The Future Poetry

On Quantitative Metre 353

work of Whitman would seem to point to a free but finely built
quantitative rhythm as the most promising base. But, even at its
highest, free verse is not likely to replace metre.

The Problem of the Hexameter

It is now possible to transfer our attention to the minor problem
of the naturalisation of classical quantitative metres in English
poetry; for in the light of this more natural theory of quantity
we can hope to find an easier solution. Among these metres the
hexameter stands as the central knot of the problem; if that is
loosened, the rest follows. But first let us return on past attempts
and their failure and find by that study a basis of comparison
between the true and the false hexameter. There are here two
elements to be considered, the metrical form and the character-
istic rhythm; both Clough and Longfellow have failed for the
most part to get into their form the true metrical movement
and missed too by that failure to get the true inner rhythm,
the something more that is the soul of the hexameter. Of the
two, Longfellow achieved the smoother half-success — or rather
the more plausible failure. He realised that the metre must be
predominantly dactylic and maintained a smooth dactylic flow,
broken only by the false, because mechanical, use of trochees to
vary the continuous dactylic beat. Other modulations could not
be used with effect because the accentual system only admits in
the hexameter the dactyl, the spondee and the trochee. For all
three-syllabled feet are in the accentual hexameter reduced to
dactyls. The tribrach gets right of entry by imposing an accen-
tual low pitch on its inherently unaccented and unstressed first
syllable, e.g.,

A

|

nd with the|others in haste went hurrying down to the sea-shore.

The anapaest is cooked up into a pseudo-dactyl by a similar de-
vice of false accentuation and by the belittling of its long vowel,
the antibacchius and cretic by a depression or half-suppression
of the value of the unstressed long syllable, the second long
bar that gives them their musical value; the molossus is shorn