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You are reminded of Siegfried by the very name of the thing, and the music enforces the remembrance somewhat, though very slightly. Everything reminds one of Wagner nowadays, even his predecessors. Rudyard Kipling has by his individuality so copyrighted one of the oldest verse-forms, the ballad, that even "Chevy Chace" looks like an advance plagiarism. So it is with Wagner.
Of course it is much easier for a poet to use the regular verse-forms and verse language than it is to dispense with them; that is, a much less poetic capital is required in the former case than in the latter. The stock forms and the stock language count for a good deal. A very small amount of original talent may cut quite an imposing figure in the robes of the great masters.
The quality which at present directs writers to choosing verse-forms for poetical expression, apart from the traditions, is the need of condensation, and the sense of proportion which the verse-structure enforces and imparts.
The joints and members of the speech fall in the wrong places and have no relation to the joints and members of the metre. He writes like a lion devouring an antelope. He rends his subject, breaks its bones, and tears out the heart of it. He is not made more, but less, comprehensible by the verse-forms in which he writes. The sign-posts of the metre lead us astray.
Take any of Whitman's irregular-flowing lines, and clip and trim them, and compress them into artificial verse-forms, and what have we gained to make up for what we have lost? Take his lines called "Reconciliation," for instance:
The ideas expressed here can be found in no other war-poet; they are idiosyncratic to the highest degree; yet the verse-forms in which they are written are stanzaic, as traditional as the most conservative critic could desire.
Though many of these verse-forms have refused to become indigenous in Germany, a large number of new words invented by Rückert have had poetical vogue, and even where the new formations were too bold or too recherché, they accustomed German ears to a new idea-presentation through sound.
Rückert was one of the first to introduce the Orient and its verse-forms into German literature. Here the influence of Friedrich Schlegel is unmistakable. He was also a master in the reproduction of the complicated metres of the East and South.
Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course 6 was given in 1897-8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. Not given in 1898-9. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. Professor Price.
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