The words are used to the
uttermost yet with composure. And a certain justness of utterance
increases the provocation of what we take leave to call unjust thought in
the few poems that proclaim an intemperate scorn--political, social,
literary. The poems are but two or three; they are to be known by their
subjects--we might as well do something to justify their scorn by using
the most modern of adjectives--and call them topical. Here assuredly
there is no composure. Never before did superiority bear itself with so
little of its proper, signal, and peculiar grace--reluctance.
If Mr. Patmore really intends that his Odes shall be read with minim, or
crochet, or quaver rests, to fill up a measure of beaten time, we are
free to hold that he rather arbitrarily applies to liberal verse the laws
of verse set for use--cradle verse and march-marking verse (we are, of
course, not considering verse set to music, and thus compelled into the
musical time). Liberal verse, dramatic, narrative, meditative, can
surely be bound by no time measures--if for no other reason, for this:
that to prescribe pauses is also to forbid any pauses unprescribed.
Granting, however, his principle of catalexis, we still doubt whether the
irregular metre of _The Unknown Eros_ is happily used except for the
large sweep of the flight of the Ode more properly so called.
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