The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [725]
It is also about eleven years ago, if I am not mistaken, since Mr. Horne (of England,) the author of "Orion," one of the noblest epics in any language, thought it necessary to preface his "Chaucer Modernized" by a very long and evidently a very elaborate essay, of which the greater portion was occupied in a discussion of the seemingly anomalous foot of which we have been speaking. Mr. Horne upholds Chaucer in its frequent use; maintains his superiority, on account of his so frequently using it, over all English versifiers; and indignantly repelling the common idea of those who make verse on their fingers- that the superfluous syllable is a roughness and an error- very chivalrously makes battle for it as a "grace." That a grace it is, there can be no doubt; and what I complain of is, that the author of the most happily versified long poem in existence, should have been under the necessity of discussing this grace merely as a grace, through forty or fifty vague pages, solely because of his inability to show how and why it is a grace- by which showing the question would have been settled in an instant.
About the trochee used for an iambus, as we see in the beginning of the line,
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
there is little that need be said. It brings me to the general proposition that, in all rhythms, the prevalent or distinctive feet may be varied at will and nearly at random, by the occasional introduction of feet- that is to say, feet the sum of whose syllabic times is equal to the sum of the syllabic times of the distinctive feet. Thus, the trochee, whether is equal, in the sum of the times of its syllables, to the iambus, thou choose, in the sum of the times of its syllables; each foot being in time equal to three short syllables. Good versifiers who happen to be also good poets, contrive to relieve the monotony of a series of feet by the use of equivalent feet only at rare intervals, and at such points of their subject as seem in accordance with the startling character of the variation. Nothing of this care is seen in the line quoted above- although Pope has some fine instances of the duplicate effect. Where vehemence is to be strongly expressed, I am not sure that we should be wrong in venturing on two consecutive equivalent feet- although I cannot say that I have ever known the adventure made, except in the following passage, which occurs in "Al Aaraaf," a boyish poem written by myself when a boy. I am referring to the sudden and rapid advent of a star:
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
When first the phantoms course was found to be
Headlong hithirward o'er the starry sea.
In the "general proposition" above, I speak of the occasional introduction of equivalent feet. It sometimes happens that unskilful versifiers, without knowing what they do, or why they do it, introduce so many "variations" as to exceed in number the "distinctive" feet, when the ear becomes at once balked by the bouleversement of the rhythm. Too many trochees, for example, inserted in an iambic rhythm would convert the latter to a trochaic. I may note here that in all cases the rhythm designed should be commenced and continued, without variation, until the ear has had full time to comprehend what is the rhythm. In violation of a rule so obviously founded in common sense, many even of our best poets do not scruple to begin an iambic rhythm with a trochee, or the converse; or a dactylic with an anapaest or the converse; and so on.
A somewhat less objectionable error, although still a decided one, is that of commencing a rhythm not with a different equivalent foot but with a "bastard" foot of the rhythm intended. For example:
Many a / thought will / come to / memory. /
Here 'many a' is what I have explained to be a bastard trochee, and to be understood should be accented with inverted