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Updated: June 6, 2025
Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in reference to this very word 'tribulation, a graceful composition by George Wither, a prolific versifier, and occasionally a poet, of the seventeenth century.
The sketch, indeed, is witty rather than accurate; a clever caricature rather than a correct drawing. There is much more poetry in Miss Bremer's prose works than in her poems, which are little more than the efforts of an accomplished versifier. One or two quotations, illustrative of Frederika Bremer's style, we may give in a note.
The versifier was rewarded by a shout of laughter, and, spurred by the approval of his friends, he declared he had hit on the mode to which to sing his lines, as he did in a fine, full voice.
Benet's, Cambridge. Within a twelvemonth after namely, in 1631 HE made his first appearance as an author. His Davia's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance, Heavy Punishment, which came out in that year, was his sole adventure of noteworthy compass as a versifier; and he certainly testified his discretion in choosing thenceforward to be satisfied with writing prose.
But let us not blame the erring lyricist too much. It isn't his fault that he does these things. It is the fault of the English language. Whoever invented the English language must have been a prose-writer, not a versifier; for he has made meagre provision for the poets. Indeed, the word "you" is almost the only decent chance he has given them. You can do something with a word like "you."
For if the versifier is not bound to weave a pattern of his own, it is because another pattern has been formally imposed upon him by the laws of verse. For that is the essence of a prosody. It does not matter on what principle the law is based, so it be a law.
I called on George Featherly at the Embassy, and we had a bit of dinner together at Durand's, and afterwards dropped in to the Opera; and after that we had a little supper, and after that we called on Bertram Bertrand, a versifier of some repute and Paris correspondent to The Critic. He had a very comfortable suite of rooms, and we found some pleasant fellows smoking and talking.
From the quotation here given, it will be seen that Sandys was a smooth versifier, and Dryden in his preface to his translation of Virgil, positively says, that had Mr. Sandys gone before him in the whole translation, he would by no means have attempted it after him. In the translation of his Christus Patiens, in the chorus of Act III. CARY LUCIUS, Lord Viscount FALKLAND,
We have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases large, rhythmical and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern, feet and groups, logic and metre harmonious in diversity: common to both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods but this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words.
If we allow that Emerson is not a born singer, that he is a careless versifier and rhymer, we must still recognize that there is something in his verse which belongs, indissolubly, sacredly, to his thought. Who would decant the wine of his poetry from its quaint and antique-looking lagena?
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