The Future Poetry

356 The Future Poetry

O ̆rthe ̆au

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r|o

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ra ̆,pe ̆r|cha

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nce, ra

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ci ̆ng|ho

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me to ̆the ̆|ei

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ght-o ̆-clo ̆ck|

mu

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tto ̆n;^11 |

So they bathed and read and roamed in heathery Highland.

This indistinctive paddling has even less of the sound and rhythm

of the true hexameter than Longfellow’s verses which are at least

hexametric in form and surface appearance.

But still there are passages, not numerous enough, in which

he loses his fear of the pure dactylic movement and does not

replace it or break it with the disturbing intrusion of unmanaged

or unassimilated trochees; he arrives then at “accentual” lines,

— if they must be so called, but they are really stress lines, —

with a firm beat that makes the metrical structure adequate; or

he achieves a movement in which the trochees come in with

a distinct rhythmic meaning and significant effect or, at the

least, make themselves at home in the dactylic rhythm, or he

brings in other modulations in a way proper to the quantitative

hexameter.

Found amid granite dust on the frosty scalp of the Cairngorm....

Eying one moment the beauty, the life, ere he flung himself in it,

Drinking in, deep in his soul, the beautiful hue and the clearness....

Often I find myself saying and know not myself as I say it,

Perish the poor and the weary! what can they better than perish,

Perish in labour for her who is worth the destruction of empires?...

Dig in thy deep dark prison, O miner! and finding be thankful,

Whi

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le thou

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a

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rt|ea

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ti ̆ng bla

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ck|brea

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di ̆nthe ̆|poi

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so ̆nou ̆s|ai

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ro ̆fthy

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|

ca

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ve ̆rn,|

Far away glitters the gem on the peerless neck of a princess....

Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended.

These lines are metrically and rhythmically adequate; the

treatment of the metre is unexceptionable: there is a true form,

a good basis and beginning of a genuine hexameter movement;

and yet something is lacking, something which ought to be there

(^11) Note that this, the sole truly dactylic line, with quantitative modulations, is in spite
of its deliberate prosaism less unsatisfactory in sound than the rest of the passage.