the syllables on which the rhythmical accent falls. 2d. The vowel sounds of the rhyming syllables must be identical. 3d. The consonant sounds which precede the vowel sounds must be different, and those which follow or close it must be identical. Perfect rhymes, then, would be roam and home, dove and love, June and tune. Imperfect rhymes would be June and moon, home and come, love and prove. Where the rhyming accented syllables are followed by unaccented ones, the unaccented ones must be identical, like idly and widely, people and steeple, charming and harming, morrow and sorrow and borrow. These are called double or feminine rhymes. Triple rhymes, where the rhyming accented syllables are followed by identical pairs of unaccented syllables, like tenderly and slenderly, futurity and purity, are rare.

Terminal rhyme subject to these arbitrary rules is a comparatively modern invention. It is found in the Latin hymns of the church in the twelfth century, as :

Dies iræ, dies illa,

Solvet sæclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sybilla.

Tuba mirum spargens sonum,

Per sepulcra regionum,

Coget omnes ante thronum.

It has been conjectured that terminal rhyme was suggested by the usage of Moorish writers in Spain,

but it seems possible that so pleasing a device might have been hit upon independently in any language. Its use became general in the eleventh century in France, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the composite English tongue as it assumed form. Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer are all rhymers, and the use of the closing echo has characterized the verse of their tongues by poets ever since. Of course assonance, or the pleasing succession of similar sounds, is the essence of the formal structure of poetry as well as the measured time-beat, whether marked by quantity or by stress, as is readily seen in the lines of Homer. It is modern terminal rhyme of which we are speaking. Sporadic rhyme, dependent largely on the fact that similar grammatical forms have similar terminations, is not infrequent in Latin verse, as for instance in Horace's ode:

Phoebe, sylvarumque potens Diana,
Lucidum coeli decus, O colendi,
Semper et culti,

and it seems strange that poets did not even then consciously use words of similar sound to mark the divisions of their verbal structures. Possibly the use of quantity or the prolonged vowel sound was sufficient to give beauty to verse in the old pronunciation without any terminal rhyme echo. But the use of rhyme became almost universal when it was hit upon.

FORMS OF ENG. POETRY - 2

A question arises whether imperfect rhymes, in which the vowel sounds are similar but not identical, like weather and hither, mar the beauty of verse. The answer to this must depend theoretically on what is the real function of terminal rhyme, and practically on the usage of poets admitted to be masters of musical verse.

The function of terminal rhyme is twofold: first, to mark the lines and thereby to emphasize the structure of the poem as band courses emphasize the stories of a building. We thereby perceive more readily the interdependence of the parts and the unity of the whole. For this purpose it is evident that the rhymes need not be exact any more than the band courses need be exactly alike. The second function of the rhyme is to give the pleasure which comes from linked sounds or echoes. The lines might be individualized by pauses or stresses, but the echo individualizes by a device. which is beautiful in itself. Now, an echo is never a perfect reproduction of the original sound. It recalls it in a modified form, and, therefore, adds variety to what otherwise would be mechanically regular. A stroke on the bass drum marks the time very perfectly, but its uniformity is irritating after a few repetitions. If the pleasure in reading poetry consisted only in a perception of painstaking workmanship and difficulties overcome, perfect rhymes would be indispensable. But the pleasure we take in poetry rarely rests on the con

scious perception of technical skill, but usually on an unconscious perception of order like that of nature in which the rigid law of uniformity is modified by variations which suggest the law without following it slavishly, and give individuality to all the pines in the forest, yet mold them into a sylvan whole. In fact, the function of rhyme does not require that the assonances should all fill the requirements of the rules any more than it requires that they should all be on the same vowel, which, indeed, is, save in exceptional cases, considered a blemish. To bring within the range over which our memory for sounds extends two such rhyming pairs as moans, groans, and stove, Jove, gives an unpleasant effect from too frequent repetition of the sound of the open o.

The question must, however, be settled by the practice of poets, to whom is given the power of building musical word structures. This power, though largely increased by the reading- not by the study of poetry, is instinctive and unaccountable. Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne are admittedly masters of musical verse. From a page of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, out of one hundred and twenty lines we gather the following eleven imperfect pairs: wear, year· imprinted, contented — one, gone — years, bears — fast, taste - kiss, is drought, mouth-forage, courage-taste, last-quest, feast-heaven, even. Milton is a far more careful workman, but in the

three hundred and twenty-five lines of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso we find the following pairs: melancholy, holy — thee, Jollity — thee, Liberty · due, crew blithe, scythe end, fiend - verse, pierce - tie, harmony strove, above throne, contemplation among, song bear, insphere tragedy, by - wont, hunt-breathe, underneath ecstacies, eyes, or sixteen imperfect pairs in three hundred and twenty-five lines, a slightly less proportion than in Shakespeare's poem. It might be urged that in the pronunciation of the time some of the above rhymed more perfectly than they do in our modern pronunciation. Melancholy might have had the long o. In the same poem, however, it rhymes to folly. But the rhymes are quite as agreeable in the modern pronunciation as if they were perfect.

In Shelley's Skylark, one hundred and five lines, we find twelve imperfect pairs: spirit, near itwert, heart-even, heaven-clear, there cloud, overflowed - see, melody — thought, not - leaves, gives-grass, was not, fraught-flow, now — thee, satiety - Hymeneal, be all.

In the first two hundred and sixty lines of The Eve of St. Agnes we find sixteen imperfect couplets and triplets: was, grass-— man, wan — freeze, oratories - door, poor cavalier, other where — moors, doors, hours-foul, soul—morn, crone ears, bears-secrecy, privacy- last, chaste—device, eyes, heraldries - amethyst, prest-weed, bed