3. Search for examples of rhythm in nature other than those quoted in the text; give also examples of what has been termed "the rhythmic instinct," whereby man is rhythmical in his best work.

4. Examine the arrangement of stresses in the following passages, and show how it differs from the more rigid and conventional arrangements:

(a) Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
ROBERT BRIDGES

(b) Is the night chilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.

The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.

COLERIDGE

CHAPTER IV

CHANGE AND RECURRENCE

Just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

BOTH the young child and the primitive savage take unbounded delight in hearing the same sound over and over again. (They revel in a familiar cadence.) For the hundredth time of telling the fairy-tale secures rapturous listeners, though it is known thoroughly by heart; and the minstrels with their well-worn stories of knighterrantry and derring-do never lacked an audience. Half the charm of these tales, both new and old, lies in their recurring and familiar phrases. In the story of The Old Woman and her Pig, for instance, there comes at intervals the pleasing refrain, "Piggy won't get over the stile, and I shan't get home to-night." The child listens for its recurrence as we listen for the neighboring chimes, and would be quick to resent any

disposition on the part of a matter-of-fact narrator to "cut the cackle and come to the 'osses." In all old tales there is this element of repetition. In that wonderfully significant parable of the trees, for example, which Jotham told the men of Shechem each tree in turn as it is given the invitation, "Come thou, and reign over us," replies, "Shall I leave my fatness [or whatever its particular virtue may be] and go to wave to and fro over the trees?" This formula is repeated until we come to the ignoble bramble, which, having no particular virtue to boast of, accepts joyfully. Here, as always, change and recurrence go hand > in hand. There is just enough of the new to spice the repetition, the sound of which is friendly and familiar and makes us feel at home. 2. This primitive delight in repetition, often so inexplicable to those sophisticated elders upon whom "shades of the prison-house" have closed desperately, gives yet another key to literary appreciation. Our early English poets loved to string together words beginning with the same sound-a device that we call "head-rhyme" or "alliteration." It was a new game then, and they exulted in it as a child revels in sorting out a new box of bricks. Indeed, poets in later times have found it dangerously tempting. Shakespeare poked fun at its extravagant use when he made

the pedant Holofernes begins his "extemporal epitaph" thus:

The preyful princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket;

Some say a sore; but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting.

But though the poet is no longer dependent upon alliteration to bind his verse together he still has it for occasional use, and how effective it can be made the following examples will show:

Magdalen's tall tower tipped with tremulous gold Marks the long High Street of the little town.

Now my brothers call from the bay,

Now the great winds shorewards blow,
Now the salt tides seawards flow,

Now the wild white horses play,

Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
MATTHEW ARNOLD

But the old poets soon got beyond the mere sorting out of words beginning with the same sound, and began to use the subtler device of placing in close proximity words with the same

3. vowel sound. This we call "assonance," and our modern poetry owes much of its sweetest music to this source. Swinburne was very fond of it, as we may see from the following stanza from the "Prelude" to Songs before Sunrise:

A little time that we may fill

Or with such good works or such ill

As loose the bonds or make them strong
Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.
By rose-hung river and light-foot rill

There are those who rest not; who think long
Till they discern as from a hill,

At the sun's hour of morning song,

Known of souls only, and those souls free,
The sacred spaces of the sea.

It is not so obvious as head-rhyme, but the ear soon learns to catch the recurring vowels in little fill, ill; bonds, strong, wrong; river, rill, think, discern, hill; known, souls, only, those; sacred, spaces. Buchanan too uses assonance effectively to describe Drowsietown in White Rose and Red:

Thro' the fields with sleepy gleam,
Drowsy, drowsy steals the stream,
Touching with its azure arms
Upland fields and peaceful farms,
Gliding with a twilight tide

Where the dark elms shade its side;

Twining, pausing sweet and bright
Where the lilies sail so white;

Winding in its sedgy hair

Meadow-sweet and iris fair;