Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it.
Further cultivation would improve also the refrain by relieving
its monotone in slightly varying the phrase at each repetition, or (as
I have attempted to do in "The Raven") in retaining the phrase and
varying its application, although this latter point is not strictly
a rhythmical effect alone. Finally, poets when fairly wearied with
following precedent, following it the more closely the less they
perceived it in company with Reason, would adventure so far as to
indulge in positive rhyme at other points than the ends of lines.
First, they would put it in the middle of the line, then at some point
where the multiple would be less obvious, then, alarmed at their own
audacity, they would undo all their work by cutting these lines in
two. And here is the fruitful source of the infinity of "short
metre" by which modern poetry, if not distinguished, is at least
disgraced. It would require a high degree, indeed, both of cultivation
and of courage on the part of any versifier to enable him to place his
rhymes, and let them remain at unquestionably their best position,
that of unusual and unanticipated intervals.
On account of the stupidity of some people, or (if talent be a
more respectable word), on account of their talent for
misconception- I think it necessary to add here, first, that I believe
the "processes" above detailed to be nearly, if not accurately,
those which did occur in the gradual creation of what we now can
verse; secondly, that, although I so believe, I yet urge neither the
assumed fact nor my belief in it as a part of the true propositions of
this paper, thirdly, that in regard to the aim of this paper, it is of
no consequence whether these processes did occur either in the order I
have assigned them, or at all; my design being simply, in presenting a
general type of what such processes might have been and must have
resembled, to help them, the "some people," to an easy understanding
of what I have further to say on the topic of Verse.
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