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They at Shan Tzu hung on to my cloak as I strove to leave them, praying that I would again entrance their ears with what they termed the melodious word-music of this person's inimitable version of the inspired story of Yuin-Pel."
How is it possible that an uncultured throng should listen rapturously to the noblest performance of the kind that exists in any language, wherein each speech is a majestic soliloquy, eloquent, sublime, with an uncloying word-music acclaimed by three centuries?"
In similar fashion he varies the rhymes, passing as the subject or the accompaniment of the word-music may require, from the couplet to the quatrain, and from the quatrain to the irregularly rhymed 'Pindaric'; always, however, taking care that, except in the set lyric, the quatrain shall not fall too much into definite stanza, but be interlaced in sense or sound sufficiently to carry on the narrative.
We do not want poetry to be merely imagistic or merely musical when we have another art that can give us much better pictures and still another that can give us much better music than any word-painting or word-music. When we read a poem, we do not want to be made to think how much better the same thing could be done in a different medium.
In Burmese the love-songs are in a short, sweet rhythm, full of quaint conceits and word-music. I cannot put them into English verse, or give the flow of the originals in a translation. It always seems to me that Don Quixote was right when he said that a translation was like the wrong side of an embroidered cloth, giving the design without the beauty.
First of all, painting has the power, through color and line as such, to express the purely musical emotions; this we demand of painting just as we demand music of verse: without word-music, there is no poetry, no matter how high the theme; so without color and line music, no matter how skillful the representation or how noble the subject, there is no picture.
The poem is of extreme beauty, and ornate as is its language in parts there are touches, such as the poet's reflection To one it is ten years of years, With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys are consummate triumphs of the word-music brought by Tennyson into English poetry.
It seems a formal thing to write, and yet there should be nothing less marred by formality than such a letter as mine. It is only that the choice is too great. I have too much to say, and so say nothing. I would ask, if I were so honoured by Heaven, the tongues of men and of angels, and all the mighty word-music of sage and prophet, that I might tell you how I love you, my heart's own.
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