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felt it to be advantageous or was he forced to do it by lack of proper words? Do you find some rhymes that appear to be imperfect, some that are false or altogether inadmissible? Is the rhyme always confined to one syllable or are there examples of two or more rhyming syllables? Can you find any examples of rhymes occurring persistently near the middle of the lines? If you find these, can the lines be broken in two without loss to the poem ?

Find examples of alliteration and see whether they add to the beauty of the poem. Can you find words which seem to have been used because of their own melodious character? Can you find words so placed that they are brought together in melodious succession? Can you find examples of single words which by their sound suggest the idea they convey, as buzzing suggests the angry whirring of the bee's wings, and hum, the soft tones of the homeward flight of the weary worker? Can you find examples of this harmony in groups of words as in the oft-quoted laborious line,— "Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone?" Much of the beauty of the poetry lies in its melody and in its harmony or pleasing succession of sounds and in the perfect adaptation of sounds to sense. One learns to feel the thrill of these exquisite tones by training himself to detect them and acquiring the habit of unconscious response to their sweet influence.

Studies

Do you find anywhere words repeated with regularity and phrases repeated in words but slightly varying? Is this a pleasing thing? Find in some poems a line or more repeated at the end of every stanza. This refrain is another effort to charm the ear by repetition of agreeable sounds though it is sometimes a recurrent thought that adds to the beauty of sentiment.

The study of versification is an interesting one but the average reader cannot give it the time needed for a thorough mastery of its laws. He must, however, if he expects to appreciate poetry, know thoroughly the common forms of meter; not know them merely as names, but as realities. The movement of the lines must seize his imagination the moment he sees them. If you have reached this point in your study without recognizing the spirit of the four principal meters, review your work and practice the scansion of a great variety of poems. The music of the lines will come to you with practice.

The Interpretation of Poetry

The author of Rab and His Friends has aptly said: "It is with poetry as with flowers and fruits. We would all rather have them and taste them than talk about them. It is a good thing to know about a lily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany, its archæology, even its anatomy and organic radicals; but it is a better thing to look at the flowers themselves and to consider how they grow."

Professor Shairp writes: "Whenever the soul comes vividly in contact with any fact, truth, or existence, which it realizes and takes home to itself with more than common intensity, out of that meeting of the soul and its object there arises a thrill of joy, a glow of emotion; and the expression of that glow, that thrill, is poetry."

The Daffodils

At one time Wordsworth, wandering in the beautiful region in which he made his home, came vividly in contact with a fact, his soul realized with more than ordinary intensity the meaning of the fact, and thrilling with the experience he gave expression to the glow of feeling:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky-way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee.

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company;

I gazed and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

One is not to suppose that the poet deliberately decided that he would use iambic tetrameter verse, that the rhymes should alternate through four verses, that the stanza should close with a rhyming couplet and that he then set about to find words necessary to fill his meters and fix his rhymes. Though Poe tells us this is the way he constructed The Raven yet we feel that there is something more than mere mechanical ability in the little poem we are considering. By some wonderful power not unlike, though vastly more refined than the one by which we learn to recognize the rhythm of the poem, Wordsworth's soul found expression for his emotion in the perfect harmony of verse. Words, phrases and sentences dropped into place, verses assumed the right length, rhymes sprang into being, graceful figures took new life, and the poem was created, complete, beautiful.

He is lonely as a cloud on a bright day in

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