FIGURE XVI.—ONOMATOPOEIA.
☞[The following lines, from Swift's Poems, satirically mimick the imitative music of a violin.]
"Now slowly move your fiddle-stick;
Now, tantan, tantantivi, quick;
Now trembling, shivering, quivering, quaking,
Set hoping hearts of Lovers aching."
"Now sweep, sweep the deep.
See Celia, Celia dies,
While true Lovers' eyes
Weeping sleep, Sleeping weep,
Weeping sleep, Bo-peep, bo-peep."
CHAPTER IV.—VERSIFICATION.
Versification is the forming of that species of literary composition which is called verse; that is, poetry, or poetic numbers.
SECTION I.—OF VERSE.
Verse, in opposition to prose, is language arranged into metrical lines of some determinate length and rhythm—language so ordered as to produce harmony, by a due succession of poetic feet, or of syllables differing in quantity or stress.
DEFINITIONS AND PRINCIPLES.
The rhythm of verse is its relation of quantities; the modulation of its numbers; or, the kind of metre, measure, or movement, of which it consists, or by which it is particularly distinguished.
The quantity of a syllable, as commonly explained, is the relative portion of time occupied in uttering it. In poetry, every syllable is considered to be either long or short. A long syllable is usually reckoned to be equal to two short ones.
In the construction of English verse, long quantity coincides always with the primary accent, generally also with the secondary, as well as with emphasis; and short quantity, as reckoned by the poets, is found only in unaccented syllables, and unemphatical monosyllabic words.[1]
The quantity of a syllable, whether long or short, does not depend on what is called the long or the short sound of a vowel or diphthong, or on a supposed distinction of accent as affecting vowels in some cases and consonants in others, but principally on the degree of energy or loudness with which the syllable is uttered, whereby a greater or less portion of time is employed.
The open vowel sounds, which are commonly but not very accurately termed long, are those which are the most easily protracted, yet they often occur in the shortest and feeblest syllables; while, on the other hand, no vowel sound, that occurs under the usual stress of accent or of emphasis, is either so short in its own nature, or is so "quickly joined to the succeeding letter," that the syllable is not one of long quantity.
Most monosyllables, in English, are variable in quantity, and may be made either long or short, as strong or weak sounds suit the sense and rhythm; but words of greater length are, for the most part, fixed, their accented syllables being always long, and a syllable immediately before or after the accent almost always short.
One of the most obvious distinctions in poetry, is that of rhyme and blank verse. Rhyme is a similarity of sound, combined with a difference: occurring usually between the last syllables of different lines, but sometimes at other intervals; and so
- ↑ [483] To this principle there seems to be now and then an exception, as when a weak dissyllable begins a foot in an anapestic line, as in the following examples:
"I think—let me see—yes, it is, I declare,
As long ago now as that Buckingham there."—Leigh Hunt.
"And Thomson, though best in his indolent fits,
Either slept himself weary, or blasted his wits."—Id.Here, if we reckon the feet in question to be anapests, we have dissyllables with both parts short. But some, accenting "ago" on the latter syllable, and "Either" on the former, will call "ago now" a bacchy, and "Either slept" an amphimac: because they make them such by their manner of reading.—G. B.
