The Future Poetry

362 The Future Poetry

Here the two trochees together — a combination almost always

awkward or crippling in the accentual hexameter — and the

trochee followed by a cretic fit easily into the movement and cre-

ate by their unusual and appropriate turn of sound a modulation

of the rhythmic feeling. If the third line were written

Looking on men who must die and on women predestined to sorrow,

the common indistinguishable metrical run would not at all serve

the intended meaning, — it would be a statement and would

inform the mind but, robbed of the special turn of sound, it

would not move. For the dactyl there is a great number of

possible modulations; the antibacchius can be used freely, the

lighter cretic less freely but still frequently, the first paeon often

but not too often; even the lighter molossus can come in to our

aid; the tribrach or the anapaest can introduce the first foot of

a line or step in after a pause in the middle, but elsewhere they

can seldom intervene or only if it is done very carefully. Even the

choriamb or the double trochee can be employed in place of the

paeon, if the second long syllable of the foot is unstressed and

therefore not burdensome. Heavy trisyllables can be allowed

only now and then, if the movement demands them. But in

fact all modulations must be employed only when there is the

rhythmic necessity or for rhythmic significance; if they are used

mechanically without reason or at random, it does not help the

harmony and often destroys it. Rhythmic necessity intervenes

when the special movement needed by the thought, feeling or

action must so be brought about, by modulation of the fixed

rhythm or a departure from it;^13 rhythmic significance occurs

when the deeper unexpressed soul sense behind the words is

brought out, not by word but by sound, to the surface.

The efficacy of this technique depends on the power of the

(^13) Thus even an almost wholly trochaic or a wholly spondaic line can be admitted
when it is demanded by the action, e.g.,
He from the carven couch upreared his giant stature
or,
Fate-weighed up Troy’s slope strode musing strong Aeneas.