Chapter IV

Style and Substance

R

HYTHM is the premier necessity of poetical expression
because it is the sound-movement which carries on its
wave the thought-movement in the word; and it is the
musical sound-image which most helps to fill in, to extend,
subtilise and deepen the thought impression or the emotional
or vital impression and to carry the sense beyond itself into
an expression of the intellectually inexpressible, — always the
peculiar power of music. This truth was better understood on
the whole or at least more consistently felt by the ancients than
by the modern mind and ear, perhaps because they were more in
the habit of singing, chanting or intoning their poetry while we
are content to read ours, a habit which brings out the intellec-
tual and emotional element, but unduly depresses the rhythmic
value. On the other hand modern poetry has achieved a far
greater subtlety, minute fineness and curious depth of suggestion
in style and thought than was possible to the ancients, — at the
price perhaps of some loss in power, height and simple largeness.
The ancients would not so easily as the moderns have admitted
into the rank of great poets writers of poor rhythmic faculty
or condoned, ignored or praised in really great poets rhythmic
lapses, roughnesses and crudities for the sake of their power of
style and substance.
In regard to poetic style we have to make, for the purpose
of the idea we have in view, the starting-point of the Mantra,
precisely the same distinctions as in regard to poetic rhythm, —
since here too we find actually everything admitted as poetry
which has some power of style and is cast into some kind of
rhythmical form. But the question is, what kind of power and
in that kind what intensity of achievement? There is plenty of
poetry signed by poets of present reputation or lasting fame
which one is obliged to consign to a border region of half-poetry,