What I rather anticipate is the growth among our writers of a poetical
prose, with a severe structure and sequence of thought underlying it,
but with an entire irregularity of outline. The pleasure to be derived
from perfectly proportioned lucid prose is a far subtler and more
refined pleasure than that derived from the rhythmical beat of verse.
Take, for instance, such works as _The Ring and the Book_ and _Aurora
Leigh_. Is there anything whatever to be gained by the relentless
drumming, under the surface of these imaginative narratives, of the
stolid blank verse? Would not such compositions have gained by being
written in pure poetical prose? The quality which at present directs
writers to choosing verse-forms for poetical expression, apart from the
traditions, is the need of condensation, and the sense of proportion
which the verse-structure enforces and imparts. But I should look
forward to the writing of prose where the epithets should be as
diligently weighed, the cadence as sedulously studied; where the mood
and the subject would indicate inevitably the form of the sentence, the
alternation of languid, mellifluous streams of scented and honied words
with brisk, emphatic, fiery splashes of language. Indeed, in reading
even great poetry, is one not sometimes sadly aware, as in the case of
Shelley or Swinburne, that the logical sequence of thought is loose and
indeterminate, and that this is concealed from one by the reverberating
beat of metre, which gives a false sense of structure to a mood that is
really invertebrate?
What I am daily hoping to see is the rise of a man of genius, with a
rich poetical vocabulary and a deep instinct for poetical material, who
will throw aside resolutely all the canons of verse, and construct
prose lyrics with a perfect mastery of cadence and melody.
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