underlying rhythmic norm are Arnold's Strayed Reveller and Philomela. These are, except in one or two places, unrimed; the lines constantly vary in length; the stanzas are irregular in length and structure; but the rhythm is not free. Here is the whole of Philomela:

Hark! ah the Nightingale!

The tawny-throated!

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! Hark-what pain!

O Wanderer from a Grecian shore,

Still, after many years in distant lands,

Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain

That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain—

Say, will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou tonight behold

Here through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes

The too clcar web, and thy dumb Sister's shame?

Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound

With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis and the high Cephissian vale?

Listen Eugenia

How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!

Again-thou hearest!

Eternal Passion

Eternal Pain!

The sense of structure in this poem comes from the correspondence of the thought phrases with the line lengths, from the parallel phrases and rhythms and from the climactic arrangement of longer lines leading up to three short ones at the close. A definite rhythmical pattern is felt through the poem, for a third of the lines are familiar variations of the iambic pentameter and the rest are short lines with no unusual departures from the iambic.

The coincidence of line and phrasing which Arnold carries out in Philomela and in the greater part of the Strayed Reveller is important in free verse of either of the two types we have distinguished. A struggle between the thought phrase and the meter cannot be perceived by the ear unless there is a regularly expected line length, i. e., there is nothing gained by making the sense run over the line in vers libre.

For instance, is there any point at all in the following line division?

From Bundle's Opera House in the village

To Broadway is a great step,

But I tried to take it, my ambition fired

When sixteen years of age

Seeing "East Lynne" played here in the village
By Ralph Barrett, the coming

Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.

If the lines of verse are to have any existence as successive rhythmic units they must be made evident either by expected repetition of meter, or by rime, or by phrasing which makes them clearly units.

Always in free verse one should feel that there is some reason for the line division. Just as one avoids the monotony of many successive short phrases in prose style, so free verse gains by variety in phrase lengths. For example, the following choppy and abrupt phrasing does not seem to me suitable for the theme:

Opposite my window,

The moon cuts,

Clear and round,

Through the plum-coloured night.

She cannot light the city;

It is too bright.

It has white lamps,

And glitters coldly.

A finer effect may be gained by a climactic arrangement of lines, several long sweeps of phrases ending with short striking ones, or several short ones rounded out with the finality which long phrases give. Such arrangements are worth working for; they add a sense of structure to the poem or stanza. Henley, in Hawthorne and Lavender, has varied his line lengths most successfully, and, in the following example made the structure clear by an arrangement of interwoven rimes:

Where, in what other life,

Where, in what old, spent star,

Systems ago, dead vastitudes afar,

Were we two bird and bough, or man and wife?

Or wave and spar?

Or I the beating sea, and you the bar

On which it breaks? I know not, I!

But this, O this, my very dear I know;

Your voice awakes old echoes in my heart;

And things I say to you now are said once more;

And, sweet, when we two part,

I feel I have seen you falter and linger so,

So hesitate, and turn, and cling,—yet go,

As once in some innumerable Before,

Once on some fortunate yet thrice-blasted shore,
Was it for good?

O, these poor eyes are wet;

And yet, O yet,

Now that we know, I would not, if I could,

Forget.

The same principle of variation in line length is evident throughout Whitman's use of free rhythms. He is particularly fond of long sweeping reaches. In the following passage from the Mystic Trumpeter the lines vary in length from five to eleven time parts (as I read them), the longer lines broken by cesuras into a rhythmic ebb and flow:

Blow again, Trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,

Bring the old pageants-show the feudal world,

What charm thy music works-thou makest pass before me, Ladies and cavaliers long dead-barons are in their castle halls-the Troubadours are singing;

Armed knights go forth to redress wrongs-some in quest of the Holy Grail:

I see the tournament-I see the contestants, encased in heavy armor, seated on stately champing horses;

I hear the shouts-the sound of blows and smiting steel:
I see the Crusaders' tumultuous armies-Hark how the

cymbals clang!

Lo! where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high!

Not only are these lines varied in length, but each line is a thought-phrase. The form of this poem is in correspondence with the ideas expressed.

This correspondence, too, appears in the changes in rhythm. Whitman here has shown his own type of free verse to the greatest advantage, for it is in possibilities of rhythmic change that the advantage consists. The spirited beginning of the passage just quoted seems to me to have the rhythm of a trumpet call:

Blow again, | trumpeter!

The next four lines leave the triple rhythm for a somewhat varied duple, which seems to move slower than the triple. The two parallel phrases of the sixth line have a parallel rhythm:

which is echoed later in the triple rhythm of the line,

I see the Cru- | saders' tu- | multuous | armies- Hark!
how the cymbals | clang!

The peculiar rhythm of that last line of the passage is very suggestive of a stately walk:

Lo! where the | monks | walk in ad- | vance, | bearing the | cross on high!

Changes in rhythm indicating changes in thought and, wherever possible, rhythms directly suggestive of the thought, are effects to be sought after in writing vers libre. Mr. John Gould Fletcher, who has emphasized in one of his prefaces the importance of this point, sometimes exemplifies it admirably, as for instance

The rolling and the tossing of the sides of immense pavilions
Under the whirling wind that screams up the cloudless sky,

and again,

Like cataracts that crash from a crumbling crag

Into the dull-blue smouldering gulf of a lake below.

Suggestive rhythmic change ought to be one of the characteristic qualities of the freer type of vers libre, but most of the recent poets seem to me to have succeeded in it but indifferently well. This suggestiveness may be gained in other ways than the mere obvious imitation of sound or movement. A sudden change in the rhythm may have the effect of italicizing the thought in the new rhythm, so that the thought becomes more vivid. The two changes in the rhythm of the following lines from Henley are, I think, very suggestive, but they might emphasize other effects quite as well if given to another thought in a different context.

The River, jaded and forlorn,

Welters and wanders wearily-wretchedly on;