susceptibility both of the general feelings and the attention" by the continued excitement of surprise. I submit that metre often distracts the attention from the poem's real object, which is to depict ecstasy. Metre often diverts our ear to the singsong tone in which the emotions are couched. Instead of adding to the vivacity and susceptibility of the feelings it really makes us suspect that the poet is not sincere, for the man of emotions expresses them spontaneously and does not trick them out in a pattern.

Next, Coleridge assumes that because of custom, metre must have some property in common with poetry. This argument cannot stand when we take into consideration the innumerable emotional passages that have been written in prose. A custom is only a passing practice, and free verse writers have abandoned the custom of writing in metre and in many cases have produced good poetry. Lastly, our critic thinks that every poet is impelled "to seek unity by harmonious adjustment, and thus establishing the principle, that all the parts of an organized whole must be assimilated to the more important and essential parts." But why assume that there is no unity of harmonious adjustment in an emotional passage in prose? Or why identify such unity with a metrical pattern? Isn't a Psalm in the Bible a unity of harmonious adjustment? Even if the essential part of a poetic piece tends to assume a certain pattern it does not mean that the whole piece should be given a patterned form. Some day it will be recognized that a long composition recording different emotions is really unaesthetic in a uniform pattern.

"As to the accents of words," says Bacon, in his Advancement of Learning, Book VI, Ch. I, "there is no necessity for taking notice of so trivial a thing; only it may be proper to intimate that these are observed with great exactness, whilst the accents of sentences are neglected; though it is nearly common to all mankind to sink the voice at the end of a period, to raise it in interrogation, and the like." This passage is the first attack in English on metre. It was Whitman who gave the death blow to metre. He brought poetry back to rhythmical prose, and is the greatest liberator poetry has ever had. He demonstrated that an entire volume might be written in rhythmical prose (with the lines broken up), and that the product could be the highest poetry. His Leaves of Grass ignored all the rules laid down in various books on poetics. Whitman has done more than most critics to convey to the world what poetry really is.

"In my opinion," says Whitman, "the time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form 

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