— alto, tenor, and bass - to a dominant air, so in verse it results from coördinating or subordinating, in two or more verses, the sounds occurring at certain regular intervals.

6

Rhyme. This correspondence is rhyme; and in English it is of three principal kinds: end-rhyme, or rhyme properly so-called, alliteration or initial rhyme, and assonance or middle-rhyme. In end-rhyme the sound of two or more words is the same in the last accented vowel and all that follows. The consonant sound preceding the last accented vowel must not be the same in the words concerned. The ess' in 'possess' and 'confess' constitutes the rhyme. The initial s and ƒ avert the monotony of identical syllables. 'Possess' and 'recess' would not be allowed as rhyme in English, because the last syllables are identical, though it would be in French. But combinations of consonants with r, or l, s, or h, producing distinct consonant sounds, afford sufficient variety. Cry' and 'try,'' slow' and 'blow,'' stale' and 'tale,' 'share' and 'their,' 'where' and 'hare,' are good rhymes. It is not sufficient that the spelling of the rhymed portions be the same; the sounds after the initial consonant must be identical. 'Scorn' is not a correct rhyme for 'torn,' but 'morn' is. The spelling (which in our modern English by no means indicates the sound) has, indeed, nothing to do with the rhyme. Buy' rhymes with 'nigh,' and 'Cholmondeley' with 'comely.' English phoneticians like Mr. Sweet would, I suppose, justify the rhyming of 'morn' with 'dawn,' because in England the r before a consonant or a pause is dropped. Such, however, is a Cockney rhyme. It is not accepted by English metrists; and in Scotland, Ireland, and most parts of America it would not be tolerated. Rhyme, I repeat, requires identity of the sounds concerned; similarity is not sufficient: 'mind' does not rhyme with 'time,' 'lover' with 'move her,' 'son' with 'throne.' We find, to be sure, even the best of poets occasionally defiant or dormitant; but it is wise for the beginner to live within the letter of the law. Sometimes, but rarely, the rhyme depends upon an unaccented syllable, or the secondary accented syllable of a three

syllabled word. Milton rhymes 'liberty' with 'thee,' and 'revelry' with 'pageantry.’

Rhymes of one syllable, as 'fair' and 'square,' 'forbear' and 'compare,' are called masculine; those of more syllables than one, such as 'merry,' 'very,' 'merrily' and 'verily,' ' saturated,' 'maturated,' whether double, triple, or quadruple, are called feminine. The quadruple is rarely used save for humorous effect. The triple lends itself sometimes to light composition as in Butler's Hudibras; sometimes to the pathetic as in Hood's Bridge of Sighs.

End-rhyme may, of course, fall at the end of a cadence within the verse, as in

or

"The splendor falls on castle walls,"

"At Florès in the Azorès, Sir Richard Grenville lay."

This internal, or involved, rhyme is, however, pleasant only when the rhymes recur at proper rhythmic intervals.

Since the harmony of a stanza depends not only upon the perfection of its rhymes, but also upon the variety of rhymes combining to make, as it were, a musical chord, it is essential that where different rhymeunits alternate, or come in juxtaposition, they should not depend upon the same or similar vowel sounds. A slight examination will show what variety there is in the succession of rhyme-sounds in any good stanza. Take the second of Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality, 'goes,' 'rose,' 'light,' 'bare,' 'night,' 'fair,' 'birth,' ''go,' 'earth.' A stanza of which the rhymes ran 'goes,' 'rose,' 'mole,' 'soul,' 'boat,' 'rote,' would be tedious. One in which the final sounds were but slightly different would also fail to satisfy the ear; as, for instance, "stream," "him," "dream," "brim.”

Alliteration. — In initial rhyme, or alliteration, the opening of the corresponding syllables is the same, as in "winter," "wasted." In an Anglo-Saxon verse, consisting, as it did, of two sections (or half-lines), this rhyme served to unite the halves in the rhythmical unit of the verse. The alliteration marked one or both of the two stressed syllables of the first half-verse, and always the first stressed syllable (or rhyme-giver) of the second half-as, for instance,

Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers alliterated not only consonants, but also initial vowels in these stressed syllables. While, however, they insisted that the consonant sounds of an alliteration should be the same, they permitted any opening vowel to alliterate with any other. End-rhymes did not obtain. But from the tenth century on, the rules of initial rhyme were somewhat relaxed, and end-rhyme began to appear by its

side.

And yet, as late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we find poems like the Piers Plowman, —

་་

"I was weary, forwandered: and went me to restë
Under a broad bank: by a burnës sidë

And as I lay and leanëd: and looked in the waters
I slumbered in a sleeping: it sweyved 1 so merry,

"

persisting in the ancient sinewy fashion, and even in the sixteenth century verse in the alliterative rhyme of the Anglo-Saxons still occasionally appears.

Our modern poets make less obvious, and more cunning use, of alliteration than did their ancestors. They do not require its presence, nor do they restrict it to certain positions in the line. When marking accented syllables modern alliteration emphasizes them rather to the obscuration of the unaccented, and so preserves the rhythmic leap or swing of its predecessor. The frequent and emphatic initial rhyme of

"I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance
Among my skimming swallows,"

is calculated by Tennyson to the peculiar effect desired, not to any artificial rule. So also that of Shelley's Cloud, –

"I sift the snow on the mountains below

And the great pines groan aghast."

More subtle, because less frequent, is the music of the King's complaint in the Passing of Arthur,

"I found Him in the shining of the stars,

I marked Him in the flowering of the fields,
But in His ways with men I find him not."

Still more artistic is the alliteration that pervades but is not obvious, falling often in the middle of a word, and sometimes on unaccented syllables. In the poem just cited, when Sir Bedivere replies to the King:

"let pass whatever will,

Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field,
But in their stead thy name and glory cling
To all high places like a golden cloud,"

his words are liquid with hidden l's, and in a less degree with m's and n's.

Assonance. A third kind of rhyme, though it is not in English regarded as a satisfactory substitute for end-rhyme, has yet uses somewhat similar to those of alliteration. This is assonance or middlerhyme. It is commonly employed in Spanish poetry, and consists of 1 sounded.