Remember, _I_ am always at thy side,
If ever fortune bring thee once again
Where there are people in dispute like this,
For wishing to hear that is vulgar wish.
Verse is another of these expedients for producing that frame of mind,
that prepossession, on the part of hearer or reader which is essential
to the purpose of the poet, who has lost much of his advantage by the
invention of printing, which obliges him to appeal to the eye rather
than the ear. The rhythm is no arbitrary and artificial contrivance. It
was suggested by an instinct natural to man. It is taught him by the
beating of his heart, by his breathing, hastened or retarded by the
emotion of the moment. Nay, it may be detected by what seems the most
monotonous of motions, the flow of water, in which, if you listen
intently, you will discover a beat as regular as that of the metronome.
With the natural presumption of all self-taught men, I thought I had
made a discovery in this secret confided to me by Beaver Brook, till
Professor Peirce told me it was always allowed for in the building of
dams. Nay, for my own part, I would venture to affirm that not only
metre but even rhyme itself was not without suggestion in outward
nature. Look at the pine, how its branches, balancing each other, ray
out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray answers to
spray in order, strophe, and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands
an embodied ode, Nature's triumphant vindication of proportion, number,
and harmony.
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