320 The Future Poetry
have no strength to bear and strong stresses are compelled to
efface themselves while small insignificant sounds take up their
burden, is not a real and natural verse movement; it is an artificial
structure which will never find an agreed place in the language.
No make-believe can reconcile us to such rhythms as Sid-
ney’s
I_
nwi_
nd|o_
rwa_
|te_
r’s||strea_
mdo ̆re ̆|qui_
re to ̆be ̆|wri_
t.|Here two intractably iambic feet followed by a resolutely short
syllable are compelled to dance a jig garbed as two spondees fol-
lowed by a solitary long syllable; so disguised, they pretend to be
the first half of a pentameter, — the second half with its faultless
and natural metre and rhythm is of itself a condemnation of its
predecessor. Neither can one accept Bridges’
Flo_
wery ̆do ̆|mai_
nthe ̆flu ̆sh|i_
ng so_
ft|cro_
wdi_
ng|lo_
veli ̆ne ̆ss|o_
fSpri_
ng|where length is forced on an inexorable short like the “ing”
of “flushing” and “crowding” and a pretence is made that an
accentual iamb, “of Spring”, can be transformed into a quan-
titative spondee. Still worse, still more impossible to digest or
even to swallow, is his forced hexameter ending,
the ̆se ̆|re_
nely ̆so ̆|le_
mn spe_
lls.|There two successive accentual trochees and a terminal long
syllable are turned by force or by farce into a closing dactyl
and spondee. Such are the ungainly antics into which the nat-
ural movements of verse have to be compelled in this game of
thrusting the laws of quantity of an ancient language upon a
modern tongue which has quite another spirit and body. What
is possible and natural in a clear-cut ancient language where
there is a more even distribution of the voice and both the short
and long syllables can get their full sound-value, is impossible
or unnatural in the English tongue; for there the alternation
of stresses with unstressed short and light sounds is a constant
and inescapable feature. That makes all the difference; it turns
this kind of verse into a frolic of false quantities. In any case,