From Steady Monotony Into Music

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One of the great strengths of traditional metrical forms is that they can be used by poets to surprise a reader.

To explain this, I could always fall back on the words of Robert Frost:

"All I ask is iambic. I undertake to furnish the variety in the relation of my tones to it. The crossed swords are always the same. The sword dancer varies his position between them."

[From a letter to John Freeman, circa 1925. Quoted in Robert Frost on Writing, by Elain Barry. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1973.]

Where Frost mentions dance, I think of music. For a skilled poet, metre becomes an implied bass line in a melody that plays with, and against, the metre, in the same way that a melody by Sibelius can shift and flex above a chugging ostinato.

Metrical analysis can show how this works, but anyone who can feel a metre as a swimmer feels a tide will have no need for the specialized terms of analysis. By reciting aloud with full attention, a good reader might catch the play of rhythms by ear alone.

One of my favourite examples of a poem that plays with and against the metre is "Lucifer in Starlight," by George Meredith.

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.

[From Poems Vol. II, by George Meredith. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1910.]

As a Petrarchan sonnet, this poem features lines of pure iambic pentameter as a reader would expect: five sets of two syllables, with an accent upon each final syllable.

"And NOW / upON / his WEST/ern WING / he LEANED"

Meredith, however, wants to surprise the reader with an unexpected melody. He pulls this tune from the iambic pentameter by replacing iambs with trochees that invert the beat, from da-DUM to DA-dum:

"TIRED of"

"SOARing"

He also breaks the rhythm by setting two equal stresses beside each other, by using spondees:

"POOR PREY / to his / HOT FIT"

"Above / the rol/ling ball / in cloud / PART SCREENED"

"Now the / BLACK PLA/net"

And by using pyrrhics, two unaccented syllables beside each other, he can make sets of words almost inaudible in the flow of the verse:

"On a / STARRED NIGHT"

"Where SIN/ners HUGGED / their SPECT / tre of / repOSE"


"Which are / the BRAIN"


By combining these methods, Meredith is able to create daring melodies that catch the readers off-guard:


"With MEM/ory of / the OLD / reVOLT / from AWE"


"The AR/my of / unAL/tera/ble LAW"


All of these methods work to surprise because the reader expects a pattern. When this pattern is broken, a line can be transformed from steady monotony into music, and from dullness into poetry.