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Such, at any rate, is the form of the tenso; a poet propounds a theme in the first stanza and his interlocutor replies in a stanza of identical metrical form; the dispute usually continues for some half dozen stanzas.
It is no part of my ambition to loose the Gordian knots which others who found them indissoluble have sought in vain to cut in sunder with blunter swords than the Macedonian; but after so many adventures and attempts there may perhaps yet be room for an attempt yet unessayed; for a study by the ear alone of Shakespeare's metrical progress, and a study by light of the knowledge thus obtained of the corresponsive progress within, which found expression and embodiment in these outward and visible changes.
The flame was in the eye and in the cheek, the coals may be still burning in the heart, but when we come to the words it leaves behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just glimmering under the dead gray ashes, that is all we can look for. When it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how well the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing.
When she turned her attention to politics, and had her patrons to be sung up and her patrons' enemies to be sung down, she very often screamed and called names, and cursed like an intoxicated fish-wife. Pope, Swift, Gay, Hervey, flung metrical abuse about in the coarsest fashion. There seemed to be hardly any pretence at accuracy of description or epithet.
But, as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the reader the state of Greek literature in England during Coleridge's youth; and, in all equity, as a means of placing Coleridge in the balances, specifically we must recall the state of Greek metrical composition at that period.
Prose had so developed that the poetical form was no longer a necessity for the expression of ideas, as it had been in the palmy days of Latin tragedy. The poetry of the future must be, so to speak, poetry for its own sake, until some new tradition were formed which should make certain metrical forms once more the recognised and traditional vehicle for certain kinds of literary expression.
To them it is poetry, and the only thing worthy of the name; while the correlative function of lending the force of reality to the imaginary will appear at best but a superior kind of metrical romancing, or clever telling of fairy tales. Nor of course can there, from the point of view of the highest conception of the poet's office, be any comparison between the two.
Among the jokes of their own invention, with which the Roman editors deemed it proper to season the elegant Attic dialogue, several are almost incredibly unmeaning and barbarous. Metrical Treatment So far as concerns metrical treatment on the other hand, the flexible and sounding verse on the whole does all honour to the composers.
And this new form opens with Samuel the Nagid's pretty verses on his "Stammering Love," who means to deny, but stammers out assent. I cite the metrical German version of Dr. The sense, however, is clear. The stammering maid's words, being mumbled, convey an invitation, when they were intended to repulse her loving admirer.
We could wish the first four lines away, and then the poem would be a perfect gem. Its clear joyous ring marks the gay time of youth; its varied music sounds the prelude to the metrical triumphs that were to come, and if it is not Virgil's, we have lost in its author a genre poet of the rarest power.
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