Recent English Poetry – 2 177The inmost seeing must bring out of itself to be poetically
effective the inmost word and sound, must find out a luminous
purity of its steps or a profound depth of its movement, must
be said in the inmost way. Rhythm is the most potent, founding
element of poetic expression, and though most modern poets
depend or at least lean more heavily on force of thought and
substance than on the greater musical suggestions of rhythm, —
Shelley, Swinburne, Yeats are exceptions, — there must always
be a change in this basis of the poet’s art when there is a substan-
tial change of the constituting spirit and motive. Especially when
there is this more subtle spiritual aim, the rhythmical movement
becomes of a new importance. Whether as an aid to help out by
the subtle meaning of the cadence the total spiritual suggestion
of the speech or, more supremely, to bring in out of the depths,
as great music does, some surge or outwelling of the infinite
movement and cry of the spirit and bear like a jewel of light on
its breast the outbreak of the inevitable revealing word, it must
be persuaded to find some new unity of measure and speech,
the thought echoing with the very native sound of its Idea. We
find accordingly the beginning, sometimes something more, of
another spirit in the movement of this poetry. These poets use
for the most part old established metrical forms or variations
of them; when there are departures, they do not go very far
from the familiar base: but in their way of using them we are as
far as possible in its intrinsic principle from the method of the
older poets. The change may be described as a more complete
subordination of the metrical insistence to the inner suggestion
of the movement. The old poets depended greatly on the metrical
fall, made much of the external mould and its possible devices
and filled it with the tones of life or thought or the excitement
of the thing that possessed them and moved them to speech.
Shakespeare’s lines,
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the shipboy’s eyes and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,are a supreme instance of the manner, or Milton’s