Chapter III

Rhythm and Movement

T

HE MANTRA, poetic expression of the deepest spiri-
tual reality, is only possible when three highest intensities
of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a
highest intensity of rhythmic movement, a highest intensity of
interwoven verbal form and thought-substance, of style, and a
highest intensity of the soul’s vision of truth. All great poetry
comes about by a unison of these three elements; it is the insuf-
ficiency of one or another which makes the inequalities in the
work of even the greatest poets, and it is the failure of some one
element which is the cause of their lapses, of the scoriae in their
work, the spots in the sun. But it is only at a certain highest level
of the fused intensities that the Mantra becomes possible.
It is from a certain point of view the rhythm, the poetic
movement that is of primary importance; for that is the first
fundamental and indispensable element without which all the
rest, whatever its other value, remains inacceptable to the Muse
of poetry. A perfect rhythm will often even give immortality
to work which is slight in vision and very far from the higher
intensities of style. But it is not merely metrical rhythm, even in
a perfect technical excellence, which we mean when we speak
of poetic movement; that perfection is only a first step, a phys-
ical basis. There must be a deeper and more subtle music, a
rhythmical soul-movement entering into the metrical form and
often overflooding it before the real poetic achievement begins.
A mere metrical excellence, however subtle, rich or varied, how-
ever perfectly it satisfies the outer ear, does not meet the deeper
aims of the creative spirit; for there is an inner hearing which
makes its greater claim, and to reach and satisfy it is the true
aim of the creator of melody and harmony.
Nevertheless metre, by which we mean a fixed and bal-
anced system of the measures of sound,matr ̄ a ̄, is not only the