The Future Poetry

On Quantitative Metre 341

have their place in the rhythm and the intonation but not in the
metre; they are not allowed to determine the metrical quantity of
the syllable on which they fall. For, in fact, unless they amount
to stress, these voice inflexions do not confer length of true
quantity; the quantity conferred by them in accentual verse is
conventional and need not be admitted where the accentual basis
is abandoned and the convention is not needed. Stress itself is
admitted as a quantitative element because it constitutes, by
the weight of the voice which it lays on the syllable, a true
metrical length, a strong sound-value. Intrinsic quantity, which
is not recognised as a metrical constituent in the traditional verse
system, recovers here its legitimate place. As a result quantita-
tive metres can be constructed which, like accentual and stress
metres but unlike the abortive constructions of the classicists,
can flow naturally in a free movement, a movement native to
the language; for they will combine in themselves without dis-
figuration or forcing all the natural elements of the rhythm or
sound-movement proper to the English tongue.
It may even be said that all English speech, colloquial, prose
or verse, has this as its natural rhythm, preserves these normal
sound-values. This universality will be at once evident if we take
at will or even take at random any snatch of conversation or any
prose passage caught from anywhere or everywhere and test by
it this rule of quantity; it will be found that the rule is in all cases
applicable.

I

_

ha ̆ve de ̆|ci

_

de ̆dto ̆|sta

_

rt to ̆|mo

⊥

rro

_

w.|I ̆ti ̆sno

_

u

_

se|pu

⊥

tti ̆ng o

⊥

ff|my

_

go

_

i ̆ng|a

⊥

ny ̆lo

_

nge ̆r.|

These sentences set out with a dactylo-trochaic movement and
change to less simple feet, ionic a minore, cretic, antibacchius,
double trochee. Or if you hear an irate voice shouting

Ge ̆tou

⊥

to ̆ftha

⊥

t|o ̆rI

_

’ll ki

⊥

ck you ̆,|

and have sufficient leisure and equanimity of mind to analyse the
rhythm of this exhortation, you will find yourself in the presence
of an excited double iamb followed by a vehement antispast,