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Updated: July 29, 2025
For, I repeat, it is not added to the pleasure of the meaning when you read poetry that you do understand: by some mystery the music is then the music of the meaning, and the two are one. However fond of versification you might be, you would tire very soon of reading verses in Chinese; and before long of reading Virgil and Dante if you were ignorant of their languages.
The poet was now grown old, and the knight desiring him to abridge and improve Gower's Confessio Amantis, he declines it in the politest manner, on account of his age, profession, and infirmities; 'but tho' love is an improper subject, 'says he, I am still an admirer of the sex, and shall 'introduce to the honour of your acquaintance, 'four of the finest ladies that nature ever framed, 'Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Magnanimity; the whole of the address is exceeding courtly, and from this I shall quote a few lines, which will both illustrate his politeness and versification
You are telling me that the poetic value of Hamlet lies solely in its style and versification, and that my interest in the man and his fate is only an intellectual or moral interest. You allege that, if I want to enjoy the poetry of Crossing the Bar, I must not mind what Tennyson says there, but must consider solely his way of saying it.
The Aeneid of Virgil was his model, and the narrative of Livy furnished his materials. It is considered the dullest and most tedious poem in the Latin language though its versification is harmonious, and will often, in point of smoothness, bear comparison with that of Virgil. Valerius Flaccus flourished in the reign of Vespasian.
No suitable versification for Comedy has yet been invented in Italy. The verso sciolto, it is well known, does not answer; it is not sufficiently familiar. The verse of twelve syllables, with a sdrucciolo termination selected by Ariosto, is much better, resembling the trimeter of the ancients, but is still somewhat monotonous. It has been, however, but little cultivated.
Among the miscellaneous poems, there are many which, in brilliancy, in keen, good-natured satire, in facility and variety of versification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and pure love of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred.
In speaking of the power of poetry we are dealing with what is essentially a mystery, the outcome of infinitely subtle, numerous, and complex forces. The rhythm of versification seems to serve the purpose of a prompter. It lets us know in advance just what syllables are to receive the emphasis which shall make the sense clear.
It was in a delightful rummaging of one of those lumber-rooms, escaped from that candle-light into the broad day of the uppermost windows, that the young Duke Carl laid his hand on an old volume of the year 1486, printed in heavy type, with frontispiece, perhaps, by Albert Dürer Ars Versificandi: The Art of Versification: by Conrad Celtes.
We have preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was so well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to vast theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental accompaniment; and then we have given up simplicity of plot and dialogue, and all truth of situation. La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked the pseudo-classic drama.
As hope of recall grew fainter, his work failed more and more; the incorrect language and slovenly versification of some of the Letters from Pontus are in sad contrast to the Ovid of ten years before, and if he went on writing till the end, it was only because writing had long been a second nature to him.
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