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This answered pretty well; but the grammars admitted no such foot as a foot of one syllable; and besides the rhythm was dactylic. In despair, the books are well searched, however, and at last the investigators are gratified by a full solution of the riddle in the profound »Observation« quoted in the beginning of this article: – »When a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic; when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable it forms hypermeter.« This is enough. The anomalous line is pronounced to be catalectic at the head and to form hypermeter at the tail, – and so on, and so on; it being soon discovered that nearly all the remaining lines are in a similar predicament, and that what flows so smoothly to the ear, although so roughly to the eye, is, after all, a mere jumble of catalecticism, acatalecticism, and hypermeter – not to say worse.

Now, had this court of inquiry been in possession of even the shadow of the philosophy of Verse, they would have had no trouble in reconciling this oil and water of the eye and ear, by merely scanning the passage without reference to lines, and, continuously, thus:

 

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle Are | emblems of | deeds that are | done in their | clime Where the | rage of the | vulture the | love of the | turtle Now | melt into softness now | madden to | crime | Know ye the | land of the | cedar and | vine Where the | flowers ever | blossom the | beams ever | shine Where the | light wings of | Zephyr op | pressed by per | fume Wax | faint o'er the | gardens of | Gul in their | bloom Where the | citron and | olive are | fairest of | fruit And the | voice of the | nightingale | never is | mute Where the | virgins are | soft as the | roses they | twine And | all save the | spirit of | man is di | vine 'Tis the | land of the | East 'tis the | clime of the | Sun Can he | smile on such | deeds as his | children have | done Oh | wild as the | accents of lovers' fare | well Are the | hearts that they | bear and the | tales that they | tell.

 

Here ›crime‹ and ›tell‹ (italicized) are cæsuras, each having the value of a dactyl, four short syllables; while ›fume Wax,‹ ›twine And,‹ and ›done Oh,‹ are spondees, which, of course, being composed of two long syllables, are also equal to four short, and are the dactyl's natural equivalent. The nicety of Byron's ear has led him into a succession of feet which, with two trivial exceptions as regards melody, are absolutely accurate – a very rare occurrence this in dactylic or anapæstic rhythms. The exceptions are found in the spondee ›twine And,‹ and the dactyl, ›smile on such.‹ Both feet are false in point of melody. In ›twine And,‹ to make out the rhythm, we must force ›And‹ into a length which it will not naturally bear. We are called on to sacrifice either the proper length of the syllable as demanded by its position as a member of a spondee, or the customary accentuation of the word in conversation. There is no hesitation, and should be none. We at once give up the sound for the sense; and the rhythm is imperfect. In this instance it is very slightly so; – not one person in ten thousand could, by ear, detect the inaccuracy. But the perfection of Verse, as regards melody, consists in its never demanding any such sacrifice as is here demanded. The rhythmical must agree, thoroughly, with the reading flow. This perfection has in no instance been attained – but is unquestionably attainable. ›Smile on such,‹ the dactyl, is incorrect, because ›such,‹ from the character of the two consonants ch, cannot easily be enunciated in the ordinary time of a short syllable, which its position declares that it is. Almost every reader will be able to appreciate the slight difficulty here; and yet the error is by no means so important as that of the ›And,‹ in the spondee. By dexterity we may pronounce ›such‹ in the true time; but the attempt to remedy the rhythmical deficiency of the ›And‹ by drawing it out, merely aggravates the offence against natural enunciation, by directing attention to the offence.

My main object, however, in quoting these lines, is to show that, in spite of the prosodies, the length of a line is entirely an arbitrary matter. We might divide the commencement of Byron's poem thus:

 

Know ye the | land where the |

 

or thus:

 

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and |

 

or thus:

 

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle are |

 

or thus:

 

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle are | emblems of |

 

In short, we may give it any division we please, and the lines will be good – provided we have at least two feet in a line. As in mathematics two units are required to form number, so rhythm (from the Greek aritmos, number) demands for its formation at least two feet. Beyond doubt, we often see such lines as

 

Know ye the –

Land where the –

 

lines of one foot; and our prosodies admit such; but with impropriety: for common-sense would dictate that every so obvious division of a poem as is made by a line, should include within itself all that is necessary for its own comprehension; but in a line of one foot we can have no appreciation of rhythm, which depends upon the equality between two or more pulsations. The false lines, consisting sometimes of a single cæsura, which are seen in mock Pindaric odes, are of course ›rhythmical‹ only in connection with some other line; and it is this want of independent rhythm which adapts them to the purposes of burlesque alone. Their effect is that of incongruity (the principle of mirth), for they include the blankness of prose amid the harmony of verse.

My second object in quoting Byron's lines, was that of showing how absurd it often is to cite a single line from amid the body of a poem, for the purpose of instancing the perfection or imperfection of the line's rhythm. Were we to see by itself

 

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle,

 

we might justly condemn it as defective in the final foot, which is equal to only three, instead of being equal to four, short syllables.

In the foot ›flowers ever‹ we shall find a further exemplification of the principle of the bastard iambus, bastard trochee, and quick trochee, as I have been at some pains in describing these feet above. All the Prosodies on English Verse would insist upon making an elision in ›flowers,‹ thus ›flow'rs,‹ but this is nonsense. In the quick trochee ›many are the‹ occurring in Mr. Cranch's trochaic line, we had to equalize the time of the three syllables ›any, are, the‹ to that of the one short syllable whose position they usurp. Accordingly each of these syllables is equal to the third of a short syllable – that is to say, the sixth of a long. But in Byron's dactylic rhythm, we have to equalize the time of the three syllables ›ers, ev, er‹ to that of the one long syllable whose position they usurp, or (which is the same thing) of the two short. Therefore, the value of each of the syllables ›ers, ev, and er‹ is the third of a long. We enunciate them with only half the rapidity we employ in enunciating the three final syllables of the quick trochee – which latter is a rare foot. The ›flowers ever‹ on the contrary, is as common in the dactylic rhythm as is the bastard trochee in the trochaic, or the bastard iambus in the iambic.