metrical base underlying the irregularities. But what are we to think of this kind of thing? [Pg 24] Have these words, by being divided[Pg 25] into two lines, acquired any kind of value they would not have had if they had been printed as prose, in which case they might be enjoyed as an amusing satirical outburst? But it would almost seem that at times free verse is no more than an excuse for uttering futilities and ineptitudes that we should not have dared to express in honest prose. [Pg 25] There is yet another important aspect of this medium of modern verse which we must not forget. Ancient poetry was in an obvious and literal sense an incantation, at once charming and exciting the mind through the ear. Now modern poetry, though no longer chanted but spoken, still retains, or should retain, something of its primitive nature as an incantation. It is notorious that poets, when reading verse, generally fall into a kind of chanting delivery, which sometimes, owing to their lack of skill, may seem affected, and even absurd. But their[Pg 26] instinct is none the less right. Poetry read to sound like prose is intolerable. Thought is not poetic unless it be kindled into emotion; and the natural language of emotion is different from that of prose, the vehicle of reason. Not only is it more rhythmical, but it is more musical; that is to say, though the pitch is not deliberately regulated, as in song, there is a tendency to a level monotonous intonation, and changes of pitch, when they occur, are more conscious and more noticeable. The commonest fault of bad speakers of verse on the stage is to emphasise individual words by raising the pitch, so destroying the music that is proper to verse, and incidentally the rhythm too. [Pg 26] And here I may mention a danger to which both writers and readers of modern verse are very liable. In order to get the full value out of poetry (or indeed out of prose too), we ought, as Flaubert insisted, to read it aloud.[Pg 27] But as we cannot always be doing that, we must, when reading silently to ourselves, listen with our unsensual ear to the same sounds and the same rhythms, moving at the same pace, as though we were reading aloud. Otherwise we shall not be reading poetry. It is indeed quite possible that twenty lines of Milton, read silently thus, may actually take up somewhat less time than they would if they were read aloud; but the pace ought not to seem hurried: in so far as it does, the magic of the medium will be impaired or
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