A PRIMER OF ENGLISH VERSE CHIEFLY IN ITS AESTHETIC AND ORGANIC CHARACTER BY HIRAM CORSON, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY BOSTON, U.S.A. Educ. T 798. 93,2.98 Harvard University, TRANSFERRED TO MARVARD COLLEGE LIBRAR: 1932 COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY HIRAM CORSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. PRESSWORK BY GINN & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. EFFECTS PRODUCED BY EXCEPTIONAL AND VARIED METRES.. 32-34 EFFECTS PRODUCED BY A SHIFTING OF THE REGULAR AC- A PRIMER OF ENGLISH VERSE. I. POETIC UNITIES AND THEIR ORIGIN. THE HE principal coefficients of poetic expression are Rhythm, Metre, Stanza, Rhyme, Assonance, Alliteration, Melody, and Harmony, which seem to be all due, when they are vital and organic, to the unifying action of feeling or emotion. When strong feeling is in any way objectified, a unifying process sets in. The insulated intellect, in its action, tends rather in an opposite direction - that is, in an analytic direction. It matters not upon what feeling or emotion is projected, or with what it is incorporated; it will be found that in all cases it is unifying or, to use a word coined by Coleridge, esemplastic, in its action. If we look at a landscape coldly or indifferently, we may be cognizant of its various elements or phases; but there is little or no effort to grasp it as a whole, and to subject all its elements to some principle of harmony or fusion. At another time, when our feelings are active, and the intellect is in a more or less negative state, there will be a spontaneous and, it may be, a quite unconscious effort to unify that same landscape, |