Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

or again, from Shakespeare’s prose,
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Thĭs goo
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dly fra
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me | thĕ ea
_
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Poems 567
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rth see
_
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ms tŏ | mĕ ă ste
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ri
_
le | prom
ŏntŏry˘ , | thĭs most
excĕll|ĕnt
canŏpy˘
| thĕ air,
loo kyou ˘ , | thĭs
_
_
_
_
brave
o’erhang|ĭng
firmămĕnt,
| thĭs măjestĭc|ăl
rooffrettĕd
|
_
wĭth goldĕn
fire
|
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and so on with a constant recurrence of the same quantitative
movement all through; or, yet more strikingly,
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Ho
_
_
wa
mornĭng!
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rt thou
_
| fa
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llĕn frŏm | Hea
_
_
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vĕn, Ŏ | Lu
_
_
_
cĭfĕr, | so
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nŏfthĕ|
This last sentence can be read indeed as a very perfect hexameter.
The first of these passages could be easily presented as four lines
of free quantitative verse, each independent in its arrangement
of feet, but all swaying in a single rhythm. Shakespeare’s is most
wonderfully balanced in a series of differing four-syllabled, with
occasional shorter, feet, as if of deliberate purpose, though it is
no intention of the mind but the ear of the poet that has constructed
this fine design of rhythmic prose. A free quantitative
verse in this kind would be perfectly possible.
A more regular quantitative metre can be of two kinds.
There could be lines all with the same metrical arrangement
following each other without break or else alternating lines
with a different arrangement for each, forming a stanza, — as
in the practice of accentual metres. But there could also be an
arrangement in strophe and antistrophe as in the Greek chorus.
In “Thought the Paraclete” the first rule is followed; all
the lines are on the same model. The metre of this poem has a
certain rhythmic similarity to the Latin hendecasyllable which
runs | ⌣⌣| ⌣| ⌣| ⌣, e.g.
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So
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le
_
_
s | o
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_
ccĭdĕr(e) | e
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trĕ|di
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rĕ | po
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ssunt.
Nobis
| cumsĕmĕl
| occĭd|itbrĕ|vislux,
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_
_
_