The Rise and Fall of Meter

the trauma of meter 151

multitude of their sins.  .  . . I still find great comfort in scribbling ; but

lately I am deadening to all poetic impulses, save those due to the pres-

sure of Problems pushing me to seek relief in unstopping my mouth.^10

The ability to express himself freely in poetry gives Owen “relief ” despite a
lack of “poetic impulse.” Though this is hardly a depiction of metrical order,
Owen admits that the expressive aspect of writing is a comfort to him. In the
same letter, he includes an early draft of the poem, “On My Songs” (inspired
by James Russell Lowell’s sonnet, “To the Spirit of Keats”),^11 which shows his
assumption of and equivocation over the poetic legacy he hopes to continue:

Though unseen poets, many and many a time,

Have answered me as if they knew my woe,

And it might seem have fashioned so their rime

To be my own soul’s cry; easing the flow

Of my dumb tears with language sweet as sobs, 5

Yet are there days when all these hoards of thought

Hold nothing for me. Not one verse that throbs

Throbs with my heart, or as my brain is fraught.

‘Tis then I voice mine own weird reveries:

Low croonings of a motherless child, in gloom 10

Singing his frightened self to sleep, are these.

One night, if thou shouldst live in this Sick Room,

Dreading the Dark thou darest not illume,

Listen; my voice may haply lend thee ease.^12

When the poetry of other “unknown” or “distant” poets ceases to comfort
Owen, he turns to writing his own verses. Here, Owen imagines writing verses
as a way of healing himself and then, potentially, lending a healing verse to
others. Verses metrically “throbbing” that do not “throb” with his heart are
artificial, external, and are not guaranteed to provide comfort. The line: “Yet
are there days when all these hoards of thought / Hold nothing for me. Not
one verse that throbs / Throbs with my heart, or as my brain is fraught” shows
that the perceived physiological comfort of a meter “throbbing” in time with
a heart cannot “hold” a thought that will soothe the poet’s fraught “brain.”
Though “throbs” / “throbs” does seem to evoke a steady beat, its placement at
the end of line 7 and the beginning of line 8 creates a palpitation, as it were, set
up by the caesura of “me. Not” in the middle of line 7. That is, the phenomeno-
logical aspects of meter, so willingly believed by many generations of poets so
as to become part of the tradition, fail Owen when he needs it most, when he
himself is ill. It is not physical, but mental comfort that he requires from this
tradition, which he recognizes is something of a fantasy of youth, akin to a