We see that these lines are of the same length and balance each other. Rhythm is thus governed by time and balance.

2. Regular Rhythm Rhymed

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

-TENNYSON, The Brook.

In this selection we have four time-beats in the first line and four in the third. In the second line, we have only three time-beats, because the line drops a syllable. Is it therefore irregular? No, for it is exactly balanced by the fourth line, which also gives us three time-beats and lacks a syllable. The ear anticipates the form of the fourth line and recognizes it with something akin to delight.

Indeed, if the law of balance be observed, a line of irregular length or unusual time-beat may often be used with fine rhythmical effect, finding its echo in a similar line further along.

3. Unusual Rhythm Unrhymed

There they are, my fifty men and women

Naming me the fifty poems finished!

Take them, Love, the book and me together:

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

-BROWNING, One Word More.

This example, as may be seen, has ten syllables and five beats to the line, like the selection from "Paradise Lost," but the unusualness of the rhythm is caused by having the beat come on the first syllable instead of on the second; in other words, the lines are in trochaic meter instead of in iambic meter. We are so used to having blank verse written in iambic meter that when Browning reverses the beat it strikes us as something entirely fresh, and we at first think that he has added a syllable. But it is not so. Notwithstanding this apparent irregularity, Browning observes the law of time; his unusual beat falls with absolute regularity, and he observes the law of balance, too, the lines echoing one another.

Although it is possible to build up a rhythm by selecting a given number of time-beats, we must never forget that rhythm is the inner impulse of verse, its heart-throb, as it were, and that it should therefore be approached from the inside and not from the outside. The stronger this inner impulse the more vigorous and spirited will be the verse. For instance, take the following:

Rode the six hundred.

-TENNYSON, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Tennyson said that this rhythm was suggested by the sound of a troop of galloping horse, and we naturally feel that movement to be the inner impulse, which, working in the poet's mind, determined the form of his poem; and the reaction of the poem on our minds reproduces that original impulse so perfectly that we hear the sound of the galloping troopers. Imitation of natural sounds and movements, and even of those that are mechanical, will reward careful study with suggestions of new rhythms.

There was never a priest to pray,
There was never a hand to toll

When they made me
me guard of the bay,

And moored me over the shoal.

I rock, I reel, and I roll

My four great hammers pĺy—

Could I speak or be still at the Church's will?

Í!

("Shoal! 'Ware shoal!") Not I!

-KIPLING, The Bell Buoy.

The inner impulse of this rhythm is the surging up and down of the buoy, and it is emphasized by the recurrent refrain "Shoal! 'Ware Shoal!"

Kipling has a wonderful feeling for rhythm and may be profitably studied in this connection. Notice especially "Danny Deever," "Mandalay," and "The Ballad of East and West."

For they're done with Danny Deever, you can 'ear

the quickstep play,

The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us

away;

Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an they'll want

their beer today,

After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

-KIPLING, Danny Deever.

In this selection we hear the sound of the regimental band and our feet almost instinctively keep time to it.

There's a Burma girl a-settin', an' I know she thinks

o' me;

For the wind is in the palm-trees, an' the temple-bells

"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin'-fishes play,

An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China

'crost the Bay!

-KIPLING, Mandalay.

Though we may never have heard temple bells, we recognize their rhythm in the foregoing refrain.

They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn,

The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn.

The dun he fell at a water-course-in a woeful heap

fell he,

And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free.

-KIPLING, Ballad of East and West.

These lines convey not only the romantic atmosphere of the race, but its killing speed; and the rhythm of the first half of the second line suggests even the faltering gait of the spent horse.

So essential is this inner impulse that it may even triumph over bad workmanship a good rhythm will sometimes carry an inferior poem. If, then, rhythm be so important, the would-be versifier should cultivate a sense